Orel Family

Bruce Springsteen salutes the crowd - April 1, 2023 Inevitably, someone might ask me, approximately: "you just saw him in Detroit on Wednesday, why would you fly to New York to see more? Especially when it's so  expensive?"  As the hours slipped away on my weather-delayed flight yesterday, I could even entertain a rational point to those questions. Hell, just looking at a setlist that had only 2 changes from the Detroit show 3 days prior, it still might seem fair to ask. Jungleland Trapped. April 1, 2023 But, you see, there was this show. If you were there, you know. You experienced the crowd. You experienced what seemed to be an extra bounce in everyone's step -- in Bruce's case, literally skipping across the stage at times. You experienced "Jungleland," in which Bruce seemed to conjure up a version of himself not seen or heard in decades, and in which, if you closed your eyes, you heard the ghost of Jake Clemons's uncle, too. You heard and saw Max ...

September, 1979. I'd just returned home from being in Israel for 6 weeks. Less than a week later, my grandmother suddenly died from a heart attack. Sometime in the immediate aftermath of the returning home to New Jersey from my grandparents' shiva house in Connecticut, the school year started, and I understood that Bruce Springsteen was going to be playing at two of the upcoming "Musicians for Safe Energy" No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden. On Rosh Ha-freaking Shannah. Tickets probably went on sale while I was out of the country, and I had no chance of getting any. There was a girl in my homeroom class, and she  had tickets. Or, at least, she was going. She wasn't even especially excited about it.  I was 17, a hardcore fan, and  shut out. The burn, no doubt distorted by selective recall, lingered for a long time. It would be nearly another 2 years before I'd get to see Springsteen live.  More than 42 years later, the concert film "The Legendary 1...

Bruce Springsteen and Max Weinberg, earlier this evening at Madison Square Garden as seen on periscope. People using the mobile app can add comments and hearts. It's Wednesday night and I'm sitting at home in Michigan and I'm watching Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performing live in Madison Square Garden. Oh, it's not on TV, and it's not "official." The picture is somewhat awful, but the sound is pretty good through my computer speakers. Anyway, what can we expect from a cell phone? This day has been coming for many years. The day when an event like this would be fearlessly broadcast, live, from inside the event venue to anywhere in the outside world. Periscope , acquired by twitter in 2015 before it was even released to the public, was hardly the first app to enable broadcasts from smartphones, but so far it sure seems to be the best. Their slogan is, "Explore the world through someone else's eyes." A week ago, when Bru...