Kristen and Mitch Take On California: Part II

On day two of our vacation, we took the train from Davis to San Jose. What a fine way to travel! Smooth, inexpensive and energy efficient. Too bad Canada hasn’t caught the wave. While I’m on the topic, the public transit in California was cleaner and cheaper than Edmonton’s, and the light rail ran directly on the street. This suggests that the transit-riding population is sharper than that in Edmonton as well… maybe just because their brains aren’t addled with cold.

Anyway, we got to San Jose, walked to our hotel, had a look around, took Mitch out for some birthday pub food and beer, marveled at the comprehensive Happy Hour (ALL drinks on special, not just whatever the bar overstocked!), and took off for HP Pavilion and the Boss!

BROOOOOOOCE!

Everyone we talked to in San Jose, including a kindly vagrant, asked if we were there to see Bruce, and that’s one reason I was excited to see him in the States. He’s a much bigger deal there. And this is the same reason I was stoked to hear him play “Born in the USA,” which he didn’t (spoiler).

Bruce was fashionably late—nearly an hour—taking the stage, but he made up for it with a THREE HOUR SET. I must say, I was impressed. When I’m his age I hope to be breathing on my own, never mind crowd surfing and doing wicked back bends.

He really puts the "sex" in "sexegenarian." 

During my pre-Mitch party years, I knew very little about the Boss. I knew he had a song called “Glory Days”—it’s the only Springsteen song my hometown radio station seemed to have in their catalogue. And that’s about all I knew. Growing up in small-town Saskatchewan pre-MySpace could really limit your musical knowledge.

Oh man these guys are my fave! 

I’ve tried not to let Mitch have too much influence on my musical taste, and he hasn’t. Mitch loves music in a broad sense, a quality that leads him to listen to a lot of crap.

Including but certainly not limited to this. AGGGGHHHHH.

But Bruce is his all-time favourite, and fortunately this is something I can really get behind. Springsteen is like the personification of the Olympics or September 11: he has the power to speak to a zeitgeist (assuming I used the word “zeitgeist” correctly) and unite a culture through the good and the bad.

There are times when I really don’t like people—they can be such messes, with all their insecurities and conceits. But Bruce’s music can really make me happy to be one of them, stumbling along from point A to point B, with all the joy and misery that may fall in between. It's easy to forget our differences to a soundtrack of Boss tunes.

For example, in the merch line I really bonded with a gentleman with a heavy tan and a sleeveless t-shirt from Reno. We got along swimmingly, at least until he found out I was Canadian. Then he looked at me like he suspected I was trying to sneak gay married people and free healthcare into his country. The humanity!

But back to the show.

At the show. As you can tell by my face, the wine and the Red Bull are really fighting it out in my system.

The sustained energy! The sheer entertainment value! Bruce was accompanied by most of the E Street Band, with the notable omission of Clarence Clemons—the legendary Big Man behind the similarly legendary E Street sax, who died last year. Filling his size 98 (or so) shoes was the Little Big Man, his nephew Jake Clemons, who led a horn section with a sax sound almost as big as that of his predecessor.

Big sax sound. 

But there is a definite reason for Springsteen’s sustained popularity, and the live show he consistently puts on, even after 40 years in the biz, is only one reason. As world-weary as his tunes have always been, Bruce clearly loves performing.

The set consisted of plenty of material from Wrecking Ball and other works from the past decade, particularly the similarly dark The Rising. He skipped over the E-Street-less misstep that was the 1990s, opting instead for a hearty helping of classics including a few deep tracks, a soul medley and fully half of Born to Run.    

The Boss worked all kinds of crowd participation into the show. He seems to genuinely love his fans, and God knows the crowd loves him. At several points, he left the stage and walked through the crowd—not on a catwalk, but actually through the fans on the floor, at their level. And then he crowd surfed back to the stage. Way more humility, trust and respect than I would expect from a star of his caliber.

It was really a family show too—he worked ballads into his high-energy set, giving the boomers a chance to sit down and take a load off. You could almost hear a sigh of relief as the band struck up the melancholy “Jack Of All Trades.”

And things were fine at the other end of the age spectrum too—a little E-Streeter joined the Boss onstage for “Waiting on a Sunny Day.” He knew all the words too, which just warms my heart. And a girl of about 12 took Courtney Cox’s place onstage for “Dancing in the Dark”—although I think her dad was more thrilled about her moment in the limelight than she was.

The high point for me came with “Thunder Road,” my favourite Boss tune and the main set closer. Thanks to the magic of YouTube, you too can enjoy it:

We left the arena aching and stimulated from head to toe, just as Bruce said we would. And that was the night it was. But just like a photo can’t compare to an amazing view, a blog post sure won’t do the Boss justice. Some things are just meant to be experienced.