The Boss

October 14, 2001

I know I’m about to flush all my street cred down the toilet, but I was watching Bruce Springsteen’s NYC concert on HBO today and I’ll be damned if I wasn’t entertained.

Usually these overhyped specials are more of a curiosity than anything else, and more often than not you find yourself looking at brilliance that’s been eroded by time and hard living. At best you’ll see the “Rock Veteran” show, a performance that is so technically proficient it verges on the robotic. It’s still very good, but you get the feeling that every wave of the hand is rehearsed, every bit of snappy banter repeated from the previous evening.

Now, this show definitely contains some of those faults. This isn’t Springsteen from 1978, and most of the pure raw emotion has been replaced by experience. On top of that, Springsteen’s shows have always been meticulously constructed to squeeze the most emotion out of the audience.

Still, Springsteen manages to fuel his show with an infectious joy and earnesty that is so often missing in performers his age. The man honestly looks like he still enjoys it, and if he’s just cashing paychecks like the Rolling Stones, it’s really hard to tell. After so many years of success, he’s still able to make people believe in his everyman schtick, most likely because he still believes it himself. This old Salon article about Bruce Springsteen nails down his appeal a lot better than I ever could.

I spend so much time looking for the next new thing, it’s sometimes really fun to watch an old dinosaur like Bruce go to work and put on a good old fashioned rock and roll show, steeped in the Americana of blues and folk and gospel, delivered with unrivaled passion and conviction.

Rock on, Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce.

Posted in From Blown Speakers