Monday, May 18, 2009

The day "The Boss" came to town...

Monday morning I cleaned the garage out and worked in the yard and had my yearly fight with the lawn mower. Grrrr! but I won again. It seems no matter how much STABIL I put in the mower in the Fall after a long cold winter it is never enough to keep things in liquid form for the Spring. Early afternoon I took Reese to the dog park for a run. She really liked that. I love to see her in an all out run. Sometime I hope to get some good pictures so you can see what a long stride she has. She is so fast!!

Then it was time....
Time to go to the.......
Show!

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were in town and we had tickets. Tickets for the floor, we were going to try for "the pit". The Pit is the section of the floor closest to the stage which is baricaded off from the other fans on the floor.
We left town mid-afternoon, a little later than my brother had thought(Little did he know it was all part of the plan). Then we got stuck in traffic (again part of the plan).

We got to the concert venue and went to get our wrist bands. These wrist bands had numbers on them that we would line up in, from which they would choose a random number. The random number would be the start of the people that would be allowed into the pit. So we had number 770 and 771. We got our tickets at about 5:00. We had to start lining up at 5:15, so we would all be there for the pit number to be drawn at 5:30. They finally announced that they would allow 600 people into "The Pit". Then they drew the number and it was 758. Whoo Hooo, we were going to "The Pit". So then we had to get in another line according to number and we were given a second wrist band. Then we were finally led down to the floor of the arena. We were the 12th and 13th people into the arena.

On the way down to the floor I jokingly said so when we get down here does the "Pit Crew" bring us some beverages. Well, we were there about 60 seconds and some guy was delivering beer and pop etc. Talk about service. It was perfect timing as we were both thirsty and new it would only get worse with what was to come. So I bought us some beers and we got to know some of the people around us that would be invading our personal space for the next 4 hours.

It was amazing we were right up against the stage. Part of the stage had baricades in front of it even for the pit people but we were front and center, there were no baricades. I was leaning on the stage all night. Here is my brother in front of the stage. He is leaning against the lower part of it and then the next level up is what you see the drums on.

I must admit there were times that I had trouble seeing Max on the drums because some guy was blocking my view - but since his name was Bruce I didn't mind!! So yes, I did get Bruce spit and sweat on me.

I guess that goes to show that if you go often enough eventually you will end up in the front. But still after being at 7 other Springsteen shows it never really occurred to me that we might actually be in the front row right at the stage. I guess we really just wanted to make it into the pit and I never really thought about it.

Here is the set list as taken from brucespringsteen.net
Badlands
Radio Nowhere
Outlaw Pete
No Surrender
Out In The Streets
Working On A Dream
Seeds
Johnny 99
The Ghost Of Tom Joad
Raise Your Hand
Good Lovin'
Prove It All Night
The E Street Shuffle
Waiting On A Sunny Day
The Promised Land
I'm On Fire
Kingdom Of Days
Lonesome Day
The Rising
Born To Run

Hard Times
Thunder Road
Tenth Avenue Freezeout
Land Of Hope And Dreams
American Land
Bobby Jean
Rosalita

So while we stood for about 7 hours it was well worth it. A ride home with a quick stop for some caffeine and another late night. The moral of the story is don't fret the traffic or when your sister is late. If neither of these things had occurred we would have had the wrong numbers. Everything happens for a reason, it really does!!

3 comments:

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

Nice I must have caught you editing your post. That's a pretty decent setlist. Usually shows I go to it seems like they play a lot less songs but maybe it just seems like it. Yeah that is a cool story. About the getting stuck in traffic.. I guess it goes to show you never know how things will turn out. ('-')/

Sare said...

Yes, he does a long show. He has so much material to choose from but he has always done long shows. He used to take a break between sets, now it is a bit shorter and he pretty much plays straight through. The other thing is that he never has an opening act either.