Miss obsessed with death.

I can't believe July is an inch from over.

And I can't believe I wasn't more excited than I was about seeing Bruce with the East Street Band on Sunday night.

I got the tickets for Joe for Christmas. Well, for us. We saw him solo, in an acoustic setting with about 3,500 other people a few years ago but because they were recording he requested no clapping, no dancing, no singing along. It was rather eerie, for a concert, but it was Bruce, so we played along and were certainly entertained, to say the least. Just quietly so. Anyway, ever since then, Joe's told me I haven't had the true Bruce experience until I've seen him in a large arena with the E Street Band and a roaring crowd. He'd already seen them twice that way (Jersey Boy).

So after a thunderstorm that even Bruce described as being "of biblical proportions" we inched along at 25 miles an hour in Sunday night tourist traffic with everyone else who had to wait for the storm to pass to get on the road. Bruce was late, too, so we only missed a few minutes.

There is no short and sweet of it.

I was nine when my dad first started collecting Bruce records. (Yes, that's right, records.) He was the first artist whose lyrics intrigued me. I remember waiting for his albums just so I could read the words that went along with the music, which was more narratively lyrical than any other musician's work I'd yet known. I modeled one of my first serious poems (read: not about a boy I thought was cute) after his style of writing and I guess I considered myself a poet from that moment on.

Still, that was so long ago that I thought I was over him, you know?

Not.

If one of those planes that kept flying overhead during the concert had dropped a bomb I would have died in a state of euphoria. We have to go some way. I've decided that's how I want to go. In the middle of some concert with 55,000 people singing along with the band - then poof! Nothing. I can't imagine a better way. No one would have to worry about where to sprinkle my ashes or if green burials are legal where I live.

I only wish my dad could have been there, too.



Show began at 8:37 p.m.

Setlist:


1 Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out 

2. Radio Nowhere 

3. Lonesome Day
4. No Surrender 

5. Adam Raised a Cain 

6. Spirit in the Night
7. Summertime Blues 
(As the song started, Bruce took signs with requests on them from the audience).
8. Brilliant Disguise 
(Nice duo with Patti Scialfa).
9. Atlantic City 

10. Growin' Up (request by a 10-year, old named Rosie) 

11. Janey Don't You Lose Heart (a sign held up by the person standing in the pit)

12. I'll Work for Your Love (by request) 

13. Youngstown 
(Awesome guitar work here by Nils Lofgren).

14. Murder Incorporated 
(and awesome guitar work here by Bruce and Steve Van Zandt).


15. The Promised Land 

16. Livin' in the Future 

17. Mary's Place 

18. Workin' on the Highway
19. Tunnel of Love 
(With Patti Scialfa - this was sexy).

20. The Rising 

21. Last to Die
22. Long Walk Home
23. Badlands !!

Encores:

24. Girls in Their Summer Clothes
25. Jungleland
26. Born to Run
27. Bobby Jean 

28. Dancing in the Dark
29. American Land
30. Rosalita

Show ended at 11:49 p.m.