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With all the dough he’s been raking in the past several years, you’d think the guy wanted to start his own space program. We’ve gotten album after tour after DVD, and then some (Trust me: It ain’t a career anymore. It’s General Mills).
By my estimate, his next album should drop by Thanksgiving — just in time to play it at Dallas’ new stadium. Maybe he’ll call it “Oops, I Did It Again.” Better yet: “Jumping the Shark.”
Before any of you devotees start transfering that vitriolic Bruce juice into email: Think about it for a minute.
Maybe you’re one of those fans who have supported him through the years. Maybe he’s given you plenty of joy, worth every penny. And maybe nowadays you really have to bust it every day just to make ends meet. Maybe you don’t even have a job.
Y’know what? You’re the ones who get to fill in those empty sections around the fat cats. Because no matter what the economy, luxury never suffers.
The vast middle, on the other hand, hurts like a son of a bitch.
The Madison Square Garden show will do just fine. Of all the large venues, it’s far and away the best choice for this type of show. And you’ll be close enough to at least see the stage.
A couple of concerts in the meadows will always sell out, though I doubt hairlip could repeat his famed 15-concert run at the arena these days. Never mind the 10 soldout nights at Giants Stadium that followed soon after.
Yes, Springsteen holds back tickets and “drops” them at intervals leading up to the concerts — purportedly to thwart scalpers. A drop window is even set up the night of the show; get there early enough and you can pick up a ducat at face value minutes before the lights go up.
Beware, however: A report on NJ.COM today quotes the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, the state agency that operates the Meadowlands, as saying that thousands of those tickets already have been released. Yet thousands are still available for tonight through Oct. 9 at Giants Stadium. And you’re likely to pay less — not more.
Time was a Springsteen fan had to wait patiently for each newly-chiseled tablet. The 80s brought only four of them (5, technically): “The River” (a single LP stretched over 4 sides), “Nebraska,” “Born in the USA,” and “Tunnel of Love.” Each was a distinctly different piece of work.
Bruce then bagged the band and issued what essentially was another single album diluted into two — “Human Touch” and “Lucky Town” — five years after “Tunnel of Love.”
Three years later came a greatest hits album that added four “new” tracks, mollifying fans who hated “the other band” — which only encouraged Springsteen to release the magnificent “Ghost of Tom Joad,” and go on a solo tour of smaller venues, including the Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side. The new tunes were solid, but his reworkings of some of the warhorses were a revelation.
Bruce began dumping the back catalog with “Tracks,” then regrouped the E Street Band at the end of the ’90s for a traveling circus-cum-greatest hits tour that closed with 10 torrid nights at MSG.
It took 9/11 to shake him from his writer’s block and into “The Rising.” The “Vote for Change” tour two years later was worth the price for the coupling of the E Street Band and R.E.M.
But the overexposure was already beginning. In roughly the time it took for Springsteen to issue the 10-track “Darkness….,” we got “Devils & Dust,” a special “Seeger sessions” sideline venture, “Magic” and, earlier this year, “Working on a Dream.”
We got the “Born to Run” anniversary edition, as well as promises (unfulfilled) of a “Darkness…” reissue. The band even began playing festivals, as well, including Pinkpop and Bonnaroo. We got the Super Bowl, for Pete Rozelle’s sake. “The Daily Show”! The guy has spent more time in front of a microphone the past few years than I have with my kid.
I’m not saying he should disappear. But at 60, being the hardest-working man in show business only gets you so far. He can’t stalk the stage anymore, or produce the spontaneous surprise, NOT when each and every note is choreographed and teleprompters have to roll in front of him and the band, lest someone forget the words to “Badlands.”
And he can’t expect to pry triple digits per ticket out of people who reach into their pockets to find only fingers. They won’t be thrusting their fists in the air, vowing to gonna blow this taco stand, when the guy leading the call is making more for two hours-plus of work that night than they’ll gross see in an entire lifetime.
As I said in this space recently, there’s no reason to crank it up again — unless maybe he hangs a quick left, like he did with the Seeger sessions, or find a mixmaster to set up behind him, the way Steve Earle did.
And this gimmick of playing a full album at each show is too little, too late. It’s been done to death, with better effect, by others. Kinda reeks of desperation, if you ask me.
Sorry, Boss. We can’t run till we drop if we can’t afford enough gas to get us back.
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