Where's your wristband?

Well, it's 5:30Pm Halloween Eve 2007 and and I'm being accosted by several underpaid security/crowd control personnel in front of the South entrance of decrepit and humble LA Sports Arena. Not for drunkenness (juicing is not one of my many foibles, ask anyone who ever patronized my bar) not for the lowly crime of scalping. Nope, I'm being hassled by the minion of the "Man" for doing what I've always done: Trying to get as close to a Bruce Springsteen performance as possible.

On this night I had endured the strenuous (albeit equitable but flawed) system the Springsteen camp utilizes to ensure that the best views of the stage don't go to the moneyed or highfalutin show folk. It's noble, but can cause heartache. How did I get here? Well it's a long story and probably not very interesting to most of you, but I feel like telling it and it's my blog, so there.

1979 or so

One thing you should know about Springsteen fans: They're annoying. Some have a holier-than-thou attitude about when they saw their first Bruce show, how they saw Bruce at the Stone Pony (legendary shore bar) or are friends with his housekeeper's manicurist. Imagine a Deadhead, minus the patchouli plus a decent job and a few extra brain cells (not that they are smarter, but they took fewer drugs, on average). I happened to be a short, chubby and lonely sixteen year old suffering through late onset puberty in the gentle bosom of Beverly Hills High School (a place well-noted for it's embrace of the poor and unattractive) My Buddy Martin (his named changed to protect him from my poor memory and his poor test-taking skills) had constantly tried to get me to listen to Springsteen's Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town albums (mmm remember vinyl?). I finally acquiesced. He was right, in those works I heard tales of fear and failure, triumph and hope, songs of lost or found souls invariably on the road. These characters resonated with me and held high the possibility that maybe, I wasn't as alone, weird or misunderstood as I thought. The words and music helped me find some peace in a very turmoltous time. It also didn't hurt that my dad hated him, called him "Sidney Greenstreet" (the man in the fez in Casablanca) said he was inarticulate, made inaudible noise etc. etc. Teen rebellion looks for allies wherever it can!

Springsteen as a cultural phenomenon had had a surge in 1975 when the Jersey Bard released Born To Run, til then, he had received some critical acclaim but hadn't had a breakthrough (this stuff is better documented elsewhere and is not the purpose of this blog) until he broke through and wound up on the cover of Time and Newsweek on the same week (typically you have to croak, or kill someone REALLY famous to achieve that honor) anywho, Bruce was big among Bruce fans but not mainstream (this comes later). I liked his songs, but had yet to see a performance.

October 1980

I had just bought the newest Bruce offering: The River, when I got a call from Martin, we'd stayed in touch after High School but he was a year behind me and struggling with the college boards (you may not be able to ascertain it from these ramblings, but in the day I was quite the test-taker) Anyway, in classic underachiever mode I had rocked the SAT so hard that the necessity of a reasonable GPA was waived and I was permitted to attend one of the States poorer Universities. Martin was desperate, he was going places, to a good school, to a decent job, but first he had to get past the SAT. So there it was: in the day before biometrics, the Department of Homeland Security and hologram IDs. Martin and I went down to 7th and Alvarado (across from the best fucking pastrami on Earth at Langer's and the most dangerous park on Earth: MacArthur) and in the time honored tradition of white middle class teens we went and got a faux drivers license, only instead of making myself 21 (yeah right!) I made myself into Martin (a year younger!) We signed me up for the SAT at a distant high school and there I sat through the boards again! "Martin" cruised the test and as a gift, supplied me with one truly lovely nosebleed seat in the farthest, highest concourse of the aforementioned Sports Arena.

My first Springsteen show was an epiphany. Long and sweaty, in the days before the giant screen TV's, I saw young (tiny) Bruce swagger and prowl the stage, he was mesmerizing, I didn't know every song, I wasn't yet a disciple, but still, there was something that told me this was special, really special. I kept the feeling about the music mostly to myself, I found myself trying to get back to the Bruce show later in the week. I got a ride to the Sports Arena a couple of days later and managed to get another lousy seat to the show, by myself. I was hooked.

As I started college I fell in with a fraternity house (we never say "frat" after all you wouldn't call your country a cunt) unlike the jock houses, my house had a humanity and a tolerance for the quirky that was likable and different. We weren't afraid to count the strange and disenfranchised among our members (I could write a blog on that too!) It was here that I met my best friend and partner in all things Bruce: Shony.

Shony was a doctor's kid from Beverly Hills High, I had seen him around and knew him casually (he was on the wrestling team with my brother) The loss of his mother and the predictable clash with his dad's new wife, left Shony pretty much on his own from the time he was 16. Steve was edgy and cool, he'd been with girls, he had a motorcycle and a rebels attitude towards schoolwork and the starchy collegiate shit that the fraternity used to soak up. He was my hero, and represented what I wanted to be, he got away with shit. At first I just shadowed and mimicked him, good (and bad) and good/bad things happened when you hung around with Shony. For whatever reason, he didn't mind me hanging around him (we had good food at Casa de Harris, and my mother loved him like one of her own, maybe more) at some point we became equals, true brothers-in-arms.

August 1981

Shony loved Springsteen. Eventually we would cover our mutual admiration for each other with a generous ladling of Bruce Juice. We inspired grief and annoyance from our fraternity brothers when we insisted on commandeering the sound system for impromptu listening parties. When the summer leg of The River tour was due to be in LA (Sports Arena!) Shony and I waited in pre-internet ticket lines with over-heated and agitated throngs of fans, we begged and cajoled seats for all seven nights! for a couple of broke guys (he was working at the produce market, I was at a liquor store) we always found the $20 for a show. Those shows were mammoth landscapes of 40-50 songs, huge encores and the unbridled fervor of a no-holds-barred performance for performance sake. We were ecstatic. Driving home from a show with Shony and Martin we heard the Boss was at the Westwood Marquis hotel. On a lark, we went there and waited, and eventually the man showed up! He was kind and generous with his time (he signed Shony's Union Card!) we were humbled. Even dad said Hilburn had written a rave review (Why was dad reading Springsteen reviews?).

1982 saw the release of Nebraska, Shony and I pored over very inch of the album (we also bought the tape too!) We liked it's starkness and enjoyed the fact that it may have alienated some of the burgeoning Springsteen crowd. We actually resented the other fans, Shony used to joke that he wished Springsteen would execute a puppy on live TV so that maybe we could get better seats to a show. We actually thought that by the time the next tour came around we would be better positioned to see it. Boy were we wrong.

BITUSA

When the single Dancing in the Dark was released in 1984, Shony and I liked it and played it and the b-side (remember those?) Pink Cadillac perpetually for two weeks. Up until then the only non-album oriented rock radio play Bruce had had was Hungry Heart. As for media appearances he had shown up in the documentary for the No Nukes Concert and they made a video of Atlantic City from Nebraska without using his face. We began to feel excited and maybe nervous when MTV premiered the DITD video (ahh young Courtney Cox).

Bruce Springsteen was starting to get marketed and merchandised to a public that was ready to embrace him, big time. When Born In The USA came out, Shony and I did our normal ritualistic purchasing and listening to the latest offering. We liked it , and knew it was a very polished and accessible album. We were at first pleased that Bruce was finally getting the recognition he deserved, then we were horrified by the onslaught of the media and fanboys and girls, who would only dilute the base of available show tickets and miss his sweet grandeur in all the hype and glare of fame, big fame, fill up the Coliseum four nights in a row fame...

One Night in Pacoima

By the time the BITUSA tour started Shony and I had become fixtures at the TicketTron outlets (everyone thought we were scalpers, after all, who wants tickets for every night?) In generating our strategy for getting tickets, we plotted out which ticket outlet would have the lowest turn-out of fans. We came upon a dingy Western Union check cashing place in Pacoima (home of Richie Valens) We decided to spend the night there (with Martin and Shony's girlfriend Marie) we needed bodies to offset the limit of six ticket only rule. We were alone until about three vans of scruffy scalper shills pulled up just before dawn. By the time the sale was over and done we had managed to get 2nd row seats for opening night, nosebleeds for the rest of the shows, a speeding ticket, an altercation with a ticket scalper and a dispute that ended my friendship with Martin.

To be continued (sorry)