Tickets for the Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band concert at Madison Square Garden in June, 2000 were a tough get so I went to work trying to obtain a pair as my wife really wanted to go. Around the same time, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were to be on their 2000 U.S. Tour. I had purchased seats on the side of the stage for CSNY at MSG and somehow found someone online, who conveniently turned out to be located near where I worked, who wanted to swap decent Springsteen seats midway up to the right of the MSG stage, for my CSNY tickets (the ultimate sacrifice as I was, and am, a huge CSNY fan). My wife was thrilled to be going to the Springsteen show (I like Bruce but have issues with him at times, as you will see). “American Skin” was a song written by Bruce Springsteen inspired by a police shooting in New York City that was a tragedy, to be sure. It was around this time that I started to feel Mr. Springsteen began to abandon his working class fan base, and law enforcement in particular, for a more “liberal” philosophy, which is certainly his right to pursue whether some of us agree with him or not. On this night, Springsteen & the E Street Band broke into “American Skin” with the audience eerily quiet during the playing of the song. My opinion of the song has fluctuated through the years and at the time I took the tune to be an attack on our law enforcement community, so as Springsteen repeatedly sang “41 Shots”, I yelled toward the stage “Bruce you suck!” between each refrain. This went on for awhile, my wife was mortified, and at some point someone in the section below us turned around and yelled back at me “No YOU suck”. There we’re two young guys standing to my left as this went on for awhile, and when I briefly explained to them that I was a cop, they shrugged their shoulders as if to say they got it. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band have begun their 2023 tour following the ticket price controversy (unbelievably I have to agree with the artist on this one, that if they lower ticket prices only the brokers and sidegiggers would reap the profits; the shows are obviously not going unsold at the seemingly exorbitant pricing but the market is what it is). Bruce got me for about a grand this tour as I managed to obtain really good seats on the right side of the stage at Barclays Center in Brooklyn and a pair of nosebleeds behind the stage at the UBS Arena at Belmont Park. I just saw that Pink tickets at MSG are being sold, for me, crazy prices; it has gotten that a half way decent pair for a popular act can cost you over $700 bucks to start. Where it ends is anybody’s guess but the bubble may burst at some point considering how few tours are selling out immediately these days (just look at the upcoming summer concert schedule). I will go to one of the Springsteen concerts, I am sure it will be great, but whether you got your money’s worth might depend on if you managed to pay your mortgage that month.
Badlands
Rock on!
GQ