From: ai873@detroit.freenet.org (Matthew R. Orel)
Subject: Get grounded, see a show
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 11:05:56 -0500

We were supposed to be somewhere around Minneapolis by show time last night.
Our big getaway weekend, planned long before Bruce tickets went on sale.
Then it happened.  The snow started falling.  The airline freaked.  Our flight
was cancelled, and there were no other possibilities.  First time I've ever
lost a day due to a flight cancellation, and what a coincidence, it means I
just had to go see the Springsteen show!

Got to the box office, sure enough they were selling the seats just to the side
of the soundboard -- they weren't going to make *that* mistake two nights in a
row!  A number of LTD friends were at the Elwood again, I can deal with
flight cancellations.

Inside the Fox, see some people got miracles for the 2nd night in a row...
Photographers were there from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the LA Times.
The Times is going to do a feature on Youngstown and related themes; we talked a
while, the photographer knows our cousin in LA (there are only so many press
photogs there, it's not such a long shot).

The show started splendidly, Bruce seemed even more up than the previous night.
Unfortunately, a handful of idiots in the audience eventually ruined the show.
If *anyone* knows the idiot in the back of the main floor who kept shouting "I
love you, BRUUUCE!," and who finally screamed, "I SAID... I LOVE YOU BRUUUCE!!,"
please find a way to lock him in an 8x8 cell for a week and pipe Michael Bolton
music at him non-stop.  This guy needs some real emotional pain in his life.

After it became clear that these selected rowdies were out of hand, Bruce more
or less just tuned out the crowd and blasted through rest of the show.  This
made for some of the tightest song performances yet -- they'd go great on a
live album, I supose.  However, the show suffered, the emotional conncection
was totally gone.  Bruce did amuse us all by calling us a "lovely audience."
Yeah, right.

Say what you will about whether it's appropriate for Bruce to be demanding
silence.  Say that he's gone Hollywood, say that he's being condescending or
preachy or whatever, he's still the performer, and my $30 are for *his*
performance, NOT the nut in the cheap seats.  The show was fine, but I can
only imagine how much better it would have been had those few nuts shut up.

After the show, Bruce came back to stage left to do a meet and greet with
whoever was straggling getting out of the hall.  That was pretty cool, we'll
see if it becomes a regular post-show feature...

--Matt