Road Trip For Bruce!

In addition to my fondness for punk rock, I love a wide and eclectic variety of music. And that includes Bruce Springsteen. A lot of people find this odd but Bruce himself cites The Clash and The Sex Pistols among his key influences. Bruce has a new record coming out called Devils & Dust which is sort of "modern country" (Bruce's term) similar to his Ghost of Tom Joad record.

Bruce is solo acoustic touring to promote the album. He's playing in smaller venues that seat 5,000 or less so that makes it tough for the die hard fans. However, Bruce solo acoustic country-fied is an acquired taste even for hardcore tramps*. He even warns fans that they won't get acoustic versions of the hits like Thunder Road. Fortunately, all this leads to Phoenix turning out to be a great place to try for tickets like I did this morning to help my friends Rob and Cheryl. Turns out no help was needed because demand was so low. So I snagged a single for myself and I'll be road tripping out. This may turn out to be a smart move because from the boards at Backstreets, it looks like Oakland is going to be in much higher demand.

I hope I can snag an Oakland ticket though, for sentimental reasons. The show is at the Paramount Theater. Bruce played there in 1975. And I graduated from High School at the Paramount. It was very exciting for me to know that I had walked the same stage where Bruce had played (this is before I met Bruce - a story for another post). I still would love to see him play on that stage so keep your fingers crossed for me that I get the chance!

*nickname for Springsteen fans from the line in the song Born to Run "til then tramps like us, Baby we were born to run"