Wrecking Ball - Bruce Springsteen

There is a real risk that this blog, which set out to cover a whole range of albums in my collection, is going to get sidelined into a commentary of Bruce Springsteen's recording career. The reason for this diversion, which I promise is temporary, is that the concert on Thursday was, to borrow an overused sporting analogy, a real game changer.

For three and a quarter hours he gave everything; energy, passsion, heart and humour. Each song was delivered as if his life depended upon it. It's a hackneyed expression but Springsteen is the real deal. Glory days indeed.

And so to the final part of gig ettiquette. Is it acceptable to be obsessed with the performer you saw several days after? Well common sense says "yes". After all isn't that the whole point of a tour - to sell records? but is it ok to be obsessed ten years after? Twenty even? Experience says, if the artist is Bruce Springsteen, "yup, you betcha".

'Wrecking Ball' is a powerful and angry record and, with this being his seventeenth, it's remarkable that the passion is still burning as strong as it did when he stepped into Mike Appel's office in 1972. A great deal of the anger on the album is directed at the financiers and Wall Street. Take 'Death to My Hometown' for example;

"Send the robber baron’s straight to hell
The greedy thieves that came around
And ate the flesh of everything they’ve found
Whose crimes have gone unpunished now
Walk the streets as free men now
And they brought death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown"

No punches pulled and all the better for it. Hearing this and other songs from the album live really hammered home their power and the effect is still reverberating. But I'll do you a deal. I'll stop obsessing about it on these pages if you go and listen to 'We Take Care of Our Own'. Deal? Deal!