Dear blog,
I managed to get a pretty good night’s sleep, and shed quite a it of jetlag. I woke up this morning, lazed around a bit, and then headed over to Haight-Ashbury for breakfast with the Shade’s Jeremy Lassen.
Jeremy had suggested we meet for brunch at The Blue Front Cafe, on Haight, and it was a great suggestion. It’s a small, comfortable place and perfect for spending a couple hours over omelettes or whatever discussing publishing and such, which we did.
After brunch I headed back to the hotel to catch up with Trevor, and to head out and get a new cell phone for the rest of my US visit. That took and hour. After that I crashed, the jetlag hitting me a bit like a brick. When I woke up, I shot off an apology to Jason, who I’d been supposed to see. I then skyped the family. It was our first real test, and after a few hiccups, the video conference went really well. I think it’ll help manage the homesickness, and keep me in touch with my girls.
Round 4.30pm, Cheryl and Kevin arrived at the hotel and we headed for some great Spanish food down near the Moscone Centre. It was a real blast from the past, because we kept walking past places where I’d spent time back in 1993 when I was in town for WorldCon. We even went past the restaurant (Chevy’s) where I Marianne and I shared our first meal. It was something. After a some very good food, we headed for BART (the local train system), which took us down to the Oakland Colliseum to see Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band.
Writing about music isn’t my forte, but it was really something. We took our seats around 7.15pm, and less than an hour later the houselights went down and the strains of “Radio Nowhere” crashed (a little muddily) out of the PA. From there, Springsteen and his well-drilled gang ran us through two and a half hours of rock ‘n’ roll as community celebration. While I’m no fan of 2002’s The Rising and am only getting to know material from this year’s Magic, most of the newer songs were great (and it was interesting to hear Rising tracks without the awful production). The highlights, though, were the oldies: “Badlands”, “Adam Raised a Can”, “The Ties That Bind”, “She’s the One”, “Backstreets”, “Born to Run”, “Dancing in the Dark”. It was…magic.
After that, an easy train trip back to the hotel, a little time to wind down, and then off to bed. I’m going to keep hoping Springsteen comes to Australia. I’ll definitely go. But, last night was special.
And today: on to American Airlines, six hours on a plane, and Manhattan. Tonight dinner with Garth and Deb. Yay! More soon.
Note: You can see the setlist for the Springsteen show here.
The Bay Area and Springsteen occupy different eras in my life. The idea of both together makes my head explode. What a wonderful day! My Thursday was a bit suboptimal, but the univeral Thursdayness score went up every time I remembered you were getting to see Springsteen. I’m glad the concert lived up to expectations.
Sorry to hear your Thursday was suboptimal. I hope Friday is an improvement. My day was pretty fine. It probably would have been improved if I’d had more sleep, but overall was damn fine. It probably would have been more archetypal to see Springsteen in Jersey or NYC somewhere, but this was fine.
Glad you enjoyed the evening. FYI, the place where we had dinner was the Thirsty Bear (warning – web site auto-plays flamenco music on loading). Interested to see what we both had the same line from “Thunder Road” in mind when writing our reports.
Glad you had a blast, JS
Doesn’t look like he’s doing Youngstown these days…that’s my current top Bruce track.
I think the current tour is very much all about his new persona as the spirit of America. Because of that, he’s not featuring a bunch of stuff. I love “Youngstown” and Tom Joad, but it’s not where he’s at right now. I’d have loved to have seen him on the Joad tour.