Spring(steen) has sprung(steen)

Well, today is the first day of spring.

I'm always happy when spring gets sprung, but this winter has been such a meh, all the way around, it's not the big deal it usually is. A couple of super cold days. Virtually no snow - our one "major" snowstorm measured 3.5 inches. A lot of gray and overcast. A lot of rain. 

Even so, with Daylight Saving Time starting up, I'm enjoying having more light at the end of the day. And spotting the first crocus: priceless.

And tonight, if all goes well, I'll be at the Boston Garden - just can't get used to TD Garden - rocking out with my sister Trish, and Bruce Springsteen and the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, house-rocking, earth-quaking, booty-shaking, Viagra-taking, love-making, testifying, death-defying, legendary E Street Band. 

I am a Springsteen fan, but a latter-day one.

In November 2007, my sister Trish took me to the Magic Tour concert at the Garden.

Of course, I knew who Springsteen was. 

In 1975, he'd been on the cover of both Time and Newsweek. In the same week. 

By 1975, Trish - 10 years my junior - was an ardent fan. 

In the spring of 1977, she and two of her friends took the bus from Worcester into Boston for a Springsteen concert at the Boston Music Hall (now the Orpheum).* They stayed at my apartment. I stayed at my boyfriend's. 

The big excitement: one of the girls had forgotten her ticket. I asked if they wanted me to go over to the venue with them to explain the situation. Why yes, yes, they would.

It was a kinder, gentler time, and the guy at the door let me talk their way in. It probably helped that Mary's seat was between Trish and Grace, but they got in. 

The girls probably didn't pay more than ten bucks for a ticket. And the Music Hall's capacity was less than 3,000. 

The show, we were told when we took the girls out to breakfast at the Parker House the next morning, was fabulous. 

By 1977, Trish was on her way to being a life fan. Not a crazy, follow-to-the-ends-of-the-earth fan. But a solid, buy all the albums, go the concerts when they come around, fan.

And 30+ years into her fandom, she decided I should become a fan, too.

Thus, the ticket to the Magic Tour concert.

At that point, I was familiar with only a couple of Springsteen songs: Born in the USA, Glory Days, I'm on Fire. Numbers that were unavoidable even if you didn't listen to any radio beyond Boston's all-folk WUMB and the NPR stations. 

And although Springsteen occupied exactly 0% of my conscious, awake time, I'd had an extremely vivid dream in which I was some sort of combo roadie-groupie for his band. 

But what a show! (Magic Tour, not the dream.)

I was hooked, and went out and bought a bunch o' CD's. I totally enjoyed the music, and there was no way I was going to go to another Springsteen concert and be the only one in the audience who didn't know the words to Thunder Road. 

Since then, I've been to a few concerts. The River anniversary at the Garden. Something at Gillette. And the magnificent Wrecking Ball concert at Fenway Park in August 2012. 

Thirty-five years after the ticket-left-in-Worcester incident, Fenway 2012 was another lost ticket escapade. 

I had ordered the tickets through Fenway/Ticketmaster, and they were mailed to me, as tickets were back in the day, in a plain grey envelope. Which was so plain I apparently threw it out without opening it. 

But back then - the good old days - you could actually get someone on the phone, and when I got that someone on the phone and told them I hadn't gotten the tickets yet (neglecting to mention that I'd probably given them the toss), I was told I could come out to Fenway the day before the concert and pick them up.

Tickets to Springsteen concerts have, over the years, become a lot more of a scramble than in 1977 when my sister and her buddies probably bought them at a record store in Worcester. 

Procuring tickets (which happened last summer) for tonight's concert was an incredibly tense hassle, reminiscent in a PTSD way of signing up for the covid vaccine in 2021. 

I preregistered to get "verified fan" access, which just entitles you to sit in a virtual line for hours - but to do so before the tickets are generally made available to the hordes. The "verified fan" nonsense is pretty rando. Trish didn't make the cut for tickets in Boston (March 20, 2023), but got on the the list for Albany (March 14, 2023). 

On the day when Boston tickets went on sale, I sat in the queue for a couple of hours. I then got into the actual ticket-purchasing section, where, every time I clicked on a pair, I learned that another fan had beat me to it. Meanwhile, Ticketmaster uses something called dynamic pricing, in which the ticket prices go up before your very eyes. In very eye-popping fashion. (Dynamic pricing is done with the permission of the artist. While you can't blame Springsteen for wanting his cut of the proceeds, rather than let it fall into the pocket of scalpers, it's pretty controversial - and has soured a lot of fans on The Boss.)

After another hour or so, I gave up.

Onto Albany.

But then Trish and I factored in the cost of driving and a hotel, and decided to see what was available on Ticketmaster's secondary market. (Ticketmaster doesn't want to leave the spoils of war to the likes of StubHub and Ace Ticket. They - and, presumably Bruce, get to wet their beak on sales of tickets that someone managed to nab and then decided to resell. The per person limit was four tickets, but I'm suspicious about that.)

I was able to get us tickets on that secondary market for well above face value. 

But, hey, it's only money.

And it's a good thing we didn't try for Albany as a) there was a big storm on March 14th, and b) the concert was canceled postponed because of an unspecified, mysterious something or other. Concerts in Columbus and Mohegan Sun (CT) were also postponed.

As of this writing, the something or other remains unspecified and mysterious, but given that the show went on even when key band members like Steven VanZandt were down with covid, I'm guessing that this was Springsteen's turn.

The postponements weren't announced until a couple of days before each concert, so I was sweating it as we got closer to Boston's date. To borrow a bit (altering it just a smidge) from Thunder Road, was the screen door going to slam on us???

But then unofficial news apeared that the Philadelphia tour stop (March 16) was on! And it was. So was March 18 at State College PA. So unless there's a relapse, Boston should be good to go.

Meanwhile, just to make extra sure that Trish and I were going to get to see Springsteen this year, I managed to secure face value tickets for August at Gillette Stadium - part of a tour extension that was announced last month.

Gillette is a drag to get in and out of, but Trish knows where to park.  

First day of spring. Springsteen concert. What better way to get sprung from winter?

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* The 1977 concert Trish saw was one of a Springsteen string that week. The Boston Globe just ran an article on what a great and foundational tour that was. Anyway, I was talking to my brother Tom the other day, and mentioned that Trish and I were going to see Springsteen, and he told me that he had also gone to one of those spring 1977 Springsteen concerts in Boston.