Waitin' On A Sunny Day
Waitin' On A Sunny Day
The Wildest Party You Have Ever Seen
Sunday, September 15, 2024 Entry #109
As I wrote in the last post, Springsteen playing to 35,000 fans on the Asbury Park beach to conclude a successful two-day festival was a very big deal, truly encapsulating and enunciating the revitalization of Asbury Park itself. “It’s a story of patience, progress and power-specifically the power of art to revitalize a storefront city that…spurred Springsteen’s 2000 dirge, “My City of Ruins,” wrote a reporter for NJ.com. But, thanks in part to Springsteen’s perseverance and fame, and those who came in his wake and in his spirit, Asbury Park is cool again. “And when a place is deemed “cool,” concluded the article, “investors come knocking—as do mammoth destination music festivals.”
But, looking around at the ecstatic outpouring of humanity around me, I thought about another story of renewal, namely, the way our society has bounced back from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although not even five years has passed since the lockdown, it is a bit of a strain to remember how uncertain we were about when (and even if) normal public life would return, including concerts.
Springsteen’s frankness when he spoke about the COVID health crisis on his Sirius XM satellite radio show was captivating to me in those days. He perfectly articulated the fears, loneliness, and bewilderment that he and so many of us were feeling about having many of the things that make life worth living taken away indefinitely. But characteristically, Springsteen also sent out messages of hope through the time of darkness (I included many of Springsteen’s comments about the COVID era in my initial essay, See Entry #1). Among those statements was one about how he was going to throw a big party “when this experience is over.”
In one of my reviews of the opening night of the Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s 2023-2024 tour in Tampa, FL (See Entry #10), I focused again on that party notion (“All I can tell you is when this experience is over, I am going to throw the wildest party you have ever seen and you, my friends, are all invited”). At the time, I considered his triumphant return to the road, and specifically that first show in Tampa, to be the fulfillment of that promise. And, it was exciting and grand. Redemptive even.
Back then, we could not yet know that Springsteen would, not even two years later, return to the beach where he sunned and swam and surfed; come back to the boardwalk where he hung out with his friends and wrote songs about their escapades. I never would have predicted that Springsteen would perform a monumental concert within hearing distance of the clubs where he first moved and rocked audiences, on a stage from which he could see the ocean waves seemingly bouncing along with the music. A Bruce Springsteen show where he would perform so many songs fans only dreamed they would hear him play in one night, songs that are imbedded in our hearts, souls and minds. Not to mention a whole bunch of those are compositions that tell iconic stories of the characters and landscape of the very site of all these current marvels. Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey indeed!
The meme at the top of this entry was created prior to Springsteen performance at Sea.Hear.Now on the beach, but it is an incredibly accurate a portrait of what actually transpired here. This evening, where there was true “magic in the night,” is as close to the fulfillment of the Bruce Springsteen COVID-era pledge I imagine we will ever get.
We passed through the ravages, isolation, and limitations of an awful pandemic. Now that it is finally over, Bruce Springsteen came through and invited us to his party. And indeed, it was the wildest!
I also like this take I saw online that goes further back than either the COVID lockdown or the redemption arc of the Asbury Park story.
Posting on a Springsteen Facebook fan group, Robyn Weitz is referencing a pivotal moment in Bruce Springsteen’s memoir, Born To Run. Springsteen is seven years-old, and his young world is turned upside down by seeing Elvis Presley’s liberating presence on the Ed Sullivan Show (A few years later, another revolution happened on the same show, which made an even bigger impact on the teenage Springsteen, The Beatles being introduced to America). Utterly captivated afterward, Springsteen begs his mother to get him a guitar. They rent one, but Springsteen is just too young for it at this point. As Springsteen put it in all caps, “IT WAS TOO FUCKING HARD!” Before they returned the instrument though, the young Springsteen foreshadowed his own future:
“I stood in front of six or so of the neighborhood guys and gals in my backyard. I gave my first and last show for quite a while. I held the guitar…I shook it…I shouted at it…I banged on it…I sang voodoo nonsense…I did everything but play it…all to their laughter and great amusement. I sucked. It was a joyful and silly-assed pantomime…It was over for now, but for a moment, just a moment, in front of those kids in my backyard…I smelled blood.”
This next fan whose social media post follows, had a good point as well. One thing that has truly distinguished this recent tour’s set lists is the poignant story Springsteen clearly wants to tell. The songs he sings and the narratives he weaves in these shows speak to mortality, legacy, and resilience in the face of the loss of so many friends. He repeats throughout the shows his solemn pledge to carry on in their names and memory. He defiantly rocks out with abandon, not simply for the pure joy he gets from it, but pointedly as a counterweight to the many forces conspiring to crush our souls. Especially in 2023, Springsteen’s standard setlist seemed to act like a storyboard script, a concert equivalent to his live venture just prior to the pandemic, the multi-night staging of his one-person show, Springsteen on Broadway. As Richard points out below, all of that was temporarily put aside. This concert was about something else.
Finally, though I have never met him, this John Soltes is a person after my own heart. For me too, taking a dip would have been an epic capstone to an already otherworldly, pitch-perfect late summer day and night. Next time, for sure!
