So yeah… I really did fly across the country into a hurricane on an ill-considered whim because I was able to get a ridiculously cheap pit ticket for a Bruce Springsteen concert.
And if you remember the last leg of that tour, you know how that turned out.
I checked the weather forecasts and storm trackers obsessively. I got a last minute mileage ticket (thanks to lots of passenger cancellations), and I plotted my route carefully so that I’d fly through the night from Seattle to New York, and then catch a connecting flight that would swing me wide of the storm, figuring I’d drive toward Virginia Beach after the storm had passed.
It was a great plan, and it went off without a hitch… until the moment I landed in Raleigh and switched on my phone to find that the show had just been cancelled and postponed from Saturday until Monday.
Which was a problem, because my flight home was on Sunday, and I was about to drive into a hurricane for nothing.
But as it turned out, I never even left the airport. I got off the plane and explained my situation to the gate agent, and asked if I could take the same aircraft back to JFK right now. She graciously agreed without charging me a change fee due to the circumstances, and not long thereafter I was back in New Jersey, where I’d planned to spend the week working anyway.
I knew I couldn’t justify another flight on Monday (plus I had to work on Tuesday), so I resigned myself to missing the show. But I couldn’t help but wonder… how long would it take to drive from New Jersey to Virginia Beach?
As it turned out, not that long–about 5 hours each way, and Waze was kind enough to route me along scenic byways with very little traffic. So drive I did, arriving in Virginia Beach with plenty of time to spare.
The show itself surprised me on a number of levels:
First, the crowd–it was small, but wow was it mighty! I hadn’t thought about the impact of a postponement on Labor Day Weekend. Sure, the new date was a holiday, but like me, many fans had already had their return travel booked for that day, and with most schools starting the next morning, lots of fans couldn’t stick around. The result was a very sparse pit (about 250 people) and a lot of unoccupied seats in the amphitheater, and any hard core fan knows that typically correlates with extra intensity from Bruce.
But: I also hadn’t considered that Virginia Beach was the closest Bruce was going to get North Carolina this tour (he’d cancelled the Greensboro show in protest of the state’s infamous bathroom law earlier that year), and the crowd was very heavily represented by Greensboro fans. And Greensboro audiences are (in my opinion) the best in the nation. Bruce has acknowledged that in the past as well, but even he seemed stunned by the ferocity of the crowd during the opening numbers, and he commented on it (which he rarely does).
The hurricane did cause some collateral on-stage damage, though, because neither the string section nor Patti were present. But Bruce was determined to make this a show for the ages: six(!) songs right off the bat from his very first album, followed by four from his second–and only two songs from The River (the namesake of this tour), and zero in the main set from Born in the U.S.A. This was as old school as it gets: a solo piano “For You” to open, “Lost in the Flood,” “Kitty’s Back,” “Incident on 57th Street,” “Backstreets…” just an unbelievable cornucopia of rare classics.
And as for me, I was able to tick three more songs off my list–a rare occurrence these days: my first performances of “Factory” (finally completing the Darkness on the Edge of Town album), “Save My Love,” and “Pink Cadillac” (which I’ve been chasing for years) complete with the “ancient Mesopotamia” story.
I also got a handshake *and* a high-five–the pit was so small (250 people!), it seemed he had a chance to touch everyone.
Bruce closed the show with an acoustic “This Hard Land,” capping off a terrific show for those of us fortunate or foolhardy enough to be there.
I caught three hours of sleep, and then set off for the five-hour drive to my office to put in a full work day. From here, it was a into the tour’s home stretch. I had tickets for both Philly shows later that week, but I couldn’t imagine a show–even in Philly–that could top this one.
I really have to work on broadening my imagination.
I have some empathy for you, having flown from Australia to land in NC to the news that the show in Greensboro had been cancelled – what to do? – book a ticket for the Columbus Ohio show and drive for 7 hours! And it was worth it!