A Springsteen Odyssey is an ambitious effort to tell the story of one Springsteen concert, from one fan's perspective. What makes it ambitious is that it is twenty-six parts long, one part for each song played by Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band that night, with each song helping to tell one part of the story. Taken as a whole, they provide a comprehensive picture of a fan's relationship to an artist and his music, but each part also stands completely on its own. This is part 4 of 26. You can read part 1 here.
Let’s see, where were we?
I believe we were on our way up at the end of song
three. A quick check of the
previous post, and yes, that’s exactly where we were.
All of us in the audience, it seemed, had been caught up in
the spontaneous, swelling exuberance of I’m
a Rocker. Coming as it did after a
slow start, and a disappointing one for me, the relief I was feeling at that
moment was indescribable.
Well, perhaps not completely indescribable.
I used to have an old pick-up truck with a clutch that was
nearly worn out. It became progressively
harder to get going in the morning, and one day I couldn’t seem to get the
truck into gear at all. I was sitting
there, the engine idling, gears spinning incoherently, mashing the stick into
the flywheel over and over, and it seemed like no matter how many times I
tried, it just wouldn’t catch. I found
myself suddenly wondering if this is it, if my old truck’s finally had it, and
what will I do now. But then the clutch
somehow magically did engage. I could
feel the harness slipping once again over the flailing beast of a motor, futile
energy channeled into useful power one more time. I set off for work, sighing with relief, happier
in that moment than I ever would have been had the darn truck been working
perfectly all along.
It felt something like that.
I’m guessing that Springsteen felt it too, knew that he had
things moving in the right direction, and understood, with a veteran performer’s
canniness, not to let the surge falter. That
might be why, while Max Weinberg was still busy splashing around on the cymbals
during the song’s finale, The Boss began counting out “One..two..,” forcing Weinberg
to rapidly alter direction in mid-splash.
Even so, he was able to pick up the count before Springsteen could get
to ‘three,’ and belted out five big, staccato beats. Then he held up momentarily, letting silence
fill the next two counts, creating an instant, electric anticipation in the
crowd, like the one that comes during a fireworks display, each time there’s
that long, expectant moment of silence between the fizzle of the rocket’s
fire-trail and the booming blossom of color in the sky.
In this case, though, the pause was broken by a prancing piano
jangle synchronized to the deep Bahm..Bahm,
bah-bah-Bahm..Bahm, of the saxophone.
Recognition flashed through the arena, and the audience roared out in
spontaneous reaction.