Wednesday, April 09, 2008

The Greatest Concert I've Ever Seen

A couple of weeks ago I had a chance to see Bruce Springsteen for the first time, and I've spent a whole lot of time since then wondering why I had never taken the opportunity to see Bruce prior to this concert in Columbus.

It was, simply put, the greatest concert I've ever seen. It also helped clarify some important life lessons that maybe I've been missing as of late.

I've been searching for a further way to explain the feeling and energy that carried me through this concert, and I finally found it in a review by Gary Benz, who's review appeared in BlogCritics Magazine:
There was a stretch in Monday’s show, beginning with "Something in the Night" (a tour premiere) and culminating with "She’s the One," where I felt like this was absolutely the best concert I had ever seen. This particular grouping of songs, which also included "Because the Night," "Reason to Believe," and "You’ll Be Coming Down" (also a tour premiere), itself provided an effective mini-retrospective of Springsteen’s career. But the overarching message, delivered in note-perfect passion and urgency, was that anything worth doing is worth doing well. Another great life lesson.
Gary added, There’s something about 18,000 plus singing “because the night belongs to us” in unison that is life affirming.



And I felt the same exact way.

The concert has sparked an internal challenge for me to begin assessing and affirming some aspects of my life as I grow ever closer to the half century mark.

Since the concert, the Springsteen lyrics that keep playing over and over in my head are those from his song Into the Fire:
May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love
Strength
Faith
Hope
Love

Four essential ingredients to our lives. Four essential ingredients that should not and can not stand alone.

1 comment:

DerDrache said...

I had the pleasure of being at that show too. It was actually the 2nd time I've seen Bruce. 1st time was when he was in town at Polaris a few years back playing stuff off of his Seeger Sessions album. If you don't have it already, buy it now. That concert was what made me a Bruce fan which is amusing since everything from the Seeger Sessions is a cover of some sort.

Ken