July 27, 2003|By Kevin Cowherd | Kevin Cowherd,Sun Columnist
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- It's a steamy night at Giants Stadium and I am watching Bruce Springsteen sing about love and loss and redemption, watching him radiate pure joy as he jumps around a stage that sits like a huge altar in the midst of 55,000 frenzied parishioners, when I think: Do not weep for New Jersey.
Sure, the only place that gets worse PR is Baghdad. Jersey's got monster traffic jams and ridiculous congestion and the kind of hazy pollution that sits like a gray blanket on hot summer days and smothers everyone underneath. Yes, Jersey has every hack comedian flaying it in his routine, and maybe it's even got Jimmy Hoffa's skeleton oozing out of a swamp somewhere, ready to make tabloid headlines like the classic that ran in the New York Post years ago: "HEADLESS BODY FOUND IN TOPLESS BAR."
But Jersey has the Boss, too.
Talk about redemption.
Forget the circus; there's no show on earth like a Springsteen show and there is no Springsteen show like a Jersey Springsteen show, because Bruce is the shy, awkward Jersey guy who devoured rock 'n' roll and never forgot his roots: He's the Troubadour of the Turnpike, the Aristotle of Asbury Park, the Bard of the Boardwalk. They love him here, unashamedly.
This is Monday night, the fourth in a series of 10 shows at the stadium that the trade magazines are calling history-making: most tickets sold for a series of concerts in one venue.
Dark rain clouds circle overhead, but Springsteen and the E Street Band are ignoring them and doing what they do best: singing about hot cars, fast girls, the Jersey shore life and star-crossed lovers speeding off into the night in search of the promised land.
But they're also singing about stuff nobody else sings about: restless husbands who up and leave their families, dead-end jobs and desperation, dying factory towns, withered relationships, stomach-churning fear that wakes you in the middle of the night, hope and faith in places where there shouldn't be any.
And they're singing about the gaping hole in the Manhattan skyline where the Twin Towers used to be, and the fire and death of that awful September day when madmen steered two airliners into all that steel and glass and humanity.
Who else but Springsteen could pull that off without looking like they're capitalizing on maybe the worst national tragedy ever? (Bummer about the buildings, folks. But here's a little something from my newest CD ...)
"Good evening, New Jersey ... it's nice to be back home!" Bruce said to the crowd. And the roar that greeted him said Jersey was glad to see him, too.
To celebrate Bruce's gigs here, they've even built a mini-Jersey shore boardwalk in the parking lot, complete with Ferris wheel, carnival games, a sand sculpture and stands that sell sausage and pepper sandwiches, fudge, funnel cakes, all the stuff that makes your cardiologist cry out in his dreams: "No . . . not that! Try the broccoli."
On a karaoke stage, frat boys in tank tops holding 16-oz. Buds -- and Jersey moms in Springsteen T-shirts and tight jeans -- do the most god-awful renditions of "Glory Days" and "Dancing in the Dark," so bad you wonder why the crowd doesn't rise up as one and cry "Enough!" and beat them with sticks.
But this is Jersey. Even bad Spring-steen, apparently, is better than no Springsteen. Then again, if there's a karaoke lounge in hell, at least a couple of tables will be reserved for the Springsteen impersonators here to-night.
Their beloved Boss
If you were to study the demographics of a typical Springsteen crowd, it would be hard to determine if they were there for a blistering rock extravaganza or a particularly good yard sale.
"There's such diversity of ages," said Ingrid Canepa, 20, an usher in Section 210 in the mezzanine who's worked all of Bruce's gigs this time around. "Parents come with their teen-agers. And their little kids, too. And the kids know all the words, so they sing and dance.
"And the old people come, too. They get up and start dancing and shaking! And I'm like: 'Be careful, don't fall down!' "
Some people cry at Bruce's shows, too. Springsteen has been churning out wonderful, memorable songs for three decades, only sometimes the memories they summon aren't pleasant.
Canepa was in the ladies' room the other night midway through Bruce's show when she came upon a woman who was weeping. At first, Canepa thought the woman's allergies were acting up. Then, recalled Canepa, "She said a song -- it was one of the slow ones -- reminded her of her old boyfriend."
This is what a Springsteen song can do: heal your heart or break your heart or both, depending on how your life's going at that moment.
Anyway, it was about an hour before Springsteen's show Monday night and I was talking to a woman named Marjorie Gorton, who is 42 and from Belle Mead, N.J., and nuts about Springsteen, when suddenly she said: "You gotta talk to Al Hanson. He's seen Bruce a million times."
