bruce springsteen and his greatest fan.

i'm going to see springsteen this weekend. the bruce springsteen. the BOSS. my mom is taking me, which is going to great. this woman loved bruce before anyone knew who he was and has followed his career like a disciple.

i keep remembering something one of my high school teachers said to me. i was - for some unknown reason - telling her that my mom had gone to the springsteen concert over the weekend. and she smiled and said, "i went, too. but i fell asleep."

asleep? asleep? ASLEEP?! who falls asleep when they go to see bruce? there are only a handful of times in my life when i have been more offended. (one of which was when someone doubted that lucinda williams is one of the most talented musicians performing today. but i don't want to get into that. bad memories.)



my parents raised my brother and me with the help of bruce springsteen. (and john mellencamp. and eric clapton. and the stones. and the alman brothers [who i though were the almond brothers when i was small]. and tom petty. and crosby, stills, nash, and young.) these musicians are the bedrock of my deep, aching love for music. i knew all the words to "jack and diane" and "born to run" by the time i was five. my brother's favorite song as a toddler was "motherless children" by eric clapton. (which is, i think, pretty funny.) it was a rare occassion that my mother was forced to play wee-sing or other cassettes of children's songs. we were all about the rock n' roll.

we danced in the nude to rod stewart's "motown song" and when that disc was stolen out of my mom's car, the first priority was getting another copy. those are some of my most cherished childhood memories - car rides singing along with bruce, john, rod, and eric. these men made me want to be a musician. i demanded that my mom confirm my ability to sing nearly every day. and as the wonderful woman that she is, she obligingly told me i was a great singer. (needless to say, that pipe dream was set aside when i learned that while i could make singing noises, anything that resembled a key was out of the question.)

listening to that music now transports me back to a time when i lived with a total sense of abandon. when choreographing dances and singing off key at the top of your lungs anyway and everywhere was entirely acceptable. and if it wasn't acceptable, who rightly cares?

so falling alseep on sunday? totally out of the question.