Tickets for many dates on the new Springsteen tour went on sale this week. I was determined to get into at least one show. Of East Coast big-city, reasonable-drive concerts, Washington went on sale near the end of the Ticketmaster release stretch — New Jersey early on Friday, New York a bit later Friday, and Washington and Boston on Saturday.

Friday, I went for the insurance. Tried for the first night in New Jersey, refreshed my browser at just the right moment, for once retyped the Captcha words without typos, and up came two floor seats. Success!

But to buy? Not to buy? Had I just gotten lucky in the maw, or was no one buying Bruce tickets? Would Washington be even easier the next day, making Jersey tickets unnecessary? I hemmed and hawed a few minutes as clocks ticked. Then I went for it. Of course people in Jersey were buying Springsteen (!) tickets. They were probably fighting each other in the streets for them. What was I thinking? I was fortunate.

The two times in my life I had turned my back on fortunate Springsteen seats, I had regretted it. Once was due to youthful hubris, my college friends and I in a moment of insanity throwing back middle-deck seats for the final concert of the Reunion Tour, thinking we could do better.

The second time, also long ago, was due to financial concerns. I ended up paying the same money for far worse seats to the same show. The lesson learned was never, ever throw back great Springsteen seats.

So, I bought the New Jersey tickets. Later Friday, I tried halfheartedly for the New York shows. Got to the browser a minute late, never had a shot. Saturday morning, I tried for floor tickets in Washington. Success again. I wasn't sure what I would do with the New Jersey ones. Could two Springsteen shows within a few days be a bad thing, though? No.

Looking at the news output today, luck was surely on my side. Scalper computers blew up New Jersey sales. The Wall Street Journal even did a story. "As seats went on sale at 10 a.m. Friday for Mr. Springsteen's performances at three venues in New York and New Jersey, traffic on the site shot up to a level 2.5 times higher than any point in the past year, Ticketmaster spokeswoman Jacqueline Peterson said." D.C. sold out within minutes, without trouble. To pay for my fortune this week, fate may never allow me to get Springsteen tickets again. We'll see.

I'm not as deep into collecting Springsteen bootlegs as I used to be.

I started midway through college and collected a couple hundred until easing off a few years ago. All of this was through downloading (which subverts bootleg profiteers, which the Bruce camp has tacitly backed), not buying (which helps the profiteers, earning the camp's annoyance and occasional legal chase). But the hobby got to a point where it was taking too much of my time. I quit vanity plates for the same reason.

The great sportswriter Giles Smith has a quote, which I posted on this blog once before, amid writer's block, caputured the Freudian nature:

What is it about small boys and completion? [Collecting cricket programs, if I recall Smith's story correctly] I could say I was displaying a precocious interest in the aesthetic of wholeness, but the truth is I was just being reposterously anal. Small boys are pushed that way by the makers of bubblegum cards, by the designers of petrol station promotions, by Stanley Gibbons [apparently it's a British stamp thing] and countless others who encourage us to "collect the set" and are never made to answer for the psychological implications of what they do.

All of this personal background is to explain to why I missed the news in December that Wolfgang's Vault, the great concert-archive site, has acquired the original tapes of one of Springsteen's killer 1978 Passaic shows and plans to restore, digitize and release the video in 2012. I hear the show isn't my favorite all-time bootleg (September 19, night one of the stand, booted as Passaic Night and as Piece de Resistance), but you have to imagine the subsequent night was damn good too.

But wait! You can do more than imagine. A beat-up, not-yet-restored copy of this video is online. It's damn good. Can't wait for Wolfgang.

I posted the other day that early "wild" word of Springsteen's new album either boded very well or very poorly. With the release of the album's first single last night, put up a point in the positive column.

We Take Care of Our Own has a strong beat, tight (Magic-style) vocals and all kinds of anger. Backstreets says the chorus makes the song "not only be Springsteen's most misinterpreted song since Born in the U.S.A., but misinterpreted in precisely the same way." Sounds exactly right to me. But as the review goes on to state, the ambiguity runs in various directions. While clearly fired up about the American condition, underneath there's a "So-what-are-we-going-to-do-about-it" layer.

As much as I like initial first track, what matters most to a Springsteen album's quality in the last decade are the next several tracks we hear. With this tight sound (I'm not quite willing to say Arcade Fire – again, far too reminiscent of Bruce's own '07 Magic, even keeping the strings), how the music diversifies over the rest of the album will be critical. Can the message hit enough different, right notes to sustain itself?

Friend and fellow Bruce fan Steve came across the article this morning. The good news? An "earwitness who's heard some of the music" tells The Hollywood Reporter: "It’s very rock 'n' roll. He feels it's the angriest album he's ever made." The potentially bad news? The sound "veers" to "unexpected textures — loops, electronic percussion … an amazing sweep of influences and rhythms, from hip-hop to Irish folk rhythms."

Everything could be fine, I know. There's a new producer in the house, and he might make sure the experiments fit (in a way the producer of the last couple albums didn't). But still I worry. And hope for the best.

Similarly, the pub puts the album among its most anticipated albums of 2012. But also on the list? Adam Lambert, Justin Bieber, Lana Del Rey.

A good amount has been written about how Patti Smith contributed to Springsteen's Because the Night and how he gave the song to her in return. Listen to hers and his, and you have almost enough material for an entire gender studies class. Add Michael Stipe's cover of Smith's version while performing with Bruce, and your curriculum is complete.

Less has been written of another Smith-Springsteen crossover work: the guitar riff for her Frederick and the intro to his live Darkness-tour Prove It All Night. Her version is about her husband. His is about who knows. Both are set at night. Both are primal in their lyric elements.

Both are confident but desperate. The songs say many of the same things, but if you weren't aware of the shared chords, you'd never situate them near each other on your shelves. He knows the riff but doesn't let it take over the core of what he wants to say. She invites the guitar in and incorporates it. Mars and Venus in badass manner.

Bruce Springsteen, Prove It All Night.

Patti Smith, Frederick.

On a Thursday evening after work, Lori and I drove up to Asbury Park, New Jersey. We stopped for crab cakes at Chesapeake House, found a string of Christmas stations on the radio and got in late. There was no signage outside the hotel, and workout professionals were wrapping up their holiday party, spilling into the lobby with shouts and big hair.

We were glad to be in New Jersey, with this glowing down the street.

In the morning, we had the boardwalk and the ocean to ourselves.

We proceeded to explore the town, once a bustling shore destination, then a ruin, now a comeback, with music, antiques and art as draws. 

We were there primarily for the music — Gaslight Anthem in its native Jersey, on a Friday night, one last concert before recording anew, in Asbury Park Convention Hall, built in 1927 and somehow still standing. 

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1978: Frank Stefanko shoots the Darkness on the Edge of Town cover.

2011, November 16: Thirty-three years later, the Kitten Covers Tumblr:

2011, November 19: Three days later, Stefanko poses with the kitten.

If the E Street Band ever tours again, and we know that's not a lock, I want to cast my vote for a mash-up. Amid the Reunion Tour, we heard regularly the rave-up Light of Day, which Springsteen wrote and loaned to Joan Jett who loaned it in turn to the big-screen stylings of Michael J. Fox, mashed with Hank Snow's I've Been Everywhere. From LINYC:

Four more videos? 1. Jett and Bruce doing the song together. 2. Jett and Fox in the movie version. 3. Snow's version live in B&W, very cool. 4. The 1996 Johnny Cash cover Bruce probably picked up. The original version of I've Been Everywhere? Australian, Wikipedia explains to us.

What I want now is a version that mashes the Black Keys' new Lonely Boy into what's already there. Not only can I not stop listening to this song, not only would cure the band's addiction to covering only songs from their youth, but it would take surf-rock twang to new nitro levels.

Yesterday, friend Sheri emailed and said her office had free tickets to watch a Springsteen tribute band at the Fillmore. She couldn't go, but did I want a couple? I had to think. I was a huge Springsteen fan but had no desire to hear a Springsteen tribute band. I wasn't militant like the hardcore Elvis fans who didn't want tribute artists to exist. (Really. Go look it up. An Elvis tribute artist is one of the worst things you can mention to a serious modern Elvis fan. It's almost as bad as calling an Elvis tribute artist an impersonator. They will use their karate on you.) But, despite a lack of militancy, I still wasn't too interested. How good could the band be? Just what kind of crowd would show up to listen?

But I did want to see the Fillmore. The national chain's new music hall had opened in downtown Silver Spring just the night before, and the place was set to compete with The 9:30 Club for big-name concerts in the city. Anything that helped continue the revival of downtown Silver Spring was good with me. And D.C. venues needed more competition.

Then I thought of advice I'd heard the other night. Not able to sleep, I caught an old It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Dennis told Charlie to say yes to new experiences. This advice was good. Did subsequent saying yes get them confused as truck-stop prostitutes? Yes. But did I have anything better to do last night? No. Onto the fake Bruce band.

After an unrelated avant-garde dinner (post on that to come, believe me) and a real dinner, I took the subway and arrived midway through the band's first set. The hall looked great, and the sound — especially for a band that couldn't have the best equipment — was terrific. The bartenders were fast. The staff was helpful. And the band was good.

Really. I had planned to stay for a hour and then call it a week. I was beat. But the tribute qualities were on point, and everyone in the hall, "Bruce in the USA" team included, was having a great time. After a few songs, even my skeptical self was with it. I stayed until the end of the show. It wasn't like the real thing, the real deal. But it worked. How?

Let us list! Ten things you need for a great Springsteen tribute band:

(Caution: Crazy music geekery ahead. I'm normal otherwise, I promise.) 

1. The Bruce. Matt Ryan looks, talks and sings like Springsteen. If you take a Blackberry photo from 20-30 feet (finally, this awful Blackberry pic-taking quality comes in handy for something), he is Springsteen.

2. The Clarence. Googling, Henry Alexander appears to play Clarence in yet another Springsteen tribute band. Glad he made a cameo. A Bruce tribute band with a white Clarence — there are some — has issues.

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All three pieces have shown up on Backstreets in the last couple days.

1. A bunch of fantastic Born to Run-era Clarence shots I've never seen before, from photographer Barbara Pyle. Worth expanding full-screen.

2. Lots of stories wrote about Clarence, Bruce and race. Only rock critic and Bruce biographer Dave Marsh managed to get provocative. From "MIGHTY MIGHTY, SPADE AND WHITEY: Clarence and Bruce, Friendship and Race" (quoting Curtis Mayfield in his title, in case you wondered):

Bruce and Clarence could not pull down the tower in which America is shackled, no two humans could do that, but they inflicted their share of damage and from the places I’ve sat and stood and watched them do it, their effort, properly understood, had something of grandeur about it. They were these two guys who imagined that if they acted free, then other people would understand better that it was possible to be free. How close they came is harder to see than how far the rest of us are from that goal. But there are hearts and minds a few steps closer to liberation out there because of them, people who had fun until it stopped being just fun and grew inside them.

3. Eric Meola, who shot the iconic Born to Run art, blogged at length.

As I did not have an assistant, and as I processed the film immediately after the shoot, the sequence in which the rolls were shot has been lost; the sequence within a roll still remains, however, and from that it is obvious that the interaction between Bruce and Clarence which resulted in the cover image lasted for about half a roll, or 18 frames. Of these, there are only two where his face is turned to Clarence and he is grinning in only one of them.  Clearly, it was an instinctual moment, and one which was brought on as much by practicality, as intent.  Standing on a box, he was suddenly several inches taller; Clarence’s crouch hides this and makes the height difference disappear.

Two other short pieces that I liked: Greg Mitchell writing about how Clarence saved the day for the E Street Band at their pre-fame Sing-Sing Prison show and the Telegraph writing about the saxophone.

Best line from the latter: "Condemned by the Vatican, denounced by governments, shunned by polite society, the saxophone – begetter of the coolest noise in history, and the greatest act of sedition ever to have come out of Belgium – both makes and taints its practitioners."