Woke up at 4 a.m. in suburban Chicago. Flew out of the city at 7. Arrived in Toronto at 9:30. Arrived at my hotel a little after 10. Was in line at the Air Canada Centre shortly before 11.

There was a list going because they, like I, had heard from arena officials that there would be no special general-admission rules. This first-come, first-served approach was different from the Springsteen camp's unofficial tour guidelines, but it was another country, so who knew. We knew the reports that Ottawa was playing by the rules, but the Toronto folks explicitly said differently. Anyway, so there was a little back and forth between Springsteen security and the arena, and they worked out a deal with us. You can read elsewhere what that deal was, but it left us in good shape and with a little bit of freedom from the line.

Got floor wristbands at 2, stopped back at my hotel to check in, caught the amazing Arcade Fire video from Ottawa (thank you, Spin), and went back to the arena for the line lockdown and lottery at 5. After an hour or so, with all sorts of rumors running through the line on what the lottery had determined — start at X, go to the end of the wristbands, then go back to the beginning if necessary, but where would X be? — we finally got assured of getting into the pit. When the show started, I was in the third row. By the time it ended, the crowd had worked me up to the second.

And it was a good show. Out of the 11 shows I've seen, the opening third of this one ranked up there, just below my first show and my front-row show. The pit made a huge difference. Reports today said most of the arena sat, but the front of the pit was as young and jumpy as I've ever seen it. Who knew Niagara Falls was a hotbed of Gen Y trampism? Bruce never acknowledged that group's sign, not before or after security took it away, but he should have. He definitely saw it, and there were lots of "Yeah, guess we've still got it" looks among him and the band. There were other young folks besides them and me, but giving them a shoutout would've been a shoutout to all of us. Sure, the kids had their cell cams out at different points, but if you couldn't give a shoutout to the nut kids down front — who are completely weird demographically in how much they like your music — because you were afraid of encouraging more signs or something, then you were in the same boat. Sorry, Boss.

Back to the music. I had heard it was a big guitar show, and it absolutely was. Big, clean guitars, not like the sound mess from the Rising tour (a less satisfying sequel to the Reunion tour's Murder Inc), and they probably restored my faith that Bruce and Steve were still putting in an effort there. For songs (full setlist), Radio Nowhere worked better than on the album and much better than the single. Night and Lonesome Day kept that pacing going, and the guitar solos on Gypsy Biker were awesome. As a four-pack, it was one of the most raw opens I've seen from Springsteen. It was probably half the music and half the proximity, but it was one of the most live/alive opens I've seen as well. For You was a tour premier but played kind of perfunctory. Magic was too laid back, but showed promise if it could get more tight and mean. The reworked Reason to Believe lived up to expectations. Who knew a ZZ Top riff could fit under that song?

Fast-forwarding: The Darkness songs felt a little overplayed for the first time. Some of the harder River and Tunnel songs would've worked better. Patti's song was better than the trash talk it's gotten. The rest of the band getting into it would take it the rest of the way, and there definitely seemed to be ways they could get in. Incident was cool, but hearing it solo piano on D&D was better. (I'm spoiled, I know.) Last to Die — whatever your politics, we finally saw Bruce show the anger that could have helped the Rising songs and others from the recent catalogue. Thundercrack was expected, but I didn't expect how much it would gas up live. American Land worked better than expected as a closer, until the moment after it closed. The song proved there was still plenty of gas left in the tank, and the houselights flickering after the band left the stage didn't help things.

But it was still a great show. At the end, I couldn't manage more than a few words to my compadre Luigi, a Toronto-area French teacher whom I met in the morning line. We hung out most of the day, and he reminded me of some of the best teachers I had in school. Other folks who made the day fly by: Chris from Britain by way of Miami, the nervous guy whose nerves paid off when he got his wife into the pit, all the people who gave me directions to the arena, the desk clerk girl who gave me a Canadian declarative "That's all right" when she heard I was going to the show, the guys who ran the line and got the deal in case the lottery fell threw, the buddies who were in Ottawa and stopped some jerks from cutting in line, and the kids from Niagara Falls. Didn't talk to them much, but they deserved a shoutout.

Note to the kids: Bootlegging is wrong. Taping musical performances without an artist's permission is against the guidelines of many clubs, arenas and stadia. In some states, the act may be a crime under wiretapping statutes, as may be the sale, purchase, trade, download, or otherwise intentional acquisition of the resulting product. Any writing in this blog about bootlegs is for educational purposes only because education is never wrong. Also, because it's my job. In the field of reader engagement, I have to be famiiar with a wide variety of historically oriented audience-participation documents. It's important work.

I was unfamiliar with Johnny America until this afternoon. Even then, during a brief flip to another site, I thought to myself, "I should blog about this Johnny Danger." A FAQ provided almost zero explanation, but that was enough.

Johnny America spends most of his days lounging against a low crater, fishing rod in paw. Some afternoons he helps plow the cheese fields — to earn extra money for carrots — but usually he's in the valley cut by the Mercer and Mancini Rivers, idling. The fish on the Moon are constantly drunk and easy to catch. They look almost exactly like bass, but taste like marmalade.

From time to time Johnny casts his line toward Earth, slides down the filament, and calls a meeting of the Moon Rabbit Drinking Club & Benevolence Society. The meetings are typically pot-luck affairs….

Via Google, Johnny America is alternately described as a zine or an online litmag. It stems from Lawrence, Kansas. Of course it does.

There's little reward for writing zines and even less for listening to bootlegs, as many as you might hear, and that's probably roughly why Backstreets links to Johnny Danger this week. Timmy Waldron contributes, "August 11, 2003: The Day Bruce Springsteen Ran Out of Inane Childhood Stories to Talk About Before Starting a New Song."

Probably the best long-form Springsteen exchange on record has been an interview by Will Percy, nephew of writer Walker Percy. It got deep into song- and identity-craft, far beyond "in some fashion."

Following nicely in that vein was Nick Hornby's recent interview with Springsteen for the Observer, Britain's oldest Sunday paper. Despite the musician's appearance in the writer's High Fidelity and their shared Marah friendship, they hadn't met until the interview and its surrounding events.

The obvious awkwardness seemed to pay off. Reading it last night, one question stood out for me. "Does it feel like young man's music to you now," Hornby asked, "the first three, four records?"

Springsteen responded:

(The paragraph chunkings are mine, for readability.)

I would say that it is, you know, because a lot of young people actually mention those records to me. I remember I was playing over here a while back and I was staring down and there was a kid, he couldn't have been more than 14, 15, he was mouthing every word to us, Greetings From Asbury Park, literally word for word and this kid — forget about it, his parents were the glimmer in somebody's eye [laughs].

In some ways I suppose it is, but also a good song takes years to find itself. When I go back and play 'Thunder Road' or something, I can sing very comfortably from my vantage point because a lot of the music was about a loss of innocence, there's innocence contained in you but there's also innocence in the process of being lost [laughs]. And that was the country at the time I wrote that music. I wrote that music immediately preceding the end of the Vietnam war, when that feeling swept the country.

A part of me was interested in music which contained that innocence, the Spector stuff, a lot of the Fifties and Sixties rock'n'roll, but I myself wasn't one of those people. I realised I wasn't one of my heroes, I was something else and I had to take that into consideration.

So when I wrote that music and incorporated a lot of the things I loved from those particular years, I was also aware that I had to set in place something that acknowledged what had happened to me and everybody else where I lived.

The rest is here, including Hornby footnotes and Tony Blair talking about a "grotty" apartment where he and Cherie used to listen to Bruce.

Big thanks to Shalini for reminding me to post this.

Into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Well, there I was sitting down on the couch in my pajamas with my eldest son. He was watching TV. I was doing one of my favorite things. I was tallying up all the money I passed up in endorsements over the years and thinking of all the fun I could have had with it.Suddenly I hear "Uno, dos, tres, catorce!" I look up. But instead of the silhouettes of the hippie-wannabes bouncing around in the iPod commercial, I see my boys! Oh my God! They sold out! Now, what I know about the iPod is this: It is a device that plays music. Of course, their new song sounded great, my guys are doing great, but methinks I hear the footsteps of my old tape operator of Jimmy Iovine somewhere.

Wily. Smart.

Now, personally, I live an insanely expensive lifestyle that my wife barely tolerates. I burn money, and that calls for huge amounts of cash flow. But, I also have a ludicrous image of myself that keeps me from truly cashing in. You can see my problem. Woe is me.

So, the next morning, I call up Jon Landau (or as I refer to him, "the American Paul McGuinness"), and I say, "Did you see that iPod thing?" and he says yes. And he says, "And I hear they didn't take any money." And I said, "They didn't take any money?" and he says no.

I said, "Smart, wily Irish guys. Anybody – anybody – can do an ad and take the money. But to do the ad and not take the money… that's smart. That's wily." I say, "Jon, I want you to call up Bill Gates or whoever is behind this thing and float this: a red, white and blue iPod signed by Bruce 'The Boss' Springsteen. Now remember, no matter how much money he offers, don't take it!"

 Full text of the speech.

Darkness… lines… an indefinite woman… a sax break… a blues-rock interpretation of "mean." I'd never heard John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band until this morning when 94.7 had a satellitesque moment. Sitting in traffic, I was wondering who the Springsteen ripoff was and thinking about how Dave Marsh called Thin Lizzy's The Boys Are Back in Town the "best non-Springsteen Springsteen ever" and how this song on the radio wasn't coming close.

Apparently, the song was On the Dark Side from the faux-Bruce Eddie and the Cruisers soundtrack. I had no idea. So I've got a new addition to my must-see list now, and Cafferty's got me interested.

For my money, the best use of actual Springsteen music in a film has been John Sayles's Baby, It's You. The movie was Sayles' first and only under studio control, and his themes only hit some of the time. But his soundtrack picks from the Springsteen catalog and their subsequent placement were perfect. Sorry, Tom Cruise fans.

"When those songs go out there, then you add your voice to the chorus of people fighting for their definition and what they stand for. I have an edge, because I've still got the guitar in my hand."

After 79 issues and 24 years of publishing, the premier Springsteen fan magazine in the States has finally landed an interview with the man himself. Focusing on the just-announced Vote for Change concerts, the Backstreets interview began appearing online in its entirety this afternoon.

I turn on the radio yesterday afternoon to hear the final two notes of Born to Run and to hear the DJ say Bruce wrote that song when he was just 23 years old. And I thought, "Damn, I'm falling behind!"

But then I looked this morning and found he actually wrote the song when he was 24. So, plenty of time.

After the Times had my attention yesterday morning, the Post won it back today.

First, in the Style section, William Booth gave the best-of-the-bunch telling of Ray Charles' funeral service. Booth wrote his lede: "The only thing bad about the funeral for Ray Charles was that he died."

Then Max Steele, age 82, wrote about his father for the Sunday magazine. Steel told of his father's business falling apart in Florida in 1927, when he was just five or six, forcing the family to pack up.

In a few days we will roll up an expensive Turkish carpet, tie it on top of the Studebaker touring car and leave everything to the creditors. I want to ride on one of the fold-down opera seats but am heartbroken when my sisters beat me to them. He picks me up afterwards and says I can sit next to him as we drive home. 2004

His memory first got me thinking of Springsteen's Used Cars. The father's driving the car; the sister's in the front seat with an ice cream cone; the ma's "in the black seat, sittin' all alone"; and the narrating boy's nowhere to be found inside.

But then I got to thinking about the disc that's been riding around with me the past couple days, Wilco's debut A.M., and Passenger Side.

While the sad mooch had his complaints, having a rider in the passenger-side seat seems to me as much of a rite of passage as getting to sit in that seat years earlier. Or even learning how to drive. Me, I can take care of myself. Other people bring responsibility, for better or worse.

On the better side there, the comparson's come easy. Melissa Ferrick's Drive finds the right note, sexy with her "I'll hold you up / and drive you all night" (not aimed at my gender, but stirring an alliance as such) in a way that John Mayer gets more acclaim for but fails to understand on Your Body Is a Wonderland ("I'll never let your head hit the bed / without my hand behind it").

The other side, the worse side, is the more complicated one. Metaphor on that side is avoidance to some extent. In the Springsteen catalog, the struggle for optimism's so much that even the beautifully reckless hope of Thunder Road can turn to broken dreams in Racing in the Street and giving up in The Promise.

All deal with the More Love dictum of rock 'n' soul, saying, "We are here, and I am going to take you there." Not "but I am going to take you there," because there's probably a pretty good reason — most human ones are — that you're starting where you are.

Heavy, yes, if you consider going to be a difficult act. Some days it's easier done and others easier said.

In the easier done times, one song to play is a cover I can't seem to get out of my head this week, Elvis' turbocharged version of The Promised Land. That's the song Tommy Lee Jones jams in the eight-track in Men in Black, right before Jones hits the Holland Tunnel and floors it on the ceiling.

Back in April, you read here about the fate of Tillie, the smiling painted face on the wall of Asbury Park's ancient-but-doomed Palace Amusements building. Since then, the Palace has met the wrecking ball, but photos show Tillie survived as well as hoped.

Transferring musical idolatry a ways south, I was pointed to a Tower Records page this week by Elvisnews.com. EPE has released a trailer of the Comeback Special DVD (and a trailer of Aloha if that era floats your boat). The Comeback trailer didn't hanker much for cuts but instead went for the long ride, a dubious choice. That kind of post-remix salesmanship was disappointing, but the video showed what I hoped to see on the film.

Anyway. I figured those two items were pretty different and needed to be looped together in some way, but fortunately I found the Girls Guide to Elvis had already done the work for me. The book's Web site has transcribed a Bruce Goes to Graceland story.

Because I was a reference librarian in a previous life: For more details on the Memphis gig preceding the trip, consult the 29/04/76 entry in Brucebase's 1976 page. A soundboard recording circulates from the show (see Bruceleg details); the highlight for me is definitely Yum Yum Yum (I Want Some) during Eddie Floyd's guesting Knock on Wood.

The stories from the gig are also worth hearing, especially the Pretty Flamingo intro: "…we didn't know how tough she was until Clarence came riding by in short pants, on his bicycle playing a saxophone with no hands…."

I was walking in the door last night and heard this chirping off in the side bushes. The cicadas had quieted down for the night — a sleep that always surprises me; how can the cicadas sleep better than I do? — but the noisemaker didn't sound to be a cricket either. They seemed to have quieted down too, which didn't do much to explain why they were in my basement every early morning this spring. But the almost quiet was okay. I got to thinking about the County Fair song and which was the stranger choice, using crickets as background music or singing about winning big stuffed bears?