To Tillie's Place, Long Run Friday Set LIst

Prove it All Night, Leah, The Rising, Youngstown, Jackson Cage, The Price You Pay, Brilliant Disguise, Sandy, If I Should Fall Behind (Live), We Shall Overcome, One Step Up, You Can Look (But you Better not Touch), Independence Day, Thunder Road, Badlands, Long Time Comin', Mary's Place, Land of Hope and Dreams (Live), Sinaloa Cowboys, Man's Job, The Ties That Bind, Tougher Than The Rest, The E Street Shuffle, Tenth Avenue Freezeout (Live), Surprise Surprise, Incident on 57th Street, Rosalita, New York City Serenade.

This is part of my Springsteen Stimulus Package...an all Bruce set list for my run to Convention Hall and back today, 18 miles with the wind in my face all the way home. Mind over matter...

It's been a bad week for me and Bruce. You're probably all too aware. But this is how I bury the hatchet on our differences, by celebrating the songs that have been the soundtrack to my life (I even threw in one from the new CD). A lot of my friends think I worship Bruce. Nah. In the business I've been in for the last 20 years, sitting and talking to so many people who've been worshiped by so many, I know better. He's just a guy who fell in love with the guitar and poetry and had the ambition to be great. If he wasn't recongized at the right time, he might be playing at O'Neill's tonight, or reading poetry in some coffee shop, or better yet, looking to kick his feet up on a Friday night after a long week of work.

An Aside: Here's what I mean. I covered Don Mattingly for four years and most of my friends thought Donnie was a god. They'd ask me all the time, "What's he like? What's he like? Good guy? Bad Guy?" My answer was stock. If he didn't hit and field quite as well as he does, he could've been your gym teacher, putting a mark in a book if you forgot your locker combination or weren't wearing a jock. Just a dude. Hits better than you. But just a dude.

But no, Bruce is playing the Super Bowl. Speaking of which...earlier in the week, I said I was undecided how I felt about Bruce doing half-time. Upon further review...

I'm down on it. I'll watch, but I'm down on it. I dunno, part of me still rebels against the whole idea that Bruce plays concerts in football stadiums at all. Brings back memories of him pumping iron and wearing tight jeans and kinda deserting his old self, the skinny hippy dude who lived above the surfboard repair shop in Asbury Park. Stadium rocker? Blech. Have fun, Bruce.

Time for me to move on. I was just genuinely excited for this album drop because, well, because I loved The Wrestler and I figured when I heard that, Bruce was in a good writing place. Man, was I wrong. Seriously, I had a poetry professor at Carolina, Jim Seay (I think it was Jim). Dude wore an eye patch like a pirate (I have no idea why, but I think he chose the patch over a glass eye, or at least that was the legend). I think what Seay would've done with Queen of the Supermarket and, man, it wouldn't have been pretty. Seay would've spit it out.

And, remember, Seay was teaching poetry to a bunch of hungover college kids.

PS: I could not care less about the Super Bowl. Unless it involved the Giants, which excites my dad and my brother, I don't get into it. Like the halftime show, I'll watch it...

But I doubt I'll enjoy it. Hope ya'll do.