My Bruce Journey - Part 14

'I'll be wating here until you take a chance...take a risk.  I'll take what's broken and I'll take what's fixed'  Patti Scialfa

 Never being one to do things by halves when I found Backstreets I became a super-sub.

This cost a good few dollars but I am a gullible soul and I was taken in by the list of all the extra benefits this would bring - one of which I took advantage of - the limited edition of Frank Stefanko‘s book.

I loved getting my ‘Backstreets’ magazines and read them from cover to cover - sometimes more than once. I felt like a true fan and flaunted my magazines in public places - the bus, the rest area at work in the hope of impressing someone: anyone.  As nobody ever mentioned it I can only assume I never came across any Springsteen fans.

My introduction to the world of bootlegs started with ‘Backstreets’ magazine but because they are sort of ‘under the counter’ there is no information about how to go about obtaining a boot.  OK OK so Crystal Cat’s boots are usually really good but who is he or she? and more to the point how do I get hold of one of these recordings??

It became obvious I couldn’t simply Google ‘Crystal Cat’ and find a list of CDs to buy!  A search for ‘Bruce boots‘ today actually brings up boots - those you wear on your feet - they look quite good actually.

‘Downloading’ wasn’t even in our vocabulary in 2005 so we ended up, after a lot of digging around on the internet, buying the 4 concerts we wanted from a website.  I can‘t remember the name of the site or how much we paid.  They came in battered old CD cases with poor artwork but Mike set to work designing new covers.  He found his previously hidden artistic talent with these and has been doing artwork for our boots ever since.

I was surprised by how good the sound quality is.  I thought they would be really awful.  I really get a sense of the concert atmosphere but I don’t think I will ever be a collector of boots in general.  We have them to remember that we were there - so apart from the odd one or two we only have copies of the concerts we have been to.

During this time we started buying music magazines - certain ones feature Bruce on a regular basis and we became ‘Uncut’ regulars.  We were introduced to a lot of new music through ‘Uncut’ magazine.  If they give a new album five stars we will consider buying it.

Radio 2 played a big part too. In 2004 Lesley Douglas became the controller of Radio 2 and I think she helped bring the play list more up to date.  What’s more I heard Terry Wogan play Bruce one day specifically for her because she is a big fan.

Unfortunately she resigned over the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross thing.

The latest I have heard is that they (whoever they are) don‘t want Radio 2‘s audience to get any younger.  I hope this doesn‘t mean back to playing too much easy listening stuff.  Who remembers the old Light Programme?

Anyway regular readers will know I listen to Radio 2 a lot and during the noughties we bought quite a bit of stuff after hearing it on Radio 2.  It wasn’t necessarily trendy - no hip hop, grime or garage but, new, nevertheless.

I have a determination to try and keep up to date with music - one of my regular mantras is that I will never listen to any radio station that plays oldies all the time - no ‘Magic‘ for me.

I am a big fan of Johnnie Walker and when he presented the drive time show he had a good few guests doing acoustic sets.  I often went out to buy an album after hearing these - The Storys, The Thorns and The Finn Brothers being three of them.

But you can’t give up the old favourites all together so we also have some Bon Jovi, John Fogerty, Brian Adams and Rod Stewart that we bought between 2000 and 2005.

And our strangest reason for buying an album must go to Foo Fighters, which we bought because they featured in an episode of one of our favourite TV programmes - The West Wing.  We had previously bought Jeff Buckley’s ’Grace’ after hearing ’Hallelujah’ on The West Wing.

I hadn’t abandoned country either. I bought Gretchen Wilson and Keith Urban. Gretchen was one of Johnny Walker’s finds - I love ‘Redneck Woman’ just because it‘s funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btQOND5PGSs  Hell yeah!

 Keith Urban because ‘Days Go By’ reminds me how important it is to make the most of my life.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Toich-SLY

Finally honorary mentions for Patti Scialfa and Soozie Tyrell. We bought Patti’s ‘23rd Street Lullaby’ and Soozie‘s ‘White Lines’ as soon as they came out.  I really like Patti’s albums. ’Rumble Doll’ is on the list of my favourites that gets mentioned on a regular basis.  Perhaps I will discuss Patti more another week.

This takes us up to our first Southside Johnny concert in November 2005 and the release of the 30th anniversary edition of Born to Run (BTR) the day after.  Watching ’Wings for Wheels’ and the Hammersmith Odeon concert before next week's blog is a tough job but someone’s got to do it!

And as I listen to Radio 2 right now Dermot O’Leary is talking to Stephen Merchant (both Bruce fans). Stephen has chosen to play ’Thunder Road’ from the Hammersmith Odeon concert - how spooky is that?!