Copycat

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by Madness Fades

And yes he let the crowd play his guitar, yes he pulled some kid up onto the stage and yes he rambled on about how America is not what it used to be.

Neither is Ireland, Mind you 1 Euro and 45 cents per liter of Deisel today. Double that of last year. Thats about $9 a litre..ish, sorry im moaning but its about 70 mile down to dublin and you cann feel the pinch these days.

Even with the exchange rate, 1 Euro and 45 cents is still a lot cheaper than what we pay for our gas. Also, diesel used to be cheaper than regular fuel for decades and now it's higher. So, Springsteen can leave the country and say America is not what it used to be without being boycotted like Natalie Maines, huh? America has changed then -- which is good.

I have three Springsteen albums, but I never did try to see him in concert. Due to the snippets I hear during Conan O'Brien, I'd be much more eager to see Max headline a show than The Boss.

Michele

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by trackaghost

If Lindsey was so tune with his audience then I don't undserstand his reliance on rehearsed speeches, which I thought was something he only started on the Dance tour until I started to listen to bootlegs and discovered it went back to the '70s.

I saw a couple of Tusk shows and a couple of Mirage shows and I didn't have any boots back then, not until the nineties. Around the eighties, other than the albums, that's the only experience I had with FM. I didn't think any of the band members related that personally to the audience (not even Stevie), but that's because there were a number of them and a lot of songs to sing. Lindsey did some song introductions, but they didn't seem rehearsed. They were rather pedestrian.

Later, hearing the few BN boots we have now, I thought the exchanges with the audience sounded more intimate and kind of humble and happy.

During the OOTC tour, I thought Lindsey related much more to the audience, even though I noticed then that the "banter" was repeated from show to show. It still seemed pretty warm, especially when something went wrong technically, which forced improvisation.

With The Dance, SYW and UTS the speeches got more elaborate and stilted and pretty strained at the FM shows. However, with UTS even with the speeches, with the audience yelling things to him and Lindsey responding, sometimes quite humorously, I still felt it was almost wildly spontaneous -- Gods on Mt. Olympus and all. It got to the point where once I saw him stop the show and go and whisper into a girl's ear, because she moaned after he didn't choose her song request.

I don't know how he compares to Springsteen, because I haven't seen Springsteen live, only on video. But I was impressed with Lindsey's audience interaction. And I'm not even talking about the guitar-strumming, because I never do that. I like the eye contact, and the pointing, and the little smiles and the little asides, like he's responding to specific people -- even if he really isn't.

Michele

[Nico]

Lindsey was very personable and humorous on his last tour, and I can vouch for that since I saw him 6 times, lol! He totally recognized people (including myself) and when I met him he was just...wonderful. Completely humble, kind, and accommodating. I think he's an incredibly powerful presence on stage, with a band or without.

[David]

Originally Posted by trackaghost

I prefer Lindsey to Springsteen but when it comes to relating to audiences, Bruce has that sussed in a way I've never seen Lindsey manage.

It's hard to compare the two (at least in their heyday) because they're so hugely different in terms of their styles & effects. But Bruce is a concert legend who bows to no one in rock, especially on vast scales (as when he sold out several nights at the Coliseum in L.A. in 1985 & left 90,000 people each night on a natural high).

To me, Lindsey's heyday as a performer (twenty-five to thirty years ago) is marked by power & command & exuberance so infectious that it was like a highland fling, but Springsteen the performer has built empires & carved his name on the marble steps to Parnassus. He is incomparable.

He's also one of rock's greatest songwriters. Lindsey's talents are (or were) on a more intimate scale. He's a pop-tale fabulist & miniaturist & arranger par excellence, while Springsteen is a bard -- what Hugh Downs on 20/20 once called America's modern-day Whitman.

It's like trying to compare Satie with Beethoven.

[Tango]

Help me out with the conversion of costs; isn't a liter of gas is equal to a bit more than 0.25 gallons? (a bit more than a quart) Ireland is definitely being hit by hefty prices, too. We're just catching up.

[Madness Fades]

Originally Posted by Tango

Help me out with the conversion of costs; isn't a liter of gas is equal to a bit more than 0.25 gallons? (a bit more than a quart) Ireland is definitely being hit by hefty prices, too. We're just catching up.

Yeah I dunno what way Michelej1 has counted that up. We are paying the Equivalent of $2.20 per .025 Gallon

[michelej1]

Ok, I read liter, but I didn't think liter. I never imagined liter in terms of gas. I just think, you know, like a liter of Pepsi!

So, per gallon, it seems like we are paying half what you are paying for Diesel. I thought we had it bad.

Michele

[Gazza]

Springsteen is obviously one of the great performers of all time. His shows are legendary.

Having said that, there's a power that Lindsey has when he performs something like Go Insane that I've never seen Bruce pull off when he goes out there on his own.

As for all this "artist" nonsense. I really couldn't care less if Bruce Springsteen writes songs about real people and real lives and all the rest of it. I like songs like "Prove It All Night" or "Dancing In The Dark" because they're catchy. He's no more an artist to me because he goes on "Vote For Change" tours or has any political or cultural significance. And Lindsey is no more an artist to me because he talks like a pretentious modern art student half of the time. Nor is Bob Dylan any greater to me because he was who so many involved in the civil rights movement were listening to. I just happen to like a lot of his songs. Rarely know what he's going on about though. I don't think Springsteen has written that many great songs anyway. I like more Mac songs than I do Springsteen songs.

But on the original point... Springsteen was clearly letting the audience play his guitar long before Lindsey.

[Tango]

Originally Posted by michelej1

Ok, I read liter, but I didn't think liter. I never imagined liter in terms of gas. I just think, you know, like a liter of Pepsi!

So, per gallon, it seems like we are paying half what you are paying for Diesel. I thought we had it bad.

Michele

There's 4 quarts in a gallon, so it's much worse in Ireland. I have been reading that parts of Europe pay much more than we do. Having people on The Ledge share their cost factors makes it real.

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by Tango

There's 4 quarts in a gallon, so it's much worse in Ireland. I have been reading that parts of Europe pay much more than we do. Having people on The Ledge share their cost factors makes it real.

Yes, the way I figured it, if it's $2.20 per liter, then it's over $8 a gallon.

Michele

[Madness Fades]

Well I know this is way off topic however just for comparisons sake ::
In Ireland

Decent Meal for 2 and Bottle of Wine = £100, thats $200
Fill up of Petrol £70, Thats $140
Ordinary Shirt for Wearing out £40, = $80
Standard 3 bedroom semi detached house £230,000 = $460,000 (thats not even in the big cities)
Mortgage Interest Rate 5%, USA its something like 2.5%
Saturday Night out in clubs with mates £80 each, thats $160
1 pint of beer £2.90 thats near $5 a pint
1x Springsteen concert ticket £80 = $160
1 pint of milk 56p = 1 Dollar 12 cents
Electricity up 25% from Last Year
Oil Heating up 50% from Last year
All Food up 12.5% from last year
Car Insurance up 10%

For everything else there's Mastercard