My Favorite Springsteen Concert, Part 2: 10/23/1999, Staples Center

Tickets for Bruce Springsteen's October 29th & 30th shows at the LA Sports Arena went on sale last Saturday, and we were ready; I had two laptops ready, my friend Andy also had two going and King Dork was standing by with his cell. 10AM came and we all starting clicking and dialing, trying to get three floor tickets. At 10:01 I scored. Four GA's came up and I had one minute to get through the screen. No problem, right? I've bought a lot of tickets through Ticketmaster over the past year and I felt pretty well prepared to breeze through the screens. I click "Continue" and I see the following:

"Ticketmaster does not recognize your email address. Please try again."

What? What address do they want? In a panic I tried to enter my last two addresses.

"You have exceeded the time allotted."

You don't need me to tell you how badly Ticketmaster sucks, so I'll cut right to it: Andy ends up buying six nosebleeds, none of us are enthused about it, so we're dumping the nosebleeds and spending too much money for floor GAs from Stubhub. Well played, Ticketmaster, well played!

Here's Part Two of Searching For Mr. Staples. The "Youngstown-Murder Incorporated-Badlands" trifecta was a Rock Guitar clinic. Listen to Nils Lofgren's solo in "Youngstown". You could conclude he's a bit over-qualified to be the third guitar in the band. And then there's the Holy Crap duo of "Incident On 57th Street" and "For You" that so mystified the more casual fans at the show. But I'm guessing if you take the time to listen to Part Two you're probably more than a casual fan.

The third and last in this series will go up in a few days. Enjoy!

Searching For Mr. Staples, Part 2

Youngstown

Murder Inc.

Badlands

Out In The Street

Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

Incident On 57th Street

For You

Children Of The Night Intro

The Ghost Of Tom Joad

Comments

[Eric]

thanks for part 2 of this show and congrats on scoring tickets. Even if they are from StubHub.

[Frank]

Hey man...from one huge bruce fan to another, great post...I caught the show from that tour at the Spectrum in Philly (his 50th b-day show), but it's always a good day for me when I can hear a nice clear Incident...by chance have you ever heard the old show from the Main Point 2/5/75, definitely one of the coolest early shows you'll ever hear...I just caught the Philly shows over the weekend...you are in for a treat, the new stuff sounds great, and the old stuff fresh as ever (Thundercrack worth the price of admission alone)...if you haven't already and are curious, go over to ickmusic for a pretty nice recording of Saturday's show...enjoy and definitely enjoy the show, even if you paid a ton on stubhub...you have to admit if you're gonna pay, it should be for Bruce, for it was the best 250 I dropped all year...Peace and long live the music.