Sunday, August 03, 2008

Somewhere in the swamps of Jersey


 A dark day in the newsroom this week, but I'm not going to dwell on that. Some additional thoughts on it from Editor & Publisher here.

This week also brought three Springsteen shows at Giants Stadium, two of which I got to attend. They'll likely be the last ones at the venue as well, since it's scheduled to be demolished in 2010. Rumor is the Meadowlands arena - currently dubbed the Izod Center - is on the hit list as well.

Thursday's show was delayed for an hour by what, in retrospect, was a very Jersey event - a propane tanker overturned that afternoon on the N.J. Turnpike, on the exit ramp that led to the Meadowlands. Traffic was backed up for miles and diverted to neighboring roads which also quickly backed up as well. The concert started at 9:30 and ended at an amazing 12:40 a.m., non-stop with no intermission.

A great show, with some real surprises ("Light of Day," Pretty Flamingo"), but the Ledger's Jay Lustig sums it all up better than I. You can find his reviews here, as well as interviews he did with various E Street Band members here.

Even better are these videos from NJ.com, which came directly from the concert video feed Thursday:





More can be found here.

And in case you've ever wondered why so many of the best seats to in-demand shows never make it to the public but end up on StubHub and eBay at 5 to 10 times their face value, some clues can be found here. But hey, it's Jersey, folks.

3 comments:

pattinase (abbott) said...

Our Freep is no longer a newspaper at all with no movie, book or TV reviewer and many of its news stories coming from AP etc. Using reporters to report on Detroit city politics is not enough to make a paper. How to make newspapers a vital part of daily life again. I guess making it available free online turned out to to be the final blow. Or the disastrous strike in the 1990s. It is very sad.

Jmags said...

Keep us updated on Ledger news.

Anonymous said...

nice post. thanks.