BUT, one important thing to note is that the WSP experience wasn’t mediated through the Internet or record companies or a tour presentation. I was there and other people were there and there were, I think, more possibilities for us to get out from under the exigencies of the media business. The nostalgia, though, is suffused with those exigencies. Which is the price we pay for the kind of connectedness we have now–never without access to google on the one hand, but never with a form of connectedness truly free of all that, either.

BUT again: this is more or less the eternal cry of we moderns. Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft and all that. But I think it’s worth observing that music fandom is probably one of the MAJOR ways our feelings of communal attachment have been impoverished of late in favor of relationships governed by industry and consumeristic relationships. It is the fact that we mistake these consumer relationships for communal relationships that causes our feelings of unease when we witness the kind of nostalgia we see at Springsteen concerts.

But it is important to realize this is a generic phenomenon–that there are literally thousands of versions of it, for every age and taste.

At the time of the concert mentioned in this bit, it was just after the reunion with the E Street Band. Maybe 1997? Probably 2000. That means that I was either 23 or 26. I’m 36 now. I didn’t feel a connection to anything then and honestly don’t feel much of a connection to anything now either, apart from my family.
Of course yesterday’s passion will provide tomorrow’s nostalgia. That’s life. Look at the lengths companies go to reap reward from nostalgia. For me that means endless reissues and repackaging of music.

For me, the concert I referenced came when thing weren’t quite as over the top as they are now. Music in ads, on TV, everywhere. Things didn’t used to be like that, to the best of my memory. Something changed along the way, who knows the exact date when, and I can’t even fully describe the ways in which they changed.

Perhaps this is a scattered response, but do you not think that music works in smaller circles now than it used to? Everything happens so fast now, where are the moments of reprieve, of rest?

I didn’t like the Springsteen revival at the time due to my own dislike of his music and coming face to face with the audience I was selling tickets to. Hearing the story made me think about how lame nostalgia is, but to me the nostalgia I tried to talk about was the state of mind of these boomers who sang along with a chorus that might no longer really be true.

I get nostalgic, painfully so sometime, for the energy and the anger of youth. But I feel that I have always disliked the cult of personality around celebrity. Referring to artists by their first names for instance (even if I did it in the writing) or sobbing when an artist commits suicide or dies in a river.

That said I can’t hardly wait for the Linkin Park nostalgia to take hold ten years from now.

You write as if the celebrity worship of young, angry, passionate people is somehow more genuine or authentic than the nostalgia of 45-year-olds. It isn’t. It’s just as commodified and stereotypical. And probably self-righteous and stupid to boot, which will probably have to some degree gone away in the 45-year-olds.

The idea that youth is genuine and age not is an idea that advertisers have sold us and that we’ve assimilated without too little question. Young people are generally unwise, unknowing and have terrible taste. It’s a function of being young & inexperienced. The things they are passionate about are often the wrong things and they are passionate for the wrong reasons.

People who are old now were once younger. Today’s young people will grow old one day. And because forces of consumerism emphasize the stylistic distinctions between generational cohorts so emphatically, tomorrow’s 45-year-olds will be somewhat different in style and behavior and the flavor of their nostalgia from today’s. As today’s are from yesterday’s. And as todays young people and somewhat different stylistically from 1990’s.

But . . . so what?

Springsteen isn’t that guy. He’s Elliott Smith without the drug problems — the lonely guy in his bedroom, strumming out whispered songs to himself.

In particular, whenever you get a chance, listen to Springsteen talk about Roy Orbison, or play with Roy on the Black/White special. He works in a reference to Orbison in “Thunder Road” (which he said was inspired by Orbison’s similarly unstructured, sweeping ballads). Or Dylan circa “Like A Rolling Stone.” Everyone kisses Dylan’s ass, but Springsteen does it with so much sensitivity and intelligence, he just wins you over every time.

Plus, he was a figment of imagination in High Fidelity, and was pretty good at it. That goes a long way with me.