Along with 20,000 other Philadelphians, I was on Benjamin Franklin Parkway Saturday to see Bruce Springsteen play an acoustic set in support of Barack Obama- and let's just say, I've got a feeling this drive is going to be more successful than Bruce's John Kerry concerts four years ago.
Bruce played a brief set, sure to bust out "Thunder Road" before closing with Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land." The concerts I've seen of him with the E Street Band were much better, of course, but it's Bruce! I certainly can't complaint. Not to mention, the crowd there was clearly just as jazzed about Obama as they were about Bruce. When I saw the '04 "Vote For Change" tour, the priorities of most of the crowd were roughly 1. Bruce, 2. that night's Yankee game, and 3. John Kerry.
Opening up was the excellent local musician Amos Lee, who my sister's been telling me about for two years. And the MC was, of all people, Angelo Cataldi, whose political judgment is considerably better developed than his sports judgment. He told the whole story about Obama's appearance on his show, conveniently leaving out the "typical white person" part.
Posted by Stephen Silver at October 6, 2008 04:45 PM