I love my bride. God bless her, she called me yesterday mid-afternoon on her cell phone and said: "I'm at the line at the Springsteen show. They're giving out numbers. The first 300 people with floor tickets get to stand in the very front in a roped-off section. They're up to number 178. Get down here."

This was a surprise phone call. I was planning to go down to the arena about an hour later to check out the scene casually. Me being the Bruce fanatic of the house, you would think my wife would have let me do the reconnaissance and pushing onto the line. It is a fine, fine thing that she didn't.

I hung up the phone, grabbed our floor tickets, bolted out the door, fired up the car, and made it down there in record time to join her. We stood in a self-organized, self-policed, and largely well behaved line for several hours, but it was worth it -- we did indeed get to stand about 3 to 8 feet from the stage in a very roomy standing room area for the whole show.

When you are this close at an E Street Band concert, it's impossible to be objective. We loved it, of course. And although it was great to rock out to the old anthems, it seemed that the newer the material was, the better I liked it.

If you have doubts about Springsteen's new album, you might want to see him perform it live. His dedication and commitment to it is fairly infectious. Not a single number he did failed to please me.

But then again, it's impossible to see straight when you are spitting distance from Bruce.