{"id":72387,"date":"2014-06-09T15:16:27","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T19:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=72387"},"modified":"2019-02-05T10:57:43","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T15:57:43","slug":"blinded-by-the-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/09\/blinded-by-the-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Blinded By the Light"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Boss comes to Mohegan Sun. <\/em><\/p>\n

Room 704 at Mohegan Sun, a gleaming casino and resort hotel on an Indian reservation in Connecticut, has a phone in the bathroom, right next to the toilet, and it\u2019s hard not to wonder what kinds of calls might wriggle down the line. Are they orders for room service? Broadcasts of wins and losses at the slots? Wheezing pleas from depleted souls in search of a semblance of breathable fresh air?<\/p>\n

The big picture windows in the room, which is appointed with a luxe king bed and an authoritative TV, are of a type that cannot be opened, and any attempt at Mohegan Sun to venture outside among earthly elements is met with a kind of bewildered disdain. The best you can do is to sit out on a bench by the carport, where valets prevail. If you have a car, they will gladly park or retrieve it for you. If you want to simply sit and take in the evening air, they will look at you as if you\u2019re insane.<\/p>\n

The valets had a lot of cars to tend a few weeks ago, on the occasion of a pair of concerts by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. The Mohegan Sun arena, a two-hour bus ride from New York City, has become a regular tour stop for a long list of momentous musical acts: Prince, Bob Dylan, Jay Z, Taylor Swift. The roster goes on, with more of a caste otherwise accustomed to playing settings bigger than a ten-thousand-seat room.<\/p>\n

The Boss very much among them.\u00a0\u201cDid you lose your money?\u201d he asked upon taking the stage on Sunday, the second part of his two-night stand. \u201cYou must\u2019ve lost your money. If you didn\u2019t lose your money, then we wouldn\u2019t be here.\u201d Springsteen, coming clean with the ways casinos use show-biz happenings as a loss-leader for all the other entertainment they shill, somehow sold this as a winsome arrangement for all involved, with a beneficent grin signaling a sense of solidarity that was convincing in spite of the usurious logic at play. \u201cEither way,\u201d he continued, \u201cwe\u2019re going to make you feel lucky tonight.\u201d <\/p>\n

And so they did. The set launched off with \u201cRoll of the Dice,\u201d played for the first time on Springsteen\u2019s current tour and by no means insignificant in a casino setting. Then \u201cLeap of Faith,\u201d continuing the theme, and then a cover of Van Halen\u2019s \u201cJump,\u201d ditto. It\u2019s moves like these\u2014shrewd and more clever than they need to be\u2014that make the ritual of a live Springsteen show impressive even to a casual observer. To the much more heavily represented legions of evangelical fans, they represent scripture in set-list form.<\/p>\n

The day had not started quite so illuminatingly. Though no more so than others of comparable size (read: huge!), Mohegan Sun is very much a casino, with all attendant bells and baubles and spirit-sucking sights. People in extreme states of solitude shuffled around in great abundance. A woman around eighty pushed a wheelchair in front of her, empty except for her own oxygen tank. Weight, on old and young alike, was not shy about making a show of itself. In the Brookstone, one of many shops arranged along a winding corridor, a couple reclined in electric-massage chairs, their ample bellies jiggling. In the center of it all was a grand waterfall issuing a ceaseless and inescapable torrent of noise\u2014an impediment to processing what the eye could all too clearly see.<\/p>\n

Springsteen, inside the arena, offered reprieve. With the E Street Band comprising around eighteen for the night, he wound his way through a twenty-seven-song set that made a good case for rock \u2019n\u2019 roll as a galvanizing force, no matter its battered standing in the wider world beyond. The Boss controlled it all, sometimes with just a mic, sometimes with a tambourine, more often than not behind a worn Fender Telecaster whose mangled top looked like it might have been the victim of a shark attack.<\/p>\n

He has a strange presence, at once no bullshit and all show. It would be nice to mean anything half as much as he seems to mean everything. A little more discernment wouldn\u2019t hurt\u2014Springsteen concerts do not lack for more melodrama and gloss than would be ideal\u2014but it\u2019s easy to see, for those intensely devoted fans, why he makes such a rewarding object of adulation.<\/p>\n

Early in the set, after just four songs (however lengthily extended), Springsteen went into the crowd to gather signs bearing requests. As per custom, he gathered a bunch handed up to him, on poster board mostly, and flipped through to find one to his liking. The first was scrawled by a little girl who couldn\u2019t have been more than ten, asking for an oddity: \u201cSanta Claus Is Coming to Town.\u201d Springsteen smiled, turned back to the band, and they played it. Not just a couple bars, but a full-throttle five-minute version of it complete with buildups, breakdowns, sax blasts, false endings\u2014everything that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band bring to bear.<\/p>\n

It was May 18. A Christmas song with sleigh bells blared in an auditorium in a casino. The little girl must have been ecstatic. That it was only the seventh or eight most absurd occurrence of an otherwise fertile day made it no less special an occasion.<\/p>\n