Jan 312009
Two-tight end alignment indicates Run
Prop bets on The Boss’ Super Bowl XLIII halftime performance are now open. Thanks to Townsman Chickenfrank for kicking these off. I’m starting out by bringing his suggested bets to The Main Stage and throwing in a few of my own. Feel free to do likewise. Now, let’s get it on!
Over/under:
- Number of bandanas on stage: 1 1/2.
- Maximum number of singers crowded around one mic at any time (ie, Rock ‘n Roll Iwo Jima alignment): 3.
- Number of different songs he touches on in his 12 minutes: 6.
- Number of hats on stage: 3.
- Total count of everyone in the band: 10.
- Football related: how many times will we see Warner’s wife in the stands? 3.
Other:
- In what football alignment (eg, 4-3, 3-4, Power I…) will the band take the stage?
- Will any member of the E Street Band wear a football jersey on stage?
- Will The Boss holster his guitar at any point?
- What will be the most significant clothing/Look move (eg, Bono flashing the American flag in the lining of his leather jacket, Janet Jackson flashing her boob)?
- Will The Boss tell a between-song story of any length?
- Will The Boss introduce a special guest performer?
Remember, any gambling that goes on tomorrow is for amusement purposes only.
Your photo leads me to another.
Maximum number of guitars played simultaneously: 4. Right now the sound is probably a little thin with just the 4 guitars being strummed.
I think Springsteen will be dressed in a suit made from pages of the U.S. Constitution.
With the nice weather in Tampa I guess we won’t be seeing any longcoats.
I’m predicting 2 bandanas, assuming we can count Miami Steve’s do-rag. Nils will have a bandana tied around his right thigh.
Here’s one: who will get more time on camera, Patti or The Big Man? This may say a lot about how far we’ve come as a nation.
Bruce might have a bandanna dangling out of his left ass-cheek pocket.
I think the Big Man will get more face time, only because one of the songs is bound to have a sax solo.
I’ll put the over / under on leather vests at 2.5.
The over / under on shots of Bruce and Patty back-to-back at the same mic is also 2.5.
But the elephant in the room is: setlist?
I was paid quite handsomely for guessing the Tom Petty set last year, and even more handsomely for getting the sequence right.
Chickenfrank predicted:
I think Springsteen will be dressed in a suit made from pages of the U.S. Constitution.
I say:
Now THAT’s funny!
After 2 minutes of deliberating:
given that petty only had time for four songs, and they were all in the 2.50 to 4 minute range, and that Petty was so intent on “playin’ the hits” that he wasn’t even afraid to play three songs from the same album (full moon fever), I’m thinking it’ll go down like this:
Born in the USA
Dancin’ in the Dark
Born to Run
bow to the audience, and get off.
there’s always a chance for a cheesy medley with bruce, howeer…
I think a medley is likely. I don’t see him limiting his set to those few songs. He’s going to want to slip in a new one, and that would only be allowed if it’s a snippet. I can also hear a medley where we get 30 seconds of CC Rider or another rave up. I think the 3 songs you listed will be part of the mix. My preference would be if he plays 3 seconds of 30 songs, and we spend the second half trying to guess what the list of songs were.
I’m picking the under on vests. I don’t see more than 2 in hot Tampa.
The alignment will be 8 men in the box. In today’s America, it wouldn’t be right to have rows of musicians separated by class. No one rides in the back of the bus. Everyone up front leads to more opportunities for shared sacrifice around the few microphones. Microphones are a luxury item now.
I’m going under on leather vests. I think only Patti and The Big Man will don them.
The line is definitely leaning toward the medley. That’s telling me something.
I’m going under on hats.
Here’s one: when The Boss appears on the pregame show with the crew, will Terry Bradshaw try to engage The Boss in a duet of some sort?
Number of bandanas on stage: 1 1/2. – OVER. This is a gimme. Little Steven might have two by himself.
Maximum number of singers crowded around one mic at any time (ie, Rock ‘n Roll Iwo Jima alignment): 3. – OVER. Obviously, the design of the stage will impact this one. There’s no question they pull a Rock Iwo Jima at least once. And obviously, The Boss and his wife are in it, and I don’t think one of those would happen without Little Steven diving across the stage if necessary to get in on it. So three is a lock of course, but I say at least one more person gets in there, this being the Super Bowl. Possibly Obama.
Number of different songs he touches on in his 12 minutes: 6. UNDER. Less than two minutes per song? No way. I say four, maybe five. Even if it hits six, that’s a push. Smart money is under.
Number of hats on stage: 3. OVER. I say four. The Big Man and Little Steven, who will double dip and wear both a hat and a do-rag. And I think backing musicians, not necessarily full E-Streeters, will bring two more hats to the table.
Total count of everyone in the band: 10. OVER. I say 15 members perform on stage. Somebody better keep count!
Football related: how many times will we see Warner’s wife in the stands? 3. OVER. She got a make-over, so we’ll see her multiple times, plus archival footage of the Rams-era Warners for comparison. Speaking of which, Arena Football Era, grocery store bagger Kurt Warner and his wife are more like characters out of Springsteen’s Thunder Road kind of songs than any other major athlete I can think of. “You ain’t a beauty, but hey you’re alright!”
In what football alignment (eg, 4-3, 3-4, Power I…) will the band take the stage?Swinging Gate. Only workable formation for this many people.
Will any member of the E Street Band wear a football jersey on stage?This is the hardest one. Do they make the Big Man wear a jersey? Will it have 00 as the number on it? Somebody on stage will have a jersey on.
Will The Boss holster his guitar at any point? Yes!
What will be the most significant clothing/Look move?Everybody wears cleats.
Will The Boss tell a between-song story of any length?Yes! He also has to mention Danny Federici.
Will The Boss introduce a special guest performer?He gives a shout-out to Obama. Maybe Bono rushes the stage and tries to get in on that Bruce/Patty/Little Steven/Mickey Rourke/Obama Rock Iwo Jima moment, but Bruce doesn’t get a chance to introduce him.
Setlist: I’ve been thinking about this, and I happen to think Bruce is on to all the speculation about what he might do. He’s probably even lurking at RTH, taking notes. I say Born In the USA and Glory days are OUT. They open with part of 10th Avenue Freeze-Out, do The Rising, a brief cover of Like A Rolling Stone, most of the title track from the new one and close with Born To Run.
Speaking of medleys, I think it would be cool if he went into Suicide’s Dream Baby Dream, which he’s been playing live and even released as a single, in the middle of the title song of the new album, Working on a Dream.
I listened to the new album this evening, and I quite liked it. Not as much as Magic, which I thought was exceptionally good. Bruce has a new way of singing his more melodic material, drawing on the influence of Roy Orbison in addition to Phil Spector, and the orchestrated approach sounds impressive on record, though it’s going to be hard to reproduce live.
I had a disagreement with someone today who claimed that Bruce would be earning a huge paycheck by playing the Superbowl. I assume halftime acts get paid, but I was under the impression that the exposure the artists received was worth more than any cash they’d be receiving. Any idea what the wages are for this?
Gigundus Steve said “I was under the impression that the exposure the artists received was worth more than any cash they’d be receiving. Any idea what the wages are for this?”
I’d have to believe there is a big paycheck that goes along with this. The Super Bowl is all about absurd amounts of money, it would be hard to convince an established act like BS&TESB should be donating their talents to support the NFL cause.
I would lay money on Clarence wearing a football jersey that says “Big Man” on the back.
Miami Steve was counting on the Bucs making the Super Bowl so that he could wear his vintage Bucs mascot uniform on stage, you know, the old swingin’ Bucaneer of the ’70s and ’80s. If anyone wears a jersey tonight I say it’s the bassist, Gary Tallent (?), wearing a Joe Namath Jets jersey.
Best rock ad, so far: the one using music by Smashing Pumpkins (and “edited by Billy Corgan”) or the Dylan/Will.i.am Pepsi ad?
Have I missed Warner’s Wife? Come on! She wasn’t shown once in the NFC Conference Championship Game.
yes. One Warner wife sighting.
Andyr says that was Wyclef Jean in the ad. Possible?
On the # around the mic prop. It’s hard to get more than 3 around a mic. If they get a fourth, this could be historic.
Was The Big Man wearing a hat in the promo for the halftime performance that I just caught out of the corner of my eye?
Over-under on first triumphantly raised fist from the stage: 40 seconds.
Fist raise : taking over.
Bruce is going to have a hard time topping the rock faces Journey’s new singer made during the pre-game show’s Don’t Stop Believing.
Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce.
BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!!!
Here’s Costa’s last chance to drop a Bruce lyric. Has to sneak it into the introduction.
At least one Pete Seeger song. “Pay Me My Money Down” is too much to hope for, but “This Land Is Your Land” is too much of a stretch even for Bruce. Something relatively inoffensive.
I’m asking for a 15 minute JAM of Jungleland.
Andyr here-
I think they will be doing a civer, I think ‘Twist and Shout” or the “devil with the Blue dress”
I know they are doing 4 songs.
They’re bum rushing the stage!
Doooooown innnnnn junnnnnnnnglllllle llllllllaaaa…yaaandddddddd.
Hat AND Bandana on the Big Man in the OPENING SILHOUETTE!
y over 10 band members.
Two bandanas already!
No guitar to holster! Yet, anyway …
Clarence’s ecclesiastical outfit is awesome!
La Bamba!
Correction: No bandana on the Big Man – that’s braids!
CROTCH CAM!
Two songs, one album!
Feh. Not enough fireworks.
Who is the other woman guitar player? Five guitars!?
5 guitars.
Close up passionate faces!
CHOIR!
Sort of a Wishbone-T, no?
robed choir fronted by a bowling pin alignment. that’s show business, baby
We are the world choir!
Only one vest, I think.
cnn is reporting that both teams have requested that Bruce keep plyaing and they will continue the game in 3 hours.
A shout-out to Steve! Two!
Wait “FOOTBALL player”?!?!?
Suddenly I doubt the autobiographical veracity of this song!
Mini-Iwo Jima!
back to back catwomen guitarists.
Schwing!!
Two girl guitar angel wings… didn’t see that one coming.
Someone really should have let Steve in on the schtick.
They don’t have orthodontists in Miami?
A shout-out to Disneyland?
Andyr said that was a good show.
In retrospect, the only true disappointment is that none of us anticipated a choir.
1oth Avenue Freeze Out was a strange choice.
He fucking killed.
You could tell there was definitely no lip-syncing.
I don’t know why I didn’t predict the referee dance moment. Who’s the last person to do that one? I haven’t seen it before.
we need a new term for whatever that guitar twirl thing was.
Costa just dropped “born to run”
That was thoroughly enjoyable. Way more showmanship than Petty last year, obviously. I don’t even think Prince and McCartney brought it to that degree.
I’m guessing the other lady guitarist was Soozie Tyler (is that her name?) who usually plays violin with the band.
Andy here again,
He rocked! I’m going out right now and buying “Lucky Town”
Andy –
Too bad we didn’t have a prop bet for number of count-ins
I thought that was excellent. The Boss and Company lived up to The Big Stage Occasion. Totally over the top and corny.
The entrance of the robed choir was beyond even my cynicism but it will tie in nicely to a series of pieces I have in mind for the month.
The Big Man’s Longcoat was spectacular!
The mystery 5th guitarist was a move for the ages. Totally blew my mind.
How ’bout Bruce avoiding the Holstering move? He had so many opportunities to holster, yet he foiled the oddsmakers at every turn!
Along with the opening speech, I’m counting his little rap in the middle of “10th Avenue Freeze Out” and the Bruce-Miami Steve skit at the end as THREE speeches of any length. Mindblowing!
What I didn’t get with his new single and the robed choir was, they wheel 80 African American church choir singers out there and all you can hear singing along with The Boss is Miami Steve.
The players get paid a lot of money for the Disneyland shout out, don’t they? Is Bruce that mercenary, or was it a bit of unplanned exuberance?
I wonder if there will be people offended by the Big Man’s ironic appropriation of priestly vestments. It doesn’t take much for people to work up a little outrage these days.
Both.
If I ever had a priest who dressed like The Big Man when I was a kid I’d probably have stayed Catholic.
Hey Mr. Mod; the Crotch-Cam Incident (now there’s a movie title!) is already on YouTube. I can’t embed it here; can you?
Cardinals take the lead!
Um, Pittsburgh Steelers?
You got some ‘splainin’ to do.
Signed,
The New England Patriots
Not just yet they don’t.
Well, I could get nitpicky and ask why they’re not beating the Cardinals by 40 points like some teams I could mention did just a month ago …
… but why spoil it? Congrats!
Your wish is my command, Rick.
Awesome game. I was rooting pretty hard for the Cardinals (I usually like to root for any team that knocks off my team), but Roethlisberger was as awesome as Warner. Gutsy!
That was some serious mach schau. Bravo, Bruuuce!
Fave moment: the finger point at the camera during the manly introduction.
Just excellent. Still, an artist like Springsteen has it relatively easy with a Superbowl audience, one would think. I’m not saying Prince’s show was better, but the fact that he *also* had the audience in the palm of his hand, as a five-foot black guy in a pompadour and high heels… well, I’m just sayin’.
Still, gotta give it up for the Boss. That was a truly Great superbowl halftime. Makes the Stones and — yes, I must sadly admit it — my beloved ZZ Top look like jugheads.
HVB
Musically I’d have to say wow, what stamina! I’m exhausted after twelve minutes. And fireworks! I didn’t know they had that much gunpowder in all of China!
Bruce will be sixty this year, at what point do we stop going “wow” and at what point can we openly worry about his knees? Thank goodness I have chosen a path where I leave no expectation that I might be sliding along on my knees.
Points to the glorified tambourine player (does Bruce fine him if he doesn’t play the same solo every night?), I like that he was dressed like he was on one of those psychedelic Impulse records that scare the Mod so much. It was so windy there was question on whether they’d be able to safely pull the Miami Steve balloon into the stadium (finally liberated from having to get into Silvio’s clothes I guess).
And Mod: doesn’t the Boss officially holster his weapon when he runs downstage in “Glory Days”, letting the Little People touch the hem of his garment?
I guess people love the predictability of the theater in all this, but there wasn’t a musical moment in this whole thing for me. Thirty years ago this might have been great, I guess. It was a nice surprise when they “I Want To Know What Love Is”, I forgot how good they sounded on that.
It reminded me of a comment Philly Legend “The Colonel” once said, although it isn’t something I would dare say myself. It was something like, “Say what you want about the Stones, but at least they never dragged their chicks up on stage”.
Two things:
1. When he came out of the backwards deep knee bend (with free extra mic-stand phallus!) at the start of “10th Avenue Freezeout,” Charity said “You can tell by the look on his face that he was not at all sure he was going to make it out of that.”
2. Bruce racking himself on the camera lens is now my Official Favorite Rawk Moment Of All Time.
I read somewhere that that was will.i.am in the Dylan Pepsi commerical.
My theory that Bruce was monitoring RTH prior to taking the stage was proven to be true, as evidenced by his move early on to avoid holstering: he tossed his guitar across the stage, to a tech, who almost got brained by it and nearly fell off the stage, presumably to his death.
48 mentioned the phallic micstand moment, which I can only assume was Bruce’s tribute to Prince. I still give Prince the edge for flat-out performance, with aid from the rain, but The Boss exceeded all expectations for what I was hoping to get out of him, and ramming his nuts into the camera and into the face of an estimated 100 million viewers was a glorious, career-defining moment.
That was indeed will.I.am in the Pepsi ad, proving himself to be his generation’s Bob Dylan. Or perhaps angling to be his generation’s Bono. Dylan went electric, will.I.am went holographic. It all evens out.
I loved the bizarre truly weird Abbott & Costello skit Bruce and Little Steven went into at the end. Perfect cheese for the venue. I had also primed people I was watching the game with for potential Rock Iwo Jima sightings, and while we didn’t get a truly epic one, everyone was delighted at the two or three mini Iwo Jimas that cropped up. They probably thought it was best to scale back on them, given the current economic climate.
I do hope someone can name that move where Bruce was swinging the semi-holstered guitar around his entire body. Was it more akin to a six gun shooter showing off, to keep with the Holstering idea? Or was that a full-out hula hoop moment? A Norville Barnes?
Hopefully, full footage of the performance is available today, so we can do a complete lab review and work out the results of the betting. Speaking of reviews, they don’t do a booth review for the Warner fumble? Huh.
…as, I now see, someone had already pointed out…
How do they anchor the mic stand to the ground so that it can be used like a stripper pole? I’ve never seen any other rocker do that.
I thought Bruce did as good a job as could have been done in 12 minutes.
1. I think he had too many men on the field (at one point 5 guitar players and 5 horn players)
2. He took out the 2nd verse of all 4 songs (to make time)but WAY better than a “medley”
3. The ref throwing a flag on the stage was priceless
4. The slip-n-slide into the camera had to be a mistake…did bruce just Teabag America – on the you-tube commentary killed me!
5. All things considered he picked the best 4 songs he could have for this room (ok, 3 and a new one…but still)
6. People forget that Bruce is a SHOWMAN and is also FUNNY. You don’t see that in the videos..you saw that here.
gotta log off and get on Ticketf*cker for my April 26 Springsteen ticket
OK, speaking of Slip ‘n’ Slide, did anyone notice whether Bruce sloshed water all over his knees before teabagging a natinal-TV audience?
I pooh-poohed this possibility in a different discussion – surely, that would just make your knees catch, wouldn’t they? – but was refuted by video evidence (from another show):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgBCs–KxYM
Look at the :55 mark. Busted!
Then again, an evaluation of the quality of the ensuing slide would argue against this technique. Perhaps the eschewing of performance-enhancing lubricants is exactly what gave the Boss such distance yesterday.
I have wondered about will.i.am for a while now. This guy appears to have absolutely no talent whatsoever, yet through fashion and attitude retains a respectable position in the music world. Every time I hear this guy’s “music” I cringe. Maybe I am missing something. RTH’ers is there anything there at all?
One other thing: The poll question lists as a choice “The opening silhouette shot of The Boss and The Big Man.”
As Springsteen himself made clear through several gestures, he is not uncomfortable with the implication that he is in fact “Scooter.” I think we should take him up on this.
In the clip Rick just gave us, when Bruce is climbing back up the levels of the stage, and when he runs to build up momentum for the slide, he certainly looks and moves like a man in his 50s, and I should know.
In the interview with Bob Costas that ran in the endless commercial for NBC, I mean Superbowl pre-game show, Costas mentioned aging and said something like, “You can still rock, but maybe you can’t jump up on the piano like you used to.” And Bruce responded “You wanna bet?!” And sure enough he got up on the piano during the broadcast.