When the Price of the Boss Is Too High : Sitting Out a Springsteen Concert and Watching an Old Video at Home

“You are old, rock ‘n’ roller,” the young punk sneered,

“You have kids who will soon go to s chool.

“And yet you continue to dance and act weird--

“Do you think, at your age, that is cool?”

Even back in those days when rock stars died like gods--in plane crashes, and not of arteriosclerosis--we were realists.

We knew that someday, we would turn 30. Even 35. We knew we’d get stretch marks or male pattern baldness. I was resigned that there could come a day when a goony concert security guard would pull a tin of white powder triumphantly out of my purse and I would have to tell him that it was Poli-Grip.

But we never, never expected to be priced out of rock ‘n’ roll.

Friday night, when Bruce Springsteen took the stage at the Sports Arena, in front of an audience of 16,000 who paid scalped ticket prices that probably totaled the foreign trade debt of Brazil, we weren’t there.

Instead, a bunch of us old fans ( viz. , anyone who liked Bruce before Ronald Reagan did) chose to sit this one out. We knocked back a few Geritols and watched an old Springsteen concert video. It was a boycott party, a protest, a strike action with a dance floor. Something is amiss, we agreed, when you need a Gold Card to buy a ticket to hear a guy sing a song called “Used Car.”

So, you want to go to a Springsteen concert, do you? This is America--the land of choices. Like those braces you were saving up for: Do you want 40 years of straight teeth or four hours of great rock ‘n’ roll? A college education for your kid or a thousand-dollar front-row seat with the chance that Bruce will pull you up onstage for a few incandescent moments of “Dancing in the Dark”?

Say it again, slowly. A thousand dollars. For one folding chair. For one evening. A. Thousand. Dollars.

We’re in our 30s, we earn decent money, but $200 for a fair seat, and $50 for a bad one? Get real. Disposable income for some people goes to buy disposable diapers. Two hundred bucks will fix that hole in the garage roof. Fifty will pay the phone bill and gas up the station wagon.

“I’m not going to do it,” a friend, a Springsteen zealot, said righteously, refusing to pony up the cash. “I already decided that Bruce”--we’re talking Bruce here, the hero of the food banks, champion of striking unions--”would want it that way.”

We expected that by now, the frenzy of the “Born in the USA Tour” would have abated. We thought, silly us:

* That all those screaming teenys with the attention span of “People” magazine would have swarmed after newer faces, like that performer called Tiffany (which until a month ago I innocently thought was a fine name for a New York jeweler and a rather foolish name for a golden retriever);

* That the plutocrat professionals who took their clients out to a Springsteen concert to impress them, the way they used to take them to the Playboy Club, would finally face it--that they didn’t belong in a place where ushers do not distribute either lyric sheets or ear plugs;

* That George Will and the Young Republicans would sit out this tour, realizing that a flag on one album cover does not make the performer a musical soul mate to Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler;

* That even the Beautiful People, who are there to be seen and not to hear, would be distracted by other amusements. Like Tiffany.

There was the other way to buy tickets: the pop-quiz of marketing. If you happened to be listening to the radio about 3:30 p.m. a couple of Fridays ago, and you happened to hear the announcement, and managed to get to a music store within a half-hour, you got a wristband you had to wear like a jail inmate, to trade in the next day on the chance of a place in line to buy tickets.

Now what gainfully employed person is listening to the radio at 3 p.m. and can just waltz off work? Nurse, let’s just hurry up and deliver this one Caesarean. I gotta get a Springsteen priority number. Yo, Rhonda--take over my spot on the welding line for this shuttle booster rocket, will ya? I gotta sneak out for a Bruce priority number. Sorry, boss, I know it’s almost deadline, and my story about the plutonium theft by Libyan terrorists isn’t finished, but I gotta go get a wristband with a priority number.

I know what you’re thinking, of course: What kind of wimp-out fans are we, anyway? After all, jobs are easier to get than Springsteen tickets.

I’m sure everybody had fun Friday night. And maybe when you amortize it, it doesn’t look so bad. A $600 seat, at a three-hour concert, comes out to $200 an hour. About $3.30 a minute. A nickel every second. Am I getting through?

As for our video concert party--on a TV screen, Bruce would be about the size he would look from the 400th row, anyway.

Someone I know firmly believes that the Bruce on stage is a clone, an impostor. The real Bruce Springsteen, she says, was kidnaped by space aliens three albums ago.

You know . . . she may be right.