Springsteen Rehearses "Magic" and Hones Political Screeds

In August, it was announced that Bruce Springsteen's new album Magic would be released on October 2.

New albums often mean tours. This case is no exception.

At the time, it made sense to me that Springsteen would want to be drawing large audiences just in time to preach his politics to the adoring, sometimes mindless, throngs as Election 2008 heats up.

Yesterday, Springsteen and the E Street Band "rehearsed" for the upcoming tour.

ASBURY PARK, N.J. -- It might have been billed as a rehearsal, but Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band showed 3,000 fans he still has the magic.

The show Monday at the oceanfront Convention Hall was the first of two benefit rehearsals for Springsteen and his band, who are about to embark on their first tour together in four years to support their new album, "Magic," due out Oct. 2.

"We're going to run through some things, some new things, some old things. There may be some mistakes — but I doubt it," Springsteen warned the crowd.

Before the show ended two hours and 21 songs later, Springsteen would chuckle, "Well, so there were a few mistakes."

Not that any errors mattered to the faithful, who paid $100 a ticket. Despite the many balding heads and paunchy middles, the audience greeted nearly every song with enthusiasm that ranged from pandemonium to delirium.

At 58, Springsteen still can make magic, casting a musical spell for the faithful.

He also shares his politics, sometimes bringing an exhilarating concert to a screeching halt, depending on your politics.

Springsteen offered political commentary when introducing "Livin' in the Future" off the latest album, referring to terror suspect renditions and "illegal wiretapping."

"This is about the things you didn't think could happen," Springsteen said.

Oh, joy!

More paranoiac rambling. Springsteen has been yapping about our civil liberties being stripped away since John Ashcroft was the Attorney General.

If he wants to talk about things "you didn't think could happen," he should focus on 9/11 or the next even deadlier attack.

(Note: I know Springsteen addressed 9/11 in depth on The Rising. I'm commenting specifically on his remarks from yesterday's rehearsal and his introduction of new song "Livin' in the Future.")

Personally, I'm not troubled by the wiretapping of international calls of suspected terrorists or those with ties to terrorists. I'm not worried about the government coming after me. This isn't Iran. No homosexuals being executed here. It's not China. No political prisoners rounded up here and murdered to harvest their organs for transplant.

Perhaps when Springsteen subjects his audience to political rants, he could mention the sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui.

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) -- Some spectators, including anguished relatives of the September 11 victims, sobbed as they listened to graphic eyewitness accounts of the moments after hijacked planes plunged into the skyscrapers. Video clips of people jumping from the flaming towers and gruesome images of body parts drew audible gasps.

"I saw several people, I can't remember how many, jumping," Giuliani said. "There were two people right near each other. It appeared to me they were holding hands.

"Of the many memories, that's one that comes to me every day."

Relatives wiped tears from their eyes as they listened to a New York City fireman recount how his colleague and best friend, Danny Suhr, died after being hit by a falling body.

Moussaoui alternated between smiling and nodding as he watched the video clips. After the jury and judge were gone for the morning break he sang out "Burn in the USA!" -- an apparent takeoff of the Bruce Springsteen song "Born in the USA."

On 9/11, it wasn't civil liberties being taken away that mattered. It was NOT "illegal wiretapping." It was the nearly 3000 lives that were taken.

From Bloomberg:

"As I looked up, my eyes caught on a man on the 100th floor of the north tower near the top," Giuliani told the jury today in Alexandria, Virginia, as the sentencing trial moved to its second stage. "I realized I was watching the man throwing himself out. I watched him go all the way down and hit."

...Giuliani said the World Trade Center site that day was "a scene of horror, the worst thing I ever saw in my life."

"There were places you would walk and see body parts, parts of human bodies, hands, legs," the former mayor said. "We recovered about 19,000 body parts, very small percentage of intact bodies." Giuliani said, "About half of the families got something they were able to bury and the other half got nothing."

The courtroom must have been like a torture chamber, where all those present were repeatedly slapped and whipped with the brutal reality of 9/11.

And Moussaoui was there as the embodiment of the hateful, demented ideology embraced by our enemies.

It makes me think of how truly insane it is when some Americans -- red, white, and blue patriotic Bush-haters -- call the President a terrorist.

THE ENEMY ISN'T BUSH.

"Burn in the USA!"

That is what comes to my mind when I think about the things I didn't think could happen.