(This is the first in a new series entitled Ticket Stubs—personal essays inspired by the concert tickets I have saved over the years.)

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

The Tacoma Dome • Tacoma, WA

April 4, 2000

My first “real” concert. Before this, my dad had taken my brother and I to see plenty of Christian pop acts: artists like Michael W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman, and Amy Grant. But this was the first time I was seeing an artist I discovered for myself. Those shows featured group prayer; this one had people outside with signs and megaphones warning me I would burn in Hell if I went inside.

But I knew the truth: it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.

Most sixteen-year-olds in the year 2000 were not getting into the Boss. The Tacoma News Tribune described, in their review, “a Dome full of 30- and 40-somethings—like their hero a little thicker in body, a little higher on the hairline, a little grayer around the temples.” I was ahead of my time.

I pretended to be sick one day in seventh or eighth grade, likely tired of being bullied for the decidedly uncool opinion of liking Marvel comics and Star Wars (lol). I laid in bed watching VH1 (the adult contemporary version of MTV), a choice which was completely out of character. At this time, I had zero interest in music.

That fateful day, I found two things: my first favorite song (“Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls, from the City of Angels soundtrack) and my first favorite musician.

On whatever show I was watching, they were interviewing the film director Jonathan Demme. He was talking about making a music video where the artist sung direct to camera, opposed to the far more typical practice of lip-syncing to the original track. The way he spoke about this guy made him sound like a living saint (in the city or otherwise): he was the pinnacle of integrity; an urban poet of the disenfranchised and the dispossessed; the voice of a generation. I was on the edge of my seat. I had to know who this person was.

The video was “Streets of Philadelphia.” The artist was Bruce Springsteen.

Pretty soon thereafter, my dad drove my brother and I down to Buzzard’s in downtown Tacoma (another important first: my first record store) and I did what any clueless beginner would do:

I bought the greatest hits.

My Uncle Roland and Aunt Carol took me to the show. I knew my Uncle was a fan, and I strategically dropped the fact that Bruce was touring at a family gathering in the hopes he might pick up on my interest. It worked. The concert was on a Tuesday, a school night. Apparently, the show started late. I have no memory of that.

I don’t remember the band opening with “My Love Will Not Let You Down,” either. I was probably in a state of shock. If you’ve never been to an E Street Band show, they play with incredible force. It’s an adrenaline rush that lasts over three hours. My first—and strongest memory—was the second song they played, “Prove It All Night,” off of Darkness On the Edge of Town. The lights exploded in sync with the opening blasts of guitars/drums. I was, to borrow a phrase, blinded by the light.

I only knew the songs off the Greatest Hits album. Looking over the setlist now, I hadn’t heard hardly any of the songs they played, although several (“The Promised Land,” “Out in the Street,” “Because the Night,” “Jungleland”) would go on to become all-time favorites. We were pretty far from the stage. I didn’t care. I levitated from beginning to end.

The last “first,” and the most significant: after years of attending religious concerts, full of choirs and prayer, it was here, in a different kind of church, with a different kind of savior, that I had my first spiritual experience.