Bruce Springsteen is 60

Wednesday is Bruce Springsteen's 60th birthday, which surely makes his fans feel older today than he does.

This isn't intended to be one of those slobbering tributes to St. Bruce. They've been done (and done, and done, and done), and to me, it gets a little tiresome. Enjoy the music, appreciate the artist, but save the obsessive fandom for something important like (pandering alert, sports fans) football.

I'm a Springsteen fan. I saw his show in Des Moines Monday night, and I liked it. A lot. I like artists who actually have something to say, who do it very well, who do it with joy even when their work isn't always about joyful things, who live their lives with at least one foot on the ground, and who always work hard to give their fans their money's worth.

But as I watched the show in Wells Fargo Arena Monday, I couldn't help thinking a couple of things. One, this isn't 1978 when I saw Springsteen and the E Street Band for the first of the six (I think) times I've seen them, that time in the University of Iowa's Hancher Auditorium

No, it's 2009, and I get mail from AARP that goes straight into my recycling bin without getting opened. I'm too young for that junk. Or so I think as I polish my bifocals, dare not eat pizza too close to bedtime like I did so often for so many years, and yell at kids to get off my lawn.

OK, I don't do that last thing. But only because kids on the lawn hasn't been a problem.

The E Streeters have been touring for most of the last two years, and I'm guessing this will be their last tour though no one has come out and said so. Never say never, you know.

But that's the way it felt Monday, with the Boss and his merry-makers playing a lot of old chestnuts. Here you go one last time, Springsteen was saying. Or so it seemed to me.

The first time I heard a Springsteen record was as a high school junior in 1975.  I bought the "Born to Run" album on the demand of a classmate whose musical opinions I respected. I took it home to my tiny bedroom and heard the opening of Side 1, just the sound of Springsteen on harmonica. Then came the wordy, fast-paced song that painted clear mental pictures, and the huge wall of sound capped by the closing Clarence Clemons sax riff. I was hooked.

Monday night, "Thunder Road" was in the five-song encore set. I'm pretty sure I was probably seeing/hearing it live for the last time. That wasn't a happy thought, but hearing the same song in concert by the same band 31 years apart (My first Springsteen concert was in the University of Iowa's Hancher Auditorium in 1978) and seeing/hearing it done with passion both times is more than satisfying.

The second thing isn't as melancholy. Watching Springsteen and his 50/60-something pals go full-bore on stage for almost three hours was a vivid reminder that being young doesn't have to exclusively be for the young.

As the Boss reminded us yet again in Monday's show when he sang "Badlands," it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive.

And maybe this line from 1973's "Rosalita" (also performed Monday) is somehow just as fitting:

"Someday we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny."