Almost live

Online postings allow Springsteen fans to 'attend' his Fenway concerts

By Michael S. Rosenwald, Globe Staff, 9/6/2003

When Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band take the stage tonight at Fenway Park, someone in the audience will make a cellphone call and start an unusual virtual concert experience for diehard fans who cannot be at the show.

The call is made to a Springsteen fan called a "poster," who sits at a computer and sends online reports of the entire concert, song-by-song, up to the last bring-down-the-house encore. That includes not only what Springsteen plays but sometimes how he introduces the songs and just about everything he does on stage.

Devoted followers of the Boss stay online throughout multi-hour concerts, often excitedly reacting to the description of what is happening with the same fervor as if they were inside the stadium.

"I am like . . . a grown woman," said Elizabeth Gomez of Ridgefield, Conn., who plans to take in the Fenway show tonight through the online posting.

"I'm 37 years old, a nationally known cancer nurse. I am not crazy. I am not a nut. I am a normal person. But watching Bruce like this, it's incredible. You feel like you're right there."

Reading the soundless posting may seem like a remote way to enjoy Springsteen concerts, but those who have done it say it is amazing, and communal, because other fans are responding online in real-time to what is happening at the show. It's impossible to tally how many fans take in concerts this way, but on this Springsteen tour, the reports have been feverish, sometimes with several people posting it at the same time.

The practice is sanctioned by Springsteen's representatives. In fact, the postings are on a chat board on brucespringsteen.net. Sometimes, if the sound inside a stadium is too loud for the caller to communicate with the poster, text messaging is used.

Earlier this week, the decision on who would be the callers and posters for tonight's show had still not been formally worked out. But Steve Kingsley, an accountant in New York City, has already posted a note saying that barring family obligations, he will be available to post if someone can call him.

Kingsley is a novice poster who called himself into action last month when it looked as if nobody was available to report on a Los Angeles show. This came on the heels of several magical concerts in Philadelphia, followed by lackluster posting in Chicago. So Kingsley called a friend in California named Tommy, who agreed to serve as a caller.

For Kingsley, the night was not without several stressful moments. Tommy's cellphone kept going bad, so they resorted to text messaging for a stretch.

"I did it as accurately and quickly as possible," he said. "Tommy would try and call at the beginning of each song. He'd fill me in on what was going on, what it looked like, everything. I tried to get a taste of the atmosphere. A lot of people were relying on what I was doing."

Jeff Bray of Winchester is going to both Fenway shows, but he is an experienced caller who knows that for those logging in to the Fenway shows, the night could be painful.

"You're always hoping that he'll open the vault and pull out some stuff that he doesn't play a lot," said Bray, 34. "You always want to catch that rarity, "Incident on 57th Street" or "Trapped." Classics you have to see live before you die. Philadelphia got a bunch of classics. People on the Internet were pulling their hair out."

But seeing classics roll across a computer monitor also fills Bray with hope.

"It gives you faith that you might get a piece of that when he comes to town," he said. "You just hope."

In the online community of fans, there is plenty of hope riding on the Fenway shows. The reason is fairly simple. Springsteen has never played there. Scratch that. Nobody has played there, at least not for decades. And Springsteen loves Boston. His Gillette Stadium shows were fairly standard, so his fans believe he's waiting to explode at Fenway.

Gomez fully expects to be blown away while monitoring the shows in her Connecticut home. She has been thrilled several times on this tour, both in person and via the Internet, including when she attended one of the New Jersey shows last weekend and in front of her computer the following night. Gomez had given her tickets for that show to her brother Danny and his wife, who both escaped the World Trade Center when it was attacked.

Springsteen, who at that concert played many songs from his 2002 recording "The Rising," which was inspired by the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, dazzled his fans with little-played, throw-back tunes like "Cynthia," "Lucky Town," "Jersey Girl," and "Because the Night." Online, the poster wrote, "Unbelievable. Fenway should rock." "I felt very connected to my brother," Gomez said. "I was so happy for him that they were there. He deserved a night out so bad. But it was just like I was there with him. It was really a great night. And it was a great show."