Springsteen, back with the E Streeters for the first time since 1988, has always been a rock solid reminder to his fans that there are no guarantees to rock music greatness, either from the performer, or, God forbid, from the audience. He has long testified over the power of faith, perseverance, redemeption and reward. Now, as he touches age 50 at just about the time you read this, he may have slowed just a bit, taken a little more time between songs, but the power and majesty of his songs, his characters and his performances remain true.

Springsteen has long said that each of his records, and then reflected in his live performances, show the growth of his characters. They were searching, almost running around in circles for his first two albums in early 1970s, as he utilized song/stories to tell their tales. It was with the seminal "Born to Run," released in 1975 that the characters’ stories on record and on stage merged, and he, and the E Street Band, formed an anthem for our times. Surely, the characters changed, as did his audience. For all the longing of "Darkness on the Edge of Town" and "Nebraska," there was the exhuberance of his live shows, particularly at the end of each one. For all the happiness, almost cockiness, of "The River," there was the loud foreboding of the chronically misunderstood "Born in the USA" and the depression of "Nebraska" and "Tunnel of Love."

Now, as he reaches 50, with a wife and three children, Springsteen’s shows have still born the carrion’s tone of exuberance and faith, but they, like the audience, have changed. The show I attended in New Jersey seemed more like a group of middle aged friends pulling out an old scrapbook and looking at the pictures. "Hey, remember ‘Out in the Street.’ Wow. How about ‘Factory.’ Those were the days." I don’t think it was happenstance that many of the songs were from "The River," which may have included the most interesting mix of emotions of all of his albums.

Springsteen has finished virtually every show on this tour with a new song, "Land of Hopes and Dreams," in which he returns once again to the themes of faith and redemption to get his characters through a morally, financially and socially changing world, on a positive note.

I couple Springsteen’s message of hopes and dreams with the musically bankrupt songs of many of the acts who, from the stage of "Woodstock," seemed to play upon their audience’s fear of failure, lack of redemption and potential for violence as a means to an end. It boggles the mind to find that irresponsibility and immorality has been pictured as a somewhat proper reaction to a $4 bottle of water and sitting in the heat for two days. What transpired at that show (I have a very difficult time calling it "Woodstock," because I think it desecrates the name) is a disgrace for this generation, and, unfortunately, probably for the generation, listening to Springsteen’s music, that has fostered a violent, hellbent for leather reaction to events and circumstances.

While you might get me to agree on another stage or forum or at another time that the symbolic toppling of an MTV booth may be the most positive musical idea for this generation, the reaction of the bands and the crowd at that show was preposterous. The reaction and the mild soul searching afterward has been an embarassing disgrace. Anybody who tries to moralize it, rationalize it or explain it away had better buckle down and start right over.

Perhaps the ghosts that Bruce Springsteen writes and talks about in his records and shows have won.

I hope not.