I’ve been so caught up in weblogs and their discussion boards, not to mention the chat room where I met the Sweet One, that I never did get into Usenet newsgroups. Last weekend, though, I realized that I needed some PHP help and the slow interaction of Google Groups just wasn’t getting the job done. Sure enough, ATTBI provides a news server, so I hooked up with comp.lang.php and got the help I needed. As long as I was there, I looked into Springsteen as well.
And found RMAS (rec.music.artists.springsteen), which is very active, and AMB-S (alt.music.bruce-springsteen), which has some traffic but not nearly as much. The people are very friendly and helpful and are a great source of recorded Bruce shows to trade and share. Seems like I will be getting two myself (Detroit, 8/15/2, and an NYC show from the 2000 tour).
This world has a jargon all its own and here are some amusing examples: BNP – blanks and postage, meaning someone will make a CD for you if you send them blank CDs and a mailer with postage; ALD – Assisted Listening Device, which is the closed circuit system concert halls use to broadcast the concert (inside the building only) for the hard of hearing, but which some enterprising geeks have learned how to record; L/NBC – Little/No Bruce Content, so the message is off-topic and often concerns politics or some musician other than Bruce and I know I can safely ignore the message thread.
There are also some good artwork sites (informally) associated with all of this too. John Joyce maintains John’s Bruce Springsteen Artwork Links Page. The artwork is intended for use as covers for the different Springsteen concerts that are available for trade. A couple of good examples come from Loose Ends for the 1999 LA Reunion Tour show and Joosse’s for the 1980 LA Show that was the first Bruce concert I ever attended.
As I mentioned above, it’s possible to get started in this hobby even if you don’t have any BruceLegs of your own. Then there is the other newsgroup, alt.binaries.music.springsteen (ABMS Info), where people post music that can be directly downloaded though this takes better news reader software than I have just now.
As I found, the two simplest ways to start are the freebies (that’s how I’m getting the NYC show) and BNP (Detroit). Besides the newsgroups, people post their own trade lists and as you get disks in hand you can contact traders directly or use some of the exchanges that have been set up. Having a CD burner certainly helps but I have friends who I will be pestering to help me out here as well.
The show I’d really like to get, and I’m sure this will be possible in the near future, is the 1978 show from the Capitol Theater in Passaic that was broadcast on radio nationwide. Talk about a momento of my youth!
BillSaysThis 
