Bruce Springsteen fans have a lot invested in the Jersey man. They may have had a lot more invested in last night’s show at the Verizon Center. Tickets sold out in minutes. Then a company sold tickets they didn’t quite have. Anyone who had a ticket was lucky. This was no mere Dad Rock.

And Springsteen doesn’t have mere fans. Every other dad wore a faded Boss shirt from an old tour. I’ve never seen mom jeans rock so hard during the trips to the back catalog. At this point, Springsteen doesn’t even have to sing “Born to Run,” the audience—-even a D.C. audience—-did more than a fine job screaming about Jersey desperation, springing from cages out on Highway 9. At least that’s what I saw/heard from my nosebleed seat. At this point, the obsessives are the ones willing to wait in lines for tickets, and refresh furiously at the Ticketmaster website. Last night, Springsteen seemed to acknowledge the Backstreet freaks in his midst. On this tour, he’s started taking requests. Last night, the Verizon center went epileptic when he picked “Blinded By the Light” despite the song’s hilarious backstory.

Can I just set aside my indie rock credentials for a second? That blinded-by-the-light moment was awesome.

OK. That felt good.

Nils admitted that this tour is being judged by the diehards. By the time I got home, the setlist had been posted online. The Springsteen freaks camped on the message boards are now judging without mercy. And they’ve deemed the D.C. crowd unworthy. This fanboy shit is pretty hilarious.

One commenter, “Bossfan77,” wrote that the audience was a ‘complete joke,” grousing that: “My section, 101 was sitting during Kittys Back

, like they had never heard the song before…”

Much chatter, of course, followed:

*”I wouldn’t call it embarrassing, but I agree it was strange to see so many people planted in their seats for so much of the show. As sweet as the band was, it was a little weird and off-putting to realize that a lot of people in the audience, maybe more so than normal, didn’t know WTF was happening on stage. Section 214 was sitting as well (I was at the top, with the two other people who were not—literally, there may have been five or six people in the whole section standing up for Kitty’s), almost every section I could see had a lot of people seated for Kitty’s, and it felt like a lot of people didn’t know the songs. I chatted with a few people after the show who thought he’d played a lot of covers. I mean, I think people enjoyed themselves regardless, but it was a strange vibe.”

*”you can thank the scalpers and ticketmaster. It is pure bullshit that real fans should be shut out of a show in their own backyard because of the way the majority of the DC tickets were distributed. Pure bullshit.”

*”Were you the guy yelling at all of us in the metro because no one would sing with you? :-/ sorry
I believe you said ‘the recession isn’t THAT bad, people!!!’. I laughed.”

*”EXACTLY!!! THE FACT THAT IT WAS THE TOUGHEST TICKET IN TOWN TO GET, AND IM SURROUNDED BY A BUNCH OF D-BAGS, THAT DONT EVEN KNOW THE SONGS, BUT PAYED OUT THERE ASS FOR THE TICKETS!!! C’MON!!! LETS GET THIS TICKET SELLING STUFF RIGHT!!!”

There are of course more comments.