last night i went to see a living legend of rock (not a legendary living rock.. he was one of the fantastic four or was that the gang of four or five go wild in zummerzet?.. i digress.) the travellers had been given tickets to see bruce 'the boss' springstein at the millennium stadium cardiff. but m. fromagon had gone and double booked himself (the chaffinch!). instead i went with his better half and stayed over at me mums last night. so what of bruce? I have to admit to never being a fan of the Boss. I, like many others of my generation, failed to realize that we were born to run and none of us were born in the USA and frankly, if we were, would not have shouted about it. but i was curious. we spent most of the long evening (he came on at about 8.15 and was still going when we left at 11 to get the parcio and ridio..that's welsh) watching the crowd. ours were standing tickets so it was weird to be on the pitch (concrete actually - apparently they just paint it green when there's rugby on) where i have watched arsenal a couple of times. there was a mix of people of all ages - i saw quite a few families - and everyone was there for a good time. highlights were seeing very drunk 50 somethings teeny bopping about and swaying to the music and two coppers joining in the mexican wave

as for bruce, well i have to hand it to the man, he can still rock at 98 or however old he is. he was on for nearly three hours with hardly a break and not much chatting and he worked the crowd relentlessly. its not my sort of music but he does it well and his fans love him. coming out of the stadium just after eleven we were greeted with the chaos that is cardiff city centre on a saturday night: it was like being in a documentary on channel 4! lads in fancy dress and lasses in virtually nothing but a smile, falling over, throwing up, fighting, arguing with the local the heddlu (that's welsh too) and generally at the stage where they don't care about tomorrow and probably won't meet it in their own bed. cardiff is a great city: its lively, fun and very friendly (the cops and stewards i met and talked to were very welcoming), the centre is brash but hey, there's plenty of culture over at cardiff bay. i could live there (but the girls are a little scary). as for bruce, well I won't be downloading his back catalogue but i'm glad i went.