BEFORE the preview, The Irish Times brings you a public service announcement: If you are among the lucky few thousand who got seats for Bruce Springsteen's Irish shows in the cold January weekend they took to sell out, and if you are looking forward to singing a verse of Hungry Heart, pumping the fist to Born In The USA, then boogying into the wee hours to an encore set of classic rock n roll covers" - there is still time to get out.
Yes, contact your favourite newspaper, Fleet Street, Dublin 2, and we'll try to find good, loving homes for tickets purchased in the vain hope of revisiting the dizzy rock heights of RDS 88, or even the lesser peaks of Slane 85 and RDS 93. Because on Tuesday and Wednesday, at Belfast's King's Hall and Dublin's Point Theatre respectively, this ain't no party.
Springsteen's E Street Band concerts were vast, exuberant spectacles that - without technical gimmickry - pushed at the limits of the rock show as theatrical event. The current "solo acoustic tour" is more like one of those sombre, intense films that Bruce has alluding to in song titles for years - Thunder Road, Badlands, Murder Inc., Point Blank, etc - complete with film noir lighting.
It's no accident that the tape piped into the venues after these shows includes not only Woody Guthrie - the obvious source for Springsteen's new style - but also Ennio Morricone's soundtrack music for Once Upon A Time In The West.
New Jersey's rocker laureate takes the title track of his latest album - also his concert opener - from the movies: The Ghost Of Tom load draws on John Ford's film The Grapes Of Wrath; it fuses the image of 1930s Dust Bowl refugees with that of migrant workers and homeless people living along California's highways, 1990s style. The rest of the album, and the concerts, follow suit; and in a little speech early in each show, the man who hates being called the Boss tells the punters to shut up and listen.
Cynics suspect a good career move, a reshaping of Springsteen's post superstar persona that was guaranteed to provide a needed boost from liberal critics for someone fast running out of cred. If so, the US critics obliged liberally - like the Atlanta reviewer who waxed lyrically that the new songs "wear their burdens like grease and dust caked on worn denim".
Fans (guilty, m'lud) prefer to think of it as a return to form. Our thesis is backed by Springsteen's choice of "oldies" to accompany Tom load in concert; he draws heavily on the pre Born In The USA "golden age", especially Darkness On The Edge Of Town and Nebraska. (The title song from The River hasn't figured yet in the US or European tour; but perhaps he has noticed Ireland's special affinity for it and will sing it here.)
In a sense, this is the sort of concert Springsteen has been heading towards for 25 years; after all, even in full rock n roll regalia, it was the intense intimacy of his songwriting that earned him a legion of loyal fans. And the US economy's full frontal assault on the poor and working class people who have always figured in his music have rendered him "political" because he has held on to that sympathy and chronicled a nation's decline.
"It's not quite a folk show," he told one interviewer. "It's something else. It's quiet music, but it's hard music; it's quiet music about hard things" - an apt description of much of his best work.
In addition to the Tom load songs and the reconstructed oldies, fans can look forward to other material that fits this mould, including perhaps the Oscar winning Streets of Philadelphia and Oscar nominated Dead Man Walking ahead of the Academy Awards ceremony Monday week (Dublin is the last scheduled gig before he heads to LA for that shindig).
However, while you wouldn't expect any Buddy Holly or Chuck Berry covers, you re also unlikely to hear the Guthrie songs he has performed in the past (This Land Is Your Land, Vigilante Man, I Ain't Got No Home); the only cover he has done in three months on the road, in fact, was an encore duet on Guthrie's brilliant Blowin' Down The Road - in Texas with Joe Fly (also his only "guest"), who just happens to be in Dublin's Mean Fiddler tomorrow night.
So if you're among the all seater 4,000 at each of next week's gigs, don't expect to be playing many air guitar solos; maybe work on your air harmonica. Don't shout out "Born To Run!"; you're liable to get abuse from the stage. Don't expect to be sent home sweating at quarter to one; you're more likely to be thinking through the lyrics and set list, and in plenty of time for the last bus.
In return, by all accounts, you'll get a wonderful show from a master craftsman, replete with Springsteen's traditional storytelling skills and lightning flashes of humour and hope in the darkness.
Maybe you should hold onto those tickets.