Welcome to The Concert Photo Of The Day for 04/04/12 .

Let's write a little bit about respect...

For awhile now, I've steered away of having Clarence Clemons featured in The Photo of the Day. It's not because of a lack of great photos of the Big Man, heavens no...I have plenty and many of you have seen a few of them here and other places scattered about the internet. The reason I have gone down that path is because of respect. Respect to Bruce Springsteen and respect to the rest of the E Street Band. This is a new form of the E Street Band and, while they can never escape from the might big shadow that C had, they do deserve a bit of space to be who they are today. There is no doubt from recent interviews that the loss of Clarence, and Danny before him, effects the band in many ways and both of their departed brothers still hang out on stage in various ways.

Now, I don't have a problem with fans remembering Clarence and even honoring him is some fashion. It is what fans do. I even kinda understood when I first spied large disembodied Clarence Clemons heads mounted on sticks at the first Wrecking Ball tour stop in Atlanta. There was only going to be one official first tour date after his death and the Phillips Center was the announced location. It wasn't something that I would have done but we all deal with things in our own way.

I wasn't so kind in my thoughts the next evening in Greensboro, NC. I thought it would be a one-time-only sort of thing. There they were again and they were in the air in a much more aggressive fashion...held aloft for long periods of time and blocking the sight lines of other audience members who, literally, had to move to be able to see the stage. I even had some difficulty photographing the stage when those heads-on-a-stick were waving back and forth. Still it was something that I figured would pass in time while I was on the photo podium photographing the first three songs of the night. There is a certain exuberance at the beginning of a concert that often has people doing things that they wouldn't do otherwise.

But, when Bruce was crowd surfing back to the stage during what has become known as The Apollo Medley, and the fans who had those heads-on-a-stick started stretching their arms in order to put those heads in Bruce's face and then proceeded to wack his body a few times with them, my thoughts passed from acceptance to what the fuck are they thinking?

Let me ask this question to the people who have these sticks. If you had a close friend who passed away would you like to have people running amok with their head on a stick waving them around you at work and when they got close to you, wacked your body with that head? Would you think that is a respectful way of paying homage to your fallen brother? Or would you finally get annoyed?

While scanning the internet recently, I've read quite a few things about these heads and the bodies that are controlling them. I may be annoyed but you will not see me calling for those people's head on a stick, a pike or any other head platter/carrier. I will ask them to think for a moment on how it might feel it it was being done to them. I suspect that if they continue, they will hear much worse from others and hope they hear the message before that happens.

As I said, it's all about respect.

Today's photo, which breaks the drought of Clarence, is one of the ways that I plan on honoring Clarence going forward. A captured moment in time the Big Man and a Smaller Man together with both standing tall and showing hearts that exceed their physical proportions...a channeled colletive heart that includes all of us fans who came to see the E Street Band that night and show respect to each other. This photo was taken on the first non-rehearsal night of the Magic Tour in the Swamps of Jersey, aka the then Continental Arena/Meadowlands. It may not be the best venue out there but, somehow, it feels like home.

Today's photo was taken with a Canon 30D camera body coupled with a Canon EF 300 mm f/2.8 IS L lens. The camera settings were ISO 1600, f/2.8 and a shutter speed of 1/250 of a second.