There's a fantastic, long tribute to Clarence on backstreets.com, the Springsteen fan association's website, today. A pretty beautiful piece, written in the way that only die-hard fans can write:
http://backstreets.com/clarence/
All of this is reminding me of my one and only show, on May 2, 2008. It was a rescheduled show, one of the first 7 they played after Danny Federici passed away, the last on that leg of the Magic Tour, so there was a bit of a sad note in the air: the show opened with a video tribute to Danny, set to a recording of "Blood Brothers", with the band standing onstage in the dark.
Once the show started, though, it was nothing but an exuberant experience, and one of the images that endures wasn't even all the wonderful things happening onstage, but of the two people sitting next to me: a dad and his son. I had a good chat with the dad before the show, while the kid, who couldn't have been more than 7-8 years old, mostly chimed in with questions about the old rock stars his dad and I were talking about. I thought, "What a great father-son pair, and how awesome that his dad brought him to this."
I don't remember what song it was ("She's The One", I think), but it was Clemons' first big solo of the night, and I happened to glance over to the kid, who was sitting between his dad and me, and what I saw was perhaps the biggest smile on any person I'd ever seen in my life. He was getting pure joy out of hearing that sound. The next solo, I looked over again, and the smile, somehow, was even bigger, and again, and again, throughout the show.
That kid would be 10 or 11 now, and I'd imagine that he's probably pretty crushed by the loss of whom I can only assume was one of his first musical idols, but it's nice to remember that look of pure, unadulterated joy I saw on his face, as well as the guy onstage who clearly brought it out of him.