Bruce Springsteen World Acoustic Tou ‘95-‘96 Tour Program

Description

Bruce Springsteen World Acoustic Tour ‘95-‘96 Tour Program.
The Ghost of Tom Joad Tour was a worldwide concert tour featuring Bruce Springsteen performing alone on stage in small halls and theatres, that ran off and on from late 1995 through the middle of 1997. It followed the release of his 1995 album The Ghost of Tom Joad.
The tour represented Springsteen's first full-length, solo tour; he traveled with only an instrument technician and a sound engineer. As such it was a marked departure from the high-energy shows with the E Street Band that Springsteen had become famous for. The album itself was quiet, dark and angry, and Springsteen presented it as such in the shows on the tour. Older songs from Springsteen's catalog, such as "Born in the U.S.A.", were presented in very different, often harsh re-arrangements.
While the Ghost of Tom Joad album was in the more acoustic, somber vein of his earlier Nebraska, it did contain some limited additional instrumentation and arrangements. However, Springsteen decided to perform the new material completely by himself, using only acoustic guitar and harmonica. (A couple of the Joad numbers did have a hidden offstage synthesizer being played, by Springsteen's guitar technician Kevin Buell.)
Given that Springsteen was famous for his full-band, high-energy, crowd-rousing concerts, this tour was sure to be a surprising departure. Advertisements tried to make this clear, and all show tickets were printed with Solo Acoustic Tour on them to give audiences a firm understanding of what to expect (and leading some[who?] to call the tour by that name, although it would become ambiguous in light of the later Devils & Dust Tour; Springsteen's publicists did not give this tour any formal name).
After an opening rendition of "The Ghost of Tom Joad", which featured audience members whooping and "Brooocing" by habit, Springsteen regularly addressed this audience with some variation of this speech:
"This is where I get to set the ground rules a little bit ... a lot of these songs tonight were composed using a lot of silence, silence is a part of the music, so I really need your collaboration tonight in giving me that silence so I can do my best for you ... if you feel like clapping or singing along, you'll be an embarrassment to your friends and family ... if someone sitting next to you is talking, politely ask them to shut the fk up ... Don't make me come down there and smack you around, it'll mess with my man-of-the-people image."
Sometimes Springsteen felt the need to reiterate parts of the message after subsequent songs, especially if Brooocing continued. The whole bit created quite an impression among Springsteen fans, some of whom would always refer to this as the Shut the Fk Up Tour as a result, and others of whom[who?] would wish the same rules were in effect for slower songs at future Springsteen E Street Band concerts.
Condition is Very Good or better! Looks like new to me.