By C.J. JANOVY
Photo by Scott Spychalski. Click here for slide show.
It was the last night of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s Magic Tour and so, the Boss proclaimed, anything could happen. And it did. Taking requests via handmade signs from the pit, he spread out the fluorescent posterboards and notes scrawled on the backs of printed-out tickets on the floor and chose one he said was very important. “This has never been done before!” he announced, holding up the sign to the camera. “Let Max Sing,” it said. The Boss called for a mic stand for drummer Max Weinberg, who’d been pounding a steady beat while Springsteen collected requests (and sang “Hey!” along with Weinberg’s beats while doing so). After a brief tutorial from Springsteen, Weinberg, still drumming, in a rough, basically on key baritone, sang a serviceable chorus or two of what sounded like some ‘60s refrain, maybe a Beatles tune, about “Boys…” (can someone help us out here? What was he singing?).
Other anything-can-happen moments: Springsteen laying himself out on top of the fans in the front row, or crouching down to sing right into the faces of the adoring fans there, letting the outstretched hands play his guitar. The Sprint Center itself donating $10,000 to the Danny Federici Melanoma Fund. 16,000-plus middle-agers waiting an hour and a half for the show to start, grumbling about having to go to work in the morning, and forgiving all long before Springsteen thrust the microphone out into the crowd to do its first-verse duty on “Hungry Heart.”
While Springsteen blasted through the bedrock of the Sprint Arena, playing a non-stop selection of favorites guaranteed to keep even casual fans on their feet, a theme emerged for those who wanted to hear it. In the last half of the first set, just after “The Promised Land” – a reminder of what we all believe in, here in America – he prefaced “Living in the Future” with his short speech about how the country’s fast becoming one we don’t recognize, a place where we torture people and illegally wiretap our own citizens. It was short, painless political commentary – as is “Living in the Future” itself. The answer, Springsteen reminded us all, is first coming together – for the “Kansas City/New Jersey party” that was “Mary’s Place” -- then confronting the darkness in our own hearts as he then did in “Devils and Dust.”
He then called for hard work of “The Rising,” reminded us of the consequences if we fail to act in “Last to Die,” and cautioned patience but persistence in “Long Walk Home.” After all -- as he'd been suggesting all night by demanding that the audience help lift him up, whether he was literally laying on top of the crowd or when he reminded us that the E Street Band is itself fueled by the crowd's energy -- we're all trying to get out of these “Badlands.”
Then came an exquisite encore, one that opened with Springsteen dedicating “Sandy” to Federici and ended with yet another singalong about what was by then the only thing that seemed to matter at all, in the whole universe: that we all just keep on “Rockin’ All Over the World.”
Setlist
Ricky Wants a Man of Her Own
Cynthia
Radio Nowhere
No Surrender
Out In the Street
Hungry Heart
Spirit in the Night
(Max's song)
Cadillac Ranch
Working on the Highway
It's All Over Now (Rolling Stones cover)
Candy's Room
Gypsy Biker
Youngstown
The Promised Land
Living In the Future
Mary's Place
Devils and Dust
The Rising
Last to Die
Long Walk Home
Badlands
Encore
Sandy
10th Ave Freeze Out
Born to Run
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
American Land
Save the Last Dance for Me
Dancing In the Dark
Rockin' All Over the World
Random detail: The best sign anyone brought showed a photo of young Bruce above the legend "It's Hard to Be a Saint in Kansas City"
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this is the best reivew I've seen of this. reading it was like it was all happening again! thanks!
I received a new Springsteen book last week, and well... I was really blown away by the whole thing. If any book can capture what it's like to be at a Springsteen show, this is it. The images are as good as concert photos get.
check out "For You"
I bought Bruce's first album at Tiger records, based solely on the cover art. From there I was hooked.
Fast forward a year and I was working at the legendary Main Point. Feb 5, 1975, I stood in rain doing crowd control as the fans waited to get in to the building. It was tough because every suit-and-tie from Columbia records waltzed into the front door (300+) while the 265 paying customers got very impatient (they waited two-hours, in the rain and only one person asked for a refund which I gave him). It was the greatest show I ever saw.
This was the first arena show I have seen. The excitement and the electricity was the same as The Main Point. It's pretty easy to electrify the crowd when the person farthest from Bruce was 25-ft. Doing that in a 16,000 capacity "echo box" is much harder.
I took someone who isn't a big fan, didn't know many of the songs and she is now drinking the kool-aid.
And Kim, I may have had to sit for part of the show but I didn't have to run out and buy a beer every 15-minutes like most of the folks in our section. Add in their trips to the bathroom and I don't know why they bothered to buy tickets. My guess is they wanted to be where the hip and happening thang was going on (kind of like the new NFL fans and Harley riders).
I was thrilled to hear songs which have never been played or rarely played in concert. Hearing a greatest hits show isn't for me. I liked the reworking of some of my favorites off his first two records although it made my singing along even more off-key than usual.
Had not the seating at the SC been designed for very, very, very short dwarfs, the late start wouldn't have been noticable. The folks around us were friendly and we talked about our Bruce experiences (well those who had any). But when you are over 6'1, those seats SUCK.
I'd do it again in a minute.
I saw Bruce & the band back in 1985 at the tender age of 17. They played for 4 solid hours and everyone was on their feet the entire time, dancing, singing, shouting and having a BLAST. Flash forward to 2008, and they plated for 3 1/2 solid hours, most people (except the older crusty folks who probably should have stayed home... if you can't get off your a** for the Boss, you are hopeless) danced, sang and shouted and again, had a BLAST. The best part for me, aside from hearing my sentimental favorite Boss song (Rosalita) was standing next to a 17 year old girl, a girl who wasn't even BORN the last time I saw these guys, and watching her dancing, singing and shouting every bit as much as I did back in 1985. Wow, who the hell compares?
Some say St. Louis got the better show. Looks like they got a better encore, at least. Thunder Road? Sheeit.
Personally, I could have done without him jumping 60 feet off stage, flattening the Hawaiian-shirt-clad father next to me, grabbing my lower lip, pulling me to his mouth, screaming "ALRIGHT KANSASSSS!" then reaching into my chest, pulling out my heart, anointing it with natural oils from his soul-patch, jamming it back in, signing my eyelids, hooking his leg around my neck, spinning around me 33 times, then flying off into the rafters to play a special secret cover of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony that only unborn children could hear -- all the while never missing a lick of "10th Avenue Freeze Out" -- but, I don't know, maybe I'm too old for this anymore.
But here's my honest, personal-n-shit thoughts. Actually, Bruce Springsteen seemed already old to me when I was growing up in the '80s. I really didn't get it until after the inherently wussy '90s grunge movement had flatulated itself out of the social consciousness. Think about it: You older folks got the Boss as your iconic figure -- a powerful, positive, proletarian force. Us younger folks had Kurt Cobain: an introspective, crawling, fucked-up postmodern apathete. (I made that last word up, a portmanteau of "apathy" and "aesthete," with maybe some "effete" thrown in. Damn, I like that.)
I mean, is that wrong? Bruce sang about cars. Kurt & co sang about drugs. Two very different rites of passage. �Nuff said?
Bruce doesn�t do irony. He aims to INSPIRE, and irony would only get in the way. So be it. It works for me. I screamed like a little girl when he first appeared coming up the ramp behind the drums � it was my first time seeing him in the flesh. It was also kind of amazing to see Max Weinberg and Little Steven. I�ve logged in more hours with both Conan O�Brien (probably) and The Sopranos (definitely) than I have Springsteen records in the past few years. Both of these guys are monster musicians.
So is Nils Lofgren, the runt of E-Street, whose solo during Youngstown (an odd choice, being off The Ghost of Tom Joad, right?) was otherworldly and probably the most musically interesting moment of the night. I think his head actually did a complete 360-degree turn while he played. I wouldn�t be surprised.
Other things I noticed: Clarence Clemmons, who is eight feet tall, was the best-dressed E-Streeter, with a wide-brimmed fedora and billowing, black puffy shirt. Little Steven came in second with his trademark pirate do-rag, tight tapered jeans and reptillian shoes. Bruce would have to be third: consummate working man in fitted black western shirt, charcoal jeans, industrial-strength belt and workboots. Here�s a man who knows to put anti-perspirant on before bedtime instead of in the morning; though his lower-back sweat soaked the seat of his pants, his armpits were Sure dry.
Bruce Springsteen? Mensch.
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