Bruce Springsteen

[liebzz]

Born to Run is only 8 songs, wtf?

Jungleland, and Meeting Across the River make it a substantial outing nonetheless in terms of run time. Not to mention Jungleland might be amongst the most dramatic songs in rock music. Certainly gives Fleetwood Mac and Queen a run for their money.

Also, if you wanted to get a taste of Springsteen and touch a bit on what makes it all so magical, starting with The Legendary No Nukes Concerts would work, only you might only go downhill from there given that is one of the best live albums I have ever heard.

[i got bugs]

Bruce showed up at the Zach bryan philly show last night n im so pissed at myself for not going

[liebzz]

We are almost a week out and I am still buzzing from seeing Springsteen at Sea.Hear.Now in Asbury Park. We had initially planned on skipping this year before the lineup was announced but once we saw Bruce was playing in front of his hometown crowd, we couldn’t resist and threw down for this.

The weekend leading up to his set was nearly a full success. Nearly because we wanted to see Gaslight Anthem but they were on the furthest stage from the main stage and the last act before Bruce. We had a great spot about 1/3 of the way from the front and weren’t giving it up. We missed Bruce play History Books and American Slang with them. But we did see Bruce play with the Trey Anastasio Band on Kitty’s Back, which was phenomenal.

Okay, the show. So I thought they sounded better than I can remember in recent memory. Bruce was clearly pumped and this being my 8th show, I may not be the most seasoned but I have now seen my fair share. Lonesome Day was fine and all, but you can’t beat what follows for the theme of the evening with a trio of Blinded By the Light, 82nd Street, and Growing Up off Greetings, then soon coming right back and hitting up Spirit in the Night, Thundercrack (maybe performance of the night!), the E Street Shuffle, and 4th of July (Asbury Park). Taking the early part of the set and making it all about those early songs, and effin’ nailing the performances perfectly was really incredible. Local Hero and Atlantic City kept it Jersey, and Tougher Than the Rest with Patti was poignant given her recent health issues. Ending the main set with Badlands and Thunder Road is cathartic for sure, though I didn’t even notice any semblance of an encore break. They just kept playing. And encore to Bruce means one massive song after the next, though as an exception, he played basically the last 15 minutes of the Born to Run album in Meeting Across the River > Jungleland. Born to Run > Rosie > Bobby Jean > Dancing in the Dark > Tenth Avenue Freezeout > Twist and Shout - just ridiculous. Then closing with a “second encore” of Jersey Girl seemed like an appropriate end. 75 years old and playing for 3 hours and 15 minutes without a real break or much slowing down…these guys are doing the impossible! That they sounded amazing is astounding. What a show.

[oasisfan35]

We are almost a week out and I am still buzzing from seeing Springsteen at Sea.Hear.Now in Asbury Park. We had initially planned on skipping this year before the lineup was announced but once we saw Bruce was playing in front of his hometown crowd, we couldn’t resist and threw down for this.

The weekend leading up to his set was nearly a full success. Nearly because we wanted to see Gaslight Anthem but they were on the furthest stage from the main stage and the last act before Bruce. We had a great spot about 1/3 of the way from the front and weren’t giving it up. We missed Bruce play History Books and American Slang with them. But we did see Bruce play with the Trey Anastasio Band on Kitty’s Back, which was phenomenal.

Okay, the show. So I thought they sounded better than I can remember in recent memory. Bruce was clearly pumped and this being my 8th show, I may not be the most seasoned but I have now seen my fair share. Lonesome Day was fine and all, but you can’t beat what follows for the theme of the evening with a trio of Blinded By the Light, 82nd Street, and Growing Up off Greetings, then soon coming right back and hitting up Spirit in the Night, Thundercrack (maybe performance of the night!), the E Street Shuffle, and 4th of July (Asbury Park). Taking the early part of the set and making it all about those early songs, and effin’ nailing the performances perfectly was really incredible. Local Hero and Atlantic City kept it Jersey, and Tougher Than the Rest with Patti was poignant given her recent health issues. Ending the main set with Badlands and Thunder Road is cathartic for sure, though I didn’t even notice any semblance of an encore break. They just kept playing. And encore to Bruce means one massive song after the next, though as an exception, he played basically the last 15 minutes of the Born to Run album in Meeting Across the River > Jungleland. Born to Run > Rosie > Bobby Jean > Dancing in the Dark > Tenth Avenue Freezeout > Twist and Shout - just ridiculous. Then closing with a “second encore” of Jersey Girl seemed like an appropriate end. 75 years old and playing for 3 hours and 15 minutes without a real break or much slowing down…these guys are doing the impossible! That they sounded amazing is astounding. What a show.

I was reading about this earlier in the week and just getting around to the guest spots is one thing but having just those be great to then put on one of the all-time performances you've been known to throw down for the last fifty years

The connection of Bruce and Jersey is really just tremendous, glad you had a great time and got a killer show. The only gig I caught in Jersey was at Giants Stadium but it was before they expanded GA to the whole floor so it was a relatively small segment in front of the stage. Getting in the throng of that, feeling that energy from Bruce and then looking up to a sold out stadium... I will never forget that.

[liebzz]

Yeah, may have been one of the first times, if ever, that I walked away from a show (and really having seen Pearl Jam 11 days prior at the second Garden show up front added to this) thinking if I never saw another show, I got to see that.

[oasisfan35]

Until the wheels come off...

Love it.

Have the Sea.Hear.Now set queued up for tomorrow morning too.

[liebzz]

Until the wheels come off...

Love it.

Have the Sea.Hear.Now set queued up for tomorrow morning too.

I ordered the CD. Usually I only do that with the Pearl Jam concerts I attend.

[oasisfan35]

Until the wheels come off...

Love it.

Have the Sea.Hear.Now set queued up for tomorrow morning too.

I ordered the CD. Usually I only do that with the Pearl Jam concerts I attend.

You saw one helluva show there liebzz.

It's funny that we can often slag a set by many artists that we pay close attention to when they play a fetival. Certainly not a certainty but a 'festival set' usually leaves more to be desired by the more than casual fan. Granted it seems like the stars aligned a bit here but Bruce and the Band come in and just fuckin' deliver.

[liebzz]

I think the usual for typically shortened festival sets is to play the hits and keep things moving because the audience has neither the patience or bandwidth for a more curated artistic set. Think the buffet line on a cruise ship. Everything will be above board and decent, but most bands won’t take the risk of not delivering on the hits.

Springsteen, to his credit, knew his people would be there, and would be cashing in on a once in a lifetime event with him playing in his adopted hometown on his beach, and with no one to tell him no. The risk paid off in spades and perhaps this is one of the handful of shows people will point to when he hangs up the cleats. Easily the best festival set I have ever seen by a pretty large margin.

[Monkey_Driven]

That's an awesome set. What a show to see! Would love to hear the boot someday.

[oasisfan35]

[lecherouslittlestump]

Best performance of that song. Mainly because he doesn't sing it with that godawful twang/drawl. Somewhere in the 00s he remembered how to sing properly again

[oasisfan35]

Best performance of that song. Mainly because he doesn't sing it with that godawful twang/drawl. Somewhere in the 00s he remembered how to sing properly again

Can't lie about the weirdness of the bold, if it landed it was great and when it didn't it was awful.

Stolen Car garners a lot for the transition in Bruce's writing and arrangement but I think I prefer the original... however in light of the bloated The River album it works.

[Leatherhead]

I thought I'd try getting into Springsteen a while back. Never happened.

[liebzz]

I thought I'd try getting into Springsteen a while back. Never happened.

I’d like to guide you, but there’s so many different angles to approach it that it depends on what you need from Bruce.

[LetMeSleep]

Magic is a great place to start.

[wease]

I thought I'd try getting into Springsteen a while back. Never happened.

I tried a number of years ago. Didn’t take.

[liebzz]

Okay, so for wease it’s a different metric.

Wease needs to start with “Hammersmith Odeon, London 1975” https://open.spotify.com/album/29HIscCM ... lJYr1otR1A

Feel that energy coming off that stage, doctor’s orders.

As background, I listened nearly only to Greatest Hits in the late 90s and had a more caustic view of Springsteen based on maybe Dancing in the Dark most likely. I thought Streets of Philadelphia was a really good song, which is why I bought the Greatest Hits, and liked some of his other songs well enough. I could never get through the Greatest Hits because I thought there were rough patches in there.

At some point, having heard a million times that he was unbelievable live, I talked myself into buying the Hammersmith Odeon show, if nothing else than to know whether the reputation met the reality. I was pretty blown away by the third listen, and convinced myself I needed to see him for myself, which I finally did in 2009. I have not looked back since, and started to then “get” for lack of a better term the albums past Darkness (by the time I saw them in ‘09 I had that point expanded from the Hammersmith Odeon show to the first 4 albums).

There are now a number of releases that hang with Hammersmith Odeon, but man, that energy and fire and that band just sound incredible there, and you are experiencing them totally free of the baggage that big hits hold (it only contains music from the first three albums and Born to Run had yet to truly explode at the time of this show).

[oasisfan35]

Okay, so for wease it’s a different metric.

Wease needs to start with “Hammersmith Odeon, London 1975” https://open.spotify.com/album/29HIscCM ... lJYr1otR1A

Feel that energy coming off that stage, doctor’s orders.

As background, I listened nearly only to Greatest Hits in the late 90s and had a more caustic view of Springsteen based on maybe Dancing in the Dark most likely. I thought Streets of Philadelphia was a really good song, which is why I bought the Greatest Hits, and liked some of his other songs well enough. I could never get through the Greatest Hits because I thought there were rough patches in there.

At some point, having heard a million times that he was unbelievable live, I talked myself into buying the Hammersmith Odeon show, if nothing else than to know whether the reputation met the reality. I was pretty blown away by the third listen, and convinced myself I needed to see him for myself, which I finally did in 2009. I have not looked back since, and started to then “get” for lack of a better term the albums past Darkness (by the time I saw them in ‘09 I had that point expanded from the Hammersmith Odeon show to the first 4 albums).

There are now a number of releases that hang with Hammersmith Odeon, but man, that energy and fire and that band just sound incredible there, and you are experiencing them totally free of the baggage that big hits hold (it only contains music from the first three albums and Born to Run had yet to truly explode at the time of this show).

Hammersmith Odeon is indeed a big deal.

I had heard some Bruce on the radio growing up but very little. I can still recall putting Born to Run on CD-R to give a go while I pick my future-former-wife up from classes, I listen through and it starts again as I'm waiting and it just clicked. I was enamored and ordered the 30th Anniversary box set and threw the Hammersmith show on the ol' tele... floored.

[liebzz]

As a very nice by-product of the Essential Live albums thread, I put together all my favorite live stuff into a coherent Spotify playlist I titled Essential Live: The Boss. Sharing it here for those folks with Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4iiqe ... YeWcKxTjWm

Tracklist:

Thunder Road
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
Prove It All Night
Kitty’s Back
Cover Me
The Ties That Bind
Sherry Darling
Lucky Town
Freehold
American Land
Seaside Bar Song
Thundercrack
Does This Bus Stop At 82ns Street?
Frankie
Meet Me in the City
The Fever
Backstreets
American Skin (41 Shots)
Atlantic City
Johnny 99
Blinded By the Light
Open All Night
Stayin’ Alive
War
Highway to Hell
(You’re Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher
Jersey Girl
The E Street Shuffle
Incident on 57th Street
Seeds
Because the Night
No Surrender
Bobby Jean
Hungry Heart
Born in the USA
Dancing in the Dark
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
Born to Run
Jungleland
Quarter to Three
Last Man Standing