Yes, yes, dear regular readers.
Did you think I was going to let the Boss visit Boston and not go see him and the boys (and girls?) Silly you. But this won’t be a review as such. Reviewing a Springsteen show is like reviewing a magnificent work of art. It’s always magnificent. All you can do is give your spin on the…
“…heart-stopping, pants-dropping, earth-shocking, hard-rocking, booty-shaking, earth-quaking, love-making, Viagra-taking, history-making, legendary E! Street! Band!”
To begin with, I almost didn’t make the show. Say what? Well, I’d been kinda sick for a couple of days and the night before, I’d pretty much given up hope of walking around Boston on a cold night without wheezing.
In fact, I’d—heresy!—put the tickets up for sale on TicketBastard, Craigslist, and even advertised them on Twitter. (I reinstated my Twitter account under Elon Jerkoff just long enough to do that.)
Bruce Springsteen adds third L.A. show – Orange County Register
By the grace of the Hammer of the Gods, no one responded until midday of the show. “Still available?” he asked. “No,” I lied. Because while I wasn’t feeling 100%, I was feeling better and, well, The Show Must Go On.
We (my wife is every bit the Springsteen fan as I am) grabbed a bite at a food court downstairs from TD Garden. You know the place—not enough seats, burgers that take six hours to make, overpriced. After we got inside and stood in line for a six-dollar bottle of water, we got into the Garden about 15 minutes before the advertised 7:30 start time—which of course meant 7:50 in Show Biz Time.
I had floor seats because, having seen Roger Waters, I knew they were your best bet. They weren’t too bad either, as you’ll see in my shitty videos. At least I wasn’t one of those poor souls way up on the right almost behind the stage. I happen to know those tickets run at least $300 (278 Euros).
Since I’m going to discuss ticket prices in an upcoming post, I’m going to do something I never do: tell you what I paid. For two tickets about 25 rows from the stage, I paid about $900 (835 Euro).
Was it worth it? If you paid a ton of dough to visit, say, the Grand Canyon or the Taj Mahal, did you come home and say, Well, that was a fuckload of money? Maybe you did. But the experience stayed with you. (My next post will be about the chain of greed that led to this situation.)
The band (19 people strong) entered one by one, and when The Boss came on, the room instantly filled with lusty boos! Were people booing Bruce because he charged so much? Relax, I’ve seen the guy ten times since 1977*. I’m just fucking with you.**
This show was leaner and meaner than any I’ve seen from Bruce and the gang. By that, I mean shorter (2:50 vs 4:02 last time he was in town) and fewer stories from Bruce about his old man and their friction. No signs from the crowd asking to hear, say, “Thundercrack.” And mysteriously, zero merch for sale. There’s a lost opportunity.
Bruce Springsteen E Street Band tour will happen soon, hopefully 2022
The first tune was “No Surrender” from Born in the USA and then “Ghosts” from Letter To You. Both sounded great, but for me, an inauspicious beginning: the first tune doesn’t grab me, and the second I hadn’t heard. (Bear in mind when I saw him in 2016, he started with 10 of his first 11 songs being from his first two albums—which is where I came in. Pretty sure I got an erection.)
The first tune that grabbed me was the always reliable “Prove It All Night,” where Bruce and Steve Van Zandt usually exchange wicked solos. Except tonight they didn’t. In fact, Van Zandt seemed a little removed all night. I wonder if he was the one who had the recent illness. Nevertheless, Bruce got off some great solos from his patented “I am wrenching those fucking notes out of this box of wood and wires” technique.
After whipping the frenzied, frothing-at-the-mouth Beantown crowd into a frenzy, the band took on “Letter To You,” “Promised Land,” “Out in the Street,” and “Candy’s Room.”
And then, the greatest Springsteen song of all time except for all the others, “Kitty’s Back.” And this was about when I realized Bruce had not just a horn (sax) but a fucking horn section (plus backup singers and violin). In addition to the Big Man’s nephew Jake, there were four horns—tenor sax, trombone, and two trumpets! I wouldn’t have been surprised (or even displeased) if they did a Chicago tune.
Bruce and the band whipped off a credible cover of “Nightshift,” a song he likes a lot more than I do. Then it was on to the great Jimmy Cliff cover “Trapped,” “The E Street Shuffle” (everybody form a line), and then—from Nebraska—“Johnny 99.”
Now Springsteenologists will remind you that Nebraska was a solo acoustic album of demos that Bruce couldn’t figure out how to beef up with the band. I guess they figured it out. From Kansas City, where, sources advise, they got a lotta pretty women:
Bruce had a few poignant moments talking about his bandmate George Theiss from his first band, The Castiles (named for a soap!), who passed away a few years ago leaving Bruce the “Last Man Standing.” He did the song solo and then sang “Backstreets” for him.
And then the ever-popular “Because the Night,” which—sorry setlist.fm—is not a Patti Smith cover but essentially a co-written song. I wanted to get this on here because Nils Lofgren whips off some tasty licks (from Seattle).
The band whipped through “She’s The One,” “Wrecking Ball” (have to spend some time with that album), Bruce’s 9/11 song “The Rising,” and “Badlands.”
Have to tell you about the encore. Now there’s nothing a Boston audience (sports or music) loves more than to hear a song about themselves, even though that song says nothing good about the city. But basically, the premise of “Dirty Water” is: well, we love ya anyway, you cranky old town. (We heard Steely Dan cover this as well. Are there any more different bands than Springsteen and the Dan?)
We know that Bruce goes to Des Moines, Iowa, and tells them the same shit. But Bruce is an East Coast guy who made his reputation in Philly, Jersey, New York, and was “discovered” by Jon Landau at the now-defunct Harvard Square Theatre in Cambridge. His son went to Boston College, and he has some definite ties and shout-outs here.
Now I want my fellow Springsteen-o-maniacs to step away from the ledge when I advise that the rest of the encore consisted of:
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Thunder Road
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Born to Run
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Rosalita (sweet Jesus)
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Glory Days
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Dancing in the Dark (no sign of Courtney Cox)
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Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
I was hoping to entertain you with the last one but somehow I wound up with, like, three seconds of it. But it’s fun to see a picture of Jersey—the Bruce prancing around in a leather jacket that some dude threw to him that will NEVER BE CLEANED.
So I will happily “settle” for the true story of “Rosalita,” to this day my favorite song from my favorite Bruce album. I even refrained from singing so I wouldn’t entirely ruin the video.
The show ended with Bruce doing a solo acoustic “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” which I didn’t know and would have sworn was a Tin Pan Alley standard. Bruce, at 73, is definitely feeling his mortality and, as an artist, sharing that with his audience. Maybe he’s also foreseeing the ultimate demise of the E Street Band. At what point do you put down the Telecaster? At what point, to quote an early Springsteen tune, does the bus no longer stop at 82nd Street?
For no particular reason, I’ll leave you with Bruce’s cover of Jimmy Cliff’s “Trapped,” which he’s been doing since the 70s, never to my knowledge recorded for an album. Nirvana and Pixies used to talk about dynamics—loud, soft, loud—like they invented it. Listen to this:
So, I reiterate: Money’s worth? Check. My wife danced all night. Can I afford a thousand bucks for two tickets? Can you? Unless people are dirt poor, they go on vacation and scrimp and save for years to go to Disney and spend that on the gift shop. Or if the mechanic says, “That transmission is going to cost you two grand,” we find the money. Why not blow it on yourself once in a while?
Am I justifying these ticket prices? Well, maybe only to myself. The whole fucking ticket thing is a monopolistic scandal which Congress waves aside like a disgruntled voter.
But tonight we celebrate. And if I had one wish, it would be that Patti came out and did a duet with Bruce. OK, two wishes: “Atlantic City.” Three wishes: “Point Blank.”
For my post on ticket pricing, watch this space.
Big fucking deal. I read about a guy who was at the same show and has seen him 277 times since then. That’s 4x/year.
*I’m reminded of the story in No Nukes where Tom Petty is told that if he hears “Br–uu-ce” when he comes on, they are not booing him but calling for Bruce. “What’s the difference?” Petty said.
SETLIST
No Surrender
Ghosts
Prove It All Night
Letter To You
The Promised Land
Out in the Street
Candy’s Room
Kitty’s Back
Nightshift (Commodores cover)
Trapped (Jimmy Cliff cover)
The E Street Shuffle
Johnny 99
Last Man Standing
Backstreets
Because the Night
She’s the One
Wrecking Ball
The Rising
Badlands
ENCORE
Dirty Water (Standells cover)
Thunder Road
Born to Run
Rosalita
Glory Days
Dancing in the Dark
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
I’ll See You in My Dreams
