Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Perth 25 January 2017

Lying in bed, after around six hours’ sleep and an early morning delve into the Internet to seek out the set list, for some reason I could not help thinking of one of the innumerable cat related memes out there in cyberspace.

You've probably seen the one with the blow by blow run through a cat's day, side-by-side with a similar exercise detailing the dog's reaction to the successive events in his daily routine. 

The cat delivers a misanthropic commentary delivered from the regulation aloof point of view, laced with snarky comments and statements about the inherent injustice in the feline-human balance of power.

In contrast, each new event on the doggy day is greeted with capital letters, an abundance of exclamation marks, and a vocabulary largely comprised of wow, my favourite, and the best thing ever.

Now, I'm not drawing any comparisons between the other however many thousand fans who packed into the Perth Arena last night and the canine fraternity. 

These remarks are an attempt to figure out, in retrospect, why my reaction when the bloke next door asked what I thought was along the lines of I think it was the best show I've seen.

That's strange, because my previous show, in Brisbane at the end of the2014 tour, has, in some circles, been described as the greatest Springsteen show ever. 

On the surface in last night's performance, there was nothing unusual that stood out. 

Nothing that could even vaguely be tagged unexpected. 

Apart from a little slip half way through Mary's Place where The Boss forgot the words, sang the wrong verse, and admitted he had stuffed things up. 

It didn't affect the performance, though, and the actual slip was so slight that the average fan, caught up in the moment may well have missed it if Bruce didn't point it out.

And, on the way out of the arena I couldn't help thinking that he'd run a tad under the three hour mark rather than landed in the territory between three hours and three and three quarters.

THe only thing that even vaguely resembled a surprise came after Roy Bittan’s piano flourishes kicked off New York Serenade. 

The stage lights came up to reveal a string section, but that would not have been a surprise if I had delved into descriptions of Sundays show, which featured the same opener and probably included and identical string section.

The other thing that was clearly obvious from the get go was that this tour features a well trimmed, hard-core E Street band. 

No Tom Morello. 

No backup choir and percussionist. 

The four or five piece sports section is gone, and Jake Clemons handles all those duties on his lonesome ownsome.

But who knows? 

Some of those missing elements from the last two tours could be cooling that their heels stateside, waiting to fly out to join the tour’s east coast component.

Or, alternatively, Bruce has made the package affordable for the Australian promoter by reducing the cost of accommodating of transporting the expended E Street Almost Orchestra.

Interestingly, this nine piece version rocked just as hard, and possibly harder, then the 16 or 17 piece outfits from the previous tours.

Equally interesting is the fact that in between Hughesy’s initial quest for last night’s setlist and this point of his review, this note appeared on backstreets.com.

Night 2 of 3 in Perth may have been shorter, under three hours, but a vastly different set: 16 songs not played opening night including "Wrecking Ball," "My City of Ruins," "Murder Incorporated," and "Death to My Hometown.”

Readers seeking an abundance of purple prose and a plethora of photographs are pointed towards the source of that quotation. 

Once the reviewer has delivered on his “more to come” there will be a far more detailed account than anything you will find here.

So, some impressions from a quick run through the set list. 

First, after reports of explicit political statements on Sunday, last night Bruce said practically nothing. He delivered the standard food bank appeal in an identical almost word for word version that had Western Australia instead of the other state or city identifiers I've heard elsewhere.

Second, it seemed the whole set list was preordained. 

Three or four songs in, I was about to remark to my right-hand neighbour that signs requesting songs were conspicuous by the absence. A few turned up later in the piece, but they were vastly outnumbered by requests for dance space on the stage beside various E Streeters.

Third, there was no sign, not even an inkling, of Waiting on a Sunny Day and the show was much better for it. While the sight of some kid living out his or her inner rock star goes down well with the crowd, it also sucks the momentum built up through the rest of the show right out of the reader. 

Bruce and the band inevitably and invariably restore it, of course, but last night they didn't have to.

Fourth, My Love Will Not Let You Down, which I have not experienced in concert before, absolutely rocked. As did Mary's Place, the other addition to Hughesy’s Springsteen Song Matrix.

Fifth, as Bruce and the band stormed through the songs that deal with the factors that brought about the Trump ascendancy (particularly Death to my Hometown) they did so with a fire that rendered further political commentary basically unnecessary. 

Atlantic City may not have sat under that “political songs” banner before, but last night it definitely seemed to. Actually, it was probably there all along without anyone noticing until the landscape changed.

And that, I think, is that for the first of nine shows on my version of Summer ’17 Down Under.

The setlist:

New York City Serenade (with strings)

Prove It All Night

My Love Will Not Let You Down

Two Hearts

Wrecking Ball

Out in the Street

Hungry Heart

My City of Ruins

Mary's Place

Atlantic City

Johnny 99

Murder Incorporated

Death to My Hometown

The River

Downbound Train

I'm on Fire

Because the Night

The Rising

Badlands

Thunder Road

* * *

Jungleland

Born to Run

Dancing in the Dark

Tenth Avenue Freeze-out

Shout

Rosalita

Bruce Springsteen Down Under 2014: Some Preliminary Remarks

There are, I guess, two approaches to writing a concert review, and another two when you’re looking at a run of four shows by the same artist over a relatively short period of twelve days.

As far as the review goes, you can set out to set things down while they’re fresh in your mind, or, alternatively, give yourself a big of time to reflect and analyse.

With four shows in twelve days there’d be a definite case for doing an all-in-one assessment, and another for looking at things on a show by show basis.

There are acts out there where all in one would definitely be the way to go, given a reluctance to shake things up too much, but that’s not the case with Mr Springsteen, as a glance at the accompanying song matrix might suggest.

Actually, where Bruce is concerned, there’s room for both approaches since there are common elements in a show that varies significantly from night to night.

As far as fresh in your mind versus reflect and analyse later is concerned, there are a number of factors this time around that run against the fresh in your mind option.

With a show that runs between three and four hours, kicks off significantly after the notional seven-thirty start and is followed by an hour-long trip back to the accommodation you’re not going to manage too much on the night apart from transferring your scrawled set list into a digital format. Late nights usually mean late rises, and having company with you tends to rule out too much writing activity in the morning if the someone has an itinerary of their own that needs to be attended to.

So it’s much easier to do the fresh in your mind bit when you’re travelling solo. It also helps to have the accommodation reasonably close to the venue, something that never applies when you’re talking Brisbane Entertainment Centre.

Sydney Entertainment Centre or the State Theatre, on the other hand, have very good options right in the neighbourhood, so you can spend the hour that would otherwise be devoted to the commute on recording the details.

So there are a couple of reasons for a significant time lapse between action and recollection, without the new wild card that enters the equation as far as Bruce is concerned.

Until this year you could obtain what have been termed magnetic memories or digital diaries of shows you’ve attended, but that meant waiting for a stealth taper to make their recording available and then waiting to arrange a copy of it.

Not any more. From the start of the High Hopes tour, it’s possible to purchase a digital download of most Springsteen concerts. Ideally, it should be all Springsteen concerts, but one notes the Unavailable beside the second Melbourne show.

Bruce’s Official Store notes that: There are some instances when a live show will not be recorded. The live recordings available for purchase will have the price for that recording shown next to them. Recordings will be available for purchase 2-4 Days after the show.

 At $A11 for the MP3 version and $17 for the FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) of a three and a half hour show that’s pretty reasonable.

It also adds another little cash cow to the bottom line, converting something that’s more than likely done for archival purposes into another revenue stream. With set lists appearing reasonably quickly and an obsessive fan base that would run somewhere around a hundred thousand copies of a show that had an interesting setlist.

And Bruce shows always have an interesting setlist, which is the reason Hughesy’s show count is up to seven.

Actually, as I’ve remarked at length in these parts and elsewhere, that count should be up around the dozen mark, or fourteen if I’d decided to head across The Ditch to Auckland.

That pales into insignificance beside the really devoted (and cashed up) fans, where the show count runs up into the hundreds.

The approach that different artists take to their set lists has been a matter of some interest to me over the years, and with Bruce it presents a particularly interesting little bundle of contradictions. For a start he manages to be, simultaneously, professional and spur of the moment improvisational.

We know there’s a setlist.

There has to be, otherwise there’d be no point in having someone tape sheets of paper to the stage in front of the spots occupied by the (count ‘em) four guitarists, bass player and violinist Soozie Tyrell. One assumes there’s something similar for the other dozen players a little further back.
And it’s probably safe to assume three more things.

The first one is that what gets taped down on the stage is an actual setlist, more than likely listing a specific sequence of songs, possibly with a question mark or a /sign after some things that aren’t quite set in concrete.

One assumes Bruce has come up with this based on some notion that serves as a mental organiser, like the album shows this time around. In any case, he knows what he was thinking when he set that out, and it’s safe to assume he’s open to flexibility if a better idea comes up or things aren’t working out as expected.

The second assumption that seems safe is that the support crew has the technology to either deliver the details of any song that has ever been done by Bruce and Band, or do that for any song after a particular point in time. You might guess that some of the really obscure early material hasn’t been documented that way. It seems equally safe to assume that there’s some form of prompt available to remind everyone about the way that one goes.

On that basis you’d figure there’s almost nothing that’s totally out of the question, but some things are more likely than others.

Third, now that we’re talking downloads there’s an extra justification for shaking things up. Not that it’s a prime consideration. Over time there’ll be some form of data about the actual patterns in the sales of downloads.

You’d guess that the four album shows from this tour would have been big sellers in that department, and since the Born to Run show in Melbourne is unavailable at the moment, that’s the most likely candidate for another album show.

Or maybe The River spread over consecutive nights.

The notion that you might shift x number of copies of an album show doesn’t mean you’re going to get one, and it doesn’t rule out album shows in the future if that album has already been done.
And the same way, it seems safe to assume that the shows that include, say, Highway to Hell, Friday on my Mind, Don’t Change and Stayin’ Alive will probably have more appeal than ones that don’t.

That doesn’t explain why they were played, but it does mean there’s a reason to throw in a new cover or dig up a genuine obscurity.

But in any case this run of four shows has made for a genuinely interesting experience and I’ll be looking to repeat the exercise next time Bruce is oiut this way.

And it’s safe to assume he’ll be back.

Two tours in two years mightn’t mean he’ll be back to make it three out of three at the start of 2015, but we know a Bruce tour down under can turn a profit, so the promoters will be happy to bring him back.

And, of course, the northern hemisphere winter raises its own issues as far as the logistics of touring are concerned.

So it seems safe to assume there’ll be at least one more tour down this way unless there’s some significant health issue or other disruptor. The big questions involve when, where and how many can Hughesy get to? Multiple nights in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide or Perth provide an excuse to head there for a couple of days, n’est ce pas?

So, over to the show by show recount.