Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band Brisbane Entertainment Centre 26 February 2014

There are times when you know what’s coming, and this was definitely one of them. Of course, it has a fair bit to do with getting there early, which I tend to do for my own reasons, but I’d eaten down in the courtyard and made my way into the venue proper with a good hour and a half before the scheduled start when I recognised a familiar theme in the dull roar emanating from the main arena.

Familiar, yes. Fan-miliar, not so. Saturday Night Fever summarised everything I cordially loathed in the disco-dominated pre-punk era, when Bruce, along with Southside Johnny and Graham Parker were some of the very few lights on the musical horizon.

But it was definitely Stayin’ Alive, and they were definitely putting in the work to ensure they got it right, because, having done two complete side to side sweeps around the corridors I decided to grab a seat near Door Twelve and watch the parade rather than being part of it myself. That was around six-twenty-five, and you could still hear that familiar chorus, with lengthy pauses in between.

At this point, you’re forced into two conclusions. First, the show won’t be getting away on time, and Second, it’s probably going to start with Stayin’ Alive.

You didn’t need to be a genius to figure that out. In between Sydney and Brisbane Bruce had done two shows in the Hunter Valley, opening with Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee O-Dee and Spill the Wine. What they’d just been working up had been a rather tricky little arrangement, so you’d probably tend to start with it fresh in the memory banks rather than try to wing it somewhere further down the line.

We weren’t going to be starting at seven-thirty, either. Not that it was ever likely, though as I pointed out to the couple on my left once I’d claimed my seat, he had kicked off Sydney last year a fair bit before everyone had found their places.

It was comfortably after eight (8:05 or thereabouts) when the show started, which was (sort of) fine with me provided things ran long (tick, nearly midnight when it ended), and the neighbours were talkative (tick, both sides). The couple on my right were Festival Hall veterans, but Bruce virgins, so there was plenty to discuss that way, and the woman who claimed the seat on my left had been to all the shows on tour, and was progressing on to Auckland in the morning.

There was a voice in the dark thanking Australian audiences for their support this time around before a spotlight picked up an acoustic-strumming Bruce and trumpeter Curt Ramm. Well you can tell by the way I use my walk…

So we were right there. What I hadn’t entirely expected was the thunderous swagger as the rest of the band kicked in and the horn section went into overdrive, and the string section…

There, on the riser behind Max Weinberg’s drum kit was a formally dressed eight piece string section, sawing away on the violins. Students from the Conservatorium, you’d guess, more than likely on the experience of a lifetime. Not sure how it’ll look on the old classical music CV though.

Stayin’ Alive a la E Street Band hit a monster Motown derived groove, apparently got a tick of approval from Barry Gibb via Twitter, and looked set to get the farewell party well and truly under way. It was followed, semi-perversely by a quartet of songs from Greetings from Asbury Park that sort of put the kibosh on earlier theories that the first album was too obscure to get the full album treatment.

Four out of nine is close to half way. Blinded by the Light (twice last year), Mary Queen of Arkansas (not since 2009), Lost in the Flood (played in Melbourne, second show) and For You (last played Perth, 5 February) crop up in the rotation from time to time. The Angel (played just three times since 1972) is probably the only real obscurity.

So as they worked their way through It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City (great version, stinging back and forth guitar licks between Bruce and Miami Steve) and a downright funky Does this Bus Stop at 82nd Street? There was an inkling of a suspicion we were getting a Greetings album show by stealth. No one around me seemed to be objecting.

There had been a fair bit of Bruce sits down to tell us a yarn action through Sydney and Melbourne, and we got it again at the start of Growin’ Up. This time around it took the form of a meditation on teenage life, sitting in a bedroom dreaming of being a superhero in between sporadic dates with a certain Mister Trusty, which is far as the sex quotient goes.

The conclusion, of course, is that it’s all part of Growin’ Up, but it left this listener marvelling at the man’s ability to come up with a fairly coherent off the cuff rap on a regular basis (if three out of four shows qualifies as a regular basis. He’s always been known for story-telling, and he’s built that into some fairly monumental ones through the roll those tapes, bootleggers era (Pretty Flamingo being one) but now that we’re in the business of selling official concert downloads one assumes he’ll be needing a new one each time he sits down.

Figuring that out is just another pre-concert task, along with all those other little matters that need attention, like spending three-quarters of an hour in the sound check sorting out Stayin’ Alive…

He was back in storyteller mode at the end, cutting back to the starter with something along the lines of staying alive isn’t that easy … how do we stay alive?’ How do you stay alive inside?

He’s building to something, and it’s fairly obvious that something is Spirit in the Night, and that was the way it turned out.

But even where you think things are getting a tad formulaic there’s room for something new. Spirit in the Night gets regular airings in concert, and where the venue configuration gives Springsteen a walkway between the pit and the rest of the floor he’ll more than likely crowd surf back to the stage as Jake Clemons wails out a carbon copy of Uncle Clarence’s sax lines.

So he does. When he’s safely back on stage, he noticed something unfamiliar in his back pocket as the percussive lead in to High Hopes starts up. It’s someone’s mobile. He’s landed a stuffed kangaroo as well, but this one’s got him intrigued. That's a first. … I didn’t feel a thing. And in true show biz connect with your audience fashion he can’t get the thing to work. He hasn’t sorted out the intricacies of his iPhone either, and he never reads instructions.

That revelation came out earlier, but it’s more than relevant here.

With someone else this bit might come across as forced or staged, but with Springsteen, as with Joe Camilleri when I saw him with the Falcons in Townsville back around ’78 there’s an overarching enthusiasm for the job at hand that’ll have most of the audience willing to suspend disbelief.

But we are talking show biz, and there’s a new album, which means you get High Hopes and Just Like Fire Would around this stage almost every night. This is where I’d like to see an actual setlist as taped to the floor before the show begins. Just to see how structured these things are, and what goes in the spaces, you understand.

Around this point, however, it’s fairly obvious that plans are likely to be going out the window. There’s a fair bit of grab the sign action, with four or five hauled in, though you can’t actually see what they are. That’s the way I remember it, anyway, typing away a fortnight after the event listening to the download.

But you know there are four or five. You’re just not sure what they’re calling for. Other shows he’ll wave one. and it shows up on the big screen. Jolie Blon, for example. Here, you can’t see the detail, but you know there’s a bit of set list shake up on the horizon.

So what do we get?

You Can Look (But You’d Better Not Touch) with plenty of Bruce/Steve mugging action.

A great Sherry Darling with Ed Manion blasting away on lead sax.

Save My Love, originally recorded for Darkness on the Edge of Town and released years later on The Promise.  That’s pretty obscure. It was just too fucking happy to get on that album.

Fade Away, with the revelation that it’s Miami Steve’s favourite song and needs to be played somewhere along the line every tour to keep him happy.

And then we reach a critical turning point. It’s obvious the original plan was to run through The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, and you’d guess the string section had been called in because they’d be needed late in the piece. But the Greetings material earlier on mightn’t have gone down as well as expected, the signs are delivering an interesting mix, so which way to go?

The actual issue, and I’m being just a tad cynical here, might have been a curfew, but Bruce has been known to flout those. But it might be too late in the night to run through the album, presumably on the basis that he’d need a certain amount of usual suspects time to wind things up and send the punters away happy.

Maybe just the second side. That’d be fine with me since it’d guarantee a Rosalita. Added benefit: would mean the string section gets to come back to do the job they’d probably been hired for, assuming Stayin’ Alive was an afterthought. Yeah, we could do that, and the strings would fit in nicely, sort of thing.…

So there’s a choice. The second album, or the signs? You decide.

Now, from where I was sitting, the response to each question was pretty much the same, which is why I suspect we ended up getting the second run through the album in E Street Band history. Hard core fan heaven, and in Brisbane, of all places.

And so we’re off and running with a  rousing The E Street Shuffle and a tender 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy), both pretty much the way they should be. An orchestrated Kitty’s Back swings mightily, a real treat, and then there’s another. Wild Billy’s Circus Story. Bruce: Before we had horn players Garry Tallent played the tuba, and he does, since the tuba part is a key ingredient of the song. He’s a bit rusty, and who wouldn’t be. Wild Billy last got an airing in Dublin in July last year. Before that, you need to go back to 2009. (twice), 2008 (once) and a string of airings in 2005. Interestingly, according to Brucebase it wasn’t played at all between 1974 and 1990!

And then it’s time for the second side, which is, in a word, magnificent. A stately Incident On 57th Street, a rumble through Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) and the string section back out to wind things up on New York City Serenade. Put that way it mightn’t sound that good, but I’d simply point The Inquisitive Reader towards the recording and remarks on the Bruce’s Place email list that this was, possibly, the greatest Springsteen show ever. And the run through The Wild is a key part of the performance.

And, quite possibly, an explanation for what comes next. That album’s not likely to be over-familiar to much of the crowd, and that factor might have put the question mark beside the idea of doing it at all. In any case, having done it, and devoted some forty minutes to something that mightn’t have gone down that well with a fair chunk of the audience, the stops got pulled out for the next bit.

A string of guaranteed favourites, with Bruce doing the walk around bit in Darlington County, a
Waitin’ On A Sunny Day that features the bit I personally could do without but the crowd invariably love. The Rising is impassioned, The Ghost Of Tom Joad intense, and, again, Morello points to the Aboriginal flag on the shirt on that line.

The roar of the audience singalong on Badlands is as impassioned as any I can recall, a joyful, fist-pumping Glory Days gets them in again, and the anthemic Born To Run rolls majestically.

Playing through the recording again, Bobby Jean swaggers, Dancing In The Dark swings mightily, and Jake wails away through the play out that, as usual, has a good dozen people hauled out of the pit. You can hear the upswells of audience noise in the background.

But then it’s the final leg, with a Tenth Avenue Freezeout that takes Bruce through the audience one last time and a Highway To Hell that brings Eddie Vedder out on stage. He’d apparently spent the show watching from the Pit, seems, um, well lubricated, but is definitely there to have a good time. As, of course, is everybody else, so why wouldn’t he?

But the house lights are up, as they have been since around Born to Run, and there’s still time for one more.

Actually, in official terms there isn’t, but curfew time was studiously ignored a fair way back and Bruce isn’t going anywhere. He’s already done the Food Bank pitch, just before Highway, but he’s got a bit to say about the beaches south of Surfers Paradise (I’m guessing Kingscliff as the actual spot referred to) and one more track to play, Thunder Road, the last of (count ‘em) 118 songs played over eleven nights around Australia.

And it’s arguably the highlight of the four shows I managed this time around, stripped back, minimal acoustic guitar with the crowd in full voice. A magnificent end to the best show of the four.

But you can always find something to gripe about, and in this case it’s lack of consideration shown by two girls who decided to stand up during 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) and Kitty’s Back.
That’s not a crime in itself, and you mightn’t have objected if they’d got up to dance. But they were right in the front row of the floor section right behind (and above the level of) the pit. It’s not like there was anything in front to block their view. No one else standing anywhere on either side. Just two inconsiderate people who didn’t give a hoot about those immediately behind them…
End of rant.


Stayin' Alive
It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City 
Does This Bus Stop At 82Nd Street? 
Growin' Up 
Spirit In The Night 
High Hopes 
Just Like Fire Would 
You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch) 
Sherry Darling 
Save My Love 
Fade Away 

The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shufflerun through:
The E Street Shuffle 
4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) 
Kitty's Back 
Wild Billy's Circus Story 
Incident On 57th Street 
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) 
New York City Serenade 

Darlington County 
Waitin' On A Sunny Day 
The Rising 
The Ghost Of Tom Joad 
Badlands 
Glory Days 
Born To Run 
Bobby Jean 
Dancing In The Dark 
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out 
Highway To Hell (With Eddie Vedder)
Thunder Road

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band Brisbane Entertainment Centre 16 March 2013

Sunday, 17 March 2013

I've had people tell me I have a drinking problem, and I’ll reluctantly concede that (maybe) it's quite possible I do, but there's no way known I'd be leaving my seat during a Springsteen concert in a shout for shout quest for rum and coke. Years ago we had a coaching trinity in the local school cricket fraternity, where the third member, assuming himself to be the Holy Spirit, adopted the moniker Rum and Coke, but in the presence of a performer as messianic and downright riveting as Bruce Springsteen I would have thought sitting tight and taking in every detail was almost mandatory.

That taking in every detail enters considerations because the dude beside me, apart from the regular excursions to the bar, spent a great deal of time doing something that seemed to involve tapping away on a miniature keyboard on his smart phone. I'm not sure what it was, though it may well have been something involving Twitter or some other social media engine, because I was absorbed in taking in every detail, wasn't I?

And from the start of High Hopes, recorded for a Greatest Hits or similar package a fair while back there was plenty of detail to note, particularly given the much better perspective you get from looking down on the stage.

High Hopes was followed by a rousing and robust Promised Land, the seemingly obligatory when it's the title track of the current album and the label for the whole tour shebang Wrecking Ball, and Death to My Hometown, which was certainly rousing and delivered with passion aplenty, but I hope it gets a rest in Sydney on Monday night.

Out in the Street went down rather well in all quarters, while My City of Ruins and Spirit in the Night are another couple of tracks that look like candidates for every show status. City works well in the wake of recent events, and Spirit gives an opportunity for the Clarence/Jake thing, so I'm not objecting on either front.

In any case, how can you object when Bruce follows those two set pieces with Incident on 57th Street, The River, Atlantic City and Open All Night?

The first three of that quartet were merely great, but the rock and rolling Open All Night was, for me anyway, the highlight of the evening. It rocked, it rolled, it swung and it boogied set to bust without quite managing to actually do so. Bust, that is. It certainly delivered in spades on all other fronts. Great stuff.

After that, Darlington County and Shackled and Drawn might have been a let down, but they roared along just fine, maintaining a definite momentum into Waitin' on a Sunny Day where we got one of those moments that would probably look corny, fake and showbizzy in other hands, but worked beautifully here.

Earlier in proceedings during the soul interlude in My City of Ruins Bruce had been working the front of the stage when he'd paused midstream in a monologue about continuity to ask a kid who must have been right there in the front row how old he was. Eleven was the reply.

Bruce’s response? And we'll be doing this (or still doing this or words to that effect) when you bring your eleven year-old son to the show! Fine, fair enough, a bit of hyperbole perhaps, but it's a nice thought.

Now, midway through Sunny Day he hauls this kid up (maybe not the same kid, but if it wasn't there were two in very close front row proximity) and hands him the microphone. The kid's not going to be chased down by competing record companies any time soon, but he had a go, delivered a rather ordinary performance, and nobody minded because all the rest of us were probably just as bad. But it worked...


It was good to hear Racing in the Street, which is one of my favourite Bruce as everyday dude with a passion songs, and Badlands was another one I'd been hoping for that hadn't gained a guernsey on Thursday night. Tom Morello was a bit more subdued than he'd been on Thursday night, but really cut loose on The Ghost of Tom Joad, and Land of Hope and Dreams brought the main set to a stirring close. I would have liked to have been on the receiving end of one of those rock'n'holy roller raves Bruce has been known to deliver in LoHaD, but it didn't happen, so there you go.

A girl down the front had been brandishing a Blinded by the E Street Light sign all night, and that seemingly influenced the selection that opened the encore. Conversation revealed it was her favourite track, and she liked to dance to it, but Bruce had already decided to embark on a solo acoustic rendition, claiming to be unsure whether he could remember it and suggesting he'd probably stuff it up.

Again, like much Bruce's shtick, you might see this sort of thing as contrived and acted out, but if it is he's a mighty skilled contriver, and a better than average actor. A bit of finding his way, a visual oh yeah, that's it, and he was off into a reading that certainly looked unplanned.

There probably wasn't anything unplanned about the three song salvo that followed, though. Born to Run is one of those ones everybody probably expects to hear, and the encore is probably a good place to hear it, Bobby Jean was a fairly obvious choice when you're looking for a good time rocker to help wind things up, Dancing in the Dark is another of the obvious suspects and you can't help thinking Tenth Avenue Freeze-out is the finale of choice these days, with its opportunity to remember Clarence and Danny, so you can't really complain about getting it twice.

The remembering the ghosts that walk beside us bit didn't get the silence I seemed to recall from Thursday (I was sure it had happened but maybe it was my imagination) but that just underlines the variability of the Springsteen setlist.

There's a definite appearance of planning, and you'd have to reckon the set list is carefully planned in advance, delivering a variety of songs people sort of expect to hear (given the size of the back catalogue you can't include them all and have time for the other elements) along with a couple from the latest album, a few that reflect current concerns and a couple that are there for the hard core fans who do multiple nights and are looking for an obscurity or three.

At the same time, while everything's probably planned out, with the basic structure possibly being done well in advance, there's a definite appearance of a willingness to throw away the script and fly by the seat of the pants if the mood strikes.

As I remarked in my look at Thursday night's show, back at the start, I'd had slight and momentary misgivings about the wisdom of going for three in a row (not that there's much chance of getting to non-sequential multiples when you live where I do) but those had been pretty well blown away by the end of Thursday night.

Now, faced with the prospect of a single remaining show I'm regretting I didn't (at least) book a seat for Sydney Two. After the show on Monday those regrets will probably have multiplied, and next time I'll definitely be looking at more than three. Given my other tastes you might think that Bruce is a little close to the mainstream, but based on two shows and the prospect of a third, Bruce goes on to join Elvis Costello and Richard Thompson as next time I'm going to the lot of 'em candidates.

Neil Young's in there too, of course, and hopefully the next time Bruce and Neil tour they'll do so with sufficient separation between tours so certain old fogeys can rest and recuperate between tours as well as between shows...


Setlist:

High Hopes 

The Promised Land 

Wrecking Ball

Death to My Hometown

Out in the Street 

My City of Ruins

Spirit in the Night

Incident on 57th Street 

The River

Atlantic City

Open All Night

Darlington County 

Shackled and Drawn

Waitin' on a Sunny Day

Racing in the Street

Badlands 

The Ghost of Tom Joad

Land of Hope and Dreams 

Encore:

Blinded By the Light (solo acoustic) 

Born to Run

Bobby Jean 

Dancing in the Dark

Tenth Avenue Freeze-out

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band Brisbane Entertainment Centre 14 March 2013

Friday, 15 March 2013

In some ways, I guess, you might expect a juggernaut to take a bit of time to get moving. Inertia and all that, a need for time to gather momentum.

I wasn't completely blown away by the first couple of numbers in last night's Springsteen show, and it may have had something to do with the fact we're looking at a fifteen piece outfit coming off a three month break between tours. Takes a little bit of time to get things meshing tightly together and all that. I guess it happens.

Then again, it might be me. There were a couple of non-Bruce elements that impinged on the opening salvo from a quite magnificent outfit, and maybe it was more a case of Hughesy getting himself into the swing of things rather than Bruce and company needing time to get the gears meshing in the required manner.

I'd arrived in plenty of time, noted the existence of what looked like queues for the GA (non-seated) part of the house, and encountered an acquaintance from years back who has gone on to carve out his own little niche in the Music business. With the show allegedly due to start shortly after seven Watto cast an evaluatory eye over the situation and remarked that they'd be pushing to get things away on time.

In any case I was inside and seated comfortably before seven, watching from my space on the floor, trying to figure out why I wasn't where I thought I was supposed to be and wondering how long it was going to take to have them usher the crowd to their allocated seats once they'd deigned to leave the bar. By seven-thirty most of the crowd were in and seated, but there seemed to be a bit of coming and going. I hoped no one was watching and saying "Hang on, they're not all in yet."

That coming and going also reminded me that I really should have bought water on the way in. Do it now? Go back out, snaffle a bottle and probably miss the start? Be forced to negotiate my way back to the seat in the middle of the row past people out to max out their concert enjoyment? Naah. Sit it out and wait.

Lastly, having decided from the Neil experience that a seat in the banked sections on the side wasn't necessarily a bad thing, as people made their way to the allocated seats on the floor I realized there were going to be visibility issues once people in front started to stand.

Later checks on the seating arrangements delivered a clear distinction between A Reserve Lower Circle (Section 11) and B Reserve Floor (Section S11) that obviously hadn't been obvious when I booked the tickets three months back.

In any case, regardless of what actually caused the impression that things took a while to get moving, it doesn't matter because four numbers into the set everything was rocking along quite wonderfully in a set that ran to a good three hours.

Sirens blaring and everything bar the kitchen sink thumping and blaring along, We Take Care of Our Own was probably a predictable choice for an opener, but given that three month break (or the other factors, take your pick it's six of one and half a dozen of t'other) I had a definite sense of things not quite meshing the way they should, and following it with a cover of The Saints' Just Like Fire Would might have been a nod to one of Brisbane's most noted bands but wasn't likely to set the arena into paroxysms of ecstasy.

It's not as if The Saints are a household name in these parts and I, for one, wasn't familiar with the track, what with All Fools Day slipping past my guard back in what I've been known to label The Wilderness Years. When you're talking iconic Brisbane songs they aren't exactly thick on the ground. It might have been interesting to see an E Street version of I'm Stranded, but you wouldn't be holding your breath. Maybe the three guitars doing an acoustic Cattle and Cane, but that wouldn't have worked coming after We Take Care of Our Own, would it?

Wrecking Ball was starting to get things together, but when they launched into Badlands any bugs that had been there from the start had seemingly sorted themselves out and I was resigned to the fact that it was going to be an up and down sort of show depending on what the substantial section of the crowd in front of where I was sitting was doing and which part of it was doing it.

Now, I realize you've probably got no business sitting at a Bruce concert, but if you're going to put seats into a flattish area you either need a bit of a slope or else they shouldn't be there at all. End of story.

Badlands, however, was where things really got themselves together and from that point there was no (or very little, unless you were inclined to dwell on the start) looking back. You're possibly not inclined to roar along with We Take Care of Our Own early on (though you may well be doing so later), and Wrecking Ball's in much the same boat, but the anthemic Badlands, well, that's different. A chorus that begs you to give voice to the frustrations, and there was a goodly bunch of throats around the auditorium that did.

Having loosened things up that way, Death to My Hometown worked better than its Wrecking Ball colleagues had done earlier, and Hungry Heart got the voices roaring again. Not the sort of thing you'd have been looking for if you were taping the show, perhaps, but as far as getting the audience in is concerned...

There was a heartfelt introduction to My City of Ruins, referring to the natural disaster of Hurricane Sandy, and Spirit in the Night jived and gyrated along, working that R&B groove for all it was worth and bringing Jake Clemons into the spotlight role formerly filled by Uncle Clarence.

Clarence's passing brought its share of anguish at the time, and continues to do so as the encore demonstrated, but the most significant issue that came out of it was how to fill the sizeable hole he'd left in the stage presence. Replace one man with another and you're bound to get comparisons. Replace one man with something demonstrably different (a relative as part of an enhanced brass section) and you're adding some different sonic possibilities. Make the horn section something that's individually mic'ed rather than blowing into a fixed object and you've got further possibilities in the visual dynamics department.

It was around Spirit in the Night that those matters became a bit more evident as far as Hughesy was concerned, and The E Street Shuffle reinforced the same conclusion. Around this point in the show there was the first of a number of references to The E Street Band as a show band, and Bruce seemed quite determined to emphasize what I took to be a reference to the bands that worked the Irish circuit from the mid-fifties through to the end of the seventies and provided the inspiration for The Commitments in the movie and the Roddy Doyle novel.

I'd seen passing references to this particularly Irish phenomenon, but a wander over into the Wikipedia suggested an outfit based on the internationally popular six or seven piece dance band with a repertoire that ranged from rock and roll and country and western songs to traditional dixieland jazz ... Irish traditional and Céilidh music.

Usually comprising a rhythm section, lead guitar and keyboards augmented by a brass section, this isn't, from where I'm sitting, a million miles away from the E Streeters anyway, and when the Wikipedia goes on to refer to the fact that they usually played standing up, rather than sitting a la the earlier Big Bands, and created momentum by playing while stepping, dipping and bopping in the manner of Bill Haley & His Comets, and the more successful bands toured Irish clubs located in Britain, the United States and Canada.

Later comments in the lead up to The Apollo Medley made it quite clear Bruce and his Jersey Shore confreres spent a lot of time studying the great soul and R&B performers. looks like his Irish ancestry might have exposed him to something that didn't have quite the same cachet but is increasingly coming out in his more recent work.

There was definitely something familiar about the everybody lined out across the front of the stage routine that became a recurrent sight through the show and had a certain uncannily familiar je ne sais quoi about it. On subsequent reflection I'm inclined to put it down to a substantial dose of the Michael Flatleys...

That's not a put down, by the way, more an identification of what looks like a deliberate decision to add an element that definitely works in the theatrical sense.

Theatrics weren't quite as much to the fore during Jack of All Trades, which was one that got the crowd off their feet, but they were back up for Murder Incorporated and a very rocky Johnny 99. It was easy to pick the opening of Because the Night, and equally easy to roar along, and as the band headed off into She's the One I started wondering whether we might get some of the didgeridoo meets Bo Diddley beat Bruce used to favour in the seventies in the old Mona > She's the One medley back in the (bootleg) day.

Shackled and Drawn had things back in Celtic show band mode, and Waitin' on a Sunny Day had the audience participation factor right up where the tapers would prefer it wasn't before the Apollo Medley (basically, in this incarnation The Way You Do the Things You Do > 6345789) delivered an exercise in working the crowd for all it was worth. Having studied at the feet of a few masters, Bruce delivered a master class of his own.

The Rising rose and roared, Tom Morello came to the fore with some stunningly atmospheric guitar work on The Ghost of Tom Joad and Thunder Road brought the main part of the proceedings to a close in a suitably robust fashion.

There were a number of candidates for inclusion in the subsequent obligatory encore that had already appeared in the evening's set list, and We Are Alive mightn't have seemed an obvious candidate to kick off the encore proceedings, but I thought it worked rather well, with a bit of Bruce storytelling leading into the number itself. In these situations I think it pays to have them sit down and regather the strength before you get 'em back up on their feet again.

And that back up on the feet again is what you want to wind up an evening, isn't it?

Born to Run, Glory Days and Dancing in the Dark might all be likely candidates for the encore, and you might be looking for something less obvious if you're a gnarled veteran of multiple shows over numerous tours, but if Bruce decides to go with the more obvious candidates at my first show, that's fine with me. I'd been waiting something like thirty years in the wilds of North Queensland to break my Bruce duck, so whatever appeared first time around was fine with me.

Tenth Avenue Freeze-out as the closing track was, however, a master stroke, producing Bruce’s third foray into the crowd, images of Clarence and Danny on the big screen and delivering a master class as a great performer worked the audience into where he wanted them to wind things up.

I'd be lying if I denied that, around a minute and a half into We Take Care of Our Own, I wasn't having some misgivings about the wisdom of signing on for three shows, but Badlands took care of that, thank you very much, and I'll be out there bright and early for Saturday's show and on to Sydney.

Setlist:
We Take Care of Our Own
Just Like Fire Would
Wrecking Ball
Badlands
Death to My Hometown
Hungry Heart
My City of Ruins
Spirit in the Night
The E Street Shuffle
Jack of All Trades
Murder Incorporated
Johnny 99
Because the Night
She's the One
Shackled and Drawn
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
Apollo Medley
The Rising
The Ghost of Tom Joad
Thunder Road
Encore:
We Are Alive
Born to Run
Glory Days
Dancing in the Dark
Tenth Avenue Freeze-out