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 & 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 Allphones Arena Sydney 19 February 2014

At this point we start to recognise that Bruce, or someone close to him, has a fair working knowledge of Australian rock history. Not necessarily a deep one, but with The Saints turning up in the setlist on a regular basis through Just Like Fire Would and nods to AccaDacca earlier in the tour you’d have to put a tick in the box beside general awareness.

Highway to Hell kicked off proceedings in Perth, which, if I recall correctly (and I’m not inclined to check) was Bon Scott’s home town, and they did it again to start the first show in Melbourne, another city with a reasonable AC/DC connection.

So you might not be surprised to find Friday on my Mind kicking off proceedings in The Easybeats’ home city, but it runs a little deeper than that.

There was an interview in (I think) RAM magazine where Bruce rated it as one of the all-time great rock songs, said he’d love to play it live but had a monstrous degree of difficulty in figuring out the guitar part. That would have been back in the days when guitar duties were shared between Bruce and Miami Steve, who’s not the greatest technical exponent of guitar intricacies or between Bruce and Nils Lofgren, who’s considerably more proficient.

But with (count ‘em) four guitarists available on stage and Soozie Tyrell if you happen to need a fifth, maybe some of those issues disappear.

In any case it was an ideal opener, and following it with Out on the Street, which seems to have been his attempt to have been his attempt to work the same territory (according to this interview with, of all people, Molly Meldrum, when I wrote it I was trying to copy one of my all time favourite songs, “Friday On My Mind” by the Easybeats … In my town, there was a particular place you drove to on Friday that was filled with teenagers and “Out In the Street” was my attempt at that writing about that image but with a Beatles type structure) definitely kept the vibe going, as did Cadillac Ranch. Those two aren’t exactly obscurities, but they’re not numbered among the obvious suspects for the set list rotation either.

Which is more than you can say for High Hopes, Just Like Fire Would and Spirit in the Night. The first two, however, are both on the new album, with The Saints’ cover apparently (I don’t listen to the radio) picking up airwave exposure. I could have done without either or both of ‘em, but if Bruce is going to preface Spirit with another reminiscence about something or other, that’s fine with me.

This time around it was an exposition about toilet technology he claimed to have never seen before, and the man is obviously a rather talented story teller. In any case there are a couple of aspects that spring Spirit into the usual suspects particularly, as was the case here, in a setting that allows him to crowd surf back to the stage while Jake wails away on sax. Jake wasn’t actually doing the wailing this time, having returned to the States following a family bereavement, but Ed Manion worked the same territory just as well.

Kinda corny once you’ve seen it a couple of times, but it still gets you in. Regular rituals and all that.

And when we’re talking regular rituals, with Born in the USA and Born to Run getting go to whoa run throughs in Melbourne, you’d probably figure Darkness on the Edge of Town for the same treatment here. I hadn’t really been overwhelmed by the decision to run through BitUSA, though I was probably one of a very small minority in that regard. BTR is slightly different because there are tracks there that don’t quite qualify as the usual setlist suspects (Night, Meeting Across the River) and it does have the title track, She’s the One and Jungleland.

But if I’d had to pick an album to get the treatment I would definitely have gone for Darkness. Like a shot. For one reason. Candy’s Room. But we’ll get to that, won’t we?

For all the glorification of America and things American, there’s a grimness lurking under the veneer, and we’ve got some of the same here, which makes the bookends of Badlands and Darkness as appropriate in this time and place as they were when they were written in the mid-seventies.

So we start with an incendiary Badlands, always a concert favourite, run the angst quotient up to the max with an angry Bruce guitar solo for Adam Raised a Cain and drop things back a tad as pianist Roy Bittan shines on Something in the Night.

And then there’s Candy's Room, a perfect statement of obsessive lust. Every time I hear that rattling rustle on the cymbals …

But it’s the sequencing and the light and shade that makes Darkness such a great album. After that howl of lust things drop back to everyday life and quiet despair for Racing in the Street and the reading here was magnificent, the instrumental ending stately and immaculately paced.

From there, The Promised Land offered the usual affirmation, always a concert highlight because if you’re the sort of person who goes to Springsteen shows you do believe in the promised land, don’t you. And you’ll roar out the chorus with the rest of the believers. Anticipation of hope out of despair is what it’s all about, but the frustration and mixed emotions of everyday existence are still there, as Factory reminds us.

Streets of Fire was committed and fiercely intense, Prove It all Night for my money did, especially during Nils Lofgren’s solo and Darkness on the Edge of Town wrapped things up neatly.

And to think we weren’t that far past half way through the show…

Darlington County balanced things up nicely after the intensity of Darkness, but it was a momentary thing. It did get Bruce off into the stalls eating potato chips and skolling beer but Shackled and Drawn delivers a reminder of what we’re still up against.

Which brings us to Waitin' on a Sunny Day, which, to be honest, I wish it didn’t. Sure, it’s a joyous little singalong, and you can get a certain amount of interest seeing if you can spot the kid Bruce is going to grab out of the pit to have a sing. But it’s becoming formula, and while it gives the crowd a buzz I wasn’t sad to see it missing from the first show in Melbourne.

There are probably those who feel much the same way about the Morello factor in The Ghost of Tom Joad, but it’s obvious that Bruce and Tom have a message, and it’s fairly pointed when Morello points to the Aboriginal flag on his shirt around the line about if there’s someone struggling to be free…

It’s an activist song, and played with an activist rage and intensity.

And it’s entirely appropriate to follow it with the anthemic Land of Hopes and Dreams.

That was it for the main set, but time wasn’t up yet. Take a bow, line the four guitarists out across the front of the stage, count the band into a chiming riff and watch the gradual recognition as the pincers realise they’re getting the INXS signature tune Don't Change.

Actually, you can hear the recognition on the recording, and it’s a bloody good reading. As stated earlier, Bruce obviously has a fair working knowledge of classic Australian rock.

The house lights were up for Born to Run and, for once, something went wrong on stage.  The band were in full flight and suddenly the wheels fell off. Don’t know why, but Bruce called a halt, they started again, got it right and the song was followed by the announcement that it was the fastest version ever. Or words to that effect.

But they still weren’t done. There isn’t a whole lot you can say about Dancing in the Dark and
Tenth Avenue Freezeout once you’ve seen the routines a couple of times, but they get the crowd up and moving and Shout  maintains the frenzy, which is what you want at the end, isn’t it?

But if that side of things seems stage managed (and it certainly is) there’s room for spontaneity.

There’s a bow, the band depart and Bruce appears, acoustic guitar and harmonica brace in place. Fine, we’re in for This Hard Land or something. Can’t be The Promised Land, that was on Darkness.

But wait. There’s a sign requesting Surprise Surprise, for Eddie, who’s just turned twenty-three, the age at which, Bruce reminisces he’d just written Blinded By The Light, noting my brain was fucking scrambled at the time. And with Surprise, Surprise we’re still not done. He hasn’t done the Food Bank public service announcement, and he’s got to play something after that to finish off.

Actually, after a remark about the song, you’d think Blinded By the Light might get a guernsey, but no, they wheel out a pump organ and it’s Dream Baby Dream, a mesmerising reading built around looped notes that gradually built until Bruce stepped away from the keyboard and let the machine do its thing as he belted out the lyrics. Stunning.

Setlist:
Friday on my Mind
Out on the Street
Cadillac Ranch
High Hopes
Just Like Fire Would
Spirit in the Night

Darkness on the Edge of Town run through:
Badlands
Adam Raised a Cain
Something in the Night
Candy's Room
Racing in the Street
The Promised Land
Factory
Streets of Fire
Prove It all Night
Darkness on the Edge of Town

Darlington County 
Shackled and drawn
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
The Ghost of Tom Joad
Land of Hopes and Dreams
Don't Change
Born to Run
Dancing in the Dark
Tenth Avenue Freezeout
Shout
Surprise Surprise
Dream Baby Dream

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band AAMI Park Melbourne 16 February 2014

In the break between Hunters & Collectors and the start of the main set one couldn’t help speculating about the possibility of another album show this time around.

As I pointed out to the knowledgeable gent on my left I could have done without Born in the USA the previous night, largely on the basis that everything on the album was so well known. Those considerations might not apply to another album, and if we were going to run through another album the question was which one.

It was, I suspected, a no-brainer. Greetings from Asbury Park was possible, with most tracks appearing in the set lists reasonably regularly. Ditto for The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. Both possible, but not that likely.

Born to Run or Darkness at the Edge of Town would, on the other hand, be highly likely.

Discount The River, unless they decided to do it in two parts, Nebraska probably didn’t fit into the E Street Band setting, we’d already had Born in the USA and everything after that was, I suspected, able to be ruled out on some basis or other.

The eventual consensus was that if it was going to happen it would have to be a classic single album and, really there were only three of them. So it was a case of wait and see…

And here’s what we got:

Born in the USA, Badlands,  Lucky Town, Roulette, Growin' Up, Wrecking Ball, Death to my Hometown, High Hopes, Just Like Fire Would,  Lost in the Flood, Spirit in the Night

Born to Run in sequence: Thunder Road,  Tenth Avenue Freezeout,  Night,  Backstreets, Born to Run, She's the One,  Meeting across the River,  Jungleland

Heaven's Wall, Waitin' on a Sunny Day, The Rising, The Ghost of Tom Joad, Land of Hopes and Dreams

Encore: We are Alive,  Ramrod, Bobby Jean,  Dancing in the Dark, Twist and Shout, This Hard Land (solo acoustic)

What we didn’t get was an official download. From what I can gather there were issues with the actual recording, which is interesting because everything sounded fine from where I was up in the nosebleeds. Better, on the run through Born to Run than it was through the early part of Born in the USA the night before. Strange.

So where with the other shows I’ve been able to sit back and relive the evening over and over, tapping away as the sound washes over, with nothing to cue the memories, the memories haven’t been coming.

Bruce hit the stage a little after everyone else, remarked he was late for my own show and the band kicked into Born In The USA and Badlands before hauling out Lucky Town and Roulette. That, from where I was sitting, looked to be pretty standard operating procedure. Two to kick things off, two for the hard core fans. Fine.

Bruce didn’t actually pull up a pew as Roy Bittan’s piano picked out the introduction to Growing Up, but he did hunker down in story-teller mode with a tale about a grandmother and a toddler who was allowed to sit up watching TV until the wee hours. Watching through The Late Show into The Late Late Show and on to The Late Late Late Show, which preceded a Superman cartoon around three in the morning.

These nocturnal habits, of course, weren’t conducive to standard sleep patterns and Bruce is able to attribute his lack of academic sense to Grandma’s failure to ensure he got to bed at a reasonable hour, Fortunately, of course, he ended up in a job that allows him to go to bed at three in the morning and get up at three in the afternoon.

So there you are. It’s all Grandma’s fault.

From there I couldn’t help feeling Wrecking Ball and Death To My Hometown had echoes of the sign request that delivered Factory the night before. High Hopes and Just Like Fire Would seem to turn up as a pigeon pair around this stage of proceedings, and there they were again. Must be obligatory to play something from the new album around here, and these two are the ones that work best.

Or something.

But after that dash of predictability, if that’s what it was, you might need to change things around a bit. A sign request delivered Lost In The Flood and another monologue, this time about getting a bit in the late fifties and early sixties, frozen over lakes, parked cars and the Jersey Devil lead nicely into a swaggering Spirit In The Night.

More or less as anticipated, that led nicely into a run through the Born to Run album, pretty much a no-brainer after Born in the USA the night before. Actually, I enjoyed this one better than the previous one. Slightly more obscure songs in some places, and Bruce was going to need something other than Thunder Road, Tenth Avenue Freezeout and Born To Run in the run home at the end of the show. We were almost certain to get two out of those three anyway, so it was handy to knock them over a little early.

But the full band Thunder Road rocked, Freeze-out was as good as it always is, and it’s always excellent. It was good to hear Night and Backstreets was one of the highlights of the night.

There’s probably nothing you can say about Born To Run that hasn’t been said before, while She’s The One rocked its Bo Diddley beat as hard as nails. From there a stately Meeting Across The River and a stunning Jungleland demonstrated one of the good things about a non-BitUSA album show.

You get a couple of relative rarities. Pity there’s no official recording to remind me of the highlights.

And with the album out of the way it was time to shape things up for the run home and Heaven’s Wall definitely got that particular party started. We’d missed Waitin’ on a Sunny Day, with the seemingly obligatory haul up a kid to sing the chorus bit, and you can’t expect to get lucky two nights in a row. But at least it was two kids this time. Maybe he was making up for missing it the night before.

But this is more or less set piece time, and while The Rising, The Ghost of Tom Joad and Land of Hope and Dreams certainly qualify in that department you can’t knock the intensity in the performance, particularly on Tom Joad, where the live environment provides an intensity at this stage of proceedings that you can’t turn on and off in the studio.

All those critics who’ve complained about the album version missing something need look no further than that last sentence. You might take exception to Tom Morello’s guitar contortions too, but that hasn’t happened to me. Yet. After seven times. In fact, to be honest, I till rate it as a highlight.

And Land of Hope and Dreams was a fine way to round off the main set.

Now, from what I could gather, the standard practice through the rest of the tour had been to keep the thing rolling through to a single solo acoustic encore right at the end, but here, with two key agents in the formula delivered earlier, we got an actual encore break, during which, according to one report I saw, Bruce was handed a note to say the curfew kicked in in ten minutes.

As if.

Acoustic guitar in hand We Are Alive was dedicated to the spirits of the recently departed Nelson Mandela and Pete Seeger. With that attended to it was time to get the party started and there’s no doubt Ramrod, Bobby Jean, Dancing in the Dark and Twist and Shout did that.

The people around me in the nose bleeds were starting to move by this time, and the lateness of the hour suggested it might be an idea to follow suit, but there was no way I was actually leaving the scene until the last notes had been played and sung.

I was pretty close to the exit as Twist and Shout drew to a triumphant conclusion, but there were empty seats nearby, which proved very handy when it came to catching a threadbare and absolutely heartfelt reading of This Hard Land, another of the night’s highlights.

And again, we’re left bemoaning the absence of the official recording. There’s a torrent out there somewhere though. We’ll have to wait and see how the bandwidth thing pans out over the rest of the billing period.

Born in the USA
Badlands
Lucky Town
Roulette
Growin' Up
Wrecking Ball
Death to my Hometown
High Hopes
Just Like Fire Would
Lost in the Flood
Spirit in the Night

Born to Run in sequence:
Thunder Road
Tenth Avenue Freezeout
Night
Backstreets
Born to Run
She's the One
Meeting across the River
Jungleland

Heaven's Wall
Wait in' on a Sunny Day
The Rising
The Ghost of Tom Joad
Land of Hopes and Dreams

Encore:
We are Alive
Ramrod
Bobby Jean
Dancing in the Dark
Twist and Shout
This Hard Land (solo acoustic)

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band AAMI Park Melbourne 15 February 2014

Maybe it’s the statement of a jaded old cynic but I can’t help thinking the presence of not one but two opening acts in the tour’s largest venue had as much to do with the tour’s bottom line as it did with a desire to break an emerging act to a wider audience (Dan Sultan) or acknowledging a reunited musical icon (Hunters & Collectors).

News that H&C were getting back together for the Melbourne shows on the Springsteen tour probably helped sell out the first show, which in turn meant a second became a possibility, but the thirty-odd dollar differential between roughly equivalent seats in Melbourne and Sydney multiplied by the thirty-two thousand or so probably comes to a fair bit more than the two opening acts collected for their afternoon appearances.

I must admit Dan Sultan didn’t do a whole lot for me, delivering around fifty minutes of what I thought of as heavy murri thunder that rocked along but didn’t hit any peaks as far as I was concerned. I wouldn’t be going out of my way to catch his set the following night.

The Hunters, on the other hand, rocked out, hit a couple of peaks and warmed things up nicely, if warmed up is the appropriate terminology given an hour or so before the headliner hit the stage.

I’d been half expecting a repeat of last year’s setup, where Bruce’s pre-show playlist went out over the PA with Big Boss Man signalling the emergence of the Brucester, but here we had nothing over the PA with upswells of crowd noise as those in the pit sighted something that might signal the start.

Having checked out set lists from Perth and Adelaide I wasn’t that surprised to find things heading off on the Highway to Hell, and if I’d checked the Melbourne gig guide I mightn’t have been surprised to find Eddie Vedder on stage roaring out the chorus and participating in the verse action.

I saw a suggestion somewhere that it was delivered with all the zeal of an encore, but, really, that’s what you’re always likely to get at the start of a Springsteen show. Get that accelerator straight down onto the floor and don’t let it up too much unless you’re looking to add a little light and shade dynamics.

Vedder was still on stage for Darkness on the Edge of Town, which maintained the momentum nicely and once he was gone there was a second set piece in the form of a Badlands that brought Jake Clemons into the spotlight. On the recording, you can hear the roar as he does.

The recording also gives a sense of the audience involvement and having got them in the temptation would be to hold ‘em there. But it’s early on in a three hour show, and these things require some pacing, so he’s off onto a relative obscurity in the form of a gritty Seeds that rocks along mightily with a killer horn driven groove.

There’s another set piece section as Max Weinberg rides the cymbals and percussionist Everett Bradley hits the front of the stage for High Hopes complete with the old Hendrix chews the strings bit in Tom Morello’s nod solo and an audience singalong in Just Like Fire Would.

And then, for me, the highlight. We know Bruce does sign requests. Has been doing so for a while. Mixes things up very nicely, but Jolie Blon? Holy dooley!

Very obscure, very obscure! remarks Bruce as he takes the sign. The drums roll, and then they’re off into a remarkably concise reading of a track originally cut for The River and then hived off to a Gary U.S. Bonds album. Remarkably, given the obscurity, he still gets the audience singing along. Not that the chorus is difficult, you understand, but getting the best part of thirty thousand people singing along to something they’ve never heard before takes some doing.

Don’t believe me? It’s right there on the recording, as is the roar as another sign delivers Hungry Heart, followed by the crowd sing along at the start. And it’s not that far below what it was for Jolie Blon.
I could, on the other hand, have done without the go to whoa run through Born in the USA, though there were probably thirty thousand people out there who’d disagree. Depends what you’re there for, and I’m there for the surprises and the view of proceedings which is kind of difficult when you’ve got three boogieing women in between you and the stage.

There were some audio distortion issues through Born in the USA, and they’re there on the concert recording as well, but nowhere near as prominent as they were on the night.

Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, and most of my objection to running through the album lay in the notion that it’s heavy on what you might term the usual suspects, tracks that turn up in the set list on a regular basis. Consulting my matrix, however, reveals just about everything except Dancing in the Dark, Bobby Jean, Darlington County and Glory Days has had a single airing at the seven shows I’ve attended to date.

But no one else was objecting.

There was the predictable roar of recognition as they started into Cover Me and Darlington County, and Working on the Highway kept the trio in front of me boogieing.

I’ve never really rated Downbound Train, and again I guess I was in the minority, but I'm on Fire simmered nicely and No Surrender was gloriously triumphant. Bobby Jean maintained the momentum, I'm Goin' Down went as the script suggested it should, and Glory Days was back in the gloriously triumphant singalong mode.

Which brought us to the haul ‘em up from the pit to dance on stage bit and Dancing in the Dark. It’s another one of the regular rituals that get spiced up occasionally. This time the spicing came in the form of a couple of cross-dressers in Afro wigs hauled up to dance with Afro’d backing singer Cindy Mizelle.  I guess it takes all kinds, but according to Bruce it’s Only in Australia.

But if there was a highlight in the album run through for me it arrived in a beautifully austere reading of My Home Town. It also set things up for what could only be interpreted as a political statement as Bruce grabbed a sign requesting Factory for all the workers in the car industry who have lost their jobs.

We didn’t just get Factory. There was a Bruce reminiscence about his father’s days working in the Ford plant in Brunswick New Jersey back when Bruce was just a little tacker, a broadside at the reckless and greedy people who tipped the world into turmoil during the Global Financial Crisis and a meditation on the meaning of work and the importance of work in your life before calling for the song in the key of F.

After that, Shackled and Drawn came as absolutely no surprise and an impassioned The Ghost of Tom Joad worked the way it doesn’t (quite) on the High Hopes album. It usually does, but coming off what had gone before it seemed to have a little extra zing. So, for that matter, did The Rising and Land of Hopes and Dreams.

By this point, we were well and truly in the building to the climax stage of the show. Heaven's Wall continued to do that, and the house lights were up for Born to Run. Not that it made a lot of difference to band or audience. It definitely didn’t make any difference to me, not when the track was followed by Rosalita and Moon Mullican’s Seven Nights to Rock and rock they certainly did.

They were three hours into the show when they started into Rosalita, time, as far as Bruce was concerned, to get the party started. Rosalita and Seven Nights were certainly the goods in that department, and while the Tenth Avenue Freezeout video montage had the regular tribute to Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici it was a joyous celebration rather than sombre reflection.

Shout wound up the main proceedings with Bruce possessed by my 30-year-old self and invoking memories of Johnny O’Keefe (at least as far as Hughesy was concerned). There are definitely worse forms of demonic possession.

Unlike the multiple encores last time around, the end of the main set and subsequent public service announcement was followed by a single track, an acoustic guitar and harmonica solo rendition of Promised Land.

And that, boys and girls, was that.

Setlist:
Highway To Hell (With Eddie Vedder)

Darkness On The Edge Of Town (With Eddie Vedder)

Badlands 

Seeds 

High Hopes 

Just Like Fire Would 

Jole Blon 

Hungry Heart 

Born In The U.S.A. 

Cover Me 

Darlington County 

Working On The Highway 

Downbound Train 

I'm On Fire 

No Surrender 

Bobby Jean 

I'm Goin' Down 

Glory Days 

Dancing In The Dark 

My Hometown 

Factory 

Shackled And Drawn 

The Ghost Of Tom Joad 

The Rising 

Land Of Hope And Dreams > People Get Ready 

Heaven's Wall 

Born To Run 

Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) 

Seven Nights To Rock 

Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out 

Shout 

Thunder Road

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.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band Allphones Arena Sydney 18 March 2013

Tuesday, 19 March 2013 

I didn't check the time when The Stones' Big Boss Man boomed out across the Allphones Arena, but I'm reliably informed it was 7:25, and a mistake at the end had me thinking we'd had a show that clocked in well over three hours, but the times on display in the Olympic Park station and a subsequent check on the phone suggested a running time around the two and three quarter hour mark.

That might have made it the shortest of the three but what it dropped in time it definitely made up for in sheer oomph.

It also put the kibosh on any notions that someone backstage had been watching the audience filing in and saying Hang on, they're not all in yet.

Or maybe someone had been and Bruce decided enough was enough.

In any case, the three song opening salvo had each title getting a first airing for the tour. American Land was a belated St Patrick's Day offering, and had me reflecting how much Bruce's current style, repertoire and modus operandi has been shaped by The Seeger Sessions album and extensive touring. That has probably been obvious for a while, but American Land and the mid-set Pay Me My Money Down helped underline it.

But it's not all new direction, and a Prove It All Night had the long term fans roaring along before a sign request produced Adam Raised a Cain. Bruce actually grabbed two placards from the pit, returning the one that produced Adam, and stowing the other, seemingly for future reference or souvenir purposes. It'd be interesting to know what was on the orange Day-Glo one...

Things seem to have settled down into a regular pattern as far as the next bit is concerned, with Wrecking Ball and Death to My Hometown holding down roughly the same slots each night once the opening salvo is out of the way.

There's obviously a point being made, and once it had been it seems there's a recognition that things need to be lightened a bit, and Hungry Heart certainly did that. The crowd roared out the first verse, Bruce took a wander along the side around to the walkway behind the pit and surfed his way back to the stage.

This section of the show seemed to be heading into formula territory with My City of Ruins delivering the regular remembering the old faces and acknowledging the new routine. Working the front of the pit Bruce found another youngster, got a quick acknowledgement of the relative youthfullness of the identified party and seems to have settled into grabbing them for a singalong in Waitin’ On a Sunny Day.

Spirit in the Night seems to have grabbed a regular mid-set spot, and had the silence for those who are no longer with us bit, and from there, with what seemed like a couple of formalities out of the way things headed off towards let's loosen things up territory with High Hopes, Youngstown and (the one I'd really been waiting for) Candy's Room.

High Hopes works very well, Youngstown rocked with righteous anger and frustration and segued quickly into that characteristic drum pattern that signifies an impending visit to Candy's Room, which soared the way it should do and morphed very nicely into She's the One.


As Bruce started a your butt is going to start moving of its own volition rap after StO I thought we were in for another Open All Night, which had been my highlight of the previous show. That didn't eventuate, but a rousing Pay Me My Money Down worked the same sort of territory and made for a more than adequate substitute.

From there it was back to set piece territory, with Shackled and Drawn a regular inclusion that needed to be followed by something lighter. Waitin’ on a Sunny Day certainly fits the bill in that department, and the slightly different angle this time around gave a head on view of the interaction that got the singalong kid onto the walkway in front of the pit.

You can't help wondering how long this one will continue, and while you can spot it coming it's the sort of thing that's guaranteed to deliver a roar of approval from the audience. Calculated? Quite possibly. A bit of fun? Quite definitely.

It's also the cue that we're heading into the succession of heavy hits that's going to round out the main set, and this time around that started with The Rising, delivered another powerful Springsteen-Morello double act on The Ghost of Tom Joad and ran out through Badlands, Thunder Road and Born to Run.

The encore bracket (Seven Nights to Rock, Dancing in the Dark and the seemingly inevitable Tenth Avenue Freeze-out wound things up rather nicely.


Setlist:

American Land

Prove It All Night

Adam Raised a Cain 

Wrecking Ball

Death to My Hometown

Hungry Heart

My City of Ruins

Spirit in the Night

High Hopes

Youngstown

Candy's Room

She's the One

Pay Me My Money Down 

Shackled and Drawn

Waitin' on a Sunny Day

The Rising

The Ghost of Tom Joad

Badlands 

Thunder Road

Born to Run

Encore:

Seven Nights to Rock 

Dancing in the Dark

Tenth Avenue Freeze-out

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

Graham Parker "The Up Escalator" (4*)

News of a new album by Graham Parker & The Rumour had me scanning the landscape around the end of November, once I'd spotted the odd reference to Three Chords Good on the interwebs. For some reason, however, it doesn't seem to have wormed its way into the iTunes Store, at least not into the Australian branch (though it’s already there in the US store) but then it took a while for that to happen with Little Feat's Rooster Rag, which explains why the review here features a photo of an actual CD jewel case rather than a shot of an iPad screen.

Despite the absence of Three Chords Good the search reminded me I really liked Mr Parker’s work back in the day, and there’s a swag of material that could well justify a bit of further exploration. Had they been there I might have started by going right back to Howlin’ Wind and Heat Treatment, but since they’re not this seemed to be the right place to pick up the thread.

Parker’s previous albums, the aforementioned duo, Stick to Me, The Parkerilla and Squeezing Out Sparks all featured The Rumour, a classy outfit whose members cut their teeth in pub rock bands Brinsley Schwarz and Bontemps Roulez and went on to back, apart from Parker, various pub rock and new wave acts including Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds, Garland Jeffreys and Carlene Carter.

While guitarists Brinsley Schwarz and Martin Belmont were still on board, as were the rhythm section of Andrew Bodnar (bass) and Stephen Goulding (drums), keyboard player Bob Andrews had left the band in 1979, so when  the time came to cut The Up Escalator keyboard duties were handed to Nicky Hopkins (piano) and The E Street Band’s Danny Federici (organ).

From the start of No Holding Back on my first run through there was something missing, and the first thing to spring to mind was, of course, Andrews. There was a fairly trademark GP & The Rumour sound, and most of it was still there, so the first inclination was to look in obvious directions. I suspect the thought processes may have been influenced by recent exposure to Andrews’ recent solo efforts, Shotgun and Invisible Love, but subsequent run through (or should that be along?) The Up Escalator with the volume cranked substantially were much more satisfactory.

Squeezing Out Sparks had gone close to breaking Parker into the US market, so it must have made sense to Arista to do something that’d convert the breakthrough into major commercial success with the follow-up. On that basis it may have seemed like a good idea to match Parker and what remained of The Rumour with Jimmy Iovine, who’d produced or engineered Tom Petty's Damn the Torpedoes, Dire Straits' Making Movies and Springsteen's Born to Run, a sort of pairing that’d deliver critical acclaim and commercial success. Throw in some guest vocals from Springsteen and things should be close to signed, sealed and delivered.

Commercial and critical success are, on the other hand, rather tricky little beasts. For a start, when you’re seen to be positioning an artist for glory you’re also setting them up as a target for those who might have their own axes to grind. Parker & The Rumour had been sitting quietly on the periphery as far as popular success was concerned, attracting A and A+ ratings from the likes of Robert Christgau, the (self-proclaimed) Dean of American Rock Critics. Christgau reviews Sparks here and, interestingly, fails to note the existence of Escalator.

As things proceed through that first run through I was inclined to agree with assessments that panned the material and described the sound as flat, poorly detailed, mushy and just a bit dull but again, with a substantial crank in volume they sounded a whole lot better. Definitely not as good as you’d like, but definitely better. Play the bugger loud.

And volume doesn’t just add punch to the music. Lyrically, The Up Escalator delivers another solid bracket of vitriolic Parker rants against conformity and associated mind-numbing and dumbing down (Devil's Sidewalk and Stupefaction) and  everyone who has questioned his abilities and denied him his just rewards and then want him to fill in the gaps in their Empty Lives.

You could pick a similar source of righteous anger in any of the other tracks. The loveless bastards who’d want to drown out The Beating Of Another Heart, the pull of obsessions and the denial of ambitions through the Endless Night, ineffective responses to demands and unexpected circumstances in Paralyzed and Manoeuvres. He might want to express love for a new bride in Jolie Jolie, but even that comes across as paranoid and can’t be expressed without an and don’t you forget it. You can’t, in the words of the last title on the album, have Love Without Greed, or maybe lust without emotional imperialism.

The bonus tracks, a vehement Women in Charge that suggests he’s got his tongue firmly in cheek when he suggests this is a fortunate development. A live reggaefied reworking of Hey Lord, Don’t Ask Me Questions mightn’t burn with the same incendiary passion of the Parkerilla version, but it isn’t exactly lacking in bite either.

Putting everything together, and accepting that it’s no Squeezing Out Sparks (which is fair enough from where I’m sitting, neither is anything else in his discography) played at a decent volume it’s not that bad.

I’m inclined to dismiss the contemporary critical response as a case of expectations set that were never likely to be filled, the sort of thing that happens when our little secret positions himself (or is positioned, same horse different jockey) for a shot at mainstream mass market success. A case, I suspect, of you can do it, but when you try, you’d better make sure the product really delivers, sonny Jim. The Up Escalator didn’t quite deliver at that level, and mightn’t have quite made it to the top of what might have been possible, but it’s not broken down in the basement either.