LostInaFog.com

I just got home from the Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band concert in San Jose last night, and its about 1AM. I’d like to go to sleep, but, well, if you weren’t paying attention, I said I just saw The Boss and it will take me a bit to come down before I can drop off. So I figured it was a good time to write up my take on the show. This is the Kickoff show for the Working On A Dream tour and I suspect that some folks out there with tickets for upcoming shows would like a little preview. I’m here for you.

Scheduled to start at 7:30 it did indeed start like clockwork at 8:30. Now in the old days, Bruce might have started before 8 because he wanted to finish by midnight. But he just can’t rock it for 4 hours straight anymore. Since I can’t either, let’s not get too caught up on this little point. The show was a solid 2:45 front to back. I should be so lucky.

Lets just get the awkward stuff out of the way up front so we can then concentrate on the fun. I saw E-Street first in Ohio in the ’70s and the last time was in Oakland for last year’s Magic tour. As far as I’m concerned they are the greatest rock & roll show band ever. They are consistently tight and just drive the music right through you. I’ve seen Bruce throw curves that would derail lesser bands and this one doesn’t miss a downbeat. They’re a sports car that can change direction between beats on the slightest of wrist flicks from Bruce. But tonight? Well, not so much. Maybe I’ve never seen a tour kick-off show before, but there were a couple of cringeworthy moments tonight. Particularly in the transitions. Clarence headed off into the next song very prematurely at one point drawing a laugh of disbelief from Bruce, and a few other transitions were muddled at best. I guess they stand out precisely because they were so unexpected. At one point Bruce made a joke about thanking the crowd for letting them test on us, or some such thing.

The local papers here, according to knowledgeable fellow pit denizens prior to the show, had said Patti Scialfa wasn’t doing this tour for whatever reason. I was shocked at this, having not picked that up before. But probably not as shocked as she was when she a short time later found herself onstage with guitar in hand. And all the other expected boys and girls were there too.

So enough of that. You folks in Austin or Tulsa probably won’t notice a thing by the time they get to your town. Its hard to imagine the boat not righting itself immediately.

Pete over at Blogness on the Edge of Town has the set list for you if you want to see it. It came pretty close to the one I saw for the final rehearsal shows in Asbury Park. I thought I remembered that he had led with Thunder Road there, and I happily impressed my new pit friends with this knowledge prior to the show. I even loaded up the tweet ready to send as soon as they hit the first note. Unfortunately, by the second note I realized they were starting Badlands. I then decided that bandwidth was a problem in the arena and just put the iPhone back in my pocket and just lost myself to the show.

And despite the the notes above, it was a fantastically fun show. He did most of my favorites from the new album (excepting the weirdly infatuating Queen of the Supermarket), and several from Magic. Strewn in were a lot of big crowd pleasers–Born to Run, Thunder Road, Tenth Avenue Freezeout, Dancing in the Dark, etc. He even gathered a pile of song request signs from the crowd and did a couple of those-Growing Up and Waitin’ On a Sunny Day. they may have already been in the playlist–hard to tell. The highlight of the night for me was Seeds, a song from (I’m guessing) the ’70s that I haven’t heard Bruce sing for more than 20 years in a show. Its a story of a down and out guy who moves his family to Houston to make oil-worker-money only to have the oil collapse leave him living on the streets. Remember back when we had that oil collapse thing? Well, it was sort of like now except then it was only oil, whereas now it is everything. So, a perfect time to dust this one off and they rocked it. Starting with a driving Nils guitar intro, it included Bruce’s best guitar solo of the night and maybe his strongest, most desperate vocals.

Many of my fellow pit folk didn’t even know the song. Its on Live ‘75-’85. Go get a copy. This one song would probably have been enough to make this all worthwhile. But come on. It was Bruce. It rocked all night.

When it comes to Bruce, its not really a love him/hate him thing. Its more of a worship him/just like him thing. Who hates Bruce? For those of us that fall closer to (ok, squarely on) the worship side, his shows are like no other. They heal the sick, feed the needy, save marriages (well, not mine, but other people’s) and turn water into wine. I know. I’m understating this a bit. This show for me was just another in a long line of rock & roll ecstasy, a nearly 3 hour orgasm of rockin’ rebellion. There is nothing comparable.

Now who has extra tickets for any of the shows within easy flights of San Francisco? I’ll buy the beers and stay back and clean up the venue afterwards. Twitter me @lostinafog .