Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, SPAC 8/25/09

For my birthday, my parents got me two tickets to see Bruce Springsteen play in Saratoga Springs last night. The idea was that Kate and I would go, and they would come up and spend an evening with the grandbaby. Unfortunately, Kate had some sort of intestinal bug (which I now have, joy), and couldn't make it out, so my father came along with me.

The show was scheduled for 7:30, and we walked in the gates at about 7:20, having been forced to pay for parking when a traffic cop suddenly declared that the giant empty field for free parking was full, and steered everybody into the $10 lot. The band too the stage a little after 8:00, and never left until 11:00.

The set list is here, and I remember saying to my father after "The Promised Land" ended in a big sing-along, an hour and a half in, "You might think he would stop here. He'll go three or four more songs before the break, though. Four more songs got to "Born to Run," and I said "OK, that's it." They barely paused before going into "Rosalita."

I think "Rosalita" may have been the end of the show proper-- at least, there was some bowing, and congratulations offered to Max Weinberg's 19-year-old son, filling in for his father on the drums-- but it wasn't a typical encore break, because they only paused long enough for everybody to get back to their instruments before starting up again. Three more songs got to "American Land," which he's used as a show-closer for a while, and which got the big E Street Band speech ("... booty-shakin', love-makin', Viagra-takin', earth-quankin'..."). And then three more songs, though the last two ("Dancin' in the Dark" and "Hungry Heart") were mostly sung by the audience.

I think the longest break Springsteen took came in the middle of the show, when he took requests by going around the stage grabbing signs from audience members, and then playing a few of those-- "Summertime Blues," "Two Hearts," "Surprise, Surprise," and "Because the Night." I haven't seen that before, but it was pretty cool.

The show was not without its rough edges-- Nils Lofgren tripped while spinning around on "Because the Night," and his guitar came unplugged, "Rosalita" was stopped and restarted most of the way through when the band got out of synch, and "Girls in their Summer Clothes" was restarted after the first eight bars ("Oh, how can we be fucking it up already?"). Given that they were playing with a substitute drummer, though (as they have been for much of the tour), I'm amazed at how far they went into the catalog in the first place. It's a real testament to the strength of the band that they can get away with that.

As with the show Kate and I saw a couple of years ago, I was amazed by the energy level. I got a little tired just standing in one place for the whole show (we had lawn seats at SPAC), and Springsteen's twenty years older than I am. But he seemed to be having a blast for the whole three hours of the show.

If you've got the chance to see these guys live, take it. It's really an amazing show, and they can't keep doing this forever. Or maybe they can-- God knows, I have no ability to predict when they're done.

(Local paper review of the show here.)