It's our first concert review here on the podcast! I was lucky enough to score a last-minute ticket to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in Syracuse, and it was a special night. The show was yet another testament to the enduring energy that Bruce and the band pump into the crowd, and the crowd is happy to give right back. I'll tell you all about it, and discuss the power of nostalgia in Springsteen's setlist, looking into how he has used the past as a powerful driver in his songwriting from the start of his career over 50 years ago.
Give it a listen and let us know what you think. And subscribe so you don't miss our incredible lineup of guests coming on the podcast in May. And remember - life is short, so get those concert tickets!
It's our first concert review here on the podcast! I was lucky enough to score a last-minute ticket to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in Syracuse, and it was a special night. The show was yet another testament to the enduring energy that Bruce and the band pump into the crowd, and the crowd is happy to give right back. I'll tell you all about it, and discuss the power of nostalgia in Springsteen's setlist, looking into how he has used the past as a powerful driver in his songwriting from the start of his career over 50 years ago.
Give it a listen and let us know what you think. And subscribe so you don't miss our incredible lineup of guests coming on the podcast in May. And remember - life is short, so get those concert tickets!
Alex Gadd:
Welcome to the Rock-N- Roll Show podcast. I'm your Alex Gadd, and this week, since our show is all about the love of live music, I've got a concert review for you. I was lucky enough to get a last minute invitation to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band last week in Syracuse, New York. Yes, my favorite band, and I'm excited to tell you all about it. So stick around for my Springsteen concert review this week on the Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast. Now, before the review itself, I need to give you a little context. My love of live music can be traced back essentially to one event seeing Bruce and the E Street Band at Madison Square Garden in November of 1980. I was 11, and, without exaggerating, that show changed my life. Since then, I've seen Bruce on almost every tour he's been on, including all three New Jersey shows last summer. Those shows were strange for me for two reasons. One, he used a fixed set list, which I had never experienced from him before, and that made the shows feel a little static. Secondly, his voice sounded noticeably weaker than he'd ever sounded before. At the time I chalked it up to "he's 73. Of course his voice is going to get weaker as he gets older. So when my buddy James called me and told me he had an extra ticket for the Syracuse show that was rescheduled from last year to this past week and he asked me if I'd like to go with him, I said yes, because of course I would, but I wondered if it would be more of the same. I'd seen that Bruce has started mixing up the set list a little bit more, so that gave me some hope. But hearing my musical hero sounding frail again wasn't so appealing. Still, we made the three-hour trip into Syracuse. We found a parking spot about a quarter mile away from the JMA wireless dome which, yes, used to be the carrier dome on the campus of Syracuse University. We got to our seats in the second row of the center section of the floor, right behind the standing room only pit. The seats were great. The rain outside wasn't an issue because we were in an indoor football stadium, and I was pretty excited.
Alex Gadd:
Bruce and the band came out and kicked into Lonesome Day from the Rising album. From there they were off and running with high energy songs Night from Born to Run, No Surrender from Born in the USA, Two Hearts from the River, Darlington County, also from Born in the USA, was a crowd pleaser. And then Bruce went out and took sign requests, something that he had been doing for the last I don't know 15 years and he had stopped doing on last year's tour. It was a welcome return. He found a sign for growing up and a couple other signs he picked up out of the crowd and immediately they went into Growing Up.
Alex Gadd:
The next song was the first one from 2020's Letter to you album, the last album he recorded with the band. That was Ghosts, which I think was probably the best song on that record, and then he moved into Spirit in the Night, a great song from the first record, Hungry Heart from The River, and that was complete, as it always is, with the audience first verse sing-along. I don't think I've ever seen him perform that song without having the audience sing the first verse at the beginning, including when it was a new song. He came out in 1980 and had us singing along with him right away, so that song has always been a crowd pleaser and a crowd participation song.
Alex Gadd:
The first song to shift the mood was Atlantic City, which was a song he originally recorded solo on acoustic guitar on his 1982 album Nebraska. It was really a haunting song about a loser who couldn't get out of trouble and was making bad decisions to compound his already bad decisions. But when he plays it live, he uses the power of the E Street Band to really bring an intensity of desperation to that song. That is just incredible. When they hit with that song it is a powerful thing. And they hit up in Syracuse they really knocked it out of the park. And then, after Atlantic City, Bruce took a break and addressed the crowd for the first time. He came down onto the steps leading down towards the audience, sat down and started to talk about why they were there, why the band was there and how they were there to tell a story. And the story was a story of hellos and goodbyes. Take a listen..
Bruce Springsteen:
Max, give me a shot. We've got a story to tell. It's a story about yesterday and tonight and hopefully tomorrow. It's about hello and goodbye. It's about the things that leave us in this life and the things that remain with us. It's a lot of ground to cover, so let me get started.
Alex Gadd:
Bruce introduced the band and it was all in reference to people that were there and people that were missing as part of the story of hellos and goodbyes, and missing from his life, from the band he suggested, from the audience's lives as well. No names were used, but it's a powerful moment when Bruce testifies that "if you're here and we're here, then they're here with us. I love hearing that. It's one of my favorite messages. He's been using it consistently since the start of the 2012 tour. That was the High Hopes tour, which was the first tour after Clarence Clemons died one year earlier. Take a look.
Bruce Springsteen:
Are we missing anybody? Yes, we are, and I know a lot of you out there have someone that you miss too, and that you wish could be here with you tonight. But life doesn't provide us with those satisfactions. All the time I don't know where we go when this is all over.
Bruce Springsteen:
But I know where we remain. We remain alive in our memories and in our hearts those that we've loved and who've loved us, those that we've loved and who've loved us, those that we've stood next to and those who have stood next to us when we needed them the most. Now, the only thing I can guarantee is if you're here, and if we're here tonight, then they're here with us.
Alex Gadd:
Now. As I said, he didn't mention any names, but his , Adele adele must have been on his mind as she just passed away this past January, as well as Clarence and Danny Federici, the original organist in the band. Two songs later had another story. This one was about his old bandmate, George Theiss, who died in 2018. Theiss was the lead singer of The Castiles, which was Bruce's first band back in Freehold, New Jersey, in 1965. George was friends with Bruce's younger sister, Virginia, and came over one day to invite Bruce to join the band as the lead guitarist. Now, flash forward to 2018, when George Theiss died. It left Bruce as the last living member of his first band, and that seemed to trigger something in him and the songwriting that resulted in the 2020 Letter to You album. He's brought this up and told this story on every show of this tour this year and last year, prior to playing only the second song from the Letter to You record, which was Last Man Standing. Now he plays this solo with an acoustic guitar. One of his trumpeters, Barry Danielian, is the only one who came out and accompanied him on that. A very heartfelt moment, a moment of introspection and retrospection. From there he cranked up the energy again, bringing the band back on, segueing into Backstreets, which is one of my favorite songs, especially live. The drama and the intensity and the emotion that that song brings out is just otherworldly. Then performed a run of absolute hit songs to end the main set Because the Night, She's the One, Wrecking Ball, The Rising, Badlands, and finally Thunder Road. Every one of those songs sounded great, went over great. Hey, the crowd was absolutely giving him back all the energy that he was giving to us. It was really a special night. Then, as the band is taken to doing, they took their bows but never left the stage.
Alex Gadd:
Before starting the encore, they jumped directly into Born to Run, complete with bringing the house lights on, and that's always a special moment if you've seen a Bruce show any time I don't know since 1980. You watch the main set, as you do with most concerts, in darkness and while you're aware that there are other people, you hear cheering and you see people in front of you and to the sides of you. The darkness gives you an illusion of intimacy. But when the house lights come on in the middle of one of the highest energy songs and you see, in this case 65,000 fans all going bonkers in full house lights. It's really quite something. It's really special to see.
Alex Gadd:
And then the encore, as it should, continued with the big hits Glory Days, Dancing in the Dark and the now-mandatory 10th Avenue Freeze-Out, where Bruce and the band properly paid tribute to Clarence and Danny Federici's loss with a series of pictures of them together throughout the last part of the song. To wrap up the encore, bruce took another sign request and played Twist and Shout, which he's played in encores for years and years and years, followed by the Detroit Medley, all the Mitch Ryder and Detroit Wheels hit songs, also known as the Devil with the Blue Dress Medley. The band took another well-deserved round of bows. Bruce thanked each one of them as they left the stage and then he stood on stage with an acoustic guitar. The lights came back down and he played the third and final song from the Letter to You album, I'll See You in My Dreams. And with that it was over.
Alex Gadd:
So here are my observations. One Bruce's voice sounded great. I had nothing to worry about. It's clear that his voice is much stronger and sounded as good as it ever has, and I don't know how that happens with a 74-year-old guy, but it's amazing. Secondly, the band sounded great. The music sounded vibrant. It was alive. There was no nostalgia in the performance. This band can go out there and compete with the best of them.
Alex Gadd:
Third, Jake Clemens is absolutely taken over as the primary foil for Bruce on stage. That's a role that Clarence Clemens always played in the band and Jake Clemens is Clarence's nephew, joined the band in 2012 after Clarence passed away by 2016,. He had really taken his place as one of the main foils for Bruce, along with Stephen Van Zandt, and while Stephen still plays a critical role in the stage show, he takes a lot of singing with Bruce at the mic together and he seems to be the consigliere on stage for sure. But Jake is the guy that Bruce really .. he leans on him, they go down and walk towards the audience together for sax solos and there was clear connection there. And as Bruce was saying goodbye and thanking each of the members after the encores as they left the stage, Jake was the last to leave. They talked for a long time it was probably not quite a minute, but that's a long time after he said thank you to each other band member in a couple of seconds. They had an intense hug and real, a real emotional moment there. Jake has developed a wonderful stage personality all his own. It echoes his uncle, without mimicking him and it was really great to see that.
Alex Gadd:
Fourth, the JMA Wireless Dome sounded great. Those of you who live in central New York are lucky to have such a large-scale venue to attract major acts to play there. The biggest takeaway I had was about nostalgia. It started with my nostalgia for seeing Bruce and the band for now 44 years running and how much their music means to me. But it was hard to avoid, given the theme of the night, that Bruce's show centered around the theme of loss and remembrance and celebrating the past. So as I revisited the songs from the set in my head, I was impressed to note how many of Bruce's songs look backwards.
Alex Gadd:
Thinking more about it, it's apparent he's always written songs about looking back at life and recognizing how things move on and how he's evolving as he's gotten older and continued losing people close to him. That's only increasing in his songwriting. Letter to You was basically a record about remembering old times and people that have gone. Not that he's unique in any way. Anyone who's lucky enough to live to 60 or older will have lost people close to them. But Bruce has been writing about the past since his first album. I mean, Growing Up is a song about leaving your childhood behind, leaving your innocence behind, and he wrote the line I swear I lost everything I loved or feared when he was, I guess, 21? Who writes that kind of stuff? Who's aware of those things? I mean?
Alex Gadd:
On his second album, The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, he sings a song Sandy, 4th of July, Asbury Park and he writes "for me, this boardwalk life is through, babe, you ought to quit this scene too. He's looking at the end of an era when he's 22 and Rosalita. He says someday we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny. And again 22 years old. That must feel like when Pete Townsend wrote the line I hope I die before I get old in the song, my generation and was still singing that in the year 2019. It's just interesting. So, looking back at the set list, songs like Growing Up, ghosts, my City of Ruins, last man Standing Backstreets, wrecking Ball, thunder Road, glory Days is a classic nostalgia song.
Alex Gadd:
10th Avenue Freeze-Out tells the story of the band's formation, looking back on it with great affection, again writing when he's 24 or 25 about something, singing about it when he's 74, 50 years later. This is a man who's always had a clear eye on the past and always seems capable of looking backwards and forwards at the same time. Bruce's sense of what's in his past keeps being reflected back at him and he seems more than okay with it. He seems comforted by it. So go see the legendary E Band Band this year. They'll be in Europe in May, June and July, and then back in the States in August and September, before wrapping up the year touring across Canada throughout November.
Alex Gadd:
As for the podcast, thanks for joining us. Stay tuned for next week's episode when we'll have our interview with Dave Schneider of the Zambonis and the LeeVees, and then we have great guests lined up throughout the month of May. If you like this episode subscribe and follow to make sure you get notified about every new episode, and if you would please tell your friends Additionally, we want to know what you think, so if you would leave us a comment and I'll try to respond to each one of them. The Rock-N- Roll Show Podcast is a World Highway Media production. I'm your host, Alex Gadd, and until next time, I want to remind you that life is short, so get those concert tickets!