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BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND
Greensboro Coliseum (Greensboro, NC)
April 28, 2008

(NODEPRESSION.NET) -- If you're a Springsteen fan you've probably already seen set lists and other details about the Monday night show I attended. Rather than a quick-turnaround Tuesday writing and posting a formal review, I spent the day just down the road in Winston-Salem at a Barack Obama town meeting (fittingly enough, given that Springsteen has endorsed him). Thus, what follows is less structured and more scattershot -- a handful of observations from one longtime Bruce fan's perspective....

* For a long stretch I'd managed to see Springsteen every election year, starting in 1984 (the first election-year in which I was old enough to drive myself to concerts). Somehow things shuffled slightly this last cycle; I caught him in '02 at this same venue, and then a solo show in '06 in Seattle. For whatever reason, it seemed important to see him in this election year.

Certainly Springsteen doesn't refrain from being political, and this night was no exception (though nothing came of the possible notion that Obama might make an appearance; he was campaigning in the area, so it had seemed not too far-fetched). With Bruce, though, the political has always best been channeled through the personal; you get the picture well enough from the characters in his songs, whether on age-old numbers such as "It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City" or the title track to his new album Magic (both of which he performed on this night).

* Much of a performance's tone/tempo can be divined by a closer examination of the set list, in terms of what records the material is being drawn from. Monday's show sorted out like this: seven songs from Magic; three from Born To Run; three from Darkness On The Edge Of Town; three from The Rising; two from The River; one from Greetings From Asbury Park; one from Born In The U.S.A.; one from The Seeger Sessions; and four various orphans from the likes of the Live 1975-85 collection and the Tracks box.

Those non-formal-album tracks meant this show probably appealed more to the hardcore fans craving such obscurities, as opposed to those looking for the better-known songs. I guess I fall somewhere in between; while I appreciate the less-obvious cuts from the formal albums (thus my joy at hearing "Hard To Be A Saint"), I've never been one to follow deeply into the ancillary catalogue, so the opening one-two punch of "Roulette" and "Don't Look Back" was mostly lost on me. My guess is that others were amazed by and quite appreciative of that start.

That wasn't quite the beginning of the show, actually; the video tribute to the recently departed E Street keyboardist Danny Federici (which is also posted on Springsteen's official website) was quite moving, and a fitting acknowledgment of their fallen comrade.

* Not being one to keep up with daily tour-reports, I've probably missed that holding up signs with a song-title request has become commonplace at Springsteen's shows, with Bruce eventually plucking one of the signs from the audience and playing the song (and then autographing and returning the sign to its owner). Tonight's pick happened to be one of my personal favorites, "Waiting On A Sunny Day" (from The Rising). Other request-signs that didn't get picked included "Independence Day", "Racing In The Streets", "Jungleland", "Jersey Girl", "Detroit Medley", "Hungry Heart", "Lucky Town", "Kitty's Back" and "Rosalita". (Whoever had the "Ramrod" sign may have initially been disappointed, but must've been thrilled when he pulled that one out during the five-song encore.) All in all, a nice little gimmick to further energize the audience.

* Having had seats behind the stage the very first time I saw Springsteen, I've always admired the efforts to which he makes a point of playing to the fans in the back every so often during the show. This night was no exception, and it was clear the folks in those sections appreciated it as much as I did back in '84. It's really not a bad place to be at all for a Springsteen show, especially since those seats are generally quite close to the stage.

* Watching the E Street Band onstage in its full overdrive glory, it continued to seem almost incomprehensible to me what it would've been like to be in the audience in Houston a couple weeks ago, to imagine the surreality of such a scene suddenly being intertwined with the presence of Alejandro Escovedo walking out from the wings and up to a microphone right next to Springsteen. There'd be an almost "what's wrong with this picture?" vibe to it -- except that, to the contrary, it's ultimately a case of how right that picture actually is.

* Finally, when the Obama town meeting came to a close a few miles away about twelve hours later, it seemed entirely fitting that the song which came over the sound system as he left the stage was Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising". Come on up, indeed....

-- PETER BLACKSTOCK
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Peter Blackstock.