Concert Review: Bruce Springsteen, 8/24/08, the Sprint Center
By C.J. JANOVY
Photo by Scott Spychalski. Click here for slide show.
It was the last night of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s Magic Tour and so, the Boss proclaimed, anything could happen. And it did. Taking requests via handmade signs from the pit, he spread out the fluorescent posterboards and notes scrawled on the backs of printed-out tickets on the floor and chose one he said was very important. “This has never been done before!” he announced, holding up the sign to the camera. “Let Max Sing,” it said. The Boss called for a mic stand for drummer Max Weinberg, who’d been pounding a steady beat while Springsteen collected requests (and sang “Hey!” along with Weinberg’s beats while doing so). After a brief tutorial from Springsteen, Weinberg, still drumming, in a rough, basically on key baritone, sang a serviceable chorus or two of what sounded like some ‘60s refrain, maybe a Beatles tune, about “Boys…” (can someone help us out here? What was he singing?).
Other anything-can-happen moments: Springsteen laying himself out on top of the fans in the front row, or crouching down to sing right into the faces of the adoring fans there, letting the outstretched hands play his guitar. The Sprint Center itself donating $10,000 to the Danny Federici Melanoma Fund. 16,000-plus middle-agers waiting an hour and a half for the show to start, grumbling about having to go to work in the morning, and forgiving all long before Springsteen thrust the microphone out into the crowd to do its first-verse duty on “Hungry Heart.”
While Springsteen blasted through the bedrock of the Sprint Arena, playing a non-stop selection of favorites guaranteed to keep even casual fans on their feet, a theme emerged for those who wanted to hear it. In the last half of the first set, just after “The Promised Land” – a reminder of what we all believe in, here in America – he prefaced “Living in the Future” with his short speech about how the country’s fast becoming one we don’t recognize, a place where we torture people and illegally wiretap our own citizens. It was short, painless political commentary – as is “Living in the Future” itself. The answer, Springsteen reminded us all, is first coming together – for the “Kansas City/New Jersey party” that was “Mary’s Place” -- then confronting the darkness in our own hearts as he then did in “Devils and Dust.”
He then called for hard work of “The Rising,” reminded us of the consequences if we fail to act in “Last to Die,” and cautioned patience but persistence in “Long Walk Home.” After all -- as he'd been suggesting all night by demanding that the audience help lift him up, whether he was literally laying on top of the crowd or when he reminded us that the E Street Band is itself fueled by the crowd's energy -- we're all trying to get out of these “Badlands.”
Then came an exquisite encore, one that opened with Springsteen dedicating “Sandy” to Federici and ended with yet another singalong about what was by then the only thing that seemed to matter at all, in the whole universe: that we all just keep on “Rockin’ All Over the World.”
Setlist
Ricky Wants a Man of Her Own
Cynthia
Radio Nowhere
No Surrender
Out In the Street
Hungry Heart
Spirit in the Night
(Max's song)
Cadillac Ranch
Working on the Highway
It's All Over Now (Rolling Stones cover)
Candy's Room
Gypsy Biker
Youngstown
The Promised Land
Living In the Future
Mary's Place
Devils and Dust
The Rising
Last to Die
Long Walk Home
Badlands
Encore
Sandy
10th Ave Freeze Out
Born to Run
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
American Land
Save the Last Dance for Me
Dancing In the Dark
Rockin' All Over the World
Random detail: The best sign anyone brought showed a photo of young Bruce above the legend "It's Hard to Be a Saint in Kansas City"
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