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Monday, May 25, 2009

Bruce Springsteen Saturday Night In New Jersey Review

Can a Springsteen show with three songs from Wild & Innocent, and Glory Days in the encores really be not that good?   Backstreets is raving about it but I felt like this show was all over the place.
After two songs (the second one being the best version of Spirit In The Night that I've heard) I thought we were heading for an all-timer.
The problem is that although I love the new album, and I'm the kind of fan that doesn't mind if Bruce plays 30 unreleased songs (I'm not looking for hits), the new album doesn't work live.
Outlaw Pete which is too long on the record is way too long live.  I know what Bruce thinks he has, but he doesn't.  Pete sucked all the life out of the room.
Then a quick rebound with Something In The Night.  Very cool.
Working On A Dream is a snoozer live....then Seeds/Johnny 99/Tom Joad (Youngstown would have been better) and Good Lovin' made for a nice boring generic bar band set.
Fortunately the audeince knew better than Bruce on this night and the requests segment was Shuffle, Cover Me and Thunder Road.
Then it was back to Bruce By The Numbers with an uninspiring Sunny Day/Promised Land....the always awesome Incident...and then a really bad segue into Kingdom of Days.  Finish up the main set with Lonesome Day/The Rising and Born To Run and I was thinking of leaving early.
Hard Times was the first encore, and then I was really annoyed.   Only Kittys Back and Glory Days saved it (around the useless american Land and the underrated Land of Hope and Dreams).
So not an awful show....but the whole was not as good as the individual parts.  You'd think "getting" Incident, Kitty, Shuffle, Something In the Night, Spirit, Glory Days and Thunder Road would make for an all-timer, but Kingdom of Days, Working On A Dream, Outlaw Pete and Hard Times undercut the evening.
A shocking 5 on the Bruce scale of 1 to 10.  

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