BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND
LIVE AT METLIFE STADIUM, NEW JERSEY
WRECKING BALL TOUR
As the only live event in this series, this will probably be by far the most self-indulgent of these 31 posts. In September of this year I was fortunate enough to be able to see my absolute favourite musician of all time perform live in his home state of New Jersey. I’m even luckier that my favourite musician happens to be Bruce Springsteen, one of the greatest live acts the music industry has ever seen. As a result, this was probably the single most anticipated event of my life.
And it still lived up to the hype.
Springsteen was in New Jersey as part of his Wrecking Ball tour, an album I really loved, and hearing the songs played live lent them all kinds of new dimensions. ‘Land of Hope and Dreams’ is a completely different experience in a stadium full of people – it gains an anthemic, collective sensibility that lifts the song to even greater heights. Other highlights: Bruce crowd surfing during ‘Hungry Heart’, Bruce bringing a small child on stage to sing a chorus of ‘Waitin’ on a Sunny Day’ (to rapturous applause) and the special meaning anyone with the vaguest connection to New York City will feel upon hearing tens of thousands of people sing ‘The Rising’.
Then there was the encore: We are Alive, Thunder Road, Born to Run, Rosalita, Dancing in the Dark, Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out and Twist & Shout. That’s as close to a religious experience as I am ever going to get.
I flew for twenty four deeply uncomfortable hours to get to New York, staying in a tiny hotel room and eating very cheaply for the first few days of the trip. One Bruce Springsteen concert made it all totally and utterly worth it. Seeing a second made me want to do it all again.
Honourable Mention: I was also lucky enough to see the play Grace on Broadway, which had two fairly reasonable leads in Paul Rudd and Michael Shannon. Rudd plays a man looking to open a chain of religious-themed hotels, Shannon his atheist, reclusive and unwilling prospective business partner. It’s pitch-black, brilliantly acted and thoughtful while remaining thoroughly entertaining throughout.
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