I wasn't sure what to expect from the venue, because Bruce rocked Giants Stadium to the ground, I just wasn't sure that Madison Square Garden would be able to handle it.
MSG held up, and so did Bruce and the Legendary E Street Band.
Let's check out the set list...
Thundercrack
Seeds
Prove It All Night
Hungry Heart
Working On A Dream
The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle
The E Street Shuffle
4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
Kitty's Back
Wild Billy's Circus Story
Incident on 57th Street
Rosalita
New York City Serenade
Waiting on a Sunny Day
Raise Your Hand
Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street
Glory Days
Human Touch
Lonesome Day
The Rising
Born to Run
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Wrecking Ball
Bobby Jean
American Land
Dancing in the Dark
Higher & Higher (w/ Elvis Costello)
I knew that Bruce was going to be playing The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle in it's entirety for the first time ever, but I wasn't sure how I was going to like it. This was Bruce's second album, and at the time it didn't receive such great response. You could really tell that Bruce and the Band really liked these songs, because they were having a lot of fun performing them, and I was having a fucking ball listening. Much of this album I've heard live because he plays Kitty's Back and Rosalita at a lot of the concerts in the "encore". (Bruce doesn't really have an encore - the lights go off for about 30 seconds, and Bruce walks back to grab a different guitar and walks right back to the microphone. There isn't any bullshit 5 minute holdout. So just to clarify, Bruce performs for about 2 hours and 45 minutes, takes a 30 second break, and comes out for his encore. Dudes (and his band) awesome.) Kitty's Back and Rosalita from MSG might have been the best I've ever heard.
I'm a huge fan of the song Thundercrack, so I was really happy that he started with that, and he began the "encore" with Wrecking Ball. I heard this song multiple times at Giants Stadium, but I really got to listen to it last night. Really good song, especially since he wrote it on the road for the New Jersey/New York area. Awesome. He changed portions of the lyrics where he talks about being from the Meadowlands to "tonight being in the garden", which was pretty awesome. About 1/3 of the crowd knew the song because they were at Giants Stadium, and the other two thirds had no idea what he was playing. Awesome for me, sucks for you!
I was a little bummed he didn't play Badlands or Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out, and I really wanted to hear Atlantic City, but he played Lonesome Day, which is by far my favorite song off of The Rising album. The Rising is probably an underrated album in Bruce's musical arsenal - the record was made in the early 2000s, and they've been making music together since the early 1970s, and had almost a ten year hiatus with one another. The album is awesome by itself, but when you put all those factors in it's downright amazing.
Finally, in the encore as he was taking requests (and Bruce doesn't just take requests and stop the show - the band plays Raise Your Hand which is a nice little jam and Bruce works the crowd for about 10 minutes, it's really awesome) he acquired a [pinstripe sign that said "NEW YORK - 27 - ...", and Bruce had a portion of the sign hidden. It was Glory Days. Good performance of Glory Days, and Bruce and Steven [Van Zandt] at one point they started shouting back at forth at one another the various players on the team - Swisher, Damon, along with the likes of Jeter, Teixeira and Rodriguez. Pretty sweet.
All in all, the concert might have been better than any of the Giants Stadium performances. Bruce went on about 8:40pm, and ended about 11:45/11:50 or so. He ended with Higher & Higher and a special guest performance by Elvis Costello, which was really awesome. Elvis looked a little out of place, but I don't think Bruce should apologize for his awesome-ness...
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