By BEN WENER
The Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/
Thursday, April 16, 2009
You must admit, Bossaholics, that by now, with the unpredictable mega-epics of yore long gone and a show structure firmly in place, it can sometimes seem like there's no discernible difference between one Bruce Springsteen tour and the next.He'll almost always do 20 songs in the main set and return for five more – six if you're nice and he's in the mood. The leadoff section won't be fiddled with much night to night. Last time he played a pair of gigs at Los Angeles Sports Arena, in late October 2007, "Radio Nowhere" and "Lonesome Day" were prominent, and a triptych of "Gypsy Biker," "Magic" and "Reason to Believe" almost always followed.
This time, to kick off Wednesday's first of two sold-out shows at the same venue – "the joint that don't disappoint," he dubbed it – it was "Badlands" to start, the grandiose "Outlaw Pete" (one of his rare love-it-or-hate-it pieces) not far behind, and four favorites shortly after that – the big fun of "Out in the Streets," the optimism of "Working on a Dream," then a snarling "Seeds" (with a scorching Springsteen solo) and a rollicking, raucous run through "Johnny 99."
You can bank on "Born to Run" near the finish, as usual – these days it's his main-set closer, preceded by "Lonesome Day" and "The Rising," the latter increasingly inspired and inspiring. Pretty good bet that "The Promised Land" will turn up two-thirds in, and that "Tenth Avenue Freeze-out" and the boisterous Irish jam "American Land" (a "Seeger Sessions" holdover that couldn't sound more like Flogging Molly) will punch up an encore in which "Rosalita" is apt to make an appearance. If you're lucky, you'll take a trip to "Jungleland," too.
He's certainly generous if you keep up – the overwhelming majority of selections are swapped out from tour to tour, so it only seems like you're hearing "Backstreets" for the umpteenth time. But what isn't always detected – not by all tens of thousands on hand night after night, maybe not even by die-hards who trail him from city to city – is how thematically driven Springsteen can get, how his set lists continue to be devised to make a point, not just achieve mass appeal.
His last outing, behind the politically charged "Magic," came off like righteous, roof-raising indignation at a government run amok, packaged with a hint of Tom Waitsian circus imagery. The tour supporting "The Rising" earlier this decade, of course, was a deeply moving dose of we-shall-overcome jubilation just when we needed it most. And no one who was in New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina leveled it will forget the emotional wallop of the launch of the "Seeger Sessions" shows.
This new construction, however, may be Springsteen's most resolutely focused yet – even escapist moments like "I'm Goin' Down," or the detailed drama of "Racing in the Street" (luminously enhanced by Roy Bittan's piano) and the brokenhearted bitterness of "Darkness on the Edge of Town," seemed to add to the overall sweep. Several lines from that last song were nearly spoken, not sung, for emphasis: "Some folks are born into a good life," he sermonized. "Other folks get it anyway, anyhow / I lost my money and I lost my wife / Them things don't seem to matter much to me now."
THE POWER AND THE PASSION
Once again the goal was to inspire, with arguably more reason to rally spirits than after Sept. 11. That tragedy shook us to our core, but its tangible fallout affected only so many people directly. Our current economic disaster, on the other hand, has had a vicious and immediate impact on millions of Americans. "All you have to do is pick up a newspaper and see millions of jobs lost since 2007," Springsteen noted near the end of Wednesday's performance.
People are tumbling out of the middle class with a devastating thud, and it has the legendary songwriter turning to corners of his catalog where hard-luck everyday people become heroes just for surviving.Not that this show was so downcast, or any less rousing than any other Boss encounters lately. He still climbed atop Bittan's piano, still dropped to the stage and into the arms of fans in exultation, still indulged all the patented Boss moves of yesteryear (to which he has added the sponge-soaked knees-slide he indulged at the Super Bowl).
Adding to the audience's elation: a nightly routine in which Springsteen gathers signs with song titles on them from the packed throngs in the pit, then selects a few – this time a very fitting "Spirit in the Night" and "Raise Your Hand," the latter evoking memories of massive joy two decades ago at the Coliseum during the Amnesty International Tour of '88.
"We're here tonight with a mighty purpose on our minds," he declared at the outset. "Not only are we gonna rock the house, but we're gonna build a house tonight. We're gonna take fear and build a house of love … take doubt and build a house of faith … take despair and build a house of hope."
Consider this Brother Bruce's Hard Times Revival and Revue, suffused with plenty of Obama's yes-we-can cheer (we're working on a dream, we'll make it to that promised land) but rooted in rougher reality. Suddenly so many of us can empathize more strongly with "Johnny 99," the short-circuiting, clerk-killing gunman, out of work and "with debts no honest man could pay." Or the fellow traveler surveying the ruin in "The Ghost of Tom Joad": "Families sleepin' in their car in the Southwest / No home, no job, no peace, no rest."
(That last track featured another searing, hyper-skilled cameo from Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, just like last year at Honda Center. This time, he returned in the encore for a remake of Stephen Foster's all-too-relevant song from 1855, "Hard Times.")
Not to downplay the role of the E Street Band (curiously minus Springsteen's wife Patti Scialfa), for they were as agile and mighty as ever, with somewhat slowed-down Clarence Clemons, looking a bit like a wizard, noticeably invigorated by the performance.
But this time their involvement took a backseat to the vision Springsteen wanted to share, one in which even overplayed chant-along staples like "Badlands" took on renewed resonance. Despite a relative dearth of new material, suggesting he doesn't have as much faith in "Dream" as he did "Magic," he was far more impassioned here than in 2007-08, his fire now burning at inferno strength.
All these years later, it's still so: Sometimes Springsteen can seem like he's the last rocker alive whose songs truly matter – whose lyrics seem capable of healing the scarred soul of this land of hope and dreams.
Also:
Will Springsteen turn up at Troubadour tribute to Danny Federici?
Springsteen's 'Working on a Dream' among his very best work
Contact the writer: 714-796-2248 or bwener@ocregister.com
Setlist:Badlands
Candy's Room
Outlaw Pete
No Surrender
Adam Raised a Cain
Working on a Dream
Seeds
Johnny 99
Youngstown
Raise Your Hand
Proud Mary
Growin' Up
Hungry Heart
The Promised Land
The Wrestler
Backstreets
Bad Luck (w/ Mike Ness)
Lonesome Day (w/ Jay Weinberg)
The Rising (w/ Mike Ness and Jay Weinberg
Born to Run (w/ Jay Weinberg)
* * *
Hard Times
Thunder Road
Tenth Avenue Freeze-out
Land of Hope and Dreams
American Land
Glory Days
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