"Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" - Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Manchester Etihad Stadium, 25/5/16

Well, another year, another opportunity to see Bruce I couldn't pass up. His "quick jaunt" around the US at the start of the year to get the band together before he finishes a solo record turned into a pretty extensive tour that has now reached Europe (and beyond that will hit the US stadium circuit at the end of the Summer).

Originally the tour was to feature The River in full, but by the time the band came to Europe Bruce had had enough of playing the same songs in the same order for so long and dropped that aspect of the show. Which is fair enough, but you have to question why they made the initial US leg of the tour so extensive, even adding extra dates in some cities. While I was a bit sad to miss out on hearing one of Bruce's albums live in full, I knew the show would be great even without this quirk. In fact there were plenty of other quirks to come...

Manchester had been lovely and sunny these for weeks, so of course come the day of the show it just had to be bloody raining! This was my third Springsteen show and I've been rained on at them all - even in Australia (albeit very briefly). "Wouldn't have it any other way" claimed Bruce upon arrival. I dunno mate, if you'd have seen what it was like before...

The show started a bit late due to chaos on the trams, apparently including some idiot driving onto the tracks in Droylsden (more time waiting in the rain, yay!). There was no playing about in the ball pin when the band came out, however. The opening stretch of songs proved a great reminder of how blistering they are in their stride; the first seven songs were literally non-stop, each carrying on into the next. This stamina and fortitude never ceases to amaze me.

After sandwiching a terrific rendition of rarity "Murder Incorporated" between the more familiar "Atlantic City" and "Badlands" (naturally met with rousing "WO-OAH-OAH-OAH"s), the first half of the show saw a strong focus on chronologically showcasing most songs from the first disc of  The River. "The Ties That Bind"/"Sherry Darling" and "Hungry Heart"/"Out In The Street" were both excellent, sprightly one-two punches just like on the record. "Hungry Heart" of course saw the crowd sing the entire first verse solo, but it also saw Bruce walk RIGHT BY ME! Look how close he got!

Look! Bruce!

In fact, a fan request for "Darkness On The Edge Of Town" aside, the songs running from "Hungry Heart" to "Point Blank" were all played in the exact sequence featured on The River. This captured a large portion of the "party" element of the album while also covering the point where things begin to hit a starker note. The pairing of "I Wanna Marry You" with the title track is a particular bit of genius; the former being "a daydream of a love song" in Bruce's words, an attempt to find "a love without consequence... that's why it's a song of youth"; the latter bringing that daydream crashing down with a tale of love purely through consequence (family legacy, pregnancy, redundancy).

This was hands down my favourite part of the set. Even the lightweight "Crush On You" sounded gritty and great, right at home with many of the headstrong sing alongs also featured. "Point Blank" was augmented with an intro that added a great sense of drama and gave it the feel of something from The Wild, The Innocent... For me, though, the highlight  was definitely "I Wanna Marry You", in large part thanks to the wonderful "Here She Comes Walking" intro that has been reprised for this tour. Roy Bittain's gentle keys are enough to send hearts a-flutter, while the vocal interplay between Bruce and Steven Van Zandt is simply phenomenal, soulful and touching. This is probably my favourite vocal performance from Stevie - it's exactly this kind of material where he is in his element.

It felt kind of odd to cut the overarching feel of The River off at "Point Black" when there were plenty of moments like "Fade Away", "The Price You Pay" or "Wreck On The Highway" that would have brought the poignancy of the tail end of the album to a more natural close. But then again, the weather was miserable, so I think the motivation was to keep the cheerier stuff coming to keep our spirits up. It was definitely "mission accomplished" as far as that was concerned, especially when it came to the whole host of knock about Born In The U.S.A. era anthems littered through the set, such as the crowd pleasing "Working On The Highway" and "Glory Days".

And make no mistake about it, Bruce was in a sure fire crowd pleasing mood here, constantly getting in amongst the audience, making frequent use of the little walkways and platforms they'd set up for him, and seeking out signs in the crowd. He was spoilt for choice too, there were loads. I have to give props to the people with ones for "Tougher Than The Rest" and "Racing In The Street (78)", you guys have taste! Then, when it came to picking a youngster to join in on "Waiting On A Sunny Day", he had to pick the most wonderfully shy little girl with a sign proclaiming it was here "first Brucie concert".

Peek-a-Bruce

It wasn't as if the set was lacking in poignancy or deftness once the material from The River ran dry either (I know, I'll get my coat...). As a huge Darkness... fan I was delighted that "The Promised Land" made an appearance, as well as a rendition of "Because The Night" where Nils Lofgren played like a man possessed, including undertaking a huge 360 degree spinning solo a man with his hips really shouldn't be able to pull off. Meanwhile, images of dearly missed saxophonist Clarence Clemons and organist Dan Federici during "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" drew a truly touching groundswell of affection from the audience, and a fan requested performance of "Backstreets" was absolutely spellbinding.

The ultimate piece of fan interaction, however, came much earlier on in the set. In a real Springsteen & I moment, some dude dressed as Santa Claus was spotted in the crowd. I suppose they got the day of the month right at least. "Is it like a perverted attempt at a request of some sort? Damn." quipped Bruce. So, as you do, Bruce invited him on stage ("He can't be shy, he's got the Santa suit on") for the band's version of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town". Santa himself would hilariously fluff Clarence's "better be good for goodness sake" lines (he got the pitch right, he just couldn't keep time to save his life). This really did happen! I have video evidence and everything.

Anyway, as has become a tradition of sorts at Bruce's shows, after seemingly closing the show with a cracking cover of The Isley Brothers' "Shout" and a joyous performance of "Bobby Jean", Bruce lingered on stage for one last acoustic number to properly wind things down for the night after nearly 3 hours 20 minutes of hard rocking, pants dropping, booty shaking, history making and (allegedly) Viagra taking. With the rueful, reflective "This Hard Land" rounding the show off, it was time to join the near 50 minute queue for the tram home (get this, if you were lucky, they'd even find a DOUBLE CARRIAGE service to cope with the thousands leaving the show, how revolutionary). The long wait for the journey home couldn't dull the feeling I get having spent another truly wonderful night in the company of a once in a lifetime artist.
You might say it was like all my Christmas' came at once...

Setlist

1. Atlantic City
2. Murder Incorporated
3. Badlands
4. The Ties That Bind
5. Sherry Darling
6. Two Hearts
7. No Surrender
8. Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
9. Hungry Heart
10. Out in the Street
11. Darkness on the Edge of Town
12. Crush on You
13. You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
14. I Wanna Marry You
15. The River
16. Point Blank
17. Johnny 99
18. Darlington County
19. Working on the Highway
20. The Promised Land
21. Waitin' on a Sunny Day
22. Because the Night
23. The Rising
24. Thunder Road

Encore:

25. Backstreets
26. Born to Run
27. Glory Days
28. Dancing in the Dark
29. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
30. Shout
31. Bobby Jean

Encore 2:

32. This Hard Land

The Ties That Bind: Revisiting The River

I've shared my enormous admiration and devotion to Bruce Springsteen on many occasions. Having seen him in Manchester and Australia(!) I know what a phenomenal performer he is and I'm insanely jealous of everyone who'll see him tonight in Pittsburgh or elsewhere in the U.S from now until March on The River Tour 2016, which will see The River played in its entirety on each night.

Last December saw the release of The Ties That Bind: The River Collection. This super duper boxed set reissue was ostensibly for the record's 35th anniversary, although the fact the reissue campaign was initially to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Bruce's albums should indicate how long these releases have been in gestation (the Darkness On The Edge Of Town set was just two years late beforehand). I haven't bought a copy, but over Christmas I did get to enjoy the documentary and concert footage part of the set thanks to BBC Four, so this combined with Bruce starting his tour made it feel like a good time to discuss the record.

The River was clearly important for Bruce. "Hungry Heart", so brilliant in its simplicity that "you write it in the time it took to sing it, practically" in Bruce's words, provided him with his biggest hit single to date. In addition, you could start to hear a "take me out to the ball game" swing to Roy Bittan's keys that would later inform colossal hit Born In The U.S.A. As would the extensive European tour the band took promoting the album, which opened Bruce's eyes more to people's perception of America.

Despite this, I initially felt a bit disappointed by The River. For me it didn't live up to predecessor Darkness, which I still consider the definitive Springsteen record. It seemed like there were too many similar sounding songs that all served a similar purpose. The production sounded a bit tinny. "Stolen Car" sounded like a shadow of the version from rarities compilation Tracks. "Drive All Night" should have stayed as mid-"Backstreets" improv.

Of course as time went by ("and out love grew deep") my opinion of the record became much fonder. The dizzying high points became more and more prominent, to the point where I now consider them some of my favourite Springsteen songs. "Out In The Street" was always my jam, but "Sherry Darling" is an equally joyous singalong and "Two Hearts" is a delight (Bruce did a solo version of the latter on The Ties That Bind documentary that was just phenomenal).

"The Price You Pay"s closing cry of "I'm gonna tear it down and throw it away" has been proving to be a magnetic moment for me, while the beautifully restrained "Fade Away"is now one of my favourite Springsteen ballads. By paring the lyrics down to the bare essentials of the story the power of the feelings behind it comes through massively.

As with Darkness, Bruce wrote tonnes of songs for the record that wouldn't figure in the end result. Talking to Dave Di Martino in October 1980, Bruce remarked "We wrote about 48 songs [for The River] and at one time I thought they were all gonna be on [laughs]." Unbelievable he may have been a bit modest there. According to the documentary, Bruce made a staggering 95 demos for songs by himself and 104 with the band in the studio over the course of the sessions!

It's easy to wonder what would have been if song X replaced song Y and so on. Indeed there are many songs from the outtakes I prefer to certain songs on the final record, especially "Be True", "Loose End" and "Take 'Em As They Come". Bruce himself mentions "Roulette" in particular as the big oversight and kind of shat on "Crush On You" on the doc. He liked a lot of the outtakes but just felt they sounded like they belonged on a different record.

Oh, while on the subject of the doc, there's some decent insight but it does seem to lose steam after about 40 minutes. This is probably because Bruce is the sole "talking head" in the film, so hilariously an anecdote from Bruce outside his garage will wind down, then for some fresh insight it'll cut to... Bruce in his writing room. Seriously, it's just two interviews with Bruce that form the basis of the doc. Where's Little Steven? Where's Max? Where's Jon Landau?

"I come from down the valley... you're taking possession of that character" 

"The stakes of the record are... all the mundane things that turn life into life"

Anyway, Bruce made the point that, at the time, most of his audience only knew him for Born To Run  and Darkness, so he sought to make a record with a strong sense of identity. A lot of the artists he was listening to back then - Johnny Cash, George Jones, Tammy Wynett - made small town music with "adult concerns", and this, coupled with a sense that the band felt like "The Lost Boys" at that point, informed his approach. As he told Mark Hagen in the January 1999 edition of Mojo, "adulthood was imminent, if it hadn't arrived already, so I knew I was gonna be following my characters over a long period of time. I thought it would be interesting and fun for my audience to have a certain... loose continuity from record to record."

In late 1979 the band handed in a single album to the record company from their sessions, The Ties That Bind (hence the title of the set). However, Bruce took the album back and returned to the well to add more material. He felt he needed more time to let the "colours" in and felt it lacked the looseness and noise of the band's live show ("these records should sound like a house party"). Talking to Patrick Humphries of Record Collector in February 1999, Bruce notes "the first thing I said was, I want to include... things that happen spontaneously, things that we use to fuel the show."

Naturally this single album version is included in the boxed set, having previously been one of the most in demand bootlegs around and commonly cited in lists of "Greatest unreleased albums". It's slightly strange to hear, a bit more lethargic than the final product in places. Often the instrumentation comes across clearer than what was released and it contains the superior version of "Stolen Car", so it's still an intriguing listen. "Cindy" is the only song that didn't get released elsewhere, and the only song which sounded markedly different from its eventual release was "You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)". It seemed like the right call to release The River instead.

As a result, with Bruce struggling to contain both the "house party" atmosphere of the joyful material and the high stakes of the more grounded material, the project swelled to the double album we all know today. Bruce would recount in subsequent interviews about how he sought "relief" from the "rigidity" of songs being a certain way. 

"I'd have a song like this and a song like that because I didn't know how to combine it... I knew it was all part of the same picture, which is why The River was a double album." (Roger Scott, Patrick Humphries, Hot Press, November 2nd 1984) 

"When I did this album I tried to accept the fact that, you know, the world is a paradox, and that's the way it is... I wanted to live with particularly conflicting emotions" (Dave Di Martino, October 1980)

With the cheerier songs in particular, Bruce would note how many of the characters featured were in essence anachronisms. In an excellent interview with Dave Marsh from Musician in February 1981, he mentions how the protagonist of "Out In The Street" is firmly rooted in the past, while with "Ramrod", "it's impossible, what he wants to do... this guy, he's there, but he's really not there no more." Again expressing relief at The River's structure, he noted  "I gained a certain freedom, in making that two record set, because I could let all those people out, that usually I'd put away." It is his conversation with Di Martino, though, that draws my favourite quote of Bruce's on this record...

"There's a lot of idealistic stuff on there... a lot of the songs we do now, they're just dreams, but they're based on an emotion that's very real... It's a romantic record and to me, romantic is when you see realities and when you understand the realities, but you also see the possibilities. And sometimes you write about things as they are, and sometimes you write about them as they should be, as they could be, maybe, you know?"

That last quote for me pretty much sums up the spirit of The River. I supremely envy everyone across the Atlantic who'll get to relive that spirit live and in person with the band.

Before I close I must heartily recommend the book Talk About A Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen, edited by Christopher Phillips and Louis P. Masur, which has been the source of the quotes I've used in this post. It is a tremendous collection that sheds some light on the way Bruce thinks and helps chart his evolution as an artist. Go check it out, and hopefully see you really soon.

Waitin' On A Sunny Day: Springsteen at the Etihad 22/6/12

So this was it. As excited as I was to be seeing Pearl Jam, this was the gig I had been obsessing over the most: my chance to see the hard rockin', heart stoppin', pants droppin', booty shakin', Viagra takin', earth quakin', history makin', legendary E Street Band.

I'd spent an inordinate amount of time before the gig listening to the bootlegs of Bruce's tour (check out maury6811 on Youtube, he uploads tonnes) and so I was excited beyond words for this gig.

My excitement was tempered a little bit on the day by two things: 1) the awful weather arriving at the venue which I was stood in waiting for the doors to open (thankfully this cleared up for the most part when the show started) and 2) the blue wristband bullshit.

Basically you couldn't get right near the front of the stage unless you had arrived at the venue at ridiculous o' clock in the morning and collected a blue wristband from the event staff, the idea being you were rewarded for waiting by getting near the stage. This was of no consolation to myself and the thousands of us who got to the venue about an hour before doors opened, completely unaware that this was going on.
So I wasn't at the very front of the crowd (so Bruce wouldn't be walking past me on the walkways they'd built), but I got as far to the front of the crowd as I could and managed to get a very good view of centre stage.

So I'll end my rant there and get to the gig.

As soon as the band came out - Bruce taking to the stage last to omnipresent cries of "Brooooooooce!" from the audience - and we got that oh-so familiar count-in ("one-two-three-fouwwah!") followed by Professor Roy Bittan tinkling the ivories for the opening to "Badlands", all my misgivings about the weather and the blue wristbands were forgotten and I felt completely at home.

There are three rules of thumb one may note about Springsteen gigs.
The first is when in Europe, he'll play more stuff from "Born In The USA" than usual (I'm aware of the irony). This was the case here, with "No Surrender" being a particularly nice surprise early on, and later on the encore included probably the best version of "Dancing In The Dark" I've heard the band do, Jake Clemons' (nephew of the late great Clarence "Big Man" Clemons) sax solo in particular being fantastic.

We were also treated to a great bit of audience interaction during the latter: one girl in the crowd had a sign asking to dance with Jake, so Bruce pulled her out of the crowd to grant her wish. Not to be outdone, however, Bruce hilariously found himself a young woman in a Union Jack onesie to dance with himself.

The second rule one tends to find is that when in Britain, Bruce will play more songs from "The River" than usual. Once again this proved true. Watching the screens behind the band on stage, you could see women in tears during the band's rendition of the title track. On the other end of the scale, Bruce and Steve's chatter during "You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)" drew lots of laughs.

Bruce: "It's on channels 92 to 100, I've seen it! They have numbers scrolling along the bottom!" 
Steve: "Oh you better not look."
Bruce: "Oh You can look!"
Steve: "You better not even look!"
Bruce: "You can look. You can call in!! But you caaaaaaan't touch."

On a personal note I was just delighted they played "Out In The Street".
 

The final rule is that you can tell how much faith Bruce has in his new album by how prominent the songs from the album are in the set. So it seems that Bruce is pretty chuffed with "Wrecking Ball" (which he has every right to be) on the evidence of this night.

It might be in part down to the fact that the title track and "Land Of Hope And Dreams" have been played live years before the record was released, but with the likes of the Irish jig of "Death To My Hometown", the sombre, resilient "Jack Of All Trades" (which got a big cheer for the line "if I had me a gun, I'd find the bastards and shoot 'em on sight" in reference to the bankers) and the rousing "We Are Alive" I never felt robbed out of one of one of the older classics when he played the new stuff.

One more thing you need to understand about Bruce is this: the man is inhuman! The stamina he has is just incredible. This gig went 3 and a quarter hours, and they played it all pretty much straight with little or no breaks. The gap between the band leaving stage for the end of the main set and walking back on for the encore was barely a minute. AND THE MAN IS 63!!! Just incredible.

In my favourite bit of the gig, after "Dancing In The Dark", Bruce feigned exhaustion and lay down on the stage hugging his guitar like a pillow. This leads to Steve stalking Bruce with a wringing wet sponge to revive him. The looks on both their faces during this exchange were just hilarious! "Ah Manchester, you tired me out already!" claimed Bruce.

Still, there was time during "My City Of Ruins" to conduct the band roll call and say hello. There's nothing like an E Street Band roll call, it's both humorous (he informed us wife Patti was back home "keepin' the kids outta them drugs" and that any red-headed English women should keep back because he misses her!) and spirited, touching upon the much missed organist Dan Federci and saxophonist Clarence Clemons ("if you're here, and we're here, then they're here").
He also informed us he'd learnt a lot since last visiting Manchester: "I've learnt that there are TWO football teams in Manchester! And one of them has just... eh, I'm not going into it."

I was also unbelievably lucky to be seeing the band on a night when they played so many of my favourites. "Spirit In The Night", my favourite song from his debut, stands out in my mind in particular. Being there to hear that song was like a religious experience.
Seeing "Atlantic City" make an appearance was a very pleasant surprise, with Soozie Tyrell's violin becoming the focus of the song instead of Bruce's harmonica like on the record. So when they immediately followed that up by playing the '78 version of "Prove It All Night", with Roy and Bruce playing the extended intro, I was ecstatic.

The biggest surprise though was the appearance of "Save My Love" and "The Promise" in the set, which left me a very happy bunny indeed since I got into Bruce because of "The Promise" as I've mentioned in an earlier entry.

By the end of the show, with the band's infamous version of "Twist And Shout" (referred to as "the stadium-breaker" after a crack was discovered in a venue in Sweden after the band played the song there) ringing out through the stadium, I was wishing the night didn't have to end, I could listen to the band play all day long. They'd probably be able to play that long at a stretch too!
Alas, the show had to end at some point. At the finale's end one of the blokes I was stood with shook my hand and congratulated me on my first Springsteen gig, which felt like a bit of a right of passage. Here's hoping it won't be the last Springsteen gig I go to!


At this point, I shall bid you adieu, and leave you with the full set from the show.
See you soon!

Setlist

1. Badlands
2. No Surrender
3. We Take Care Of Our Own
4. Wrecking Ball
5. Death to My Hometown
6. My City of Ruins
7. Spirit in the Night
8. The E Street Shuffle
9. Jack of All Trades
10. Atlantic City
11. Prove It All Night (78 Intro)
12. Two Hearts
13. You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
14. Darlington County
15. Shackled and Drawn
16. Waitin' on a Sunny Day
17. Save My Love
18. The Promise
19. The River
20. The Rising
21. Out in the Street
22. Land of Hope and Dreams
    Encore:
23. We Are Alive
24. Thunder Road
25. Born to Run
26. Bobby Jean
27. Cadillac Ranch
28. Dancing in the Dark
29. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
30. Twist and Shout

Playlist (courtesy of maury6811)

IT'S BOSS TIME!

Long time no blog. Good reason though, been kept very busy with research, reports and outreach work - the joys of being a masters student!
Still, it's nearly Christmas so I'll finally have a proper break from work.

So, apart from being hard at work with maths, what's been new with me? Well I've been snapping up tickets to see two of my favourite artists ever (or in my Dad's words "more American crap") next summer - Pearl Jam and Bruce Springsteen - much to my wallet's chagrin I'm sure.
I'll get to Pearl Jam later, mostly because I'm still miffed that standing tickets sold out in the presales. They've apparently put another date on, but that's no consolation seeing as I've already bought my seated ticket. To think this was the same band that actually made a stand against Ticketmaster's monopoly in the mid 90s.

Anyway, Bruce. So I'm a very late-comer to his music. I first got into him last November, when he released "The Promise", a huge collection of material recorded in the late 70s during the "Darkness on the Edge of Town" sessions that didn't make the cut. I was mesmerised by this album as soon as I heard it and couldn't fathom how he had the discipline to not use the material on the Darkness on the Edge of Town album. There was such a range of material on there. But then I saw the documentary on the making of the album and understood the vision he wanted for the album. Plus it reminds me of Christmas, because of the production on songs like "Someday (We'll Be Together)" and "The Little Things (My Baby Does)", and also because of an excellent little gig he did in a New Jersey carousel to promote the album that featured a great cover of "Blue Christmas".

Consequently this got me into "Darkness on the Edge of Town" which could possibly be considered one of the greatest albums of all time. Released in 1978, it was arguably his most career defining record, coming off the breakthrough success he had with "Born To Run", it not only proved that Bruce wasn't just a "flash in the pan", it also showed he had the song-writing steel to transcend mainstream success and write a genre defining record that would last the test of time.

Gone (for the most part) was the sprawling, free form style of "Born To Run" and in it's place was a disciplined, uncompromising power. While "Born To Run" was about escapism and the follies of youth ("We gotta get out while we're young"), "Darkness" was about standing your ground to face what life throws at you and giving everything you have in return ("Tonight I'll be on that hill, 'cause I can't stop. I'll be on that hill with everything I got."). Or as Springsteen himself put it "Tough music for folks in tough circumstances".

In Lehmann's terms then, it's an album about growing up and facing your responsibilities, and having come across it at a time when I felt like I had a lot of growing up to do, it's an album that's very dear to my heart.

This was a very unconventional rock album: while there are some great guitar riffs such as those on "Adam Raised a Cain" and "Candy's Room", the majority of the record is driven my Roy Bittan's piano, Danny Federici's organ and of course the saxophone of Clarence Clemons (see "Badlands", "The Promised Land" and "Prove It All Night").

The undoubted highlight though is "Racing in the Street". Bruce had already established himself as a songwriter with a unique knack for narrative with songs like "Mary Queen of Arkansas", "Incident on 57th Street" and "Thunder Road", but "Racing in the Street" is, for me, Springsteen's masterpiece.
There were many versions of this song floating around when Bruce was making "Darkness", and he faced a dilemma over which version to include (an excellent alternative version is on "The Promise"). That was until producer Jon Landau chimed in with "I like the one with the girl", to which guitarist (and Bruce's best friend) Stevie Van Zandt agreed "Yeah, I like the one with the girl too." So that was what he went with. It was a decision that paid off, and the best song he's ever written. The final verse in particular, is a complete triumph of narrative and emotion:

"I met her on the strip three years ago,
In a Camaro with this dude from L.A.
I blew that Camaro off my back and drove that little girl away.
But now there's wrinkles around my baby's eyes,
And she cries herself to sleep at night.
When I come home the house is dark,
She sighs "Baby, did you make it all right?"
She sits on the porch of her daddy's house,
But all her pretty dreams are torn.
She stares off alone into the night,
With the eyes of one who hates for just being born.
For all the shut down strangers and hot rod angels
Rumbling through this promised land.
Tonight my baby and me we're gonna ride to the sea,
And wash these sins off our hands

Tonight tonight the highway's bright
Out of our way mister you best keep.
'Cause summer's here and the time is right
For goin' racin' in the street."

I've got all my limbs crossed he plays that song in Manchester, I know he doesn't play it too often.
I'll also be interested to see how the band cope without Clarence, who in another matter close to my heart sadly passed away earlier this year from a severe stroke. It's no coincidence that Bruce is leaning on the Big man's back on that iconic sleeve of "Born To Run": Clarence's sax was such an integral part of the E Street Band, and made Bruce's music stand out in the crowd.

I'm still incredibly excited though. Bruce's music's been such a huge part of my life this past year I just couldn't turn down the chance to see him live.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll ramble again soon!