Springsteen at Hunter Valley - Show 2

You know when Garry W Tallent comes on to the stage busting out some sweet dance moves that you're in for a fucking brilliant night.

The E Street Band started the night with Curtis King, drummer Max Weinberg and organist Charlie Giordano taking up their instruments and providing a beat for the rest of the band to step into position.

Then outcame Springsteen again asking that question: "Where's the wine?!"

No repeat of the previous night's opener, this time Michelle Moore soon accompanied him up front as the mysterious woman in Ed Burden's Spill The Wine. 

Once again starting up a party for the 17,000 Hunter Valley crowd steeped deep in one of Australia's fine wine regions.

My Love Will Not Let You Down followed as the re-energised, refreshed and recovery-lapsed crowd joined the band in every hand-raising fist pump.

The energy of night 2 didn't let up as the pouding Death To My Hometown spilled into an angry Seeds and Out In The Street ended with an early request for Rosalita - once again not being saved to end the party, but to build it up even more.

The subsequent duo of High Hopes and Just Like Fire Would has become a regular feature after the first burst of songs from the band - but the band don't treat it like a nightly routine. Tom Morello in particular always marking his stamp on the stage.

Night 2 was a great night for the horns section too as a request for Johnny 99 and then later on Pay Me My Money Down just two of the several occasions they became centre stage.

Meanwhile Heaven's Wall  once again belonged to Soozie Tyrell as she playfully battled with the four lead guitars on centre mic.

The real highlights started however when Springsteen announced one they 'hadn't played for a while'.

And he wasn't kidding. Even after the fans cheered for the opening bars of Brilliant Disguise Springsteen made the band start it again to get them all back in time. 

It didn't matter, the crowd was hooked from the first moment with the popular, and rarely played track.

Taking that enthusiasm further the band played straight into Human Touch. Again the audience was stunned with the sound from the whole band, playing at their best, as Springsteen brought out his extended solo for the song and Tyrell swapped stage spots for Morello for her acoustic guitar and backing vocals. Springsteen giving her a shout out afterwards as everyone knew she was having a great night.

For die-hard fans that would have possibly satisfied their desires for a few special numbers, but of course there was more to come.

I'm Goin' Down came with a hilarious quick series of scenes with Stevie Van Zandt as Springsteen repeatedly asked if he was the problem in the song's failing relationship.

The constant thirst for Born In The USA was also met, but only after the band started the encore with the 'signature song' of late Danny Federici - 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy).

Again the stunned crowd were in awe as Springsteen led the band through the epic The Wild, The Innocent... track as Roy Bittan stepped away from his piano to take up accordian duties next to the lead man.

The encore continued with some familiar favourites before Springsteen granted one final request, normally asked for by 'guys who've just been dumped'.

Taking solo acoustic duties for I Wish I Was Blind he again reminded everyone that he wasn't just able to orchestrate an 18-piece show band for three hours, he also had the power to bring a hillside of 17,000 people to near-silence - probably while thinking about an ex they secretly and selfishly hope to never see happy with a new lover.

It was the harmonica of a solo acoustic of Thunder Road that brought everyone back to the show for the final goodbye, Springsteen's vocals still on fire right to the end.

1. Spill The Wine (Cover, Eric Burden & War) 

2. My Love Will Not Let You Down

3. Death To My Hometown

4. Seeds 

5. Out In The Street

6. Rosalita (sign request)

7. High Hopes

8. Just Like Fire Would

9. Johnny 99 (sign request)

10. Heaven's Wall

11. Brilliant Disguise 

12. Human Touch

13. I'm Goin' Down

14. Pay Me My Money Down

15. Shackled And Drawn

16. Radio Nowhere 

17. The Rising

18. The Ghost Of Tom Joad

19. Badlands 

20. 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)

21. Born In The USA

22. Born To Run

23. Ramrod

24. Dancing In The Dark

25. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

26. Rockin' All Over The World 

27. I Wish I Were Blind (sign request, solo acoustic)

28. Thunder Road (solo acoustic)

Show length: 3 hours 5 mins.

Australasia tour so far: 10 shows, 276 songs, 108 different

#BruceBooks - Rocking The Wall

Just finished the latest Springsteen book in my rapidly growing collection and it’s one that every fan should give a read.

Erik Kirschbaum’s Rocking The Wall has great insights and recollections into the concert in East Germany 16 months before the collapse of the Berlin wall in 1989 and explores the impact Springsteen had on the fall of Communism in the region.

It’s not a long read and doesn’t rerun the life of an icon like the many Bruce biographies flooding the bookshelves at the moment, but it is a well-researched and presented chapter in the influence Springsteen has had in people’s lives.

Well timed with the release of Springsteen & I documentary (not out here for another week) Kirschbaum talks to people who were among the 300,000 fans in East Berlin and looks at the rising desire for change in the country’s youth.

For someone who was seven-years-old when the Wall was torn down it’s an interesting history lesson but what I really got out of it was the incredible lengths people went to get in to see the show, and how eager Springsteen was to perform there.

It also makes me think of last year’s Hyde Park concert where Springsteen was cut off during the band’s final moments.

In 1988 a concert in a country dominated by rules and regulations was supposed to entertain a maximum of 160,000 people. But when nearly double that amount turned up, the ticket booth was smashed and fences were torn down and the usually strict authorities let the overcrowded, totally unsafe show go ahead regardless. 

The book details how the concert went ahead because the country’s rulers thought it might entertain the youth of the nation, and keep order. Instead it did the very thing they were trying to avoid - hundreds of thousands of empowered young people motivated for change. 

In comparison to the Hyde Park concert 24 years later, just after Springsteen was joined on stage by English music legend Sir Paul McCartney, the power was cut on a concert of 50-80,000 people because he was running a few minutes over.

The result was tens of thousands of people spilling across the London streets trying to make it out of a city centre park with no clue what was happening and little directions on how to get out without disrupting nearby residents and businesses. 

The very thing those who pulled the power were trying to avoid.

Two different situations but with similar lessons…

(Never underestimate Springsteen or his fans).

When the lights go out...

Hard Rock Calling - the festival series that has taken over London's Hyde Park for a decade and hosted two unforgettable E Street Band shows - has managed to lure Bruce Springsteen back to the UK capital again this June.

It comes as they move their massive event from the Royal Parks to the Olympic Parks site and a year after Springsteen was shut down during his final moments on stage with Paul McCartney.

A historical moment in the history of popular music that made headlines around the world as the venue organisers couldn't give them another five minutes on stage.

Near the front of the 80,000 crowd in Hyde Park last July part of me couldn't believe they cut the power on the band. It was reportedly to help serve the local area better, but actually ended with thousands and thousands of confused, angry people pushing each other around trying to find an exit without any clear signs or instructions on the quickest and safest way to get home.

Something that could have gone up on the big screen after the band left the stage AFTER their goodbye.

It was in the Hong Kong airport lounge on the way back to Perth that I saw on TV news reports just how big the insult was.

But it seems that Springsteen isn't holding it against the Hard Rock Calling organisers Live Nation as he has agreed to join them as headliner for a third time at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Having been at previous Hard Rock Calling concerts, anyone in the UK thinking they can only make it to one Springsteen show this year, really should consider this one.

In fact with Paul Weller and Kasabian making up a weekend of headliners spending a few days checking out the new east London venue wouldn't be a bad idea at all.

Tickets are on sale Friday from Hard Rock Calling


Title Track: When The Lights Go Out

From Small Things...

A few months ago Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's tour of Australia was officially announced.

A few months before that I had a spam email from online music retailer PopMarket with an eye-catching offer: A Bruce Springsteen Live DVD bundle for $26 - with free postage.

Fearing the rumours I had heard of the Australian Wrecking Ball tour were in fact nothing more than rumours, I really wasn't going to miss out on such a great bargain.

Especially when it includes two significant concerts:
1 - The Live in New York City set which I first stumbled upon late on BBC2 one night in 2001 that came a couple of years after I was first introduced to Tracks and sealed my appreciation of everything E Street and essentially started my increasing borderline obsession with seeing them live at any given opportunity. 

2 - The London Calling: Live From Hyde Park concert, which I managed to get to the front row, received a tip of the hat from Clarence Clemons and even made a close up appearance in the final DVD edit two minutes into the band's performance of Born To Run. (Wearing the stars and stripes bandana).

So this DVD bundle was ordered in September 2012 and I expected it to arrive a few weeks, maybe a month later what with it travelling all the way to Perth.
But it wasn't until a week or two ago that I received this box on my doorstep...

Complete with stickers saying it had travelled through Belgium, and "was wet when it arrived in Australia".

I actually received the parcel on the same day I wrote a short news story about a young English boy's message in a bottle that had left the north coast of England and washed up on a beach in Perth some 15 months later.
From the state of the package I wondered it had made a similar journey.

Amazingly the contents of the parcel seem completely unaffected by the delivery. And now have been added to the three Bruce and E Street biography gifts I recently received that have become my unofficial research for my upcoming trip.




 Title track: From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)

Don't Look Back

It's official - tickets for all ten Australia concerts have been secured.

Somehow despite a frustrating problem with TickeTek's pre-sale website on Wednesday morning - that caused something of a quick angry panic - I managed to grab a general admission ticket for the third and final Sydney show.

So as well as securing tickets for each concert I've also managed to get front section standing tickets for every venue on the tour. Something I had struggled with in my previous purchases for Sydney's All Phones Arena.

New Jersey's finest together in London, 2009.

And in a bonus to the E Street overload New Jersey rockband and Springsteen influenced The Gaslight Anthem have announced their own tour of Australia later this year. And tickets are booked to see them in Perth in May.

Having seen the band twice before - including the 2009 Hard Rock Calling concert where Bruce joined them for The 59 Sound and Brian Fallon later returned the favour to join the E Street Band for No Surrender - there's plenty to be excited about. 

The band are one of the hardest working and committed bands around at the moment who know how to engage with an audience while blasting out a great sound. 

If The E Street Band can't make it to Perth, then their younger New Jersey neighbours really are the next best thing.

Title track: Don't Look Back