You can tell a lot about a show by how Bruce greets the audience at the start. For his last of three nights in Perth, he went with, “GOOOOOOOOD EEEEEEVEEEEEEENIIIIIIING WEEEEEESTEEEEEEEEERN AAAAAAAAUSTRAAAAAAAALIAAAAAAA!!!”
Continue reading “PERTH 3 (+ Performance Notes!): Glory Days Will Never Pass Them By”
To commemorate moving from my Broadway writing back to E Street, here’s a Sound of Music inspired question that wracked my brain in the weeks leading up to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s Australia/New Zealand 2017 Tour:
News regarding Escape to Margaritaville; Sweat; Hamilton in London’s quest to stop scalpers/touts; the Stuttering Association for the Young (and Bruce Springsteen, kinda); the Ambassador Theatre Group/Colonial Theatre; and the Nassau Coliseum:
Continue reading “Tweet of Consciousness: Weekend News Roundup”
Amidst the seemingly endless array of doomsday scenarios regarding the onset of Trump’s America being bandied about by many artists – a majority of whom are obviously liberal – a rare, commonly held bright spot in this darkness is the promise that at the very least some amazing art will be created in response to the years ahead. Very few have ever countered the quasi-adage ‘misery inspires better art than happiness’ for a reason.
Earlier this week, Michael Riedel of the New York Post reported that Bruce (Springsteen…for those who don’t know me) – after years of purportedly refusing to sell his music for others’ artistic (and financial) gain – is now open to lending his vast musical oeuvre to a Broadway musical.
A slightly edited version of this piece originally appeared on Backstreets.com, which you can read here. If you already did, scroll down a bit to find a lot of performance notes and observations that were not included in the original version.
How do you follow the show heard round the world?
My favorite moment of Bruce and the Band’s final-leg-launching first of three nights in their home state of New Jersey actually occurred hours before the crowd was let into MetLife Stadium. Don’t get me wrong – this proclamation is in no way an indictment of the actual concert, which was rife with memorable moments of all shapes and sizes. Rather, one of Bruce’s song choices during the extended soundcheck[1] seemed to hint at the Boss FINALLY adhering to the wishes of a plethora of his fans that he put a little more thought into his construction of the setlists on this tour.
This has been the best summer of my life.
Though a vast majority of this website over the last three months has been devoted to recaps of Bruce’s concerts in Europe, what made this summer so special – and what I’ll remember most about it – revolves around the Bruce Buds that I’ve befriended along the way, a fact that I acutely felt during the final stop of the European Tour in Zurich, whose Pit was overwhelmingly populated with so many of the familiar faces with whom I had forged real friendships over the course of my travels thanks to the European Pit system.[1]
