A heavily edited version of this post originally appeared on Backstreets.com, which you can read here. 

Bruce and the increasingly death-defying E Street Band’s lone jaunt to the Great White North reaffirmed many age-old truths, but perhaps none more so than the classic adage: “you had to be there.” Though setlist watchers will undoubtedly harp about the fact that the closest the show came to a tour premiere was the briefly soundchecked “Spirit in the Night,”[1] those lucky enough to have actually been inside of Toronto’s Air Canada Centre on Tuesday night were treated to one of the most raucous, intense, and flat-out joyous evenings so far on this tour. In fact, I would argue that the predictability of the setlist not only helped to unify the crowd into one of the best of the six shows thus far, but also fit perfectly with what Bruce is trying to get at with each and every show on this 2016 River Tour.

Continue reading “TORONTO: Calling Out Nation to Nation” →

“35 summers on, let’s go down to The River and see what we find.”

With those 13 words,[1] Bruce Springsteen basically encapsulates everything that I hope to achieve with this blog. But since concision wasn’t on the top of Bruce’s mind when writing The River – the double album that practically willed this website into existence – I shall use a few more words to explain what you should expect to find on these pages in the coming months.

Continue reading “My Story” →