| Springsteen concert good, not great |
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| Connectiut Post, 2009-04-25 |
| By: Sean Spillane |
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Seeing Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band is always an event and Friday night's show at the XL Center in Hartford certainly qualified.
The Boss was as energetic as ever, even as he nears his 60th birthday, and his musical colleagues were as tight as ever, but the concert itself wasn't as captivating as past visits to the state.
And you can't blame this rather average Springsteen performance on his paying too much attention to his latest album, "Working on a Dream," which is good, not great. Only three songs from "Dream" made the set list, four if you add in the album's bonus track, "The Wrestler," which was featured in the movie of the same name.
Friday's concert never reached Springsteen's usual heights because the songs chosen never seemed to gain any traction. It began promisingly enough (though 45 minutes after the scheduled 7:30 start time) with "Badlands," which had the fans on their feet, where they would stay for the rest of the two-and-a-half-hour show.
The new "Outlaw Pete" didn't really register and the oldie "Jackson Cage," from 1980's "The River," also failed to catch fire with the audience, though I, for one, appreciated Springsteen dipping into his lengthy catalog for something a little different.
Bruce and the band did a fine version of "She's the One," leading into the title track from "Working on a Dream," which, during a musical break, had Springsteen preaching his gospel of turning the XL Center into "a house
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of faith; a house of hope." He is, after all, "on a mission from the rock 'n' roll gods."
Fun stuff.
The E Street Band took on a different look for the next four songs as drummer Max Weinberg handed off the sticks to his 18-year-old son, Jay. Mighty Max won't be with the band on its upcoming European tour because of his responsibilities as the leader of The Max Weinberg 7, which will move to Los Angeles with Conan O'Brien when he takes over the "Tonight Show" in June, and Jay will fill in for that portion of the tour.
The crowd ate up the youngster's appearance and with good reason. Jay Weinberg was outstanding on his four songs, which included one of the night's highlights, a rollicking version of "Johnny 99." That song, from the stark "Nebraska" album of 1982, was given a boost and was played as a kind of rockabilly-boogie woogie hybrid.
It was a bit odd to see the E Street Band without Max Weinberg. It lost keyboardist Danny Federici to cancer in April of 2008 and Springsteen's wife, singer Patti Scialfa, also was missing, having been injured in a horse-riding accident.
"Not the same horse as Madonna's, but she's pretty bruised up," Springsteen joked later in the show before dedicating the new song, 'Kingdom of Days," to her.
The show hit a sour note when Springsteen played a few cover songs requested by the audience in what he termed the "stump the band" portion of the concert. "Raise Your Hand" was solid, but we really didn't need to hear this great band doing "Wild Thing," which is as unchallenging and trite a song as can be imagined.
The segment wrapped with John Fogerty's "Rockin' All Over the World." Again, it was fine, but I'm sure the flow of the show would have been better served if he skipped the requests and played three more of his classic songs.
The final portion of the main set was a bit off. There were some beloved chestnuts -- "The E Street Shuffle," "The Promised Land" and "Born to Run" -- but Springsteen kept returning to songs from 2002's "The Rising." The songs were fine -- "Waitin' on a Sunny Day," "Lonesome Day" and the title song -- but he has so many better songs that I'm sure his fans would rather have heard.
There also was a lull when he followed "The Wrestler" with the new "Kingdom of Days." Again, the performances were good, but the energy level of the fans took a decided hit from the back-to-back moody songs.
The set ended with a rousing version of "Cadillac Ranch" and the ensuing encore was amazingly good.
The band gave new life to Stephen Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More," no easy feat for song that's about 140 years old. The autobiographical "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" is always a crowd-pleaser and "Land of Hope and Dreams" has been an encore staple for a few years.
Maybe it's the Irishman in me, but I loved "American Land," the Celtic-tinged song Springsteen wrote for the "Seeger Sessions" album (thought it was only included on a later version of the record). The band also seemed to be having a good time performing it on their (mostly) acoustic instruments.
Springsteen knows how to send his fans off with a smile and Friday night he ended the proceedings with one of his most popular songs, "Rosalita."
It was a high-energy conclusion to a show that had many such moments . . . as well as a few small stumbles. |
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