Thoughts from Friday:
Apr. 14th, 2003 05:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jenkOur seats were behind the stage, roughly behind Nils & Danny. We had a good view of the entire stage.
Good thing I lost 4" in my hips and wore thin pants, because one place the pacific coliseum (former home of the Canucks) showed its age was in the seats. Not just narrow, not much legroom. My hips can compress; my thigh length doesn't. Putting my feet on the seat in front of me blocked my view; Jesse was on my left; someone I didn't know was on my right. And, damnit, I'm too polite to stand when *no one* behind me is standing. My knees hurt most of the night.
The seats did have cushy padding.
Oh, and the staff insisted on keeping bottle caps. I can understand pouring my lemonade out of the glass bottle and into a paper cup - paper doesn't shatter - but no bottle caps? Argh. I'd hoped to get a couple extra bottles of water to save for after the show. Oh well.
Setlist: The Rising/Lonesome Day/The Ties That Bind/Prove It All Night/Empty
Sky/You're Missing/Waitin' on a Sunny Day/No Surrender/Two Hearts/Worlds
Apart/Badlands/Out in the Street/Mary's Place/My Hometown/Into the Fire/Thunder
Road
First Encore: This Hard Land/Ramrod/Born to Run
Second Encore:My City of Ruins/Land of Hope and Dreams/Dancing in the Dark
"The Rising" is a great opener. I squeezed my legs out from between my seat and the seat back in front and stood up happily. I was less happy when I saw that many of the folks around me weren't standing up. Why go to a Springsteen show if you don't want to dance? *Don't* tell me that all those other people had such short inseams and small hips that they were comfy!
During "Mary's Place" Bruce said a house party needs two things: the music has to be righteous, and "the people have to get up off their ass. That's your part!" People did get up, at least for a while.
"Lonesome Day" is great too.
"No Surrender!" Live! Full band rocking version, not solo acoustic version!
Yippee!!!
"Ties That Bind!" Good, good song. Love that song.
On several of the opening songs I noticed Nils having trouble with his guitars. He had some sort of signal to a guitar tech, who'd swap guitars with him. At one point he swapped guitars moments before a solo of his. Sometimes he'd switch guitars to play bottleneck.
While the lights were up for "Sunny Day" a lot of folks up front were holding up signs that showed a single red heart on them. They probably had 'Two Hearts" written on them too, but what I saw was a sea of hearts.
There also was a scramble after "No Surrender" - Nils had his banjo on, and Danny was strapping on his accordian, and then Danny took off the accordian and Nils grabbed a guitar. I think Patti and/or Steve might have switched guitars too, and they went into "Two Hearts" before pulling out the banjo & accordian for "Worlds Apart".
In the condo elevator we ran into a couple guys from Olympia who'd grabbed a setlist from the stage. We checked, and "Two Hearts" wasn't on it. Hence the scramble ;)
Anyway, the banjo gave a bit of a middle eastern feel, along with Soozie's violin. I still have that copy of Insh'Allah to send to Soozie (oops). Roy had the background chanting programmed into his synth, and perhaps other instruments as well. I was suprised in the middle of the song when Nils took off the banjo to play a guitar solo, then finished up with banjo. Not that I *mind* Nils doing a solo, he's my favorite guitarist of the band, but I was surprised that he
played banjo and guitar on the same song.
Instrument notes: Bruce mostly played guitar, took most of the guitar solos, occasionally harmonica, and piano for the first verse of "My City of Ruins". (I got excited when I saw them setting up the piano for Bruce. Used to be if he was playing piano, it mean "The Promise". Oh well.) A few songs he focused on vocals and working the crowd, especially "Sunny Day" and "Out in the Street". Nils played guitar, bottleneck guitar, banjo, and pedal steel guitar. Steve played guitar and mandolin. Patti is often seen as 'the extra guitarist', and there's lots of jokes about her guitar not being plugged in. When I've been up front I've noted that she's most likely to play an acoustic guitar, and that the guys often start playing the same pattern she plays before taking off to do other things. Patti lays down the rhythm guitar that the other guitars build on and dance around.
Back to instruments...Danny played organ, accordian, and some synth. Roy had the grand piano and synthesizers. I didn't see the stand-up bass, and Max's drum kit seemed rather small (have I been watching DannO too much?) Soozie's violins all looked acoustic with wireless pickups. C switched between a couple different saxes and percussion.
I think Soozie had more solos this time around, but I could be wrong. Nice one on "Worlds Apart", also on "My City of Ruins" and "Empty Sky". Her playing is very different from Heather's. Give Heather a fiddle on a rock song, and she's like a lead guitar - attention-grabbing and exciting. Soozie's a more like a bass or rhythm guitar: she lays down a solid riff, and she occasionlly steps out for a melodic accent to the song.
It was fun to watch Soozie "clapping" on a few songs - tapping her bow and fiddle above her head ;)
C also sat in a cool-looking chair during a couple quiet songs. I heard a rumor that he's going to need a hip replacement one of these days...? Hope he's okay. I think he's the oldest of the band.
Anyway. I love the live version of "Empty Sky". It's more meditative than the studio version, and I like Patti's harmony vocals.
I cried, as usual, on Thunder Road. Or maybe not as usual; I don't *always* cry to that song in concert. It is the first Bruce song I heard him sing. I've been living with that song for 20 years now; the lyrics connect with many bits and pieces of my life.
Ramrod was fun and full of life. I'd like to see![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jenkitty dance to it. By then the folks on my right had cleared out, so I had more room to dance! ;) The distracting part was that I'd start to take my shirt off, then remember I'm not at a clothing-optional dance. It happened several times.
Also, Roy took a nice loong solo in the middle of Ramrod - just the piano, no one else, on a roadhouse-style song. Bliss. There's a reason I think of Roy whenever Spider describes Fast Eddie's playing.
Dancing in the Dark was faster than the studio version, and lots of fun. Like Mary-Chapin Carpenter sez, it's 'a bummer of a song'. It's about frustration and anger - "I'm just tired and bored with myself", "I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face/Man I ain't getting nowhere/I'm just living in a dump like this". "Stay on the streets of this town/and they'll be carving you up alright/They say you gotta stay hungry/hey baby I'm just about starving tonight/I'm dying for some action. Or, to hit close to home for me: I'm sick of sitting 'round here trying to write this book". Oh, yeah. Jesse and I laughed over that one.
But it's not just the bouncy beat that is the anti for all this depressant: "You sit around getting older/there's a joke here somewhere and it's on me/I'll shake this world off my shoulders/come on baby this laugh's on me" ""You can't start a fire/Worrying about your little world falling apart" and "You can't start a fire/Sittin' around and crying over a broken heart".
There'd been some discussion before the show as to whether Bruce would do "Born In The USA". He has brought back the full-band rock version this tour. March 10th he introduced it, "I wrote this song about the Vietnam War... I hope I won't have to write this song again. So we'll offer this as a prayer for peace, for the safety of our young men and women in uniform, for the lives of innocent Iraqi civilians... and add our voice to those against war in Iraq."
Bruce didn't sing "Born In The USA" in BC. He sang "My Hometown". At the end of the song, he turned to each side of the coliseum in turn to sing "This is your hometown", and waited for us to sing the next line back. There was something deliberate about how he did it, as if he wanted to ingrain 'This is where to you live. Act like it.'
Couple dedications: "City of Ruins" to a local foodbank. He'd arranged for volunteers to be in the lobby collecting any donations after the show. "Land of Hopes and Dreams" to the Iraqi people.
The coliseum is supposed to be no-smoking, and there was less smoking than, say, when I saw Melissa Etheridge play in Florida. I do wish the 'hosts' would super-soaker any fires. The smoke was thick walking through the crowd outside afterward. Yes, I'd taken antihistimines. Thank god we had bottled water in the car.
Good thing I lost 4" in my hips and wore thin pants, because one place the pacific coliseum (former home of the Canucks) showed its age was in the seats. Not just narrow, not much legroom. My hips can compress; my thigh length doesn't. Putting my feet on the seat in front of me blocked my view; Jesse was on my left; someone I didn't know was on my right. And, damnit, I'm too polite to stand when *no one* behind me is standing. My knees hurt most of the night.
The seats did have cushy padding.
Oh, and the staff insisted on keeping bottle caps. I can understand pouring my lemonade out of the glass bottle and into a paper cup - paper doesn't shatter - but no bottle caps? Argh. I'd hoped to get a couple extra bottles of water to save for after the show. Oh well.
Setlist: The Rising/Lonesome Day/The Ties That Bind/Prove It All Night/Empty
Sky/You're Missing/Waitin' on a Sunny Day/No Surrender/Two Hearts/Worlds
Apart/Badlands/Out in the Street/Mary's Place/My Hometown/Into the Fire/Thunder
Road
First Encore: This Hard Land/Ramrod/Born to Run
Second Encore:My City of Ruins/Land of Hope and Dreams/Dancing in the Dark
"The Rising" is a great opener. I squeezed my legs out from between my seat and the seat back in front and stood up happily. I was less happy when I saw that many of the folks around me weren't standing up. Why go to a Springsteen show if you don't want to dance? *Don't* tell me that all those other people had such short inseams and small hips that they were comfy!
During "Mary's Place" Bruce said a house party needs two things: the music has to be righteous, and "the people have to get up off their ass. That's your part!" People did get up, at least for a while.
"Lonesome Day" is great too.
"No Surrender!" Live! Full band rocking version, not solo acoustic version!
Yippee!!!
"Ties That Bind!" Good, good song. Love that song.
On several of the opening songs I noticed Nils having trouble with his guitars. He had some sort of signal to a guitar tech, who'd swap guitars with him. At one point he swapped guitars moments before a solo of his. Sometimes he'd switch guitars to play bottleneck.
While the lights were up for "Sunny Day" a lot of folks up front were holding up signs that showed a single red heart on them. They probably had 'Two Hearts" written on them too, but what I saw was a sea of hearts.
There also was a scramble after "No Surrender" - Nils had his banjo on, and Danny was strapping on his accordian, and then Danny took off the accordian and Nils grabbed a guitar. I think Patti and/or Steve might have switched guitars too, and they went into "Two Hearts" before pulling out the banjo & accordian for "Worlds Apart".
In the condo elevator we ran into a couple guys from Olympia who'd grabbed a setlist from the stage. We checked, and "Two Hearts" wasn't on it. Hence the scramble ;)
Anyway, the banjo gave a bit of a middle eastern feel, along with Soozie's violin. I still have that copy of Insh'Allah to send to Soozie (oops). Roy had the background chanting programmed into his synth, and perhaps other instruments as well. I was suprised in the middle of the song when Nils took off the banjo to play a guitar solo, then finished up with banjo. Not that I *mind* Nils doing a solo, he's my favorite guitarist of the band, but I was surprised that he
played banjo and guitar on the same song.
Instrument notes: Bruce mostly played guitar, took most of the guitar solos, occasionally harmonica, and piano for the first verse of "My City of Ruins". (I got excited when I saw them setting up the piano for Bruce. Used to be if he was playing piano, it mean "The Promise". Oh well.) A few songs he focused on vocals and working the crowd, especially "Sunny Day" and "Out in the Street". Nils played guitar, bottleneck guitar, banjo, and pedal steel guitar. Steve played guitar and mandolin. Patti is often seen as 'the extra guitarist', and there's lots of jokes about her guitar not being plugged in. When I've been up front I've noted that she's most likely to play an acoustic guitar, and that the guys often start playing the same pattern she plays before taking off to do other things. Patti lays down the rhythm guitar that the other guitars build on and dance around.
Back to instruments...Danny played organ, accordian, and some synth. Roy had the grand piano and synthesizers. I didn't see the stand-up bass, and Max's drum kit seemed rather small (have I been watching DannO too much?) Soozie's violins all looked acoustic with wireless pickups. C switched between a couple different saxes and percussion.
I think Soozie had more solos this time around, but I could be wrong. Nice one on "Worlds Apart", also on "My City of Ruins" and "Empty Sky". Her playing is very different from Heather's. Give Heather a fiddle on a rock song, and she's like a lead guitar - attention-grabbing and exciting. Soozie's a more like a bass or rhythm guitar: she lays down a solid riff, and she occasionlly steps out for a melodic accent to the song.
It was fun to watch Soozie "clapping" on a few songs - tapping her bow and fiddle above her head ;)
C also sat in a cool-looking chair during a couple quiet songs. I heard a rumor that he's going to need a hip replacement one of these days...? Hope he's okay. I think he's the oldest of the band.
Anyway. I love the live version of "Empty Sky". It's more meditative than the studio version, and I like Patti's harmony vocals.
I cried, as usual, on Thunder Road. Or maybe not as usual; I don't *always* cry to that song in concert. It is the first Bruce song I heard him sing. I've been living with that song for 20 years now; the lyrics connect with many bits and pieces of my life.
Ramrod was fun and full of life. I'd like to see
jenkitty dance to it. By then the folks on my right had cleared out, so I had more room to dance! ;) The distracting part was that I'd start to take my shirt off, then remember I'm not at a clothing-optional dance. It happened several times.Also, Roy took a nice loong solo in the middle of Ramrod - just the piano, no one else, on a roadhouse-style song. Bliss. There's a reason I think of Roy whenever Spider describes Fast Eddie's playing.
Dancing in the Dark was faster than the studio version, and lots of fun. Like Mary-Chapin Carpenter sez, it's 'a bummer of a song'. It's about frustration and anger - "I'm just tired and bored with myself", "I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face/Man I ain't getting nowhere/I'm just living in a dump like this". "Stay on the streets of this town/and they'll be carving you up alright/They say you gotta stay hungry/hey baby I'm just about starving tonight/I'm dying for some action. Or, to hit close to home for me: I'm sick of sitting 'round here trying to write this book". Oh, yeah. Jesse and I laughed over that one.
But it's not just the bouncy beat that is the anti for all this depressant: "You sit around getting older/there's a joke here somewhere and it's on me/I'll shake this world off my shoulders/come on baby this laugh's on me" ""You can't start a fire/Worrying about your little world falling apart" and "You can't start a fire/Sittin' around and crying over a broken heart".
There'd been some discussion before the show as to whether Bruce would do "Born In The USA". He has brought back the full-band rock version this tour. March 10th he introduced it, "I wrote this song about the Vietnam War... I hope I won't have to write this song again. So we'll offer this as a prayer for peace, for the safety of our young men and women in uniform, for the lives of innocent Iraqi civilians... and add our voice to those against war in Iraq."
Bruce didn't sing "Born In The USA" in BC. He sang "My Hometown". At the end of the song, he turned to each side of the coliseum in turn to sing "This is your hometown", and waited for us to sing the next line back. There was something deliberate about how he did it, as if he wanted to ingrain 'This is where to you live. Act like it.'
Couple dedications: "City of Ruins" to a local foodbank. He'd arranged for volunteers to be in the lobby collecting any donations after the show. "Land of Hopes and Dreams" to the Iraqi people.
The coliseum is supposed to be no-smoking, and there was less smoking than, say, when I saw Melissa Etheridge play in Florida. I do wish the 'hosts' would super-soaker any fires. The smoke was thick walking through the crowd outside afterward. Yes, I'd taken antihistimines. Thank god we had bottled water in the car.
