Concert Review: Springsteen 3/17/08

Last night I had the pleasure of seeing one of my favorite artists of all time, Bruce Springsteen, at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee. I've seen him before in various incarnations, acoustic solo, big band and of course the E-Street Band. Last night was the E-Street Band version and they were tight!

They opened with a very electric version of "No Surrender" which set the pace for the rest of the show. It was full of distortion and fuzz so it was quite a bit different than the version I'm used to.

Seven songs from the new album, Magic, were performed. My favorite of the bunch was "Devil's Arcade" because and Bruce looked menacing under the red light and Max Weinberg was pounding away at the end of the song. "Magic" was also very good too.

Bruce pulled out a ton of old songs from his back catalog including: "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City", "Loose Ends", "Streets of Fire", "She's the One", "Jungleland", "Meeting Across the River"

A highlight of the show was Bruce introducing the bass player that played on "Meeting Across the River" from Born to Run. His name is Richard Davis and he played on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks which Bruce said he listened to non-stop when he was younger. He now works as a music professor at UW-Madison.

Overall, the show was about 85% hard-rocking tunes and a few slower ones tossed into the mix. I feel bad for the guy I went to the show with since he didn't know the majority of the songs that were played. The show got over at 11:00 but we didn't get back to Madison until 1:30 because of traffic and a few accidents probably due to St. Patty's Day!

Check out this review of the show: http://www.backstreets.com/setlists.html

Here is the setlist:

No Surrender
Radio Nowhere
Lonesome Day
Streets of Fire
Gypsy Biker
Magic
Reason to Believe
It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City
Prove It All Night
She's the One
Livin' in the Future
The Promised Land
Cadillac Ranch
My Hometown
Devil's Arcade
The Rising
Last to Die
Long Walk Home
Badlands
* * *
Loose Ends
Meeting Across the River (with Richard Davis)
Jungleland
Born to Run
Ramrod
American Land