2003-08-30 Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ

Scheduled: 19:30 Local Start Time ??:?? / End Time ??:??

Info & Setlist | Venue

Rarity "Janey, Don't You Lose Heart" opens the set and "Roll Of The Dice" and "Candy's Room" also included. Only tour performance of "Raise Your Hand", performed with guests Dave and Serge Bielanko of Marah. Tour premiere "Across The Border" is performed with guest Emmylou Harris. "This Hard Land" is dedicated to Bobby Muller, who is in the audience on the night, and "Thunder Road" is dedicated to the memory of Jim Berger. "Mary's Place" includes "The Monkey Time" and "Another Saturday Night". Final tour performances for "Roll Of The Dice", "This Hard Land", and "Pretty Flamingo".

Dave Bielanko (Guest)
Serge Bielanko (Guest)
Emmylou Harris (Guest)

30.08.03 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to ´Waitin´on a Sunny Day´
´´Are there any Little Steven fans in the audience tonight ? (cheers)….his people are there….. come on, Steve (chuckles)….´´

30.08.03 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to ´Roll of the Dice´
´´Are you feeling lucky ? (cheers)….´´

30.08.03 East Rutherford, NJ, middle of ´Mary´s Place´
´´Are you ready ?….are you ready ?….are you ready….are you ready….are you ready for an official E Street Band end-of-the-summer house party ? (cheers) are you ready for an official E Street Band New Jersey end-of-the-summer house party ? (cheers)….alright now, oh yeah ….if you´re gonna have a house party….you´ve got to meet three conditions…..three…..first, the music has got to be raucous…..second, you´ve got to get your ass up out of your seat…. come on, get those asses up….that´s right, oh yeah, you´ve got to shake your booty now….oh yeah, that´s right, that´s right….and third, you´ve got to have at your service the greatest little houseband in all the land….I wanna say on the piano, we got the pathological piano pounder, Professor Roy Bittan…on the violin and vocals, Sister Soozie Tyrell….on the guitar we got Little Steven Van Zandt….on the bass guitar, we got Mr.Garry W.Tallent….on the drums, the man that brings the power hour after hour night after night, star of ´Late Night (crowd : ´Television´) Mighty Max Weinberg….on the guitar, one of the greatest guitarists in rock and roll, Brother Nils Lofgren….on the organ, out of Flemington, New Jersey, Phantom Dan Federici…..to the far side of the stage, we got the First Lady of love, on guitar and vocals, my sweetie baby honey child, my personal savior, Miss Patti Scialfa….and last but not least ….last but not least….ladies and gentlemen, you wish you could be like him but I´m sorry you can´t, Minister of soul, Secretary of the brotherhood, Big Man Clarence Clemons….I want you to put your hands together for the heartstopping, pants-dropping, houserocking, earth-shaking, booty-quaking, Viagra-taking, lovemaking, death-defying, sexifying, I ain´t lying, legendary E Street Band…..did I mention ´sexifying´ ?….´´

30.08.03 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to ´Across the Border´
´´Oh, we got a special guest tonight, honored to have with us, she´s one of my favorite singers, a great, great lady, Miss Emmylou Harris….(?)….here´s a song that, uh, Emmylou did a beautiful version of….´´

30.08.03 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to ´Thunder Road´
´´Gonna send this out tonight to the Berger family and the memory of Jim Berger….´´

30.08.03 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to ´This Hard Land´
´´Gonna do this for my friend Bobby Muller in the audience tonight….welcome, Bobby….´´

30.08.03 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to ´Raise Your Hand´
´´(?)….anybody from Philly out there tonight ? (cheers)….I´ve seen it all now: my wife was just trimming her nails on Steve….
(….) I want everybody to get up out of their seat and gimme some of that old soul clapping…. and just raise your hand….´´

30.08.03 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to ´My City of Ruins´
´´Thank you, New Jersey….I wanna thank everyone for coming to the show tonight, thank you very much….these shows we´ve done here have been a lot of fun and real exciting and I wanna say we appreciate your longtime support and thanks for just showing (chuckles)…. gonna send this out tonight for the Community Foodbank of New Jersey, old friends of ours ….Foodbank ships up to 24 million pounds of food annually….they´re assisting the struggling citizens in 18 New Jersey counties, 40 percent of the people they help are kids, people who gotta choose between paying for food or paying their rent…..uh, they´re out there tonight on the boardwalk, they´ll be collecting donations and they´re also signing volunteers….if you´ve time, if you either have time or you can help them in any way, Community Foodbank of New Jersey are the good folks out there on the frontline fighting a good fight….this is for them….´´

30.08.03 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to ´Land of Hope and Dreams´
´´Thank you….thanks again, I wanna thank everyone for coming out…..this is where I make my little public service announcement…..we have people coming to the shows of all different kinds of political beliefs and that´s something I really like that and we welcome everybody, there´s been a lot of questions raised recently about the forthrightness of our government, the way we entered the war in Iraq, I just wanna say that playing with the truth during the wartime´s been a part of both Democratic and Republican administrations in the past and it´s always wrong when the lives of our sons and daughters are on the line….and I think the question of whether we were misled into the war in Iraq´s not a Liberal or a Conservative question, it´s an American one, protecting the democracy that we ask our sons and daughters to die for is our sacred trust, as is demanding accountability from our leaders…. that´s the American way….so may the truth will out….that´s my public service announcement for the evening, there´s a….that same thing but…..that same thing but a lot funnier is in the Al Franken book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them (chuckles) so check that out….come on, this is ´Land of Hope and Dreams´ !….´´

Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi

"Raise Your Hand" w/ Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band

On August 30, 2003, Dave & Serge joined Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band on stage during the encore for "Raise Your Hand." Thanks to a new audio bootleg of this great show, this video now has excellent sound. Check it out.

Recently, Bruce Springsteen's longtime friend and assistant Terry McGovern passed away. He was a good friend of the Bielanko brothers as well. On Marah's message board, Serge wrote a moving tribute to Terry with this great story about how Terry was there for them while they prepared to sing w/ Bruce and the band that night.

Standing backstage, really behind and under the stage, in a small dim-lit box of electronics and guitars, my brother Dave and I had cotton mouth. "Nerves" doesn't even begin to describe it. You cannot prepare yourself…or your body, or your mouth for such things; there is no training.

Occasionally, I would try to focus and then I would see bits and pieces of the band out on the stage: Springsteen's hair, Emmylou Harris's wind-swept dress, someone's guitar neck. Inside of my heart I felt all of the blood in my body bashing against the chamber walls like waves smashing a winter jetty, the effects of their collision rippling through my muscles to my skin, goosebumps the size of pencil erasers running a range up and down my arms and legs.

I looked at my brother. He had to go with me up there. To sing. With our hero. We both looked at the only other person around. It was Terry. Terry was Bruce's guy…his buddy and his minder and his assistant and for all I know he mighta wrote BORN TO RUN to be honest. He was a huge guy, intimidating to many folks, but secretly very very sweet, as Dave and I had discovered in the past few years. And for some reason, he really seemed to like my brother and me.

I stared Terry in the eye.

"Dude, this is nerve-wracking. All of New Jersey is out there!!!"

He stared back. Music out on the stage, 60,000 people, Giants F'in Stadium just beyond this thin black curtain, what seemed like all the world gathered to scream and hoot for their beloved native son.

"You guys got this, you know you do," he growled. He looked past me. Did he really believe we were about to pooch the show??

My brother, his lips as dry as mine, his heart as bursting with unfiltered joy and fear, mumbled that he needed a beer. Of course, the very notion of even sipping a beer before appearing out on that stage with The E Street band was a twisted one, almost sacreligous to the very notion of the rare and wonderful opportunity being presented to us. I hoped Terry hadn't heard Dave say that. I didn't want him to think we weren't taking this as seriously as we were. Christ, I was as serious as passing out….which was a distinct possibility at this point.

Dave and I watched, or rather listened, to the song before us unfurl. Bruce Springsteen and Emmylou Harris sang a duet, I think. I don't even remember. I only recall wishing simultaneously that the wind would kick up so hard, a great typhoon wind, as to blow Emmylou right off the stage leading to a speedier appearence for us. Yet at the same time, I wanted their song to last forever, days turning to weeks, then years, Bruce forgetting all about us as the scattered sands of time blew over him and the band and the stadium and the fans…maybe to fossilize there, the song only ending centuries from now. Then me and my bro would just shrink away back to the hole we climbed out of, never to perform in the dream we had somehow dreamed into reality.

Then, I noticed Terry had disappeared.

The song onstage was minutes old, soon to end, I thought. I peeked over the cold steel steps that rose to the stage and saw for the first time the magnificent endless horizon of lighters, flashbulbs; the swells and sways of a massive crowd thrusting with life out there in the dark. Dave's leg was bouncing up and down beneath him, his boiling excitement jackhammering his bones.

My lips were sun-baked wedges of licorice. My tongue was a hunk of sticky kindergarten paste rolled in seashore sand. Dear God, I thought…not now….PLEASE!!!…just let me get the words out for three more minutes! Let me sing this song with my brother and Bruce and Patti and all without having to pull my mouth open with my fists in order to hear a dry squeak eek out of my gob and into the piping hot microphone that would deliver my message to "RAISE YOUR HAND" to the crowd! Palpatations, beads of sweat, visions of glory or absolute failure, everything was slashing into everything else, my courage beginning to fail, my dream in danger, when I felt the cold touch of a late summer ghost on my rigid arm.

It was Terry. He had a bottle of Rolling Rock in each of his giant paws and he was touching them ever so slightly to my brother's arm, and to mine. He had gone and gotten them for us. I was his forever.

He didn't say a word as we took them from him. The song was ending. The crowd was roaring. I thanked him with my eyes above their sound. Ahhh but Terry,he was already smiling. Smiling that rare grin and watching the two brothers slug down their bottles of beer as if their was nothing left in this world but to finish them, crack a burp, and walk out into the spotlights of an enchanted land where dreams come true for little guys, while gentle giants hang off in the distance,unseen, but forever watching your back.

Goodbye Terry… Thank you for the way you treated us, the beers, and the passes to a dream.

Serge Bielanko

^{By David Hensel and Serge Bielanko via marahvideos.blogspot.com.}

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"Raise Your Hand" w/ Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band