2009-05-18 Verizon Center, Washington, DC

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

Info & Setlist | Venue

Max Weinberg returns. Tour debuts of tour "Little Latin Lupe Lu" and "Blinded By The Light", only performed once and twice on the tour respectively. "Outlaw Pete" includes a snippet of "Apache" in the introduction. "American Land" includes a snippet of "Theme From Shaft" in the midsection. Roy Bittan plays a snippet of "Hail To The Chief" as an intro to "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)". "Out In The Street", "Little Latin Lupe Lu", "Hava Nagila", "Blinded By The Light", and "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" are played by sign request.

Intro to “Badlands”
“Washington! (crowd cheers) are you ready to be delivered? (crowd cheers)…”

Middle of “Working on a Dream”
“Good evening, Washington (crowd cheers) we’re so glad to be here in our nation’s capital tonight (crowd cheers) and we’re here tonight to fulfil our solemn vow to rock the house! (crowd cheers) but we’re not here tonight just to rock the house, we’re here tonight because we’re gonna build a house (crowd cheers) that’s right, right here in this room tonight we’re gonna build a house (crowd cheers) we’re gonna take the fear that’s out there and we’re gonna build a house of hope (crowd cheers) we’re gonna take the despair that’s out there and we’re gonna build a house of love (crowd cheers) we’re gonna take the doubt and we’re gonna build us a house of faith (crowd cheers) and we’re gonna take the sadness and we’re gonna build ourselves a house of joy and happiness (crowd cheers) and we’re gonna take that cooling off and we’re gonna build ourselves a house of sexual healing! (crowd cheers) that’s right…and we’re gonna use the bad wood and we’re gonna use the good wood…and we’re gonna use the bad news that’s out there and we’re gonna use the good news that’s here tonight…and we got all the tools we need right here on this stage and in these seats (crowd cheers) we got everything we need…but we’re here tonight because we can’t do it by ourselves…we’re here tonight and night after night after night the E Street Band comes out to bring the down power but we can’t do it by ourselves (crowd cheers) if we’re gonna build a house out of music and spirit and noise…the E Street Band is here tonight and we’re gonna bring down the power of the music but, Washington, we need you to bring the noise (crowd cheers) now sing it like you mean it …”

Intro to “Out in the Street”
“That’s a good sign…(?) whose sign is that? whose sign is that? whose sign is this?…(?) are you ready, are you ready?…”
[According to Backstreets, “played for a nine-year-old girl who made it to the front of the stage to sit with Bruce during part of the song.”]

Intro to “Little Latin Lupe Lu”
“Give me the drumbeat, Max, key of E…”

Intro to “Kingdom of Days”
“Oh yeah…Patricia! (chuckles) bring your sassy self out here (chuckles) we got Patti with us tonight, it’s nice (crowd cheers) oh yeah…(chuckles) alright…gonna dedicate this, gonna dedicate this to her because it’s great to have her with us tonight…’cause you’re nice, that’s just ‘cause you’re nice, that’s nice…”

Intro to “Hard Times”
“Thank you (crowd cheers) thank you for coming out to the show tonight (crowd cheers) we wanna thank and salute our, our great friends from the Walter Reed Hospital and Bethesda Naval Hospital, let’s hear it for our veterans that are with us tonight (crowd cheers) yeah, right there (crowd cheers) come on, give it up, give it up, give it up, give it up! (crowd cheers) we thank you, oh…we also have some friends from the Washington DC Central Kitchen, for twenty years the DC Central Kitchen has been using the food that we waste to feed the homeless and the hungry, each day they collect and serve more than a ton of surplus from area restaurants and they get it to the Washington DC’s struggling citizens, all you have to do is pick up the newspapers to see the millions of jobs that have been lost, hundreds of thousands just over the past few months, you realise there are many, many, many, many people out there that are truly struggling…grassroots organizations like the Washington DC Central Kitchen are very often their last safety net between having their kids go to bed with some nutritious food or hungry, please support your neighbours and support the Washington DC Central Kitchen (crowd cheers) this is, uh…this is a song written by Stephen Foster in 1855…it’s called “Hard times come again no more”…”

Intro to “American Land”
“We wanna thank you all for coming out to the show tonight (crowd cheers) thank you for supporting our band over all these years…
(…) The unbelievable Little Steven (crowd cheers) the gorgeously luscious and talented, Miss Patti Scialfa (crowd cheers) from the Sessions Band, Curtis King (crowd cheers) Sister Soozie Tyrell (crowd cheers) the unstoppable Mighty Max Weinberg (crowd cheers) the thunder from down under, Garry W. Tallent (crowd cheers) with an I.Q of three hundred thousand, Professor Roy Bittan (crowd cheers) Charlie Giordano from the Sessions Band (crowd cheers) Cindy Mizelle on the vocals (crowd cheers) one of the greatest guitarists in the world, Nils Lofgren (crowd cheers) and the biggest man you’ve ever seen: Clarence “Big Man” Clemons (crowd cheers) Washington! (crowd cheers) Washington! (crowd cheers) Washington! (crowd cheers) Washington! (crowd cheers) Washington! (crowd cheers) Washington! (crowd cheers) you’ve just seen the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, hard-rocking, earth-shaking, love-making, Viagra-taking, history-making, legendary (crowd: “E Street Band”)(crowd cheers)…”

Intro to “Rosalita”
“[There is a request sign that says “Obama called, he wants Rosie”] …[Roy plays a little bit of “Hail to the Chief”]…By executive request (crowd cheers)…let me hear it, Roy [Roy again plays a short bit of “Hail to the Chief”]…”

^{Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi.}

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J. Freedom du Lac on Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at Verizon Center

Bruce Springsteen wasn't about to shuffle quietly into the night. Having already spent nearly three sweaty hours striving for rock-and-roll deliverance Monday at Verizon Center, Springsteen thundered one last time down that familiar redemptive road.

As the E Street Band roared through an encore version of the rambunctious old war horse "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)," Springsteen growled and howled his joyous circa-1973 lyrics about forbidden love and "stone desire." He stood on his tiptoes to punctuate particular guitar licks or vocals. He darted back and forth across the spartan stage, feet and, especially, fists pumping. He exhorted the crowd to sing the final pre-chorus part louder, then even louder still.

"It's the big one!" he shouted. "BIGGER!" The sound inside the arena spiked, as requested, and Springsteen unleashed an impassioned shriek, sending his feverish fans over the edge.

At 59, Springsteen remains one of the most potent live performers in popular music, largely because he's among its most committed practitioners. He drains every bit of his creative energy whenever he's onstage — all in the service of proselytizing the power of rock-and-roll, in which his faith is unwavering.

"Washington, are you ready to be delivered?" he asked at the outset of Monday's concert, before diving into "Badlands," a breakneck rocker about working-class spirit.

Later, during a somewhat leaden performance of the title track from his new album, "Working on a Dream," the Boss bellowed his mission statement for the show: "We're gonna take the fear out there and we're gonna build a house of hope!" Also, he promised: Despair would be transformed into love, doubt into faith, sadness into joy and happiness.

Springsteen long ago embarked on an everlasting edition of Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show, whose guiding principle is to deliver hope and redemption through song. Accordingly, Monday's show featured more than a few moments of redemptive rapture.

But it wasn't necessarily a show for the best-of books, despite the sense of purpose with which the band performed and the generosity of the nearly three-hour set, which spanned 25 songs — 27 if you counted the instrumental riffs on "Hava Nagila" and "Hail to the Chief," the former requested on a Torah-scroll sign, the latter a nod to another sign's "Rosalita" request, which read: "Obama called, he wants 'Rosie.' " ("By executive order!" Springsteen joked by way of introducing the show-closing song.)

The mix was muddy beyond belief. Opener "Badlands," for instance, was a toxic swirl of cacophonous noise during which the vocals and 10 instrumental parts repeatedly crashed into each other. "No Surrender," an otherwise terrific mid-1980s anthem about war, romantic dreams and lost youth, was a relatively indecipherable and impenetrable wall of sound. "She's the One" suffered similarly once the instrumental parts began stacking atop the clean, simple power chords and Max Weinberg's irresistible Bo Diddley beat.

The set also featured an overabundance of songs from Springsteen's fallow period — which is to say, from his new album, which is full of lyrical missteps and half-realized or, worse, ill-considered ideas from one of rock's preeminent poets. There were only four songs from "Working on a Dream" in the set, but it sounded like three too many.

Whereas "The Wrestler" was an emotionally gripping character study on which Springsteen sang convincingly of struggle and survival, "Outlaw Pete" was a melodramatic epic that played like a parody of a "Nebraska"-era Springsteen story-song, or maybe like Meat Loaf doing musical theater. It came across forced and farcical, especially when Springsteen donned a black cowboy hat. Would you like some cheese with that hamminess?

Yes? Well, "Working on a Dream," whose lyrics sound like Springsteen on autopilot, featured a cheesy whistling interlude.

"Kingdom of Days" was better lyrically, as Springsteen considered the notion of romance making time stand still with his wife, Patti Scialfa, singing by his side. But, as on the recorded version, the musically overwrought live performance sounded schmaltzy.

Still, the set was generally well considered, with Springsteen mixing some of his greatest hits (the blistering "Born to Run") and oldest misses (the swinging, shifty jazz-blues workout "Kitty's Back") with a handful of superlative recent songs, including "Waitin' on a Sunny Day" and post-9/11 anthem "The Rising," on which Nils Lofgren's slide guitar soared.

On 2007's Magic tour, Springsteen's set was loaded with songs about isolation, alienation and disillusionment. Monday's theme was more hopeful, with several references to the promised land — including "The Promised Land" itself — as well as multiple songs about optimism, as with "Land of Hope and Dreams," which included an interpolation of Curtis Mayfield's epochal "People Get Ready."

Not that all's well in this American land. Springsteen acknowledged the recession in several songs, including "Seeds," "The Ghost of Tom Joad," an overly muscular "Johnny 99" and a standout version of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times (Come Again No More)."

It wasn't the night's only cover, for Springsteen and the E Street Band have been getting in touch with their inner-jukebox lately; on Monday, they revived Eddie Floyd's R&B hit "Raise Your Hand" to stirring, soulful effect and bashed out a wobbly garage-rock version of the Righteous Brothers song "Little Latin Lupe Lu" upon request.

No audience is more important to Springsteen than the one he's currently trying to win over, and he's connecting with his fans on this tour by soliciting their set-list input at every show. So there he went, racing around the front of the stage, collecting handmade signs with titles on them and then calling out audibles to the band, including titles from their own catalogue.

Most notable was "Out in the Street," an idealistic 1980 song about community — a fitting theme, as Springsteen performed part of the raggedy rocker while seated at the foot of the stage, right next to the little girl who'd apparently made the request.

She sang with him and held the microphone while Springsteen played his guitar. But he wasn't sitting down on the job for long; soon enough, the Boss was back on his feet, running, gesticulating, mugging, exhorting and hollering, doing everything in his considerable powers to deliver on that promise of salvation.

^{By J. Freedom du Lac via The Washington Post.}

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