Scheduled: 19:30 Local Start Time 20:00 / End Time 23:46
Info & Setlist | Venue
Bruce meets with five-time Rio gold medalist Katie Ledecky backstage before the show. For the fifth show in a row "New York City Serenade" opens the 34-song set, once again accompanied by Sam Bardfeld's string section. An eight-song miniset from the first two albums follows soon after, with five songs from Greetings and three from The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle. The remainder of the main set includes the tour premiere and only tour performance of "Better Days", and outings for "Trapped" and "Downbound Train". "Secret Garden" is played for the second show in succession, and the set closes with "Bobby Jean"; no acoustic closer tonight. Final tour appearances for "Summertime Blues", "Trapped", "Secret Garden", and "Seven Nights To Rock". The strings, all violins, are Bardfeld, Sara Caswell, Janey Choi, Rachel Golub, Joyce Hammann, Todd Reynolds, Curtis Stewart, and Mazz Swift.
- On Stage
- Setlist
- Performances
- Cancelled
- Gallery
- Media
- Recording
- Storyteller
- Eyewitness
- News/Memorabilia
- String section (Guests)
Soundcheck
Show
- NEW YORK CITY SERENADE
- SUMMERTIME BLUES
- SHERRY DARLING
- NO SURRENDER
- GROWIN' UP
- IT'S HARD TO BE A SAINT IN THE CITY
- DOES THIS BUS STOP AT 82ND STREET?
- SPIRIT IN THE NIGHT
- LOST IN THE FLOOD
- KITTY'S BACK
- INCIDENT ON 57TH STREET
- ROSALITA (COME OUT TONIGHT)
- NIGHT
- TRAPPED
- BETTER DAYS
- THE PROMISED LAND
- AMERICAN SKIN (41 SHOTS)
- HUNGRY HEART
- OUT IN THE STREET
- DARLINGTON COUNTY
- WORKING ON THE HIGHWAY
- DOWNBOUND TRAIN
- I'M ON FIRE
- BECAUSE THE NIGHT
- THE RISING
- BADLANDS
- SECRET GARDEN
- JUNGLELAND
- BORN TO RUN
- SEVEN NIGHTS TO ROCK
- DANCING IN THE DARK
- TENTH AVENUE FREEZE-OUT
- SHOUT
- BOBBY JEAN
incl. Rehearsals.
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Official concert recording available for purchase in multiple formats, including CD and high definition audio, from Springsteen's official live download site at nugs.net/bruce (previously live.brucespringsteen.net).
- Running Time: 3:47:03
Audience tape (Lostbrook) circulates.
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Intro to “New York City Serenade”
“Evening, Washington (crowd cheers)…”
After “New York City Serenade”
“Good evening, let’s hear it for the string section! (crowd cheers) out of New York City, take a bow! (crowd cheers) woo!…alright…
Intro to “Sherry Darling”
“Let’s hear some summertime party noises (crowd cheers)…”
Intro to “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City”
“This was the, uh…this was the song I sang to John Hammond… when I went up to his office to audition for my record deal (chuckles)…it was written in an abandoned beauty parlor (chuckles) on the mean streets of Asbury Park (chuckles) (crowd cheers) well, not so mean, just unkind (chuckles)…oh yeah, come on, Roy…”
Intro to “Spirit in the Night”
“Can you feel the spirit? (crowd cheers) can you feel the spirit now? (crowd cheers) can you feel the spirit? (crowd cheers) can you feel the spirit now? (crowd cheers) if you can feel the spirit, I want you to answer me with a “Yeah, yeah”…can you feel the spirit? (crowd and band: “Yeah, yeah!”) can you feel the spirit now? (crowd and band: “Yeah, yeah!”) can you feel the spirit? (crowd and band: “Yeah, yeah!”) can you feel the spirit now? (crowd and band: “Yeah, yeah!”)…”
Intro to “Secret Garden”
“Thank you, Washington! (crowd cheers) thank you…we got some friends in the hall tonight, folks from the DC Central Kitchen (crowd cheers) and Hero Dogs (crowd cheers) the DC Central Kitchen provides food for hungry school kids and culinary job training for adults to end the cycle of poverty and hunger here in the District, if you see them, give them a hand…and Hero Dogs raises and trains service dogs and places ‘em free of charge with our nation’s Veterans (crowd cheers) those are our friends in the hall tonight, folks from the DC Central Kitchen and Hero Dogs, if you see them on the way out, please give them a hand, they’re good folks on the frontline doing God’s work (crowd cheers) here we go…”
Intro to “Shout”
“E-flat…is there anybody alive out there? (crowd cheers) is there anybody alive out there now? (crowd cheers) well, what I want you to do is, what I want you to do is…shake your ass now…that’s right …come on and shake that ass now…”
Middle of “Shout”
“Sister Soozie Tyrell on the guitar and vocals and the fiddle (crowd cheers) Charlie Giordano on the accordion and organ (crowd cheers) Nils Lofgren on the guitar and vocals (crowd cheers) Mr. Jake Clemons on the saxophone (crowd cheers) the mightiest of the mighty, the man that doesn’t stop until he drops, the Mighty Max Weinberg on the drums (crowd cheers) on the piano, Professor Roy Bittan (crowd cheers) Mr. Garry W. Tallent on the bass (crowd cheers) the Queen of E Street, Miss Patti Scialfa on guitar and vocals (crowd cheers) and last but not least…the king of the Underground, Little Steven Van Zandt (crowd cheers) can I get a witness?…can I get a witness? …can I get a witness?…can I get a witness?… can I get a witness? …can I get a witness?…can I get a witness?… can I get a witness? …can I get a witness?…can I get a witness?… can I get a witness? …can I get a witness?…can I get a witness?… can I get a witness? …can I get a witness?…can I get a witness?…Washington! (crowd cheers) Washington! (crowd cheers) Washington! (crowd cheers) Washington! (crowd cheers) you’ve just witnessed the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, Earth-shocking, hard rocking, booty-shaking, Earth-quaking, love-making, thank-God-Viagra-taking, history-making, legendary E (crowd: “Street Band!”)…”
Intro to “Bobby Jean”
“One more for Washington! (crowd cheers)…”
After “Bobby Jean”
“Thank you, Washington (crowd cheers) thank you, thanks for coming out and seeing us (crowd cheers) the E Street Band loves you (crowd cheers) thank you (crowd cheers) thanks for supporting our music for all these years, thank you (crowd cheers) Washington! (crowd cheers) in the back, way up top (crowd cheers) …”
Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi. |
Glen Graubart | OK I have to give my review of this one. This was my 20th time seeing him and I was quite ecstatic with this performance. I went with my Brother in Law Ron who is a Dead Head but definitely an aficionado of all music. I think he was particularly pleased with the large share of songs from 1973!!!!!! In terms of a review - simply the best show I have ever seen. I have seen some great, great American shows - 7/18/99, 7/1/00, 10/4/02, 9/7/03, 9/2/12 and 10/26/12 to name a few of the ones I have seen. I had seen him earlier this year in Baltimore (which was great but the feeling I left was that I have seen this show several times - even though I love side 4 of the River). What worked tonight - simply everything from the Opening, to Spirit (which was amazing) to Lost in the Flood to the Incident/Rosie combo. My favorite moment was the BITUSA segment of the show and the American Skin / Promised Land part. Just nailed Promised Land which is every bit as good as Badlands! Other special notable parts to the show was Trapped and Secret Garden. For someone to have seen the performer 20 times -and to get songs that I have not seen like Secret Garden or Does the Bus Stop- it still amazes me. The other thing that amazed me is that the show was totally different than the show that I had seen 4 months earlier. |
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Springsteen at Nationals ParkCould there be anything more American? |
On Thursday night at Nationals Park, a brief storm had passed, leaving the sky a deep burnt umber. A few thousand people covered the outfield, with tens of thousands more in the stands, a home run away from the stage. And just before 8 o’clock, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band opened their set with “New York City Serenade.” The Boss playing a baseball stadium in the last days of summer: Could there be anything more American?
Springsteen and company are wrapping up their 75-date “The River” tour with a handful of shows up and down the East Coast. This tour first hit Washington in January, with the band celebrating the 35th anniversary of “The River” by playing the 1980 album in its entirety. But these last few dates serve as an encore of sorts: marathon concerts drawn from Springsteen’s entire oeuvre, with plenty of hits, cult favorites and even a few sign requests.
Springsteen is one of the last monoculture giants who can fill a stadium and command such a massive crowd with ease. Three building-sized screens projected his craggy, emotive face (and occasionally, his iconic, jeans-clad butt) all the way to the cheap seats, and the sound was as clear as can be expected from a stadium show, trading nuance for raw power.
But if you want high fidelity, stay home and listen to a box set. If you want communion with 40,000 people, come to a Springsteen concert. For his fans, a Springsteen concert is a shared spiritual experience marked by both celebration and mourning. His distinct brand of Americana uplifts and unites people around a specific vision of the country — full of shuttered factories, late nights in Cadillacs and plenty of broken hearts — that seemed to resonate with his almost entirely white, mostly middle-aged audience.
Springsteen’s mission seems particularly important during this American moment: He has been trying to make America great again for years in a way that’s antithetical to those who co-opt his progressive songs for conservative purposes. On Thursday, after pondering the American Dream on “Promised Land,” he performed the solemn “American Skin (41 Shots).” Inspired by the police-shooting death of Amadou Diallo, the song is particularly poignant at a time when — as Springsteen sings — “you can get killed just for living in your American skin.”
Whether he was delivering political polemics or feel-good anthems, the 66-year-old Springsteen never slowed down, jogging the length of the stage and reaching out to fans who just want to touch the hem of his garment. And when he needed a break, he relied on his legendary E Street Band: joking around with Little Steven Van Zandt, sharing the mic with Patti Scialfa on a cover of “Because the Night,” or ceding the spotlight during a solo by drummer Max Weinberg or saxophonist Jake Clemons, the latter ably filling the big shoes left by his uncle Clarence Clemons, who died in 2011.
After a nearly three-hour set, the band encored with another eight songs. The stadium’s lights were turned to full blast as the band played classics like “Born to Run,” “Dancing in the Dark” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.” By then, the rain had started again, with little effect on the crowd or the band. If Springsteen and company haven’t been stopped by the sands of time, what chance does a little rain have?
By Chris Kelly via The Washington Post. |
How Bruce Springsteen concerts cure loneliness |
The night before his 27th birthday, in the spring of 1974, music critic Jon Landau attended a concert at the Harvard Square Theatre in Cambridge, Mass. It changed his life. He got up early the next day and wrote of the concert that “on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the first time.” That “he” is Bruce Springsteen, whom Landau, one of the most influential rock critics in the country at the time, had famously anointed “rock and roll’s future” one sentence earlier.
I saw Springsteen and his mighty E Street Band last week, here in Washington, on a night when I needed to feel young. (Who doesn’t need to feel young these days?) And whenever I see a Springsteen show, I feel like I’m hearing music for the first time — music, and all the wonderful things that come with it.
A Springsteen concert is a celebration of community. There’s an intimacy associated with seeing those seated near you in complete abandon, and that intimacy fosters friendliness. Last week’s show offered a new spin on this familiar theme: I happened to meet the guy seated next to me a few days earlier when I sold him a couple of my extra tickets. He arrived during the third song, and we greeted each other as if we were old friends. It’s odd, but there was more warmth between us than I have with any of my neighbors. Springsteen brings people together.
Many different kinds of people. There are the veterans, who share stories of their favorite concerts in anticipation that what will happen on that stage in a few minutes will top what they’ve seen before. There are the skeptical first-timers — five songs in, and they are always mesmerized, stunned, in awe of the fact that all the hype they’ve heard for many years wasn’t hype after all. But my favorite are the kids, often with their parents — a generational handoff. My unborn son has been to two shows already.
We live in a fragmented society. People feel isolated. Many feel invisible. Springsteen is aware of this, and he explicitly tries to combat it with his concerts. For a few hours, any trace of loneliness vanishes. A Springsteen show is a balm.
The community created at a Springsteen concert is, in part, sacramental. (Springsteen himself used this word in a 2005 documentary, albeit sheepishly, to describe his music.) From the “Badlands” chant to sharing his guitar with the audience during “Born to Run” to the crowd taking the first verse of “Hungry Heart” to the very frequent audience call-and-response — Springsteen uses action and participation ritualistically, sacramentally: as a means to create fellowship and confer grace.
A Springsteen concert is a celebration of life. First, the show is a blast. So much of it is just pure fun, pure joy. (That I’m not spending many words on the fun shouldn’t underweight its importance.) And there are the songs, which cover the gamut of lived experience: fun, lust, fathers and sons, racial division, renewal and rebirth, duty, longing, fatherhood, marriage, murder, desperation, anger, mothers-in-law and more. Springsteen songs are about more than chasing the girl.
The characters in a four-minute song are often as developed as those in 200-page novels. Sean Penn based his 1991 film “The Indian Runner” on Springsteen’s “Highway Patrolman.” Springsteen stepped into the shoes of a man dying of AIDS, and won an Academy Award for it.
But more important than the range of content and quality of execution, Springsteen’s songs celebrate the grandeur and importance of ordinary life. Getting up and going to your job is an act of great heroism. A father and a son sitting around a kitchen table late at night commands the drama of an ancient myth. An anthem about friendship and camaraderie reminds one of Henry V at Agincourt. Rolling Stone wrote that “Backstreets” — a song about friendship and betrayal — “begins with music so stately, so heartbreaking, that it might be the prelude to a rock & roll version of The Iliad.”
The truth is that life is grand and life is important. Every day, we are all faced with choosing between angels and demons. For a Catholic like me, the stakes are as high as they come — the product of those countless, daily choices influences where I’ll spend eternity. It is important to be reminded of the majesty, romance and enormity of daily life. One of Springsteen’s great gifts is expressing the epic drama of the mundane in popular art. His concerts are shaped by this gift.
Springsteen the performer is a role model. There’s not a drop of gas left in the tank when he’s done performing. He is dead serious about his job on that stage. There is something refreshing and deeply admirable about a man of his stature and wealth working so hard for his audience. Apart from all the rest, a Springsteen concert is an experience simply because of the energy, effort, devotion and dedication of the man himself.
That’s all well and good. But the reason I keep going back is simple: redemption, the unapologetic embrace of the need for it and the possibility of it. Springsteen’s music looks reality squarely in the face, recognizes that life is cruel and unfair, that this world is fallen, that we are all sinners and that we are all broken, sometimes significantly so. But we are alive. We can get up off the mat. We can defy the world. We can hope. We are not alone. Faith is powerful. Things might be better tomorrow. There’s always another chance, waiting just a bit further down the road.
What better message could there be for the world today?
By Michael R. Strain via The Washington Post. |
Links:
- Springsteen at Nationals Park: Could there be anything more American? (WashingtonPost)
- How Bruce Springsteen concerts cure loneliness (WashingtonPost)
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