Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band

The Rising 2002-2003

After 14 months of traveling around the world with the E Street Band, Bruce Springsteen concluded "The Rising” world tour concluded with 3 sold out shows in New York’s Shea Stadium on October 1st, 3rd & 4th. Not surprisingly to some of you dear readers, this concert reviewer was in attendance for the tour opener on August 7 2002 in New Jerseys Continental Arena, the tour closer at Shea on October 4^th and another 7 shows in between.

Sure, this may seem to be way overkill even for die-hard rock and roll fans but I figure that if some of my peers can attend as much baseball, hockey or football games in the same period of time than who’s to say? So I will take this opportunity to review,  what for me were the highlights and low points of these 9 concerts.

 

July 21, 2003 Giants Stadium New Jersey

 OK, so this show was attended by the band of brothers, Ralph, Eddie & Nick Carulli with me as the honorary 4^th bro’. As usual, my nerves were shot because I always want to arrive hours early while the brothers all want to arrive at the last possible minute. Guess who usually wins (hint, I’m badly outnumbered here). We did walk into the stadium after the start of the show but since the opening number was “The Rising”, I took it all in stride. It helped a lot that these tickets were all on the ground floor; I’d say that we were about 50 yards from the stage, over on the left side.

 There were several highlights to this show, starting I would say with a great version of “Trapped” (oooh- yeah-eee-yeah-ah).  Continuing in the spirit of older songs being highlights, a great full band version of “For You” put most of the long time fans deep into nostalgia land.

 Finally, the show wrapped up with “Rosalita”, “Hungry Heart” and “Dancing In The Dark”. If not the best of all of the 2002-03 shows I saw, than this was definitely in the top 3, what a great night!

Than “it” came, during the song called “Mary’s Place”. The “it” being torrential downpours, which continued for the rest of the night. For those not familiar with the lyrics of “Mary’s Place”, there is a refrain during this great party song that repeats the phrase “Let it rain” and man did it ever! Bruce really stepped up and so did the band because rather than back off they just kept right on ripping like there was no tomorrow, because that’s how it rained the rest of the night!

 Back to back highlights in the first encore were due to the introduction of original E Street Band drummer Vini Lopez, who played with the full band on “Spirit In The Night” (all night!). When Max Weinberg rejoined, the band pulled out a relic from the “Tracks” compilation called “Where The Bands Are”. This number set the tone for what wound up being a theme for the remainder of the stadium tour, that being performances of rarely or never before played live in concert songs.  More on this point to follow in future show recollections coming up.