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 27, 2003 Giants Stadium New Jersey

 

This performance started with Downbound Train, from 1984’s Born In The USA album and this was also the last night of the July NJ shows. As such, everybody in the stadium seemed duly pumped up, despite an ongoing threat of more downpours.

 Long time fans like myself were now being rewarded for attending multiple shows by Bruce, as he dusted off more and more relics as the tour started to wind down. Tonight’s highlight was a one-two punch from the Born To Run album. For the first time in nearly 30 years I saw the band perform Meeting Across the River, which is a personal favorite since the story is about a guy named Eddie (can you lend me a few bucks?) I nearly stained myself when this song segued into what is my number 1 Bruce song of all time, the classic Backstreets. You could have put a fork in me for the rest of the tour by the time this song was over (but no, not really).

 Tonight also included a killer version of Kitty’s Back, back from the long ago year of 1973! As far as I’m concerned, this performance demonstrated that Bruce continues to be one of the most under-rated guitarists in rock and roll. The leads he played during the whirling dervish served up by the Viagra-taking, earth-quaking, butt-shaking, legendary E Street Band were truly a sight & sound to behold. And to think that the recent Rolling Stone magazine poll didn’t include Bruce (or Nils for that matter too)  in the top 100 rock guitarists of all time,

UNBELIEVABLE, INCONCEIVABLE, NEVER REPEATABLE!

 The rain did hold off until the very end of the concert but as was the case in all of the NJ shows I attended, Luke, Bobby and myself hung out in the parking lot until about 1:00 am before heading back Across The River. Here’s a callout to Laura & Noel who were seated to our right around section 120 or so. A good ending to the first leg of the NJ stand!