BRUUUUCCCEEE

Wednesday afforded me the distinct opportunity to see BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN live at the TD Banknorth Garden. I don’t think I’m overstating things when I say it might have been the best concert I’ve ever seen. Lets just put that into perspective. I’ve seen some phenomenal and energetic performers (dropkick murphys, mighty mighty bosstones), some fantastic song writers (james taylor x2, bob Dylan), some excellent musicians (clapton x3, Santana x2, leo kotke) but none of those had the complete package of BRUCE. I never quite understood why he had such a cult following…I don’t wonder about that anymore. Let me first say that he played pretty much non-stop for 3 hours. It started with a set that was close to 2 hours long that included some good stuff from his new album including “Outlaw Pete” which was awesome, dramatic, powerful, and all the rest. He played some old favorites, ballads and driving rock and it was all awesome. The set was punctuated by him taking a few requests from the crowd including, “I wanna be sedated” by the ramones which was awesome and became a veritable sing-along of epic proportions (19,000 people screaming! He played a couple of more requests before going into the most powerful songs of the night, “The Rising” and “Born to Run.” Again these were accompanied by 19,000 background vocalists and more energy than an atom bomb. Bruce and the guys then left the stage only to return for an encore a few minutes later. This time he was joined by a member of the dropkick murphys (tim) and a young woman (tim’s girlfriend). We were then all witness to a proposal at which point a few more members of the dropkicks came out and played with the E Street Band for a few songs before finally ending with glory days and seven nights to rock. By the end, my hands literally hurt from clapping and my voice was hoarse. Absolutely ridiculous. If you haven’t seen him yet…you have to. Patrick OUT!!!