BRUCE: Like None Other

This started as an email to my Bruce-loving compatriot, Kate. It pretty much sums up my reflections on last night's brilliant show in Philly. Oh, that, and I woke up at about 3:30 this morning with the entire show cycling over and over again through my consciousness. It was that haunting.

Aaaaaaaah, yes. What a treat at the ol’ Spectrum last night. (I don’t think I have been there in over 15 years.) As expected, Bruce delivered in a monstrous fashion. We had good seats very close to the stage, but on the second level, a bit high up. But we had a great clear view. It was a totally different experience than seeing him with the band, and I was pleasantly surprised that the crowd was quiet and reverent for most of the show, with appropriate, periodic bursts of enthusiastic whooping and cheering. Only at the very end, during a funereal rendition of “Promised Land,” did some galoot from the crowd yell out lyrics while Bruce was playing. (He was promptly shushed by his neighbors.)

Some highlights: a haunting arrangement of “The Ties that Bind,” in an eerie minor tuning, played on 12 string. “Highway Patrolman,” one of the saddest stories from his entire catalogue. (Yes, tears on this one.) “Incident” on piano – what can I say? It’s the third time we have gotten to hear this tune live and it gets me every time. The major surprise of the evening was “Drive All Night,” not played live in about 25 years, also on piano. BREATHTAKING. “Something special for Philly,” he said.

All of the material from the new record sounded AMAZING, and the two songs from “The Rising” sound MUCH better acoustically than with the full band. Over-all, it was such an amazing thing to get to experience his massive talents totally stripped down and unadorned. Don’t get me wrong, The E Streeters are a force to be reckoned with and I love them all, but this show really gave me the chance to understand the depth and breadth of Bruce’s seemingly limitless musical imagination. There were a few misses in the set – he has been doing this routine with a crazy bullet mic (old fashioned scratchy sounding thing) and he used it twice last night on “Born in the USA” and “Johnny 99.” The effect is to totally distort the lyrics so you can’t understand a thing he is saying. But he opened with BITUSA, and while he hollered into the mic, blew on the harmonica, and stomped his feet, he actually broke a lamp and a pitcher of water that were sitting on a table on stage. The sheer vigor of his stomping knocked everything on the floor and made a spectacular crashing sound. It was quite dramatic and a bit scary. He of course joked about it, saying “Wow, I really beat the shit out of everything on that table!” The crowd loved it, of course.

What can I say? He is one of a kind, and he just keeps getting better. This was like no other Bruce show I have ever seen, and I feel like it really enhanced my appreciation of his artistry. Perhaps most stunningly, his voice was crystal clear and right on key all night long. It was wonderful to hear what a great instrument he has with such stark clarity, and all of the different ways he uses it to convey emotion in his singing.