Born In The USA (Guitar & Bullet Mic)
Devils & Dust
Atlantic City
Long Time Comin’
Used Car
Frankie (Piano)
Meeting Across The River (Piano)
Johnny 99 (Guitar & Bullet Mic)
Ain’t Got You
Brilliant Disguise (Feat. Patti Scialfa)
Maria’s Bed
Cautious Man
Reno ($200 straight in, $250 up the ASS!)
Two For The Road (Electric Piano)
Drive All Night (Piano)
The Rising
Lucky Town
Jesus Was An Only Son (Piano)
Leah
The New Timer (AutoHarp)
Matamoros Banks
I Want To Marry You (Ukulele)
Thundercrack (Piano)
Born To Run (Guitar)
The Promised Land (Guitar)
Dream Baby Dream

There was no fist pumping, but a lot of hand wringing – but my hand’s okay. It was a very interesting, VERY ENJOYABLE show. It’s amazing the level of intimacy achieved in such a big arena. A lot had to do with the crowd. This is New Jersey. Bruce’s New Jersey. And typically this means that every Born In the USA fair weather idiot who gets drunk and screams BRUUUUUUUCE and Candy’s Room all night long comes out from under their favorite diner rock. Apparently they got the memo because they all stayed home. I’m sure that Bruce’s rules contributed to this as well: all concessions closed 10 minutes prior to the show starting and remained closed throughout. You know what this means – no beer runs during the songs you don’t know. Everyone stayed in their seats too. Barely any BRUUUUUUCING (okay – I did it once or twice, but only between songs.)

The man was VERY loose last night. He was laughing and joking and telling stories and it was like (I imagine) the old days. He experimented with every instrument known to man – including some god awful horrid bullet mic contraption that completely distorted all vocals. It was pretty funny – there was a guy a few rows in front of us who got that he was playing Born In the USA about 3/4 of the way through and started getting all excited. The best way to explain it was he sounded like Darth Vader with a horrible head cold. Georgie and I laughed every time he brought it out.

Highlights for me – well, he played Drive All Night. I told G before the show that I didn’t care if he was sitting with me during the show, but if he played Drive All Night, he needed to be sitting next to me and holding my hand. He did – and we held so tightly to each other probably the most hand damage occured during that song. I won’t lie to you – we both cried. I, personally, wept silently as my heart beat so fast and the tears just fell from my face. He never ceases to amaze me – it’s as close to religion as I get these days. There was a red light on stage as he sat at the piano and it was aimed directly for our box, so we were bathed in a red light. This is very significant because whenever we’re in traffic at night G always tells me how much he loves looking at me in a red tail light (apparently the distortion brings out my beauty 😉 ) and it was like we were in the car and Bruce was singing to us and we were bathed in a red light of love. Laugh if you want, but that’s how it was. It was worth the entire night to hear that song. Actually, it was worth a lot more than that because honestly in my whole life I never thought I’d witness it live. Thank you. Thank you Bruce so much. You made us a very happy couple last night.

Other highlights – Meeting Across the River at the piano. My god he seemed so happy after the song. HUGE smile on his face because he knew he NAILED it! It was so beautiful. Born to Run – sung slow and quiet and more powerful than any stadium anthem has a right to sound. For you afficianados out there – think the Chimes of Freedom version. When Max was a baby I was listening to this version of BTR a lot and I would rock him to sleep and sing it to him.

Funny one – Bruce says he’s going to play his favorite song from Tunnel of Love – and G and I get really, really excited. This was my first Bruce album ever and G used to sing it to me all the time and there are so many beautiful songs on there and we’re thinking will it be this one, that one and then he plays Cautious Man and G and I start totally laughing because it’s like the only song on the album we don’t like and always skip over! Talk about disappointed!

He played the pornographic RENO and a song about anal, prostitutes and fellatio never sounded so incredibly beautiful. It was full of sadness and emotion and it was really good. Also good was the guy next to us who brought his young son who was FULL of questions after that one. HAHAHAHAHA! Bruce was all about the swear words last night too and after a particularly FUCK filled monologue the kid asked his dad – does that mean he’s pissed off? Pissed off doesn’t even begin to cover it, kid.

During The Promised Land you could literally hear a pin drop. It was that quiet. I’ve never heard a crowd so quiet in my life. It was beautiful. Comfortable. Intimate. I never wanted it to end.