It all starts in San Jose!

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Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band April 1, 2009 ** 1st show of the tour ** HP Pavilion San Jose, California

Badlands
Outlaw Pete
My Lucky Day
No Surrender
Out In The Street
Working On A Dream
Seeds
Johnny 99
The Ghost of Tom Joad
Good Eye
Good Rockin' Tonight
Darlington County
Growin' Up
Waitin' On A Sunny Day
The Promised Land
The Wrestler
Kingdom Of Days
Radio Nowhere
Lonesome Day
Born To Run
****
Hard Times Comes Again No More
Thunder Road
Dancing In The Dark
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
Land Of Hope and Dreams
American Land

Fantastic show! I don't really know what all to say about it besides that. Well, maybe a little more: there are TWELVE songs that were not played on the Rehearsal Night #1 -- 3/25/09 in Asbury Park -- which I posted a couple weeks ago. A few things don't work so great like Good Eye is just difficult to hear the lyrics and Good Rockin' Tonight doesn't work well in this slot in the set. I mean Good Rockin' Tonight is a set-closer or maybe a first encore to really get people UP and Dancin'! Eh, what are ya gonna do? What is very cool, though, is that song is a total bust-out for Bruce: he only did it once in 2008 and October 1980 was the last time before that! Plenty of great rockin' tunes besides that one. So many tunes just smoke. This band is alive, baby! The setlist may have many, many similarities to Asbury Park Rehearsal Night #1, and also to many, many, many shows that have so far followed and will follow, but the differences thrown in, the crowd suggestions, they definitely help make this interesting.

Sound quality is really good. Taper did a great job, no cuts, fairly clear separation of instruments, strong vocals, very LITTLE crowd clapping, cheering, singing along and all that crap. Splendid... yes, splendid!

from Backstreets: Bruce and the E Street Band go west to kick off the Working on a Dream tour in San Jose, their first of three California shows. The structure from the second Asbury Park rehearsal was clearly the model -- the setlist was nearly identical to March 24, opening with "Badlands" into a hard-rocking "Outlaw Pete" (Springsteen threw on a cowboy hat for this one) and onward. But a few additions to the set stretched this opener to 26 songs already, suggesting that Bruce is still putting the pieces into place. The "hard times" arc of the show -- the fantastic Recession Trilogy of "Seeds," "Johnny 99" and "The Ghost of Tom Joad," into the "Good Eye" blues -- was followed by a surprise mid-set cover: "Good Rockin' Tonight." It served as an antidote to those blues, and an invitation -- "Baby, bring my rockin' shoes / 'Cause tonight I'm gonna rock away all my blues / Have you heard the news, there's good rockin' tonight" -- and a smart transition into the back half of the show. And the signs are back! Just a few songs later, "Growin' Up" was played by request, and in the encore, "Thunder Road" was an audible after someone in the audience gave Bruce a small poster from the Robert Mitchum movie. Still a lighter focus on the new album than we'd expect at the beginning of a tour. The sixth and final Working on a Dream track was "Kingdom of Days" toward the end of the main set, one showgoer describing it as "gorgeous, with Patti singing at a mic next to Bruce, and Bruce clearly focusing attention on her to highlight her role in his life. This to me was the show that did not happen, the personal show, because the times just don't call for it." Overall a solid opener, clocking in at 2:40, with a few minor hiccups, but not nearly as many performance kinks as past Night Ones and a quick pace -- Bruce and the band, in mid-tour shape, played continuously without a break from the opening until 90 minutes into the show. What we'll be watching for as we move to Night Two, Night Three, and beyond is a show that feels new, and reconciles the new material with the times. A sharp review from Shay Quillen the San Jose Mercury News, calling the show "decidedly subpar," points to the challenge Bruce confronts right now: "As Don Rumsfeld might say, you don't go on tour with the album you wish you had, you go on tour with the album you've got. So Springsteen faces the tough task of hyping a new romantic pop record while simultaneously offering hope and support to a wounded nation — not an easy task." by: ?

Download The Show Here (320 kbps) Part 1 ♦ ▬ ♦ Part 2 ♦ ▬ ♦ Part 3 Neumann KM140s > Sound Devices MP2 > Edirol R09 (16/44) > CD Wave > FLAC16

mp3 (not flac lossless) download 09-03-23