Reading 2004
Albany 2006 Camden 2006 E. Rutherford 2, 2006 Inglewood 2006,
Chicago 2007
Camden 2008 MSG 2008 MSG 2008 Hartford 2008.
Seattle 2009 Seattle 2009 Philadelphia 2009,Philadelphia 2009 Philadelphia 2009
Hartford 2010 MSG 2010 MSG 2010
Toronto 2011,Toronto 2011
Wrigley Field 2013 Brooklyn 2013 Brooklyn 2013 Philadelphia 2, 2013
Philadelphia 1, 2016 Philadelphia 2 2016 New York 2016 New York 2016 Fenway 1, 2016 Fenway 2, 2018 MSG 2022 St. Paul, 1, St. Paul 2 2023
"I play good, hard-nosed basketball.
Things happen in the game. Nothing you
can do. I don't go and say,
"I'm gonna beat this guy up."
didnt catch much of the show besides 2 minutes of my hometown.
i did, however, record the entire show .
dvd to follow !
i think i may be headed out to the swamps of jersey to try and grovel a ticket for the rehearsal show tonight, lts still up in the air .
everyone in the band looks great, including the big man, i guess his hip problems werent as bad as people said they were. He used the stool when he needed it, but was up and alive blowing his horns when called upon .
i cannot wait for either tonight or next weekend in philly, to see the full e street band again.
awesome !
For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
ORGAN DONATION SAVES LIVES http://www.UNOS.org
Donate Organs and Save a Life
For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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Donate Organs and Save a Life
Why are you still here??? I thought you were going to NJ?
How much butt did Bruce and the band kick this morning??? He is unbelievable.
too tired :eek:
not feeling 100 %
work tomorrow , ...
so i'll be at opening night in philly next weekend ,
with some kickass seats. Lower 100s behind but close to the stage
over on stevie and pattis side.
this morning ?
what did we expect
its the boss with the e street band,...
i liked the selection of songs, mixing up the new and fresh as well as handpicked classics.( gotta love the harmonica, boss )
i thought it was touching
there was a black guy confined to a wheelchair.
he sang every song, word for word.
then, while singing along to my hometown, i swear the guy was crying.
it gave me goosebumps.
For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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1. Radio Nowhere
2. The Ties That Bind
3. Lonesome Day
4. Gypsy Biker
5. Magic
6. Candy's Room
7. She's The One
8. Living In The Future
9. Promised Land
10. Town Called Heartbreak
11. Reason to Believe
12. Darlington County
13. Born in the USA
14. Devil's Arcade
15. The Rising
16. Last To Die
17. Long Walk Home
18. Badlands
******
19. Waitin' on a Sunny Day
20. Thundercrack
21. BTR
22. American Land
For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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how's he play "american land" with the E Street? I'm not really into the idea of him closing with one of those old early 20th century folk songs next week...
also, these setlists seem pretty short from what I've heard of Springsteen's shows..doesn't he usually play close to 3 hours?
I've faced it, a life wasted, and I'm never going back again.
how's he play "american land" with the E Street? I'm not really into the idea of him closing with one of those old early 20th century folk songs next week...
also, these setlists seem pretty short from what I've heard of Springsteen's shows..doesn't he usually play close to 3 hours?
More like 2 1/2 like PJ. Keep in mind that Bruce's songs are typically longer than PJ's so 22 songs can more than fill the evening.
how's he play "american land" with the E Street? I'm not really into the idea of him closing with one of those old early 20th century folk songs next week...
also, these setlists seem pretty short from what I've heard of Springsteen's shows..doesn't he usually play close to 3 hours?
as the tour gets longer, the shows will also.
they are fine tuning everything, they will get the basic songs down packed and then they will scramble the setlists up a little more diverse, i would guess.
naturally , the length of shows will increase also.
are you going to philly ?
bruce always plays up to philly ( even better then NJ )
enjoy
b r u u u u u u u u u u u u u u u u c e !
For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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as the tour gets longer, the shows will also.
they are fine tuning everything, they will get the basic songs down packed and then they will scramble the setlists up a little more diverse, i would guess.
naturally , the length of shows will increase also.
are you going to philly ?
bruce always plays up to philly ( even better then NJ )
enjoy
b r u u u u u u u u u u u u u u u u c e !
yeah i'm going to the october 6th show...nice to hear he's good to philly : )
i got into bruce about a year and a half ago and he's now one of my favorite artists...this is gonna be like a religious experience haha
I've faced it, a life wasted, and I'm never going back again.
theres a taped portion of " The Today Show ",
that was saved for Sundays broadcast-
9am- 10 am Eastern Time Zone,
& I hear there are 2 more performaces on this tape.
( rumour has it 10th Ave Freezeout may be played )
As I will be @ work, I have my DVR ready set to go ,...
For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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Anyone else agree this is a dark record? He sounds world weary and sad, all this despite overt political references
I think it's quite the opposite of that. The Rising is a very dark album and I feel like Magic is more light hearted. While there are 3 political tunes, I think the come off not being too preach. Anyone that writes a song about girls in their summer ckothes cant be in too bad of a mind set.
additionally can someone illuminate me on Devil's arcade. In articles, i have read that this is one of the albums most overt political songs. Yet I cant make out anything in the lyrics that relate to the current world situation or the war.
additionally can someone illuminate me on Devil's arcade. In articles, i have read that this is one of the albums most overt political songs. Yet I cant make out anything in the lyrics that relate to the current world situation or the war.
am i missing something?
I think that it is about a soldier that has come home from Iraq and is thinking about his friends that didnt come home. The war in Iraq is the US administrations playground...aka The Devils Arcade.
I think the line that sums up that song is, "somebody made a bet, somebody paid"
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That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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Murder Incorporated * How Good Would Pearl Jam sound covering this one ? Stone & Mike alternating riffs !
For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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[size=+3]"Bruce Springsteen is back in the masterpiece business" [/size]
by Chris Willman
''Have a little faith/There's magic in the night,'' Bruce Springsteen sang on 1975's ''Thunder Road.'' And for keeping the faith along the decades of back roads and stylistic detours, fans get their beautiful reward with Magic, his best record since The River in 1980. If such devotees assumed that the new album's title was a nod to rekindling the tattered romanticism of his salad days, they wouldn't be wrong. Magic marks only the second instance in more than two decades that Springsteen has made a studio CD with the E Street Band — and unlike the last reunion, he's not resisting their signature sound. Synths get a breather so Roy Bittan can return to those classic piano arpeggios; stirring key changes are again signaled by Clarence Clemons' sax solos; arena-friendly sing-alongs arrive in quick succession. If you were raised on this stuff, you may experience the giddy sensation that the world has been set aright again.
So why is Springsteen looking so damned surly on the cover? You didn't really expect a guy who devoted his recent career to sober fare like Devils & Dust to completely recalibrate his political serotonin levels, did you? In the tradition of Born in the U.S.A., the celebrative group spirit is also a buffer for his dark materials. Springsteen's sour expression is merely the first hint that his CD's simplistic name is actually a double entendre. When the spooky title track finally arrives, he's playing the part of an enigmatic illusionist who seems a little too eager to ''cut you in half, while you're smilin' ear to ear.'' It turns out Springsteen was also thinking of magic in the sense of smoke and mirrors, as favored by snake-oil salesmen and senators alike. You don't need a semiotics degree to guess that he's getting allegorical about leaders using the War on Terror to pull off some sleight of hand. That becomes clear in songs such as the soldiers' elegy ''Gypsy Biker,'' which includes asides like ''The speculators made their money on the blood you shed.'' Note to self: World not set aright after all, despite reassuring Danny Federici organ fills.
There is no trickery, however, to the naturalness of the band vibe here. On 2002's emotional but musically uneven The Rising, you could sense everyone straining with producer Brendan O'Brien to figure out how to bring the E Street Band into the 21st century — then finally arriving at what felt like a Springsteen ''solo'' album that happened to graft in the old gang. But Magic, also produced by O'Brien, gets it right from the start by mostly ditching recent rootsy flavorings for a compressed wall of sound. Sometimes that wall is gorgeously Spectorian, as with the glockenspiel-and-timpani-adorned pop stunners ''Girls in Their Summer Clothes'' and ''Your Own Worst Enemy,'' which Springsteen delivers in a tender, rasp-free register barely heard since ''Born to Run.'' Sometimes it's a garage wall, as on ''Radio Nowhere,'' which gives axman (and ex- Sopranos hitman) Little Steven a cranky guitar blowout to play, unapologetically, on his garage-rock radio show.
If there's another ''Glory Days'' here — an inevitable concert standby that Bon Jovi will spend the next decade trying to rip off — it's ''Livin' in the Future,'' an insanely jubilant celebration of denial as a coping mechanism. ''None of this has happened yet,'' the gleeful choruses insist as Clemons wails on his horn and everyone joins in a ''na-na-na-na-na'' cheer. This, despite almost apocalyptic verses about how the singer's ''faith's been torn asunder'' by both his girl and his country. That's one of many Magic passages where it's intriguingly, purposely unclear whether Springsteen is describing wartime malaise and social dystopia or simply a bust-up between lovers.
No album could say more about the uncertain national mood of 2007, though that's only part of the set design. Springsteen's topical allusions are unspecific enough that Magic will remain enchanting after we get these American messes straightened out, in 5, 10, 50 years. Still, he does finally bring the war to the fore in the climactic ''Devil's Arcade,'' and an album that began with Bruce yelling ''Is there anybody alive out there?'' ends on real matters of life and death. This big, slow-building ballad finds a young woman visiting her beloved in a military hospital, whispering promises of an idyllic suburban future and finally repeating the line ''the beat of your heart'' over and over, as if that very incantation could keep him tethered to the corporeal world. It's a moment that will break even a hardened rock fan's heart. But by then your resolve might already be melting from the realization that, three and a half decades into his career, Bruce Springsteen is back in the masterpiece business. A +
For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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If you've been absorbing the various critical and fan accounts of Bruce Springsteen's brilliant new record, Magic (including my own, which you can read here), you may feel torn about just what kind of expectations you're supposed to bring when the CD arrives in stores Tuesday. Is it a pure, giddy blast of band-oriented fun — a grand, spirited, hard-rocking return to the E Street glory days that finally gives the fans what they've been wanting ever since Born in the U.S.A.? Or is it a dark, somber, even grimly political piece of work that soberly zeroes in on disillusionment and the downfall of American idealism?
Well, geez, can't it be both? It is, and that, really, is the magic of Magic. But fans will see in it what they want to see in it. Friday morning, playing a live set on Today, Springsteen introduced the new song "Livin' in the Future" with a long rant that started on the jocular side, before he veered off into a laundry list of wrongs — "rendition, illegal wiretapping, voter suppression, no habeas corpus, the neglect of our great city of New Orleans and her people, an attack on the Constitution, and the loss of our best young men and women in a tragic war" — to which the deceptively celebrative-sounding song is really alluding. "This is a song about things that shouldn't happen here happening here," he told the crowd. You can see footage of the performance if you go to this page at MSNBC.com. But ironically, on that same page is a link to MSNBC's review of the album, headlined "The Boss abandons the message albums of the past to have fun with friends," bizarrely claiming that you won't need to worry about any of that pesky social consciousness stuff this time around. Ironic, right?
There's so much substance to Magic that, in addition to my A-grade review, I thought I'd pop up on PopWatch to offer a track-by-track preview of the album:
1. "Radio Nowhere." Everyone already knows this one, since it's been available free online as a teaser for weeks. The main complaint fans have had about it: It fades out too soon — but the entire album has that economical, leave-'em-wanting-more ethos. Here, Springsteen sets up the themes of searching and disillusionment that will characterize the album without tieing them too strictly to topical events (yet). The E Street Band's phalanx of guitarists has probably never indulged in such a three-pronged attack before. And you'll notice that a key change kicks in at the beginning of Clarence Clemons' sax break — only to have the tune revert back when he's done. Actually, that same Big Man key-change gambit is pulled on the next two songs, too. But (speaking of magic) even if you know how the trick is done, it still doesn't ruin the effect.
2. "You'll Be Comin' Down." Unless Springsteen is getting even more allegorical on us than we imagine, this is one of the songs that isn't about America, but just an American girl. But it's no ode, as such; in the great tradition of artists like Dylan and Costello taking the piss out of an in-vogue beauty who's gotten a little too big for her britches, he warns: "You'll be fine as long as your pretty face holds out/Then it's gonna get pretty cold out."
3. "Livin' in the Future." If any song here is destined to become a concert favorite, it's this one, which fans who've gotten an early listen have compared to "Tenth Avenue Freezeout" (even though there's no horn section on this or any other Magic track). But Bruce hasn't been making any bones about the fact that the lyrics are designed as a distinct political critique, and one fan already posted after the Today appearance that Bruce's "rant" had "ruined 'Livin' in the Future' for me forever." You could still take this as a song about a relationship gone wrong, but it seems clear that, if you get a ticket for his coming tour, this is going to be the number where he does a little preaching and lets his progressive freak flag fly.
4. "Your Own Worst Enemy." Self-loathing never sounded so gorgeous as in this, the first true timeless classic of the album. The string arrangement might have you drawing comparisons as far back as the Left Banke's "Walk Away, Renee," though you'll hear some harmonies redolent of the Beach Boys when it gets to the bridge, too. But don't let the prettiness fool you: This is the perfect song, when you realize that you've completely #@&*-ed up, to flog yourself by. What sins the narrator has committed that convince him he's his "own worst enemy" remain unclear, though there are hints that it may have been some kind of personal infidelity or betrayal ("Once the family felt secure/Now no one's very sure"). It's chillingly lonely... and just a little bit transcendent, too, as the realization kicks in that — OMG!!!! — Bruce is back to writing unabashed Pop Music here.
5. "Gypsy Biker." Maybe the saddest song he's ever written — and one of the fiercest and hardest rocking. On first listen, you might not catch that the biker of the title is, in fact, a dead soldier whose buddies have gathered to celebrate him. A gleaming bike does show up, which the friends take out into the desert and set on fire, as a sort of funeral pyre. If that isn't "Born to Run" all grown up and gone to hell, I don't know what is. When the guitar solo kicks in, it's wrenchingly elegiac in a deep, primal way, almost like a dog howling to mourn its late master.
6. "Girls in Their Summer Clothes." Suddenly, Springsteen's no longer mourning a deceased soldier but his own lost youth, in the closest thing to an escapist song on the album. Fresh from a breakup, the narrator heads out to do some girl-watching, and if he might be overly optimistic about the chances of one of those sweet young things stopping to heal him, the sense of longing and tactile descriptions of a lively street scene are still intensely romantic. The Phil Spector/Pet Sounds influences return in a big way for the second time on the album, and you may hear a hint of the Who's "The Kids are Alright" in the verse's melody line, too. If they'd reissued Born to Run with this as a bonus track, claiming it was a long-lost outtake that had always been meant to follow the title song in the running order, you'd have probably swallowed it.
7. "I'll Work for Your Love." The one truly upbeat lyric here, and the most peculiar. Springsteen serenades a barmaid named Theresa, with devotion that crosses the line into pure worship — so much so that the verses are filled with hilariously over-the-top religious imagery. ("I'll watch the bones in your back like the stations of the cross... The pages of Revelation lie open in your empty eyes of blue... tears they fill the rosary, at your feet my temple of bones.") Some fans have read into this that the song might actually be about St. Theresa, but don't take the Catholic imagery too far, kids — this is the album's one moment of pure, unbridled, joyful lust. And it's Magic's fourth instant classic in a row.
8. "Magic." You could almost divide the album into two parts, with tracks 1-7 being in a classic E Street vein and 8-12 (counting the unlisted bonus track) more closely resembling one of his solo albums. Certainly things shift more overtly toward the political at this point, though you'd be right to point out that the earlier "Livin' in the Future" and "Gypsy Biker" lyrically belong in this camp, as well. The title track is really its only slow one, as Springsteen takes on the character of an apparently sinister sleight-of-hand man who may or may not have deep connections with the current administration. It's not one of the album's great songs, but it is invaluable in bridging the two types of magic on the album — the enchantment of being out on the street ("Girls in Their Summer Clothes" has a reference to "Magic Avenue"), versus the so-called "black arts" of politics and war.
9. "Last to Die." The chorus borrows a famous line from Vietnam-era John Kerry: "Who'll be the last to die for a mistake?" As the most polemical song on the album, it's in danger of stating its intent a bit too literally, compared with the artful double entendres found elsewhere in Magic's social commentary. Yet the personal imagery strewn through the song brings it back to earth and saves it: A couple seem to be on a road trip with their kids, experiencing news reports of the war along the way to "Truth or Consequences" (presumably both the New Mexico town and a more metaphorical place). And it's possible to imagine that the references to untended dead bodies refer to skeletons in their own closet as well as, literally, the Iraq situation.
10. "Long Walk Home." There's a kind of magic realism at work here, as Springsteen walks through familiar hometown streets, full of signposts that should be comforting, and yet finds that the people are "all rank strangers to me." That's a brilliant reference to the Stanley Brothers' gospel song "Rank Strangers" (covered by Dylan on a 1988 album), where the narrator, newly beholden to God, returns to a home base that no longer means anything to him. Only in this case, it's presumably divisions over the War on Terror that have the narrator feeling estranged from the people he once loved. This is the one song on the album that Springsteen had previously premiered live, on his Seeger Sessions tour, and there (as you'll see if you dig up the bootleg video on YouTube), it went on for a couple more angrier verses. But it ends perfectly now, with the character remembering some once-comforting words from his father — "You know that flag flying over the courthouse/Means certain things are set in stone/Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't" — and just leaving the indictment that might follow that unspoken and implicit.
11. "Devil's Arcade." Interpretations of this lyric — the one true story-song on the album — vary. But it seems to be sung by a woman to a soldier recovering (or not) from grave wounds suffered in a bombing in Iraq: She remembers their first fumbling sexual experiences and looks forward to a sensual, sunny breakfast when, once again, he'll be able to experience Morning in America. We don't know whether her hope in his recovery is misplaced or not.
12. "Terry's Song." The previous song makes such a stunning climax that you'd logically want it to end there, but as a celebrative funeral song, this unlisted bonus acoustic track certainly does make for an appropriate segue out of the hospital-set "Devil's Arcade." "When they made you, brother, they broke the mold," Bruce sings, in a number bound to be played at countless funerals in the coming decades. And just when you thought the mold had been broken on albums as great as Darkness on the Edge of Town, Springsteen is back, combining that early spirit with a level of writing that can only come from real maturation, ready to show us that he can not only prove it all night but prove it all life.
For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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Comments
Albany 2006 Camden 2006 E. Rutherford 2, 2006 Inglewood 2006,
Chicago 2007
Camden 2008 MSG 2008 MSG 2008 Hartford 2008.
Seattle 2009 Seattle 2009 Philadelphia 2009,Philadelphia 2009 Philadelphia 2009
Hartford 2010 MSG 2010 MSG 2010
Toronto 2011,Toronto 2011
Wrigley Field 2013 Brooklyn 2013 Brooklyn 2013 Philadelphia 2, 2013
Philadelphia 1, 2016 Philadelphia 2 2016 New York 2016 New York 2016 Fenway 1, 2016
Fenway 2, 2018
MSG 2022
St. Paul, 1, St. Paul 2 2023
"I play good, hard-nosed basketball.
Things happen in the game. Nothing you
can do. I don't go and say,
"I'm gonna beat this guy up."
2. Radio Nowhere
3. Livin' in the Future
4. My Hometown
5. Night
6. Last to Die
7. Long Walk Home
And I don't feel right when you're gone away
Admin
Social awareness does not equal political activism!
5/23/2011- An utter embarrassment... ticketing failures too many to list.
i just got in from work
didnt catch much of the show besides 2 minutes of my hometown.
i did, however, record the entire show .
dvd to follow !
i think i may be headed out to the swamps of jersey to try and grovel a ticket for the rehearsal show tonight, lts still up in the air .
everyone in the band looks great, including the big man, i guess his hip problems werent as bad as people said they were. He used the stool when he needed it, but was up and alive blowing his horns when called upon
i cannot wait for either tonight or next weekend in philly, to see the full e street band again.
awesome !
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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Living In The Future
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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How much butt did Bruce and the band kick this morning??? He is unbelievable.
And I don't feel right when you're gone away
too tired :eek:
not feeling 100 %
work tomorrow , ...
so i'll be at opening night in philly next weekend ,
with some kickass seats. Lower 100s behind but close to the stage
over on stevie and pattis side.
this morning ?
what did we expect
its the boss with the e street band,...
i liked the selection of songs, mixing up the new and fresh as well as handpicked classics.( gotta love the harmonica, boss
i thought it was touching
there was a black guy confined to a wheelchair.
he sang every song, word for word.
then, while singing along to my hometown, i swear the guy was crying.
it gave me goosebumps.
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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Bruce rocks my world.
Hopefully I will find out tomorrow about msg.
And I don't feel right when you're gone away
2. The Ties That Bind
3. Lonesome Day
4. Gypsy Biker
5. Magic
6. Candy's Room
7. She's The One
8. Living In The Future
9. Promised Land
10. Town Called Heartbreak
11. Reason to Believe
12. Darlington County
13. Born in the USA
14. Devil's Arcade
15. The Rising
16. Last To Die
17. Long Walk Home
18. Badlands
******
19. Waitin' on a Sunny Day
20. Thundercrack
21. BTR
22. American Land
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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also, these setlists seem pretty short from what I've heard of Springsteen's shows..doesn't he usually play close to 3 hours?
Some die just to live.
I'm thinking I would go something like this...
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v627/ggatta/?action=view¤t=PJ056MOV.flv
More like 2 1/2 like PJ. Keep in mind that Bruce's songs are typically longer than PJ's so 22 songs can more than fill the evening.
as the tour gets longer, the shows will also.
they are fine tuning everything, they will get the basic songs down packed and then they will scramble the setlists up a little more diverse, i would guess.
naturally , the length of shows will increase also.
are you going to philly ?
bruce always plays up to philly ( even better then NJ )
enjoy
b r u u u u u u u u u u u u u u u u c e !
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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yeah i'm going to the october 6th show...nice to hear he's good to philly : )
i got into bruce about a year and a half ago and he's now one of my favorite artists...this is gonna be like a religious experience haha
Some die just to live.
that was saved for Sundays broadcast-
9am- 10 am Eastern Time Zone,
& I hear there are 2 more performaces on this tape.
( rumour has it 10th Ave Freezeout may be played )
As I will be @ work, I have my DVR ready set to go ,...
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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Anyone else agree this is a dark record? He sounds world weary and sad, all this despite overt political references
I think it's quite the opposite of that. The Rising is a very dark album and I feel like Magic is more light hearted. While there are 3 political tunes, I think the come off not being too preach. Anyone that writes a song about girls in their summer ckothes cant be in too bad of a mind set.
http://www.reverbnation.com/brianzilm
anyone want to take a stab at what the song is about?
its a rocker!
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LSM1N04G
artwork:
http://www.bruceboots.com/MAGIC/Artwork/20070925-Livemusicman/20070925-Livemusicman-Booklet1.jpg
http://www.bruceboots.com/MAGIC/Artwork/20070925-Livemusicman/20070925-Livemusicman-Back.jpg
From Geasylake
MSG 1
Ringo the next night in Boston
Hartford
Boston 1 & 2
hell's yeah...
Promised Land
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=AV5W2HKN
Radio Nowhere
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JKZDVND7
Last To Die
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4XOCJBB9
Living In The Future
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=D2VWKG99
My Hometown
http://http//www.megaupload.com/?d=WR20Y427
Night
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MR936639
Long Walk Home
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=49ACTURL
Artwork (thanks to ramrod75):
http://img341.imageshack.us/my.php?image=20070928todayfrontut5.jpg
http://img222.imageshack.us/my.php?image=20070928todaybackwt2.jpg
MSG 1
Ringo the next night in Boston
Hartford
Boston 1 & 2
hell's yeah...
am i missing something?
Thank you!
I just found out today that I won't know if I am going to the MSG show until probably the day of. Ooh...the anticipation....
And I don't feel right when you're gone away
I'm going to the Hartford show (in only 3 days) and 2nd Boston show. Wish I could afford to to go to more, but at $100 a ticket, it's difficult.
Enjoy!!
MSG 1
Ringo the next night in Boston
Hartford
Boston 1 & 2
hell's yeah...
I think that it is about a soldier that has come home from Iraq and is thinking about his friends that didnt come home. The war in Iraq is the US administrations playground...aka The Devils Arcade.
I think the line that sums up that song is, "somebody made a bet, somebody paid"
http://www.reverbnation.com/brianzilm
today - 9 am !
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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Secret Garden
Murder Incorporated * How Good Would Pearl Jam sound covering this one ? Stone & Mike alternating riffs !
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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if you folks all saw the " 1st Row Passion Man " at The Today Show
heres an interesting thread dedicated to him .
good read !
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
ORGAN DONATION SAVES LIVES
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by Chris Willman
''Have a little faith/There's magic in the night,'' Bruce Springsteen sang on 1975's ''Thunder Road.'' And for keeping the faith along the decades of back roads and stylistic detours, fans get their beautiful reward with Magic, his best record since The River in 1980. If such devotees assumed that the new album's title was a nod to rekindling the tattered romanticism of his salad days, they wouldn't be wrong. Magic marks only the second instance in more than two decades that Springsteen has made a studio CD with the E Street Band — and unlike the last reunion, he's not resisting their signature sound. Synths get a breather so Roy Bittan can return to those classic piano arpeggios; stirring key changes are again signaled by Clarence Clemons' sax solos; arena-friendly sing-alongs arrive in quick succession. If you were raised on this stuff, you may experience the giddy sensation that the world has been set aright again.
So why is Springsteen looking so damned surly on the cover? You didn't really expect a guy who devoted his recent career to sober fare like Devils & Dust to completely recalibrate his political serotonin levels, did you? In the tradition of Born in the U.S.A., the celebrative group spirit is also a buffer for his dark materials. Springsteen's sour expression is merely the first hint that his CD's simplistic name is actually a double entendre. When the spooky title track finally arrives, he's playing the part of an enigmatic illusionist who seems a little too eager to ''cut you in half, while you're smilin' ear to ear.'' It turns out Springsteen was also thinking of magic in the sense of smoke and mirrors, as favored by snake-oil salesmen and senators alike. You don't need a semiotics degree to guess that he's getting allegorical about leaders using the War on Terror to pull off some sleight of hand. That becomes clear in songs such as the soldiers' elegy ''Gypsy Biker,'' which includes asides like ''The speculators made their money on the blood you shed.'' Note to self: World not set aright after all, despite reassuring Danny Federici organ fills.
There is no trickery, however, to the naturalness of the band vibe here. On 2002's emotional but musically uneven The Rising, you could sense everyone straining with producer Brendan O'Brien to figure out how to bring the E Street Band into the 21st century — then finally arriving at what felt like a Springsteen ''solo'' album that happened to graft in the old gang. But Magic, also produced by O'Brien, gets it right from the start by mostly ditching recent rootsy flavorings for a compressed wall of sound. Sometimes that wall is gorgeously Spectorian, as with the glockenspiel-and-timpani-adorned pop stunners ''Girls in Their Summer Clothes'' and ''Your Own Worst Enemy,'' which Springsteen delivers in a tender, rasp-free register barely heard since ''Born to Run.'' Sometimes it's a garage wall, as on ''Radio Nowhere,'' which gives axman (and ex- Sopranos hitman) Little Steven a cranky guitar blowout to play, unapologetically, on his garage-rock radio show.
If there's another ''Glory Days'' here — an inevitable concert standby that Bon Jovi will spend the next decade trying to rip off — it's ''Livin' in the Future,'' an insanely jubilant celebration of denial as a coping mechanism. ''None of this has happened yet,'' the gleeful choruses insist as Clemons wails on his horn and everyone joins in a ''na-na-na-na-na'' cheer. This, despite almost apocalyptic verses about how the singer's ''faith's been torn asunder'' by both his girl and his country. That's one of many Magic passages where it's intriguingly, purposely unclear whether Springsteen is describing wartime malaise and social dystopia or simply a bust-up between lovers.
No album could say more about the uncertain national mood of 2007, though that's only part of the set design. Springsteen's topical allusions are unspecific enough that Magic will remain enchanting after we get these American messes straightened out, in 5, 10, 50 years. Still, he does finally bring the war to the fore in the climactic ''Devil's Arcade,'' and an album that began with Bruce yelling ''Is there anybody alive out there?'' ends on real matters of life and death. This big, slow-building ballad finds a young woman visiting her beloved in a military hospital, whispering promises of an idyllic suburban future and finally repeating the line ''the beat of your heart'' over and over, as if that very incantation could keep him tethered to the corporeal world. It's a moment that will break even a hardened rock fan's heart. But by then your resolve might already be melting from the realization that, three and a half decades into his career, Bruce Springsteen is back in the masterpiece business. A +
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2007/10/bruce-springste.html#more
Here's the text:
If you've been absorbing the various critical and fan accounts of Bruce Springsteen's brilliant new record, Magic (including my own, which you can read here), you may feel torn about just what kind of expectations you're supposed to bring when the CD arrives in stores Tuesday. Is it a pure, giddy blast of band-oriented fun — a grand, spirited, hard-rocking return to the E Street glory days that finally gives the fans what they've been wanting ever since Born in the U.S.A.? Or is it a dark, somber, even grimly political piece of work that soberly zeroes in on disillusionment and the downfall of American idealism?
Well, geez, can't it be both? It is, and that, really, is the magic of Magic. But fans will see in it what they want to see in it. Friday morning, playing a live set on Today, Springsteen introduced the new song "Livin' in the Future" with a long rant that started on the jocular side, before he veered off into a laundry list of wrongs — "rendition, illegal wiretapping, voter suppression, no habeas corpus, the neglect of our great city of New Orleans and her people, an attack on the Constitution, and the loss of our best young men and women in a tragic war" — to which the deceptively celebrative-sounding song is really alluding. "This is a song about things that shouldn't happen here happening here," he told the crowd. You can see footage of the performance if you go to this page at MSNBC.com. But ironically, on that same page is a link to MSNBC's review of the album, headlined "The Boss abandons the message albums of the past to have fun with friends," bizarrely claiming that you won't need to worry about any of that pesky social consciousness stuff this time around. Ironic, right?
There's so much substance to Magic that, in addition to my A-grade review, I thought I'd pop up on PopWatch to offer a track-by-track preview of the album:
1. "Radio Nowhere." Everyone already knows this one, since it's been available free online as a teaser for weeks. The main complaint fans have had about it: It fades out too soon — but the entire album has that economical, leave-'em-wanting-more ethos. Here, Springsteen sets up the themes of searching and disillusionment that will characterize the album without tieing them too strictly to topical events (yet). The E Street Band's phalanx of guitarists has probably never indulged in such a three-pronged attack before. And you'll notice that a key change kicks in at the beginning of Clarence Clemons' sax break — only to have the tune revert back when he's done. Actually, that same Big Man key-change gambit is pulled on the next two songs, too. But (speaking of magic) even if you know how the trick is done, it still doesn't ruin the effect.
2. "You'll Be Comin' Down." Unless Springsteen is getting even more allegorical on us than we imagine, this is one of the songs that isn't about America, but just an American girl. But it's no ode, as such; in the great tradition of artists like Dylan and Costello taking the piss out of an in-vogue beauty who's gotten a little too big for her britches, he warns: "You'll be fine as long as your pretty face holds out/Then it's gonna get pretty cold out."
3. "Livin' in the Future." If any song here is destined to become a concert favorite, it's this one, which fans who've gotten an early listen have compared to "Tenth Avenue Freezeout" (even though there's no horn section on this or any other Magic track). But Bruce hasn't been making any bones about the fact that the lyrics are designed as a distinct political critique, and one fan already posted after the Today appearance that Bruce's "rant" had "ruined 'Livin' in the Future' for me forever." You could still take this as a song about a relationship gone wrong, but it seems clear that, if you get a ticket for his coming tour, this is going to be the number where he does a little preaching and lets his progressive freak flag fly.
4. "Your Own Worst Enemy." Self-loathing never sounded so gorgeous as in this, the first true timeless classic of the album. The string arrangement might have you drawing comparisons as far back as the Left Banke's "Walk Away, Renee," though you'll hear some harmonies redolent of the Beach Boys when it gets to the bridge, too. But don't let the prettiness fool you: This is the perfect song, when you realize that you've completely #@&*-ed up, to flog yourself by. What sins the narrator has committed that convince him he's his "own worst enemy" remain unclear, though there are hints that it may have been some kind of personal infidelity or betrayal ("Once the family felt secure/Now no one's very sure"). It's chillingly lonely... and just a little bit transcendent, too, as the realization kicks in that — OMG!!!! — Bruce is back to writing unabashed Pop Music here.
5. "Gypsy Biker." Maybe the saddest song he's ever written — and one of the fiercest and hardest rocking. On first listen, you might not catch that the biker of the title is, in fact, a dead soldier whose buddies have gathered to celebrate him. A gleaming bike does show up, which the friends take out into the desert and set on fire, as a sort of funeral pyre. If that isn't "Born to Run" all grown up and gone to hell, I don't know what is. When the guitar solo kicks in, it's wrenchingly elegiac in a deep, primal way, almost like a dog howling to mourn its late master.
6. "Girls in Their Summer Clothes." Suddenly, Springsteen's no longer mourning a deceased soldier but his own lost youth, in the closest thing to an escapist song on the album. Fresh from a breakup, the narrator heads out to do some girl-watching, and if he might be overly optimistic about the chances of one of those sweet young things stopping to heal him, the sense of longing and tactile descriptions of a lively street scene are still intensely romantic. The Phil Spector/Pet Sounds influences return in a big way for the second time on the album, and you may hear a hint of the Who's "The Kids are Alright" in the verse's melody line, too. If they'd reissued Born to Run with this as a bonus track, claiming it was a long-lost outtake that had always been meant to follow the title song in the running order, you'd have probably swallowed it.
7. "I'll Work for Your Love." The one truly upbeat lyric here, and the most peculiar. Springsteen serenades a barmaid named Theresa, with devotion that crosses the line into pure worship — so much so that the verses are filled with hilariously over-the-top religious imagery. ("I'll watch the bones in your back like the stations of the cross... The pages of Revelation lie open in your empty eyes of blue... tears they fill the rosary, at your feet my temple of bones.") Some fans have read into this that the song might actually be about St. Theresa, but don't take the Catholic imagery too far, kids — this is the album's one moment of pure, unbridled, joyful lust. And it's Magic's fourth instant classic in a row.
8. "Magic." You could almost divide the album into two parts, with tracks 1-7 being in a classic E Street vein and 8-12 (counting the unlisted bonus track) more closely resembling one of his solo albums. Certainly things shift more overtly toward the political at this point, though you'd be right to point out that the earlier "Livin' in the Future" and "Gypsy Biker" lyrically belong in this camp, as well. The title track is really its only slow one, as Springsteen takes on the character of an apparently sinister sleight-of-hand man who may or may not have deep connections with the current administration. It's not one of the album's great songs, but it is invaluable in bridging the two types of magic on the album — the enchantment of being out on the street ("Girls in Their Summer Clothes" has a reference to "Magic Avenue"), versus the so-called "black arts" of politics and war.
9. "Last to Die." The chorus borrows a famous line from Vietnam-era John Kerry: "Who'll be the last to die for a mistake?" As the most polemical song on the album, it's in danger of stating its intent a bit too literally, compared with the artful double entendres found elsewhere in Magic's social commentary. Yet the personal imagery strewn through the song brings it back to earth and saves it: A couple seem to be on a road trip with their kids, experiencing news reports of the war along the way to "Truth or Consequences" (presumably both the New Mexico town and a more metaphorical place). And it's possible to imagine that the references to untended dead bodies refer to skeletons in their own closet as well as, literally, the Iraq situation.
10. "Long Walk Home." There's a kind of magic realism at work here, as Springsteen walks through familiar hometown streets, full of signposts that should be comforting, and yet finds that the people are "all rank strangers to me." That's a brilliant reference to the Stanley Brothers' gospel song "Rank Strangers" (covered by Dylan on a 1988 album), where the narrator, newly beholden to God, returns to a home base that no longer means anything to him. Only in this case, it's presumably divisions over the War on Terror that have the narrator feeling estranged from the people he once loved. This is the one song on the album that Springsteen had previously premiered live, on his Seeger Sessions tour, and there (as you'll see if you dig up the bootleg video on YouTube), it went on for a couple more angrier verses. But it ends perfectly now, with the character remembering some once-comforting words from his father — "You know that flag flying over the courthouse/Means certain things are set in stone/Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't" — and just leaving the indictment that might follow that unspoken and implicit.
11. "Devil's Arcade." Interpretations of this lyric — the one true story-song on the album — vary. But it seems to be sung by a woman to a soldier recovering (or not) from grave wounds suffered in a bombing in Iraq: She remembers their first fumbling sexual experiences and looks forward to a sensual, sunny breakfast when, once again, he'll be able to experience Morning in America. We don't know whether her hope in his recovery is misplaced or not.
12. "Terry's Song." The previous song makes such a stunning climax that you'd logically want it to end there, but as a celebrative funeral song, this unlisted bonus acoustic track certainly does make for an appropriate segue out of the hospital-set "Devil's Arcade." "When they made you, brother, they broke the mold," Bruce sings, in a number bound to be played at countless funerals in the coming decades. And just when you thought the mold had been broken on albums as great as Darkness on the Edge of Town, Springsteen is back, combining that early spirit with a level of writing that can only come from real maturation, ready to show us that he can not only prove it all night but prove it all life.
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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