U N C L E *B R U C E* S P R I N G S T E E N *

awilkins wrote:

Bathgate66 wrote:

awilkins wrote:

Show last night in Moncton was great! More geared towards the average fan and lots of hits/crowd pleasers, but the energy was great.

Highlights for me were:
-No Surrender to open
-Wrecking Ball (I like that song)
-Because the Night (Nils went fuckin' off!)
-If I Should Fall Behind (solo piano)
-The River
-Twist and Shout with The Trews and Tom Cochrane & Red Rider

I was really hoping for Darkness though, gotta see that before I die!

Happy that I got to see MSG2 and Moncton this year though.

was this a " festival" , or not ?
congrats on a good show -
If I should Fall Behind solo on piano muystve been great !

Here's my best attempt at explaining festival/no festival:
Typically, every summer, we have a big artist play a show in Moncton at Magnetic Hill, billed as Magnetic Hill Festival. The Stones, AC/DC, Eagles, U2, etc. Each show has opening bands that are usually Canadian to offer a fuller day of acts, cater to everyone, and get more tix sold/get more people there early to drink over-priced beer. This has been the case for the past 7 years. Last year was U2s last show of 360 tour ever, with their opening band Carney opening; however they also added Arcade Fire as a big Canadian band to fall in line with the previous years tradition and so on. This year was Bruce, but it was to be different as it originally conceived as a standalone show, no openers as per Bruce's usual style. Everyone assumed there'd be openers due to history of the Magnetic Hill shows having openers. The show was expensive (highest priced Magnetic Hill Show and one of the higher priced Bruce shows), was on a Sunday night of a non-holiday Monday, no announced other acts, saturated summer concert market, and on the heels of U2s 75,000+ show last summer, etc etc etc. Needless to say, tix sales were slow, rumours of big openers like Pearl Jam swirled and gained traction to boost sales, and then finally The Trews and Tom Cochrane/Red Rider were announced as openers (two popular Canadian bands covering broad age range). Now, the tickets and original plans had the gates at 3 and band(s) beginning at 4 or 5, so there was always a plan for some type of opener I assume, however, I think they were going to see if they could get away with none or a very late announce, which they did, 2 weeks before show. So was it a festival in the sense like we'd usually understand/have come to know: NO. Was it a festival in the sense that there was more than one band prior to Bruce: YES. But then there's the whole Bruce never has openers thing, but this was more like this event always has an afternoon of music, several bands, so it kinda falls in the middle.

As far as the setlist is concerned, it played out like a festival setlist, but mainly due to probably 90% of the crowd had never seen Bruce before, the show was outside on a hill, and there were 2 opening acts, etc. We were told there was no curfew, so he could have played all night or 4 hours, bu played 3 and 3 minutes.

I'm not even sure if I answered your question, probably more of a festival in theory than in practice, but just Bruce would have never flown anyway due to tradition/expectations/history/price etc.

So it's a standalone Bruce show with 2 Canadian bands thrown in for shits and giggles.