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

October22 wrote:

Giants Stadium is huge.

I fucking hate Ticketmaster.

TM seating chart showing just a tad over half the stadium being utilized for these shows .

Springsteen played here a year ago with the Sessions Band, but this is the E Street Band's first show in Belfast. A strangely static setlist for this late in the leg, with just one change from the previous show in Cologne: "No Surrender" was in for "The Ties That Bind." But a looser Bruce -- much as he connected with crowds around the continent and made an always-appreciated effort to speak the local language, you could feel him relax a bit here to be back in English-speaking territory. And a little amusement ride surely didn't hurt his mood, either. "I like the new Ferris wheel!" he said before "Magic," referring to the Belfast Wheel at City Hall, just opened in October. "A town with a Ferris wheel -- that's a good thing."

Before a lovely "The River," Springsteen mentioned that his brother-in-law was in the crowd, the "inspiration" for the song (along with Bruce's sister, of course). And just in case anyone needed the dots connected between "The River" and "I'll Work for Your Love," a wedding party was also in the house, apparently having come straight from the nuptials. When Bruce called out "Are there any lovers here tonight?" as usual, he was quickly directed to them -- the bride still in her gown, the groom still in his tuxedo. "Did you get married today?" Bruce asked, and dedicated the song to them. Performance high points were the "Reason to Believe"/"Because the Night"/"She's the One" trifecta, "Kitty's Back," and "Santa Claus," which featured some impressive headgear. Someone threw onstage a red felt cowboy hat with white fur trim and a white band that read "Merry Christmas." And once again, Bruce managed to make it look good.

Setlist:
Radio Nowhere
No Surrender
Lonesome Day
Gypsy Biker
Magic
Reason to Believe
Because the Night
She's the One
Livin' in the Future
The Promised Land
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
The River
I'll Work for Your Love
Devil's Arcade
The Rising
Last to Die
Long Walk Home
Badlands
* * *
Girls in Their Summer Clothes
Kitty's Back
Born to Run
Dancing in the Dark
American Land
Santa Claus is Comin' to Town

||Release_Me|| wrote:

I've been watching "Live in Barcelona" DVD the last few days, and the crowd still blows me away. Even PJ crowds aren't as ecstatic as Springsteen fans. They're frickin' nuts on every single song!

i think this is a phenomenon consisting of European Shows.

They always seem to go a little bit crazier then even back here in the States.

Whenever I watch that Barcelona DVD, im jealous that i wasnt there, living that experience to the fullest potential.

kudos to our European neioghbors.!

Despite brisk sales, tickets remain for Springsteen's Giants Stadium shows
by Jay Lustig/The Star-Ledger
Saturday December 15, 2007, 5:29 PM
The best seats for Bruce Springsteen's three July concerts at Giants Stadium were snatched up quickly when they went on sale at noon today. But demand for the poorer, upper level tickets was relatively slow.

By late this afternoon, plenty of seats remained, though they weren't necessarily good ones.

A Ticketmaster search for a pair of tickets at 4:45 p.m. yielded offers for section 331 and 314 (both upper-tier sections) for the Sunday, July 27 and Thursday, July 31 shows, respectively. For Monday, July 28, seats in section 215 (in the mezzanine) were still available.

Traditionally, the opening and closing shows of a multi-show stand generate the most interest.

It did not appear any shows would be added to the summer stand on the first day of availability.

For Springsteen and his E Street Band's last Giants Stadium shows, in 2003, three shows were initially announced. But demand was so strong that four additional dates were added later in the day. Three more shows went on sale on a later date, bringing the summer's total to 10.

The 2003 Giants Stadium shows had a capacity of 55,000, and these shows' capacity figures to be the same, or similar. Arena shows usually max out around 20,000.

Giants Stadium tickets are priced at $65 and $95, and available at ticketmaster.com.


for those going if you dont arrive early enough, odds are you will be encountering this :

VH1 Special on Rock n Roll



Bruce Headlines This Special.

VH1 'Rock' history hits huge sour note
Monday, December 17th 2007, 4:00 AM


Mazur/Getty

Bruce Springsteen (l.) and Steven Van Zandt perform a number in 'Seven Ages of Rock.'
SEVEN AGES OF ROCK. Tonight at 9, VH1 Classic

"Seven Ages of Rock," an ambitious week-long documentary that kicks off tonight, delivers a fast-paced, entertaining ride through rock music from 1965 to the present.

So it's very tempting to just sit back and enjoy it, except that's hard when it's all built on a lie.

At the beginning of the first installment, a Bobby Vee song plays in the background while narrator Dennis Hopper explains that before Jan. 1, 1965, popular music was bland, sanitized and largely irrelevant to a restless audience that was thirsting impatiently for something more.

This view can be explained partly by the fact "Seven Ages" is primarily a BBC production, so it looks at popular music from the perspective of Great Britain, where until the '60s pop music fans had only the ultrabland BBC.

The fact that this premise largely ignores the Beatles is a little more perplexing. But it forges on, arguing that "rock" as we know it really took off in 1965, when the Rolling Stones started doing their own material and the Who found their voice and Bob Dylan went electric.

So okay, you could argue that the "British invasion" bands started to rock harder that year. But "Seven Ages" doesn't phrase it that way. "Seven Ages" gives the distinct impression that the first real voice of rock was the Who smashing guitars.

To find where that voice came from, the show suggests, you have to go back to black American blues. It underscores this argument with a marvelous scene in which Keith Richards plays "Satisfaction" as a slow Delta blues.

But the implication is that nothing else came between John Lee Hooker and Eric Clapton, that no other music affected these early Brits.

That's just plain wrong. It's a lie, and any of the musicians here would tell you it's a lie.

To talk about the dawn of "rock" without factoring in Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Jerry Lee, Fats, James Brown and a hundred others doesn't just ignore history. It sneers at history.

The people involved here should know it - from their own clips. In the first two performance shots of the Stones, they're singing "Not Fade Away," a Buddy Holly song, and "Around and Around," a Chuck Berry song.

"Seven Ages" tells a good story, with great music and incisive and amusing comments from the likes of Clapton, Richards, Springsteen and Ozzy Osbourne.

But the fact that it ignores the entire decade when so much of this music was built - ignores Little Richard, the Beach Boys and Four Seasons, Phil Spector, Bo Diddley, rockabilly, early Motown, dismisses everything that went on before 1965, suggests by omission that it doesn't matter - sheathes the whole production in a cloud so dark that Keith, Eric, Bruce, the Clash, Pearl Jam and Oasis all together can never quite bust it out.

dhinckley@nydailynews.com

12/17, PARIS: JOYEUX NOEL!
With the setlists all but static here at the end of the European leg, we've first got to acknowledge some frustration among repeat attendees, the Loneliness of the Long-Distance Tour Follower. A "real ballbuster" says one of tonight's show, the penultimate night of the '07 tour, being virtually identical to the last three -- while of course granting it's a great show for anyone who's not catching multiple nights. ("You do it to yourself," as Radiohead says.)

Differentiating the Paris set from Belfast was a shake-up of the standard opening trio (adding both "Night" and "No Surrender" in between "Radio Nowhere" and "Lonesome Day") and most remarkably, a killer "Jungleland" in the encore. Clarence was perfect, Bruce sounded great, and "it hasn't sounded that good since '78" was a reasonable reaction. Bruce sent "Jungleland" out "for Leonardo, and for Paris." It wouldn't be Paris without Elliott Murphy, and a couple songs later Bruce's old friend and regular guest was onstage for "Dancing in the Dark."

For the closing "Santa Claus" -- "Croyez vous au Pere Noel?" -- enough Santa caps were hurled onstage that Springsteen was able to go around and make sure everyone in the band got one. The Boss himself got a custom model -- when Kevin Buell came out with the guitar for the song, he also brought the red cowboy hat from Belfast, which Bruce clearly took a shine to. And with the entire band decked out, tonight demonstrated what we've said before: no one wears a Santa hat like Bruce. Not even Steve, though the headscarf/hat combo is a unique touch. "Joyeux Noel from the E Street Band!"

Next: Last stop, London. A week after Zeppelin, Bruce and the E Street Band play the O2 Arena on Wednesday night.

For the full song list, and reports from other recent performances, see our Setlists page.

Merry Christmas, Boss, Stevie
and everyone else visiting this thread.

got my Giants Stadium tickets in the mail yesterday
that was fast.

now i gotta get into that Uniondale Nassau Masolleum show.


awesome !