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Springsteen setlist - Hershey

Badlands
Spirit in the Night
Outlaw Pete
Radio Nowhere
Out in the Street
Twist ‘n’ Shout (sign)
Working on a Dream
Seeds
Johnny 99
The Ghost of Tom Joad
Raise Your Hand
Give the Girl a Great Big Kiss (sign)
Trapped (sign)
Waiting on a Sunny Day
Promised Land
Backstreets
Kingdom of Days
Lonesome Day
The Rising
Born to Run
Hard Times
Thunder Road
10th Avenue Freeze Out
Land of Hope and Dreams
American Land (E Street Band!)
Rosalita
Bobby Jean

Springsteen in Hershey - in game

So I missed the pregame post. Sue me. This is a perfect venue on a perfect night. Skies are clear. Seats are filled. And the E Street is here to fulfill their solemn vow: to rock the house. I fucking love it. A Beatles cover in the first set. Jay on the skins. This rules.

Catching up

So, I’m on the train.  When the train is interminably delayed, happiness is a tethered BlackBerry.

I’m way behind in posting.  I think I owe the world (and by the world, I mean myself) a few blog posts:

• Notes on the Springsteen show in Boston
• Notes on Boston in general
• Replies to two of Courtney and MJ’s throwdowns
• Review of Julia’s restaurant in Atlantic Highlands (no, Kelly, I didn’t forget)

I’ve also been cooking up some actual blog posts, but everything is sitting behind the mountain of work I’m under at the day job.  Plus, there have been a few things going on in life that have been taking up my attention.

And life doesn’t stop.  Gaslight Anthem at the Stone Pony this weekend.  I. Cannot.  Wait.  So I think there will also be a new-to-me review of Sink or Swim in my blogging queue.  I’m prolific in my mind.  On the blog?  Not so much.

Anyway, posts are coming.  Maybe even one or two tonight if this train continues its slow crawl and my BBerry battery holds out.

Boston Setlist

Badlands
Adam Raised a Cain
Outlaw Pete
Out in the Street
Workin on a Dream
Seeds
Johnny 99 
Ghost of Tom Joad
*signs*
Raise Your Hand
I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide (request)
I’m Goin’ Down (request)
Growin’ Up (request)
Waiting on a Sunny Day
Promised Land
The Wrestler
*hi from patti*
Kingdom of Days
Radio Nowhere (Jay Weinberg on drums)
Lonesome Day (Jay Weinberg on drums)
The Rising (Jay Weinberg on drums)
Born to Run (Jay Weinberg on drums)
*break*
Hard Times
10th Avenue Freeze Out
Land of Hope and Dreams
American Land
*E Street Band*
Rosalita

Bruce Springsteen - In Game

Badlands, Adam Raised a Cain, and Outlaw Pete to start. 100 feet from the stage, maybe, right in thje center. No Patti tonight. The Boston crowd is alive.

Bruce Springsteen - Pregame

So I’m sitting in a stairwell in the TD Banknorth Garden, waiting to be let into the floor area for tonights show. We missed the “pit” by about 30 people. C’est la vie. Never been on the floor for Bruce before, so front if the barricade will do nicely. Its a rainy day here, very chill and gray. My hoodie is all wet from waiting on line. There’s still about 2 hours until show time, so it’s all hanging out ahead of us. But dry hanging out. We’ll be let in as soon as the band finishes sound checking. This show doesn’t count for 12x12, by the way. Next month in Hershey may, but I’d prefer to get this done without using a Springsteen show.

Things to do on Boston

Rob: You know what Boston makes me want to do? Fight!

Sometimes the Wayback Machine seems like it's busted

A blog I frequent picked Matthew Wilder as the recipient of their Mustache Wednesday honors. While the man has a mad ‘stache, I think consideration of the bigger picture — the look and the song — is cause to pause. This shit used to be cool.

A response to TD10 - Shuffling Off

This is a reply to Courtney and MJ’s Throwdown #10, Shuffling Off.

Good theme this week. Except, of course, whever I do shit like this the song that comes up is a random track from a holiday CD or a novelty disc that I ripped for sake of completeness. So it was with great trepidation that I switched my home iTunes to shuffle, hit play, and waited for song 10.

I had nothing to worry about.

12 Bands 12 Months: Nada Surf, April 15, Brooklyn

Don’t push me cause I’ll fall in love/with whatever you just said ♪

I’ve been on a good run of late, show-wise.  Nary a clunker.  Usually, that has me nervous that the next $20 I drop on a show will result in abject disappointment.  But there was something about Wednesday night.  Wednesday night just couldn’t go wrong.  Wednesday night, I was going to see the soundtrack to my life.

If you know me, you know that I’m the all-in type.  I don’t half-ass anything, my kitchen renovation excepted¹.  I like it or dislike it.  Love it or hate it.  There are  few things I’m “meh” about.  Mets?  Love ‘em.  Yankees?  Fuck ‘em.  Pizza?  Best food invented².  Broccoli?  God’s only mistake.

So it’s been with Nada Surf.  I’ve been loving them for about 8 months, which is about par for me: find a band I used to kind of know something about, get re-hooked by a song, song becomes an album, and before I know it their catalog is on my iPod and they’re zooming up my last.fm stats.  But I hadn’t gotten around to seeing them.  They’ve been at the Bowery Ballroom (great venue), Terminal 5 (overpriced), and Maxwells (best non-Stone Pony Jersey venue) in the past year, but I kept missing them.  So when this show popped up on their website — and not Pollstar or OMR, by the way and damn you — and I happened to be checking their site out, I circled it and grabbed tickets.  I was not to be denied.

Again, this is the point in my life where things usually fall apart.  The big build-up, the stumbled-upon gig…expectations are high!  FAIL impending!  Driving to Brooklyn that night, I kept reminding myself that live music is organic, and sometimes organic matter, well, stinks.

Thankfully, the first opener didn’t turn out to be much of a bellweather.  Or, if they were, then the whole night would have been one good song³ sandwiched by 5 mediocre ones, wailed out by some French folk with a collective lust for flat chords, spastic drumming, and monotone bass lines.  Underground Railroad, they were called.  They can stay down there.

The second opener, Holly Miranda, was genuinely good.  But I can’t remember exactly how good they were because I was either talking or drinking during their whole set.  But I did remark several times “They’re good!” to Andrew, and he responded in the affirmative, so I am sure it wasn’t just the Gennie Cream Ale⁴ doing the talking.


While waiting for Nada to take the stage, we headed up front.  It should be noted that I consider this a minor victory.  After all, from our spot during the opening acts we were maybe 20 feet off the stage, and on a riser to boot.  Decent spot to be sure.  But it was on an angle, and frankly, I was not to be denied this show!  We found a spot in the second row of people and waited.

It was about then that the doubts were creeping back in.  So far, it was a pretty great night: good venue, good beer list, good company, and good conversation.  Now that the main event was minutes away, would it hold?

Beautiful beat, get me out of this mess ♪

A friend today, remarking on my obsessive recounting of the night, said that I seemed to be in my element.  I was.  I was surrounded by sound, lost in rhythm.  I felt my soul being healed.

When the amps kick on, when the drummer sits down and taps the skins in anticipation, when the bassist fiddles with his strap and the singer adjusts the microphone, that, for me, is a healing moment.  The world melts away.  Cares and problems, dilemmas and worries, they fade into that little buzz that always comes right before the vocalist says hi and the first chords are played.  And for two hours or so, very little else matters.

Oh fuck it, I’m gonna have a party ♪

And so they were awesome, in every sense of the word.  Three guys, plus one on keys — a benefit of being “home” and close to their session keyboardist.  Holly Miranda on few guest vocals.  A spare stage, minimal acoutrement, vintage amps.

That Matthew Caws isn’t a world-famous lyricist is a travesty and a gift.  He writes songs that are expressive without being weak or emo.  He captures moments and paints the picture with precision.  He, bassist Daniel Lorca, and drummer Ira Elliot harmonize effortlessly, adding a depth to songs about love and longing that lift them out of sense of despair into one of redemption and hope.  The people that populate Caws’ world are flawed without being tragic.  They’re real, and they connect.

Lorca and Elliott provide a solid rhythm section, and Caws’ guitar moves between tender and frantic, such as during the show-opening “Treading Water”, with ease.  Nada Surf set the tone early, dialing up the tempo on every song, and moving quickly from song to song.  The crowd, which had swelled from about 50 for the first opener to somewhere near capacity, was above all else appreciative.

The setlist was, frankly, like something I would have set up on my iPod.  They played the hits, so to speak, spanning their last three releases.  For the encore, Caws led off with the very pretty “Blizzard of ‘77,” followed by “Always Love,” and closed with “The Blankest Year” and the ensuing party on stage.

In the end, this was a show I needed to see.  They’re solid performers, and they have a body of work that wants to be played out live.  But I’ve seen plenty of good bands and great live shows.  Hell, last month’s Gaslight Anthem show was pretty damn good.

No, what made this show special was the connection.  As I said way back at the top of this novel, this band is the the soundtrack to my life right now.  And to have that soundtrack wrap me up and take me away for a few hours?  I’d never trade it.

Where are we going? I don’t care.
Our friends all left, let’s go anywhere.

¹Jesus, the kitchen.  5 years later and the drain still leaks a bit, there’s a weird hump in the floor in front of the sink, the cabinet trim moulding is still in cardboard boxes on top of the cabinets, mocking me.  I bring this up, by the way, so nobody else has to.

²To be specific: Pete and Eldas for thin crust, New Corner for “plain” Neapolitan, and Bottoms Up for insanely decadent thick crust.

³The good song, it should be noted, was sung by the female guitarist, and had a stripped-down Velocity Girl sound to it.  Distorted yet melodic, catchy, and not at all awful.  She should leave that band.

⁴Thanks Steve!