Tuesday 6 October 2009

Giants Stadium to Bruce Springsteen


Giants Stadium has life left only a few months, and unhappy, when the concrete bowl sinks into the swamps of the Meadowlands, it will be a demolition of New Jersey's own design. The irony is not lost on Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band, who have been opening every show of their stadium closing run with an aptly named song called "Wrecking Ball." It's a new song, the day of playing off the news, the way good folk songs are supposed to. Call it the Woody Guthrie way. The song fades out with a familiar sounding "whoa ohh" sing along, as Springsteen taunts some metaphysical wrecking ball to just try and smash him and his mighty band off the stage.
The E Street Band showed no signs of fatigue Friday night as it checked off the second show of its five night run at Giants Stadium. The road more or less nonstophas been band for the past three years, and with only one month to go before a touring hiatus of indeterminate length, Springsteen and his band hardly hinted at their exhaustion.
The stadium to honor, Springsteen opted to play a classic album from the E Street Band glory days during each night of their current run. The schedule has him playing Born To Run and Born In The USA twice, with the remaining night, this past Friday, dedicated to a classic of equal weight: the mournful, anthem-stuffed Darkness On The Edge Of Town. Songs from Darkness are often the choicest cuts of any Springsteen show, so the satisfaction of hearing the album blown to bits in its entirety was something of a foregone conclusion.
The only question was whether there were any surprises left to be wrung out of old warhorses like "Badlands," "Adam Raised A Cain," or the life affirming an them of better days to come: "The Promised Land." Surprises or not, however, 40,000 diehards singing every word of that last song in drunken unison is one of the finest musical moments mankind can muster.

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