Looks Good (Giants Stadium, 7/24/03)

Six songs into last night's show, Bruce Springsteen looked up into the sky, held out his hand, and, feeling nothing coming down on it, proclaimed, "Looks good!" The weather was perfect – a cool breeze in the stands, light clowd cover, and the E Street Band on stage.

The most notable aspect of these stadium shows are the sheer scale of the spectable. Walking in from Lot 17 (an invaluable tip picked up from usenet), observing the elaborate tailgate parties, different Springsteen albums being played at every stop. On the other side, the boardwalk, complete with ferris wheel and live music. Bootleg t- shirts everywhere, and Springsteen traffic reports on the radio.

The best news about the show is that Springsteen has taken whatever intimacy was left in the arena show and translated it to the stadium. The movements are somwhat bigger, perhaps, but the overall feel hasn't changed. And it seems clear that both he and the band love seeing the sea of people all the way back to section 321 jumping up and down and waving their hands.

The show opened at a blistering pace, and with "The Promised Land" as an opening and then "Prove It All Night" coming shortly thereafter, the early set had more of a Darkness feel than usual – and more of Clarence Clemons as well.

The first Springsteen show I ever heard, back in the live radio broadcast days, featured "Streets of Fire" as the 2nd song in. For the first time since that evening nearly 25 years ago, I heard it again live last night. And even if half the crowd had no idea what was going on, the other half was singing all the words – not that it could save Bruce from blowing a line in the final verse. Still, it felt right, smoking, smoldering.

The show was pretty much solid throughout. While the overall set retains similarity to the arena show of last year, the elimination of songs such as "Counting on a Miracle," "You're Missing" and "The Fuse" has served to de-emphasize material from "The Rising" in the set (though, unlike on the arena tour, the sound for the "Counting on a Miracle" video was nice and loud after the show ended). The highlights included "Meeting into the River" followed by "Jungleland" – complete with the violin opening not heard in concert since the days when Suki Lahav played with the band. Jungleland was particularly effective last night, with Clarence's solo slowed down just a bit. The first encore featured a long- overdue rendition of "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" for the New Jersey audience. I also witnessed a first for me in nearly 60 shows – Clarence Clemons playing washboard. This occurred during the final portion of "Working on the Highway," when, in addition to Clarence on washboard, Nils Lofgren was on banjo and Danny Federici was on accordian. "She's the One," with the extended harmonica ending, was another highlight.

The one notable music lowlight was "Mary's Place." It has been transformed from being a generally pleasing song for the band introduction, into being a totally overblown mess. I'm not sure, but at this point it may be even longer than the final renditions of "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" on the prior tour, and has even incorporated many of the lame introduction jokes from that version as well as the "Say Amen Somebody" ending. Lose ten minutes from this song and it will be much better.

We were in section 108 for last night's show. We went in early to see if we'd prefer an exchange, and found immediately that a gentleman named Kevin was waiting at the top of the aisle expressly to help out anyone not happy with their seats. Last night's exchange was to section 13 on the floor; by a vote of 3-1 we decided to stay put. Our seats were 13-16 in row 7, but due to others exchanging we were able to shift over to 17-20. I found the seats to be fine, although I couldn't see Roy, Suzi or Max. Bruce came up into our faces a few times, and the view of the front line was excellent. We were surrounded by *seventy-two* people attending "Mare's Birthday Party"; that must have been some party!

The sound was very poor, even considering the venue. While there was no distortion where we were, the bass was way, way too high, to the extent that the overall effect reminded me of cheapie stereo systems from 20 years ago. They can improve the sound simply by turning down the bass.

One other note: If you're going to a show and must eat at the venue, either buy it out on the boardwalk or find/host a tailgate. Whatever you do, don't buy food inside the stadium. I didn't think it was possible to murder a hot dog, fries and pepsi, but they pulled it off. You've been warned.