Live Archive: Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Orlando, FL, April 23, 2008
“I’m going to Disneyland, baby!”
Setlist: BLOOD BROTHERS / NIGHT / RADIO NOWHERE / OUT IN THE STREET / SPIRIT IN THE NIGHT / THE RIVER / DOES THIS BUS STOP AT 82ND STREET? / CANDY'S ROOM / PROVE IT ALL NIGHT / SHE'S THE ONE / LIVIN' IN THE FUTURE / THE PROMISED LAND / FIRE / LOST IN THE FLOOD / DEVIL'S ARCADE / THE RISING / LAST TO DIE / LONG WALK HOME / BADLANDS / TURN! TURN! TURN! (TO EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASON) / MR. TAMBOURINE MAN / JUNGLELAND / BORN TO RUN / DANCING IN THE DARK / AMERICAN LAND
“Good evening, Orlando. This is a little something in remembrance of Danny.”
To quote Backstreets from their April 22nd report: “And the show goes on. Eight days after their last performance, five days after the passing of Danny Federici, and just one day after the funeral service, Bruce and the E Street Band took the stage in Tampa.” The most recent official archive release isn’t that night (that one was released some time ago) but the night after that one.
The evening opened with a tribute video to Danny that had been screened the night before – man, I wish somebody cared about maintaining these things on the official website – that utilized the studio version of “Blood Brothers” and when that was finished, the band proceeded to perform the secondary version of the song, the one no one thinks of when you say “Blood Brothers,” from the Blood Brothers EP that came out in 1996. (We all remembered it existed when “High Hopes” came out because that’s where Bruce tried it for the first time.)
I get why this version wasn’t the one that made the cut – listening to the original now, it sounds kind of dated – but this rendition in Orlando redeems it. Tonight it is utterly transformative. It’s still solemn but furious, a lament, keening. Listen for Roy’s definitive, broad chords, and for Charlie sweeping in on the organ at the end. As far as I can tell, it is the only live performance of this particular version.
This archive release continues the current trend of beautiful, expansive mixes where you’re not ever screaming at the speakers because you can’t hear [insert band member here]. “Night” is stunning, and if you think you’re reading a layer of fury into it, I don’t think you’re wrong. You can be cynical and say something like, “Well of course they kept playing, no one wanted to lose money,” but one, it’s not just the band members that don’t get paid if you cancel shows, it’s the crew and everyone who works in the venues. But also? These shows were important to the band and you hear their sorrow and their fury in their performance.
“Is there anybody alive out there? Is there anybody alive out there??” Not once, but twice, before heading into “Radio Nowhere,” which is punctuated by an exclamation on guitar at the end. “Out In the Street” is next and while in current times I personally could do with it taking a rest, hearing it here, knowing who is missing, is heartbreaking.
The smoke and the fog are invoked, you know what song is next, and then Bruce says, “Ah, this one’s for Dan,” and you think aren’t all of them tonight but then Charlie swings into the opening organ riff of “Spirit in the Night” and the audience applauds with understanding and intent, and friends, the first time I listened to this recording I burst into tears at my desk like all of this just happened. No one will ever play "Spirit in the Night" the way Danny Federici did.
Bruce messes up the lyrics – “Wrong words!” – but jumps back in. When he gets to “So we closed our eyes and said…” the crowd answers “goodbye” but then they just keep singing. I can’t tell if he was momentarily overcome or if the crowd just kept powering through but it’s lovely. He waits for it to peter out before coming back in with the band, that punctuation from Max on the snare.
The intro to “The River” is just Roy, it’s an ode and an elegy and it is a tribute, it invokes the emotions of the song, he’s not going that far afield, but it is grief set to music. There’s a dedication, then the harmonica, and then Nils and Bruce together in what feels like a duet. The crowd cheers softly at the end of the first verse.
Bruce greets the crowd at the song’s conclusion. “Good evenin’, everybody. Thank you for coming out, I hope we didn’t inconvenience you by switching the nights around, appreciate that. We want to thank you for all the prayers and condolences you sent to us for Dan…gonna test the band’s memory right now.” “Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street” lumbers a little but is executed well, even if Bruce has to explicitly call out “BRIDGE!” at the appropriate moment.
I had to look this up because I couldn’t remember the exact order of events: We lost Danny on April 17th. The next show was supposed to be the 18th. They shifted around the shows in Tampa, Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale, moving the first two out a week and tacking Ft. Lauderdale onto the end of that leg of the tour. And of course the only reason they were on the road was because they’d already done the work of transitioning Charlie Giordano to fill in for Danny. I remember standing in front of the soundboard for Danny’s last two shows in Boston and how Charlie was sitting back there with a large notebook but we were all hoping that it was a temporary fix.
I’ve heard some pretty long sustains at the end of “Candy’s Room” but this one tonight has to be in the top 10, while Nils is the MVP of “Prove It All Night.” Up next, “Candy’s Room” is particularly on point: the intro in those days was always commanding, Roy hitting the intro riff while the band audibly move into formation four times, like a bell declaring their arrival.
“Here’s to the end of eight years of bad magic,” Bruce insists at the end of the usual intro to “Livin’ in the Future.” My touring friends and I used to gently mock those “Livin’ In the Future” intros, the whole “we’re gonna do something about it, we’re gonna sing about it!” joke about a thing that wasn’t actually funny, but, you know, is definitely not funny now. The segue in ‘08 was “The Promised Land” which is a dignified and appropriate match.
So apparently at some point on the 2008 tour there were fan vote contests to pick a song tied into local radio stations? (I have zero recollection of this but I also only saw 4 shows in 2008.) Tonight, the winner was “Fire.” Even Bruce seemed befuddled by the whole thing as he mentions it, to zero crowd response: "This is what puzzles me, every time I mention it, everyone says I don't know!... This was a management decision.” But! This does get a great story about the origins of the song, talking about going to Graceland and climbing over the wall – “Not something I would suggest, don’t do it at my house, alright?” – and then about Robert Gordon, the Pointer Sisters, and a big shoutout to Babyface (who had the most recently released version), before a nicely crunchy version of “Fire,” where he tries to get the audience to sing the first verse, which they more or less manage. “This was a hit!” Bruce protests as they try to get to the chorus.
“Lost in the Flood” is a relative rarity on this leg, but not unheard of, and if you think at the beginning that Bruce just wants to get to the solo so he can vent and/or testify, I think you’d be right. “Devil’s Arcade” follows, and it strikes me as a fantastic segue, but given LITF’s track record I was curious what else had been paired with it on this leg: “Terry’s Song,” “Independence Day, “ “The River,“ but also (at least once) “Sunny Day.”
That trademark Magic segue of “The Rising” / “Last To Die” / “Long Walk Home” / “Badlands” is incredible, and not for the first, second, 50th time I think about how criminally underrated Magic was, and remains. This particular segue says more than the entirety of the “Livin’ In the Future” intro. Roy is particularly amazing in “Last To Die,” the audience acquits itself respectably when requested to sing the chorus of LWH (as does SVZ when he gets his solo chorus).
In the encore, we get a surprise in the shape of none other than Roger McGuinn! “We have a special guest with us tonight, somebody whose music we really grew up on and who’s been a tremendous influence in my music.” McGuinn joins E Street for both “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and I hear the arranger hand of Miami Steve in both. Bruce’s verse in the first is respectable but everybody in E Street truly shines during “Mr. Tambourine Man.” It’s gorgeous. Of course we don’t have official video of the latter but we do have the first number.
“When I was 15, in my little room, I had my little box stereo and I played that first Byrds album 200 times in the dark, night after night after night…alright, man, give me that thing.” is how we get “Jungleland.” (“Thank you to my friend down there,” he says. “You don’t look a day over 10 or 12, my friend.”) You hear Soozie tuning up in the background, and then it begins. This is not the best version of “Jungleland” you have ever heard -- to be honest, it is lacking pace and focus -- but also I know if I was standing in the crowd it would not have mattered and frankly it doesn’t matter now because this was the first show after losing Danny and they could have done a group tap dance and sing-a-long to various folk tunes and we all would have given them a standing ovation.
But wait until the end. That wordless vocalization that concludes the song has every amount of power and pain and love and loss that you’ve ever heard, and you’ll cry one more time.
It’s funny what you do and don’t remember. I remember getting the reports about Danny Federici’s surprise appearance at the show in Indianapolis on March 20, and thinking that this was a good sign, that things were trending up, as I am fond of saying. And then a little less than a month later, of course, the incredibly sad news of his passing. But I’d forgotten the details of the rest of the chronology. I just remember wishing I’d made the impulsive decision to get myself to Florida for this first show after he’d passed.
This came up this week as people were talking about where they were when Prince died. It’s one of the things about being a fan of a band, that when something terrible happens, you’re mostly walking around carrying it by yourself, because the rest of the world continues to turn and most people can’t understand why you’re feeling bereft about someone you didn’t even know. So part of wanting to be there, and being dismayed that I couldn’t make it work, wasn’t transactional, wasn’t “I wonder what they’re going to do in tribute,” although of course that’s part of it. It was wanting to be someplace where I didn’t have to explain why my heart ached.
