River night at the Garden
When you play an album, you can get lost in the music. When you play a double album, you not only can but do get lost, all choice aside. And when the double album is two albums past the one where you realize how great the world can be, and one album past the one where you realize how bad the world can be, you must need that double shot to comprehend or express how the world can be both at the same time.
After opening with Wrecking Ball, a definite farewell to Giants Stadium turned possible farewell to E Street, we got The River. The first eight songs were as fans of recent tours know them. Then we got to Crush on You, and it sounded great. Bruce mocked it. I loved it. Play it every night. Why I'm a Rocker gets more respect is still beyond me. I Wanna Marry You was standard but gave the Springsteens a chance to dance. The title track was one of the best renditions I've heard live — pieces of different takes from different tours coming together. Stolen Car was perfect. The Price You Pay got such a good reception and found such life in the band that I wouldn't be surprised if it stuck around in the setlists in these final dates. Closing the album, Drive All Night and Wreck on the Highway grappled with love-as-devastation, good or bad, as they do.
I kept getting lost in the music, just like I always do with the album — the way we expose, the way we hide, the way we get loud, the way we get quiet, the way we leave work, the way we take responsibility, the way we can't fall asleep or don't want to fall asleep, good or bad.
Twenty-one songs in, there were still 11 to go, and they were a party. The classics were the classics, lights up, crowd on it, even the terrified boy pulled on stage for Waitin' on a Sunny Day managed to sing, and oddness like Born to Run into Seven Nights to Rock was surpassed by a request of Sweet Soul Music, two flag-waving Spaniards sprinting from our high-up opposite end of the Garden during American Land to just beside the stage, fans at the same time briefly capturing the riser mid-pit, Can't Help Falling in Love turning out better than anyone expected — who knew everyone in the building knew the words? — and Higher and Higher taking a surprise strut back to the riser, before the show ended and Springsteen, ushering off the band, stayed last to wave.
September 25th, 2010 at 8:36 AM
[...] the live Price You Pay video. The performance was a recent one, maybe at the complete River show Rob and I saw in New York, but the song retained its power. And I freaking love that [...]