A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

THE LIGHTS OF BROWNSVILLE, ACROSS THE RIVER SHINE: Loyal reader Adam C. just caught two straight nights of BRUUUUUUCE! at the Philadelphia Spectrum, and was good enough to file this report:

"This one's for the moms and dads." In a simple line by way of introduction of "Long Time Comin,'" from his latest album, Devils & Dust, Bruce Springsteen summed up a long-brewing turn in his nearly 35 years of popular storytelling. His early songs often return to the theme of fathers and sons….but back then, Bruce was the son chafing under the stern father, singing about their divergent paths and wants, about the indignities his working-class pa had to endure, about getting out. Since he became a father himself, though, he has frequently examined the parent's desire to protect the child, to hope, to do better by the next generation -- how, to paraphrase "Long Time Comin'," not to eff it up this time.

Over the last two nights at the theater-configured Spectrum in Philadelphia -- always a venue where Bruce brings the magic -- he took the crowd down both paths, exploring the theme of family bonds - fathers, mothers, children, brothers (biological and in-arms), husbands and wives. And then he blew the doors off the place by dipping into his vast catalog for deep album cuts (like The River's sublime "Drive All Night," not played live in 24 years, and "Fade Away") and fan-favorite obscurities ("Thundercrack" and -- shaking off 32 years of dust -- "Santa Ana") that earned him long and loud standing ovations.

Moving mostly skillfully from guitar to piano to electric organ, and then entertainingly to ukelele ("I Wanna Marry You," "Growin' Up"), pump organ (the hypnotic cover of Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream" with which he now closes each show), and even autoharp ("The New Timer"), Bruce kept the crowd alternately at rapt, respectful attention and in foot-stompin', hand-clappin', rollicking good spirits. New arrangements of "The Ties That Bind" and "Adam Raised a Cain" stood out, and faithful renditions of other favorites from The River and Nebraska helped flesh out both shows. Pins could have been heard to drop during a fantastic version of "Highway Patrolman."

Both nights found Bruce in strong voice, with a range that has stretched over the years to include a falsetto that he uses to nice accompanying effect in some of the more contemplative songs. He was loose and ready to make with the funny too -- a factor noticeably absent for much of his first solo tour nearly a decade ago and even the first leg of this tour, when he was still heard to crankily admonish fans to shut up during the slow songs. Introducing a gorgeous piano version of "Incident on 57th Street," he spoke about the hidden subtext of all great pop songs -- they all ask the musical question "Will you pull down your pants?" as in "Tramps like us, baby we were born to run…and would you please pull down your pants." Both nights, he led into "Jesus Was an Only Son," off the latest album, by recalling his Catholic upbringing in Freehold, New Jersey, where virtually every member of his wacky extended family lived along an L-shaped street dominated by the local church, convent and rectory. But where on night 1 he used an extended thumb and forefinger to represent the street as he described the lay of the neighborhood from the piano bench, on night 2 he gleefully offered a demonstrative exhibit to the crowd -- a hand-drawn visual aid on posterboard, done in colorful magic marker by an eager fan, which tracked almost exactly his description from the night before. He moved confidently from the lighthearted introduction into the song and then, between verses, gave us the VH1 Storytellers treatment, talking about what he was thinking about while writing the lyrics.

(A side note: while I share Max Weinberg's faith and not Bruce's, "Jesus Was an Only Son" is a terrific, moving song about a mother's devotion to her son and coming to terms with loss. Just happens to involve Mary and Jesus as the main characters.)

Lest you think the hero worship here is getting a bit too thick (I swear I was not the fan who supplied that visual aid), I'll say that there are two very surmountable problems with the show as constructed. Each night, Springsteen converts one or two of his songs from the River-Nebraska-Born in the USA canon into a Delta blues wail, Robert Johnson style (lyric, bluesy wa-waaaa-wa-wa harmonica riff, lyric, etc.). I like the concept, and the songs adapt well in theory -- but in execution, it's just unintelligible. He sings these revamped versions into something called a "bullet mic," which gives an echoey, crackly distortion effect to the vocals and harmonica (as if you are hearing a long lost Edison cylinder recording), while he accompanies himself with foot stomps on a mic'ed up platform. Whether it's the sound mix, the Spectrum acoustics, the technology or a combination of those factors, you just can't hear the lyrics. At all. The first night, he opened with "Born in the USA" in this style, and it took me two verses to figure out what the hell the song was -- others were still scratching their heads at the end of the show wondering what he'd opened with. (Though his energetic foot stomping did provide an early opportunity to lighten things up -- his water glass fell from a nearby side table and shattered mid-song, and the Tiffany-style lamp on the table also broke, prompting Bruce to note, "That lamp was on loan….[my wife]'s gonna kiiiiiiiillllll me."). The bullet mic mix the second night, this time on "Reason to Believe," was a little better, but this is a kink that should have been worked out well before the middle of the third leg of the tour.

Issue the second: Both nights, the main sets closed with devastating first-person narratives ("The Hitter" on night 1, "The New Timer" on night 2, each followed by "Matamoras Banks"). The songs are lyrically rich and challenging and fit thematically with the relationship motif running through the show, but the tone is just too relentlessly downbeat, and the pace is deadeningly slow. Bruce loses folks here -- certainly some of the more casual fans -- by saving these songs until the end of the main set. That said, (a) he leaves 'em wanting more, and (b) he gets the crowd right back before playing the first note of the encore when he strides back out on stage with a ukelele and quips "I woke up one morning in the penthouse of the Disneyland Resort hotel with two Mouseketeers, Britney Spears, and this ukelele…."

These solo shows are not for everyone, or even for every Bruce fan. If you want to dance around and sing along in full voice to Born to Run, Rosalita, Badlands, or the like, you'll not find those opportunities here. But you had your chance to see that show for the past two tours, in big arena and stadium settings. This is a more intimate deal, generally a more quiet and introspective take on his music mixing the old, the new, and the new versions of the old -- a return to Bruce as singer-songwriter-troubadour. My bottom line: I have seen Springsteen play live 16 times since 1988, with the E-Street Band, as a solo act, and with his 1992-era non-E-Street backing group, and these outstanding Spectrum gigs over the past two nights have zoomed right into my top 5 Bruce shows.