Bruce Springsteen - The River Tour. Hampden Park, Glasgow. June 2016

Live Review: Bruce Springsteen - The River Tour. Hampden Park, Glasgow. June 2016

As a long time fan of Bruce Springsteen I would enjoy seeing him perform two hours of Christmas Carols but The River, his double album released 35 years ago, contains some of my all-time favourite songs. So I was delighted to find him bringing his "The River" tour to Glasgow. When the tour started in America, on stage Springsteen and the E Street Band worked their way sequentially through the twenty tracks of the album but, as is his wont, the performances are evolving and changing every night.

In Glasgow, as he came onto the Hampden stage at 6.45pm under a glorious sunny sky, he opened with the song I had been singing all day in anticipation of the concert, "Waitin' On A Sunny Day" (from 2002 album The Rising). Right from the off he was down at the front, working the crowd and soon dragged a 10 year old fan up onto the stage to sing along with him. She gave a spectacularly self-confident rendition of the song before giving him a hug and getting back down into the crowd.

Keeping the upbeat mood he went into "Spirit In The Night" from the 1973 album Greetings From Ashbury Park, NJ, but which I first knew as the B-side to a 7 inch version of Born To Run that I have. This single was one of many that I bought from a rack in the newsagent across the road from my granny's house. These were old cast-offs from jukeboxes with the large hole in the middle, but often strange double-A side combinations. Like many people I worked my way backwards through Springsteen's catalogue, as I was only 2 years old when he released this album. My mother had bought Born In The USA when it was released in 1985, which were the first Springsteen songs that I heard. Touring the UK in 1985 he gave a donation to help the striking miners that year, which further endeared him to me. At that time I was making my first trips to record shops and started picking up second hand copies of his earlier albums.

 

In these days of Amazon and music downloads, record shops are few and far between. In the 1980s there were plenty of places to browse through racks and shelves of records, not just my granny's newsagent. I would spend many a Saturday starting at Dumbarton Road and working my way up to Great Western Road with a couple of friends, looking into umpteen record shops on the way. The first stop when I got off the number 9 bus in Partick was West End Records on Dumbarton Road. They also had a branch in Clydebank Shopping Centre and sold a lot of record company excess stock, often unfortunately with a punch hole clipped in the corner of the cover.

West End Records, Dumbarton Road Glasgow, not long before the whole block was demolished

After taking ownership of my mum's copy of Born In The USA it was in this shop that I picked up Springsteen's breakthrough album Born To Run from 1975, and later on progressed to The River. The River had come out in 1980 and was made by an artist caught between moody, downbeat storytelling songs and bright, rosy fist-pumping anthems. I didn't own many gatefold double albums then and spent many hours poring over the lyrics on the songs on it. The track The River was my favourite, but as a teenager I struggled to see why Mary and the singer in the song were so pessimistic and down about her getting pregnant and married at 19 years of age. 19, that was ancient! However, the image of this disillusioned pair dreamily thinking back to their teenage days of canoodling down by the river, wondering "Is a dream a lie that don't come true, or is it something worse?" appealed to me.

Bruce Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt
sing Two Hearts in Glasgow

In Hampden, four songs in we finally got to some songs from The River, the opening three tracks including Steve Van Zandt and Bruce duetting on Two Hearts. Drifting off of the setlist to take requests from the audience we got a storming performance of Rosalita and then Sandy from the 1973 album The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. This album of rambling storytelling songs I picked up in Realistic Records on Dowanhill Street. This second hand record shop opposite the Dowanhill Bar was where I found various gems over the years, including Big Country's The Crossing in all three sleeve colour variations and Eurythmics debut album In The Garden. Unless you got hold of the Guiness Book of Hit Singles it was harder to work out what albums and singles an artist actually had in the pre-internet age, so rummaging through record shops often turned up surprisng things.

Some of the Springsteen singles I've accumulated

In later years my amble northwards would divert from here to Music Mania at the bottom of Byres Road. Run by a Canadian with a dodgy moustache I picked up some complete rubbish like Bangs and Crashes by Go West. Then you could visit Woolworths if you were after chart singles, later Stephen Pastels record shop upstairs in John Smith's bookshop where Starbucks is now, before going into Echo nearer the top of Byres Road for more obscure stuff. The grumpy brothers that owned the shop (and also ran it as Listen in a previous incarnation) would always be happy to help. A wander up to Lost In Music in Ruthven Lane was good for older 7 inch singles and that is where I found Springsteen's My Hometown/ Santa Claus is Coming To Town classic disc.

Sad wee farewell letter from Lost In Music in Ruthven Lane

After three more tracks from The River, and an audience member's sign request for Lonesome Day, from the The Rising album, the music took a darker turn. Starting with Death To My Hometown from 2014's Wrecking Ball album before American Skin (41 Shots) and Murder Incorporated. These are two of my favourite Springsteen songs, American Skin in particular was a thrill to hear. Both are critical of gun violence in America, the former written in response to the police shooting in New York of an unarmed black man in 1999, killed when officers fired 41 shots at him. Murder Incorporated is about the normalisation of gun violence in society. Both songs are sadly more relevant to major problems in American society now, than even when they were written.

Taking requests from the audience we moved through I'm Goin' Down from Born In The USA to the excellent Johnny 99 from 1982 album Nebraska (one of my favourite albums) this time sung with a lively country and western twang. Despite the persisting bright sunshine we were into the more gloomy tracks from The River that I enjoy, with the title track and then Point Blank.

Late evening sunshine in Hampden Stadium, Glasgow

Other highlights for me in the main set were Because the Night, written by Springsteen in 1978 with Patti Smith and released by her as a single that year, Thunder Road from Born To Run and Badlands from 1978's Darkness on the Edge of Town.

A vigorous encore of barnstormers such as Born In The USA, Born To Run and the sad/happy Glory Days got the 55,000 crowd singing along to every song before a couple more audience members were plucked from the crowd to join him on stage in the Courtney Cox role for Dancing In The Dark, before Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out, which has now become a tribute to the absent Clarence Clements at Bruce Springsteen concerts.

As he did last time in Glasgow, he finished with The Isley Brothers song Shout, which got the crowd jumping and singing along, but I would have much rather had any one of a dozen Bruce Springsteen songs to send us home that we hadn't yet heard, rather than a song more associated with the teenage Lulu. Looking at the setlist.fm website, Bruce Springsteen has played this song 84 times in concerts. Which two bands do you think have performed it live more times than he has? (answers at the bottom of this page, Lulu not included as we are talking about the internet era here).

As the band left the stage we were sent home with a solo acoustic rendition from Springsteen of This Hard Land, taken from the Tracks album of unreleased tracks.

This was one of his best performances that I have seen, 34 songs in three and a half hours of non-stop music, holding a stadium crowd in the palm of his hand as usual. He is in no way running out of energy as the years go on, although with plans for a solo studio album next, this may be the last time for a while that he tours with the E Street Band. Tonight he ticked off about twenty of my favourite tracks, many of which I'd never seen live before, but as that still leaves me plenty more to try and catch next time he is in town.

There's plenty more music where that came from...

Q - Bruce Springsteen has performed "Shout" live in concert 84 times over the years according to setlist.fm. Which artists have sung it live more often?

A - Bon Jovi have sung it 214 times, and Green Day 221 times...apparently.

live review Bruce Springsteen Glasgow concert Hampden

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Hampden Stadium, Glasgow , June 2013

After seeing Bruce Springsteen playing in Glasgow last night I want to write a wee quick review of his concert. Also I am in the lucky position of having seen him twice on the current tour. I wrote about his concert in Sunderland almost exactly a year ago, when he first came to the UK on the Wrecking Ball tour. So I feel I have had the chance to see how he plays different gigs, different shows to different crowds.

I have never really thought of myself as being a groupie of Bruce Springsteen but when I was listening to some of his old albums in the lead up to this gig I was aware not only of how much I liked them, but also how well I knew them. Born in the USA was released when I was 13 years old and was bought by my mum. I liked it and it kind of drifted into my record pile as time went on, along with her Specials album and Zenyatta Mondatta, by The Police. When I was in fifth year at school and at Glasgow University I would browse the various record shops of the west end religiously every single Saturday. You had a fair amount of choice with West End Records in Clydebank and on Dumbarton Road at Partick, the wee second hand shop on Downhill Street opposite the Dowanhill pub (Realistic Records?). There were the two strange brothers with wispy comb-overs that ran the chaotic shop on Byres Road opposite the subway (was it called Echo?), the one on Park Road for weirder stuff, then Lost In Music in Decourcy's Arcade for a lot of independent Scottish stuff, Woolworths on Byres Road was good for 12 inch singles. Later came Stephen Pastel's record shop upstairs in John Smith's bookshop, beside the subway (still on the go as Monorail in town). That combined with HMV, Virgin and Tower in town and my Britannia Music subscription meant that there were plenty of ways to pick up Brucie's back catalogue, usually quite cheaply as most of these shops had big second hand sections. So I worked my way through all his old stuff, got the 5 album live box set (Live 1975/85), a few 12 inch records and picture discs. I had my Clarence Clemons and the Red Bank Rockers album on cassette (which I'm REALLY annoyed I threw out when I got rid of my tape deck - I used to drive about in my Ford Fiesta with "Resurrection Shuffle" blasting away on many a night).

However whilst I was playing his old stuff repeatedly, his new stuff seemed a bit anaemic in comparison. Tunnel of Love I bought but found it a bit too slick and overproduced. When the albums Lucky Town and Human Touch came out I only bought a few of the singles but took the chance to see him live at the legendary atmosphere dampener that is the SECC in Glasgow in 1993. After spending £21 for the ticket I then won 2 tickets in the Daily Record - it never happens when you really need one. He had recently split from the E Street band, didn't seem to engage with the crowd. It was a disappointing night and I lost interest in what he was up to after that.

 



After that I bought some of the compilations of demo versions and studio tracks that never made it to his earlier albums, things like the 4CD box set "Tracks" and the later double CD "The Promise". This was stuff that I liked and had a connection with and also the "The Ghost of Tom Joad" album seemed to hint that there was life in the old dog yet. Although I didn't buy it at the time, "The Rising" won plaudits for his songwriting managing to connect with a lot of Americans and New Yorkers traumatised by the World Trade Centre attacks. It was also his first studio album with the E Street Band for 18 years. Once he brought out the "Seeger Sessions" albums I bought back into Bruce Springsteen, playing music I knew from my parents Weavers albums and songs I was sung as a child, but delivered with a grin and a stomping energy that seemed to have been lost for a while. Wrecking Ball in 2012 delivered one of his finest albums ever. It is bizarre that some early American reviews described tracks such as "We Take Care Of Our Own" as jingositic. Did they not hear the anger, mocking the response to Hurricane Katrina? It had echoes of Reagan using Born In The USA, missing the point of the song completely because it had a stars and stripes on the cover of the album.

So when he returned to Britain I headed to what I thought would be my nearest gig, Sunderland, 12 months ago. In incessant drizzle he delivered a 3 hour long, high energy performance. I was in the standing area, though not in the expensive, wristbanded pit, and was surprised that so few people around me knew anything more than the big hits. A few were bamboozled by the Clarence Clemons tribute, unaware who the "Big Man" was never mind that he'd recently died. I wrote about it at the time, so I won't go over it again. Here is the setlist that night (I think).

1. Badlands
2. We Take Care of Our Own
3. Wrecking Ball
4. Death to My Hometown
5. My City of Ruins
6. Spirit in the Night
7. Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?
8. Jack of All Trades
9. Youngstown
10. Murder Incorporated
11. Johnny 99
12. Working on the Highway
13. Shackled and Drawn
14. Waitin' on a Sunny Day
15. The Promised Land
16. Point Blank
17. The River
18. The Rising
19. Out in the Street
20. Land of Hope and Dreams

Encore:

21. We Are Alive
22. Thunder Road
23. Born to Run
24. Hungry Heart
25. Seven Nights to Rock (Moon Mullican cover)
26. Glory Days
27. Dancing in the Dark
28. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

45,000 People "waiting on a sunny day" in Hampden Stadium, Glasgow

 

So a year later we fought our way through the traffic to reach Hampden. As usual he was on stage by 7.30pm with no support act. Hampden was more crowded than The Stadium of Light concert had been, and from the off the crowd were 100 times more lively and engaged. An unexpected sunny Glasgow evening probably helped. Here is the set list from last night (again, I think).

 

We Take Care of Our Own
1. The Ties That Bind
2. Jole Blon (Harry Choates cover)
3. It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City
4. Radio Nowhere
5. No Surrender
6. Wrecking Ball
7. Death to My Hometown
8. My City of Ruins
9. Spirit in the Night
10. The E Street Shuffle
11. I'm on Fire
12. Tougher Than the Rest
13. Atlantic City
14. Murder Incorporated
15. Johnny 99
16. Open All Night
17. Darlington County
18. Shackled and Drawn
19. Waitin' on a Sunny Day
20. The Rising
21. Badlands
22. Land of Hope and Dreams

Encore:

24. Born to Run
25. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
26. Dancing in the Dark
27. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
28. Twist and Shout (The Top Notes/ Beatles cover)
29. Shout (The Isley Brothers/Lulu cover)
30. Thunder Road (solo acoustic)

From looking at no more than the set list you can see that he is putting on a different show each night. In Glasgow he spent more time taking requests from the boards people offered up, seemed to be more relaxed and playing what he fancied, what he thought the atmosphere called for. The crowd in Glasgow was warmer, more in tune with what he was doing on stage, clocking songs from the first drum beat or guitar chord. A crowd that is more clued up about his back catalogue seems to get offered up the more obscure early album tracks that I like so much. The Wrecking Ball tracks still stand up with the rest as great songs, great live songs. The extra encore, playing a solo version with the acoustic guitar of Thunder Road, felt like after over 3 hours 45 minutes he still couldn't drag himself away from something he enjoyed doing. For all the free and easy plucking of random songs, when he threw one at the band and they got the intro a bit off, he was quick to stop them and get them to do it right. Later when a stray sax toot trod on a false ending of a song, the tooter was noted by the Boss. He is their Boss, he clearly runs a tight ship and looks for the musicians to get it right every night. Despite sitting at the other side of a stadium from the band last night, it felt much more intimate and connected than when I was standing at the foot of the stage 20 years ago in the SECC. It was a barnstorming performance. He is a fantastic showman and at the moment nobody else does it like this.



Music of 2012 so far...

Sadly, at the moment I haven't got any imminent gigs to look forward to in Glasgow. I suppose I might drag myself along the M8 to that wee festival thing they do in Edinburgh if I get the chance, but the next concert that I've got tickets for is Damon Albarn's Africa Express on at The Arches in September, then Animal Collective in November. I've decided to pass on "Jesus Christ Superstar" featuring Chris Moyles at the SECC. So I've been looking back through some music that I've bought this year to pick out some of my favourite things. This is probably going to be a bit random and basically whatever has not yet been put onto the shelf as I've kept it playing since bought.

Tattie Toes - Turnip Famine (Pickled Egg Records)

I'll start by cheating and picking an album which was released in 2011, but I didn't come across them until I saw them supporting RM Hubbert in Stereo at the launch of his own very fine album, Thirteen Lost & Found. Tattie Toes are a four piece Glasgow based band lead by Basque singer Nerea Bello, with a Welsh violinist, a part-time puppeteer as drummer and a Yorkshire-man playing bass, at times with anything he can lay his hands on. They are fantastically boisterous, clever and energetic live and that comes over in the album too.

Leonard Cohen - Old Ideas (Columbia)

Okay, bang up to date now with a 77 year old Canadian. This album only exists because Leonard Cohen's former assistant stole enough money from his account to force him back on the road and the grumbling, stripped back tunes are poetic, humourous stories that reward repeated listening to. My favourite "late night with a glass of malt whisky in my hand" album at the moment.

Django Django - Django Django (Because Music)

Django Django are building a reputation for excellent live performances and when I enjoyed them when I saw them at Stag and Dagger earlier this year. They are a four piece who met at Edinburgh Art School and the echoes of The Beta Band are all over this album, not surprising really as the drummer is the wee brother of The Beta Band's John MacLean. However where the Beta Band produced meandering psychadelic pieces, The Djangos have it stripped down to 3 minutes of dancey, rhythmic pop. They're touring again in October and well worth seeing.

Grimes, Visions (4AD)

The second person on this list from the musical hotbed that is Montreal. Claire Boucher is a solo performer under the monicker Grimes who twiddles knobs, plays synths and sings woozily to make cheery, dancey pop. Love the album and have played it endlessly despite finding her a little trying when seen live earlier this year.

Sun Ra, The Complete Disco 3000 Concert (Art Yard)

Read full review of Disco 3000 (2012 Edition) - SUN RA on Boomkat.com ©

It's a new issue of the concert from which the 1978 Disco 300 album came, played in Milan with 4 other musicians, not his full Arkestra. It is jazz/ electronica/improvisation/ disco, etc. Sun Ra either died in 1993 or returned to Saturn, as he would have it, but this is seminal, orignal, unique and a fantastic and bonkers piece of music.

Lata, Starlings (Exotic Pylon Records) - excerpt

This isn't actually out in a physical format until the end of the month but I downloaded it a while ago. Lata is Jacob Burns, one of those people making electronic music in their bedrooms. This is a 44 minute track which is described as "channelling the sentimentality of old Bollywood singers into the resonances of South London by train". I get the rhythmic, echoey thrum of a train that comes and goes through it, though I missed the Bollywood. Builds to a nice bit of drone in the middle before fading away. I find it soothing, everyone else at home moans when it's on. Pah!

Bruce Springsteen, Wrecking Ball (Columbia Records)

The Boss returns to form with one of his best albums in a while, in no small part due to seemingly being in a happy place stomping around the world with the E-Street Band behind him again. Whether bemoaning bankers' actions, the immigrants' struggles or ironically noting how the common man is dealt with on "We Take Care Of Our Own" it is an album of pleasing, tub-thumping, anthemic yells and growls. Great to see him live in Sunderland earlier this year, hamming it up like a good-un.

Two Wings - Love Springs (Tin Angel)

The vocals here of Finnish multi-instrumentalist, Hanna Tuulikki, can be an acquired taste, but I saw her singing a track on RM Hubbert's 13 Lost & Found and went seeking out her other stuff afterwards. She wrote this album with Ben Reynolds of Trembling Bells and Alasdair Roberts collaborator, and they have now formed this five-piece Glasgow-based band. The range of Hanna's voice is matched by the range of musical influences - soulful, folksy, gospel, psychadelic, jazzy. An album that benefits from repeated listenings, would like to see them live.

Hildur Gudnadottir - Leyou Ljosinu (Allow the Light), (Touch Records)

Read full review of Leyfdu ljosinu - HILDUR Gudnadottir on Boomkat.com ©

Iceland produces its own wee musical bubble. I was blown away the first time I that saw someone playing alone with a laptop looping his sounds. Icelandic musician Mugison was that chap. Last week I was a bit bored with tUnE-yArDs efforts at it. It can help a solo musician make rounded music, but I think when there is a whole band behind you it becomes a shackle at times. Remember Remember I saw in Stereo many moons ago as a one man and a laptop act and he has moved forward with that and become a band with my favourite album of last year...Hildur plays this 40 minute piece live with some looping with only her voice and cello, It slowly,flows and builds then fades just when you want it to keep rising and is a lovely way to pass the time. Less is more sometimes.



Well that's my random musings on some stuff I've bought this year. Please let me know if you think I've missed anything.

Bruce Springsteen, Stadium of Light , Sunderland. June 2012

I've had a long held affinity for the music of Bruce Springsteen and respect for the man himself. Although it's easy to write it off as part of his image, he still thinks about and writes about 'the man on the street'. His latest album, Wrecking Ball, is his best for a couple of decades in most people's opinion, filled with songs about immigrant workers, 'robber barons', bankers and the title track itself is a poetic paean to the hopes, dreams and memories that people associate with sport, in this case the demolition of the Giants Stadium in New Jersey where "all our little victories and glories, have turned into parking lots". There are some people who spend a lot of their time following Brucie live, and there were plenty of middle aged men in Sunderland's Stadium of Light last night proudly wearing their campaign t-shirts to prove their loyalty. There was also a lot of young people there too, and with fashion having come full circle, many of them looked unintentionally the double of Courtney Cox in the Dancing in the Dark video from 1984.

I came to Bruce Springsteen via my mum's Born in the USA album, then worked backwards collecting everything else he had done, preferring the stripped back, small town tales of thwarted dreams. My vinyl collection, including my Pink Cadillac picture disc, is gathering dust in the garage.

The first time that I saw Springsteen live was in 1993, on the Human Touch/ Lucky Town tour. Despite expecting a mega-performance I was really disappointed. He had split from the E-Street band and the backing band seemed like disparate session musicians, he seemed to be going through the motions and even stopped halfway through to do a song live for Top Of The Pops, making me in the audience feel like an extra in a promotional event. After that I drifted away from Brucie and stopped buying everything he produced. He seemed to 'find his muse' again with the 'Ghost of Tom Joad' and the 'Seeger Sessions' albums. Now with the Wrecking Ball album and the E-Street Band back together his music seems more heartfelt again, and his energy and enthusiasm for playing it shines through.

His UK dates unfortunately didn't include any Scottish venues, so on a Thursday morning we trekked down to Sunderland to see them play. All week the forecasters predicted torrential rain and on the road down it duly arrived, making us cancel plans to have a wee wander on Hadrian's Wall on the way there. We sat in The Town Wall pub in Newcastle watching the water cascade down the streets and onto the heads of a few miserable looking Japanese tourists. The middle aged men with stars and stripes bandannas on were already milling about the station as we headed off to Sunderland. Bizarrely I ended up standing alongside David Milliband at the Metro station platform, who is the MP for South Shields and seemed less awkward in the flesh than he does on TV, just a big drip really.

The River. Fog on the Wear

Sunderland itself looks like its best days are behind it, a visit to the local museum catalogued all the local industries which don't exist anymore, including one display titled "Who were the miners?". I hadn't realised they were extinct! England feels very much like a foreign country just now. We were in a Sunderland pub but couldn't bring ourselves to eat as we would get a St George's flag with our table number on it. I think if they actually DO win Euro 2012 England as a nation may spontaneously combust with excitement (if the rain lets up).

By the time we walked over the Wear the rain had changed to drizzle and fog, and it never got beyond that so we avoided the promised downpour. Anyway I can tick The Stadium of Light now off my list of football grounds to visit. I like that, as next time I see them on TV I can understand the context within the town around the ground and the scale of it. Still on my 'to see' list of footie teams though.

"It's rainin' but there ain't a cloud in the sky. Must of been a tear from your eye"

With no messing about with support acts he came on stage at 7.10pm with 14 musicians in support including the surviving members of the E-Street band.

They started with Badlands, one of my old favourites, then straight into We Take Care of Our Own and Wrecking Ball, two of my current favourites. That was the pattern for the rest of the gig. Bang, bang, bang. One song after another from a phenomenal back catalogue and lots from the current album. Bruce holds all the attention stomping about the runways at front of stage, back and forward, extricating himself from the hands of those in the front rows. He is a true pro. When he was doing an earnest bit of balladeering in centre stage, to Spirit In The Night I think, and the crowd "whoop" as the cameraman whose pictures are up on the big screens, pulls away from a girl up on someone's shoulders just as she goes to whip off her t-shirt, "There's some things you can't compete with" he acknowledges as he lets the earnest mood pass. (Turns out she had a stars and stripes bikini top on she was dead keen to show off). Death to my Hometown, a funked up versions of Johnny 99 and finally hearing The River live were highlights for me, as were the 5 piece brass section, and the violin and accordion playing from Soozie Tyrell and Charles Giordano deserve special mention.

Bruce always treads a fine line, objecting to unfairness and injustice, but apolitically and avoiding preaching, which is a shame to be honest. The Steve Earle concerts I've been to end up like rallies with this speechifying and the crowd lap it up. Bruce I think fears that's not what they come for whereas I think he's wrong - that's part of his appeal. If they didn't come for it then I think it would do some people good to have some politics shoved down their throats, to avoid us all becoming spineless David Millibands. Some drunken Geordie lass kept grabbing my arm to say 'D'you know he's a Socialist?' Although I fear she may be overstating it a little, it certainly was a reason why she was here. I think the current economic woes needs people to support those affected, but also to kick out those who brought us here rather than let neo-liberalism take the high ground and tell us its their way or the highway.

They played for over 3 hours and it flew past, the band were tight and impressive, he lead from the front throughout, no long instrumentals to go off for a lie down like Gary Glitter did when I saw him (that was a good few years ago, before that thing he did). He played all the big numbers with gusto, a crowd-pleasing performance. I would have preferred seeing him in Glasgow. Not only would getting home have been easier than the 90 minute wait at the Metro station and the 3 hour drive next day, but the crowd always seem more engaged and knowledgeable in my parochial opinion. There was raucous crowd singing round about us, but mainly with Scottish accents. Also I'd love to see Brucie ease off on the subtlety and give the people the characters in his songs are crushed by, both barrels when he's talking, as when he does it gets attention. First and foremost though he's a helluva songwriter,  musician and performer. Special mention must go to Jake Clemons on saxophone. He has particularly big shoes to fill, but as the nephew of Clarence Clemons I am sure that he is aware of that more than anyone. The on screen and musical tributes to "the Big Man" were nice, but sadly completely over the heads of some of those I was standing near. So next time Brucie - play Glasgow.

The morning afterwards we headed home, successfully dodging the Olympic torch route. Newcastle I'm guessing is hosting some Olympic football as they, like Glasgow, have been blessed with a set of rings, which I spotted next morning when I was out for a wee run trying out some of the Great North Run route, which will be the reason for my next trip to Newcastle.

My next dose of Springsteen will be at the Edinburgh Festival, as now that I'm home I've just ordered a ticket for self-confessed Brucie groupie Sarfraz Manzoor's show 'The Boss Rules'.

Good luck to those in Manchester if the rain we drove through on the way home is on its way to you tonight. We arrived home to a Glasgow thunderstorm in which lightening hit a tree outside our son's school and we had water "racing in the streets" so maybe Glasgow doesn't make the perfect venue after all.