Figuring that out is just another pre-concert task, along with all those other little matters that need attention, like spending three-quarters of an hour in the sound check sorting out Stayin’ Alive…
He was back in storyteller mode at the end, cutting back to the starter with something along the lines of staying alive isn’t that easy … how do we stay alive?’ How do you stay alive inside?
He’s building to something, and it’s fairly obvious that something is Spirit in the Night, and that was the way it turned out.
But even where you think things are getting a tad formulaic there’s room for something new. Spirit in the Night gets regular airings in concert, and where the venue configuration gives Springsteen a walkway between the pit and the rest of the floor he’ll more than likely crowd surf back to the stage as Jake Clemons wails out a carbon copy of Uncle Clarence’s sax lines.
So he does. When he’s safely back on stage, he noticed something unfamiliar in his back pocket as the percussive lead in to High Hopes starts up. It’s someone’s mobile. He’s landed a stuffed kangaroo as well, but this one’s got him intrigued. That's a first. … I didn’t feel a thing. And in true show biz connect with your audience fashion he can’t get the thing to work. He hasn’t sorted out the intricacies of his iPhone either, and he never reads instructions.
That revelation came out earlier, but it’s more than relevant here.
With someone else this bit might come across as forced or staged, but with Springsteen, as with Joe Camilleri when I saw him with the Falcons in Townsville back around ’78 there’s an overarching enthusiasm for the job at hand that’ll have most of the audience willing to suspend disbelief.
But we are talking show biz, and there’s a new album, which means you get High Hopes and Just Like Fire Would around this stage almost every night. This is where I’d like to see an actual setlist as taped to the floor before the show begins. Just to see how structured these things are, and what goes in the spaces, you understand.
Around this point, however, it’s fairly obvious that plans are likely to be going out the window. There’s a fair bit of grab the sign action, with four or five hauled in, though you can’t actually see what they are. That’s the way I remember it, anyway, typing away a fortnight after the event listening to the download.
But you know there are four or five. You’re just not sure what they’re calling for. Other shows he’ll wave one. and it shows up on the big screen. Jolie Blon, for example. Here, you can’t see the detail, but you know there’s a bit of set list shake up on the horizon.