The first three of that quartet were merely great, but the rock and rolling Open All Night was, for me anyway, the highlight of the evening. It rocked, it rolled, it swung and it boogied set to bust without quite managing to actually do so. Bust, that is. It certainly delivered in spades on all other fronts. Great stuff.
After that, Darlington County and Shackled and Drawn might have been a let down, but they roared along just fine, maintaining a definite momentum into Waitin' on a Sunny Day where we got one of those moments that would probably look corny, fake and showbizzy in other hands, but worked beautifully here.
Earlier in proceedings during the soul interlude in My City of Ruins Bruce had been working the front of the stage when he'd paused midstream in a monologue about continuity to ask a kid who must have been right there in the front row how old he was. Eleven was the reply.
Bruce’s response? And we'll be doing this (or still doing this or words to that effect) when you bring your eleven year-old son to the show! Fine, fair enough, a bit of hyperbole perhaps, but it's a nice thought.
Now, midway through Sunny Day he hauls this kid up (maybe not the same kid, but if it wasn't there were two in very close front row proximity) and hands him the microphone. The kid's not going to be chased down by competing record companies any time soon, but he had a go, delivered a rather ordinary performance, and nobody minded because all the rest of us were probably just as bad. But it worked...
It was good to hear Racing in the Street, which is one of my favourite Bruce as everyday dude with a passion songs, and Badlands was another one I'd been hoping for that hadn't gained a guernsey on Thursday night. Tom Morello was a bit more subdued than he'd been on Thursday night, but really cut loose on The Ghost of Tom Joad, and Land of Hope and Dreams brought the main set to a stirring close. I would have liked to have been on the receiving end of one of those rock'n'holy roller raves Bruce has been known to deliver in LoHaD, but it didn't happen, so there you go.