Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band in Brisvegas

Taken from backstreets.com

God how I wish I were at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre. I think it's fair to say Brisbane got the best setlist of the 2014 Australian/New Zealand tour. It was the last show in Australia, and Bruce was determined to pull out all the stops and put on the best show this continent has ever seen. If you thought covering AC/DC or INXS (and most recently, Lorde) was 'shocking' enough, Bruce decided to open the show with the one cover that no one ever expected in a million years. The band brought a very unique spin to The Bee Gees' Stayin' Alive; it was more Stax than Disco, and it sounds fantastic on the official bootleg. Things began to get real interesting from then on; the show's structure was unlike anything that had come before; it was obscurity after obscurity, audible after audible, sign request after sign request. Four songs in a row from the first album, including another awesome Growin' Up story. Save My Love (which I was lucky to hear in Manchester '12) -- "too fucking happy" to be on the Darkness record,as Bruce describes it. And three rarities from The River, including the ULTRA-RARE and one of Little Steven's all-time favorites, Fade Away, gorgeously performed in Brisbane, and blowing the one from NYC '09 (the famous River show) out of the water. One can't even begin to contemplate what it must have felt like for the diehard fan to hear this song live.

But of course, this was nothing compared to Bruce deciding to perform the entire The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle album, for the second time ever. And that alone is worth the price of the whole bootleg. Causal concertgoers must have been scratching their heads for the first 2 hrs 20 mins. A funky E Street Shuffle into Sandy into a 15min Kitty's Back into Wild Billy (with Garry Tallent on the tuba) into an EPIC Incident into Rosalita, and into the rarest of them all, NYC Serenade (with strings!).....you just can't fucking beat that!!! And that little transition from Rosie to Serenade was done just like on the album! After that it was hit after hit, crowd-pleaser after crowd-pleaser. I've never heard The Ghost Of Tom Joad performed this fast. Eddie Vedder even came back to sing on Highway To Hell; I suspect he might have planned his solo tour dates around Bruce's. According to official reports, the total duration was about five minutes shy of Melbourne Night 2 (still waiting in vain for the official download), making it the second longest show of the tour, and also one of the longest E Street shows ever. It has been two truly wonderful summers seeing Bruce and the band in Sydney and Melbourne, and meeting many fans along the way, and I can't wait to do it all over again.

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Stayin' Alive
It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City
Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street?
Growin' Up
Spirit In The Night
High Hopes
Just Like Fire Would
You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
Sherry Darling
Save My Love
Fade Away
The E Street Shuffle
Fourth Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
Kitty's Back
Wild Billy's Circus Story
Incident On 57th Street
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
New York City Serenade
Darlington County
Waitin' On A Sunny Day
The Rising
The Ghost Of Tom Joad
Badlands

Glory Days
Born To Run
Bobby Jean
Dancing In The Dark
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
Highway To Hell (with Eddie Vedder)
Thunder Road (solo acoustic)


P.S. 17 shows in South Africa, Australia & New Zealand. And over 120 DIFFERENT SONGS performed. Most bands don't even play that many different songs live throughout their entire careers. Just incredible.