"IS THERE ANYBODY ALIVE OUT THERE?"

Anyone who has attended a Bruce Springsteen concert has heard him yell out the semi-rhetorical question, “Is there anybody ALIVE out there?” Maybe during “Raise Your Hand,” maybe during “Light Of Day.” At the first of two (official) Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band concerts at New Jersey’s Continental Airlines Arena shows, he yelled it out before kicking the band into their opening number, “Radio Nowhere.” Bruce and the band played another great show, but the crowd wasn’t as energetic as you’d expect a Jersey crowd to be. I mean, it was the E Street Band's first New Jersey show since the Vote For Change tour. Bruce even commented that Philadelphia was louder.

As opposed to the rehearsal gig that I attended a week and a half before, where we had tickets in “the pit,” this time we were in the upper level, almost the last row, behind the stage. It actually didn’t matter much, because the band was so great: they played a somewhat similar set to the rehearsal (with “No Surrender” replacing “The Ties That Bind” and “Brilliant Disguise” replacing Patti’s “Town Without Heartbreak”) so it was kind of like watching a DVD from an alternate angle: in our case it was like an aerial view. Despite the crowd’s energy lag, it was a great show. I wish I was going to the Garden next week, but I’m looking forward to more E Street shows in the summer of 2008.