Concert Review: Bruce Springsteen, 8/24/08, the Sprint Center

By C.J. JANOVY

Photo by Scott Spychalski. Click here for slide show.

It was the last night of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s Magic Tour and so, the Boss proclaimed, anything could happen. And it did. Taking requests via handmade signs from the pit, he spread out the fluorescent posterboards and notes scrawled on the backs of printed-out tickets on the floor and chose one he said was very important. “This has never been done before!” he announced, holding up the sign to the camera. “Let Max Sing,” it said. The Boss called for a mic stand for drummer Max Weinberg, who’d been pounding a steady beat while Springsteen collected requests (and sang “Hey!” along with Weinberg’s beats while doing so). After a brief tutorial from Springsteen, Weinberg, still drumming, in a rough, basically on key baritone, sang a serviceable chorus or two of what sounded like some ‘60s refrain, maybe a Beatles tune, about “Boys…” (can someone help us out here? What was he singing?).

Other anything-can-happen moments: Springsteen laying himself out on top of the fans in the front row, or crouching down to sing right into the faces of the adoring fans there, letting the outstretched hands play his guitar. The Sprint Center itself donating $10,000 to the Danny Federici Melanoma Fund. 16,000-plus middle-agers waiting an hour and a half for the show to start, grumbling about having to go to work in the morning, and forgiving all long before Springsteen thrust the microphone out into the crowd to do its first-verse duty on “Hungry Heart.”