Concert Review: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Pittsburgh, PA, August 15, 2024

I’ve never been electrocuted, but I imagine it probably feels a lot like it did tonight, when Bruce Springstreen and the E Street Band walked onstage in Pittsburgh and opened their set with “Seeds.” Instantaneously, my brain and my entire body were immediately shocked to attention. OH MY GOD THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE SONGS OH MY GOD HE IS OPENING WITH IT OH MY GOD HE IS PLAYING MOTHERFUCKING “SEEDS.” IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING

It was one of those moments every cell in your body is focused and vibrating and there is no other thought in my brain besides OH MY GOD, “SEEDS”

“Seeds” is one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs – hell, one of my favorite songs, period – because it is raucous and eloquent and angry and deeply, deeply political, and it rocks the fuck out: a gritty, dirty guitar riff opens the thing, Nils Lofgren at his expressive, textured best, with Bruce in full declaratory, full power vocal:

Well a great black river a man had found
So he put all his money in a hole in the ground
And sent a big steel arm driving down down down
Man now I live on the streets of Houston town

He sets up the rest of the story, two more verses, sketching it out, this story of this family who went down to Texas chasing the oil boom of the ‘80s, only to have their dreams shattered once they get there –  and then the horns kick in. It’s #66 on the list and at this moment, that seems far too low, but I am still literally vibrating over having seen this tonight. But more important than just the fact of “Seeds” showing up in a setlist (and it has been with more frequency, but still not enough) was that it was a phenomenal version. You can’t half-sell “Seeds,” it won’t work, he wouldn’t even try. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know the song (although Pittsburgh, god bless them, has always been a stronghold for E Street, so chances are high that most people did) because it is a statement, it is a declaration of intent, it is staking a claim.