remnants: Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band,The Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA, October 20, 2009

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A small blast from the past in honor of the Philly dates this week. I literally wrote this in the car sitting in a traffic jam on I-95. It was not my usual route home, I usually favor 295, but I desperately wanted coffee and donuts from that Dunks that anyone who does this drive knows about and so took 95 and drove straight into late-night construction, so usual caveats apply. That is to say, I have lightly edited for clarity, but if you weren't glued to setlists at the end of the 2009 tour some of this may read like it's in code.

Let us begin at the end.

Everyone who was at Philly #4 is testifying like nobody’s business. Everyone who wasn’t at Philly #4 wants to shoot themselves. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle. Here’s the thing: the problem with Philly #4 was that there were these tremendous gigantic enormous EVENTS... and then there was the rest of the show. Which wasn’t bad, but it’s not like you missed 3 hours and 17 minutes of pure perfection, the best show ever, give up, don’t ever bother going to another one.

Yes, “Higher & Higher” was beyond unbelievable. To paraphrase my learned colleague Flynn McLean, it was the finest E Street Band moment in the last decade. Flynn is not prone to exaggeration, and he is also not wrong. It absolutely was the finest E Street Band moment in the last decade. It was a song that hasn’t been played since 1977. It was a JACKIE WILSON song, and Bruce loves to play at being Jackie Wilson, and ups his game when he does (see: 2003 Christmas shows). People have always brought “Higher & Higher” signs, but there was no chance that they were going to do it without a horn section. If you look at the context of when the song was last played, it was at the last show of a tour and Bruce wanted to thank the people of Boston – the #2 Springsteen city in the US – for their support.

Bruce took the sign. He deliberately sought out and took the sign. And then we had an E Street Band firing on all cylinders, because of 8 months on the road and rehearsals and extra soundcheck and we had the closest that we’ve had to a horn section in years, and it was the last night at the Spectrum. Bruce could have officially closed out the joint, because he was the first choice, the obvious choice to do so – that flag in the back corner ain’t bullshit – but he had already committed to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame shows. So this was it. This was goodbye to the place that was one of the epicenters of the live Springsteen show for so many years.

He tries to find the riff – he’s close but he’s doesn’t have the key right. Charlie has it, plays the refrain. He plays it once – just once – and Bruce has it dialed in. Calls to the horns – and of course, Clarence goes first, even though I bet any amount of money that Curt Ramm knew it immediately – and then the Professor for good measure. (I am sure some of this was to give Kevin time to get the lyrics on the prompter.) And then – BOOM. Holy mother of god, they are doing it. They are playing it. They are going to play “Higher and Higher.” At the Spectrum. The thing about doing this in Philly is that you’re going to get enough of a OH MY FUCKING GOD reaction from the crowd to give the band energy to keep going. It’s like trying to play “Thundercrack” anywhere outside of the East Coast – maybe Detroit, once upon a time Cleveland (but not now), Boston, maybe Chicago – but anywhere else it’s going to drop dead in the water because no one in the crowd knows what to do.