Showtime! Concert #14-Edmonton, Alberta Canada Part 2
Tuesday, November 19, 2024 Entry #140
Knowing that the tour was ending, I started to really pay heightened attention to those iconic Springsteen live moments in Edmonton, not sure when I would experience them again.
For example, the moment that happens during each show when Springsteen holds his guitar upwards as if making an offering to the gods of rock. He handles this triumphant motion with a quiet reverence, and for me it never gets old.


I also love it when Springsteen and Little Steven Van Zandt, the two lifelong chums and bandmates, joyfully share a microphone and sing together in ragged harmony. It always makes me think about my own buddies from youth. There are people in our lives with whom we share a history and an easy relationship groove no matter how much time goes by in between contact. Springsteen and Van Zandt effortlessly portray that dynamic onstage.
Speaking of Little Steven, there was a time when their friendship experienced something of a rupture. In 1984, just before the Born In The U.S.A. tour that made Bruce Springsteen an international superstar, Van Zandt quit the E Street Band to pursue a solo career. Springsteen expressed his feelings about the situation in the emotional (and eminently relatable) friendship song “Bobby Jean.”
“Me and you, we’ve known each other, ever since we were 16. I wish I would have known, I wish I could have called you just to say goodbye...Now you hung with me when all the others turned away, turned up their nose. We liked the same music, we liked the same bands, we liked the same clothes…We told each other that we were the wildest, the wildest things we’d ever seen. Now I wished you would have told me, I wish I could have talked to you…Well, maybe you’ll be out there on that road somewhere, in some bus or train travelling along. In some motel room, there’ll be a radio playing and you’ll hear me sing tis song…Well, if you do, you’ll know I’m thinking of you, and all the miles in between. And I’m just calling one last time, not to change your mind. But just to say I miss you baby, good luck, goodbye.”
To replace Van Zandt, Springsteen brought another hot-shot guitarist to E Street, Nils Lofgren. Nils had played with Neil Young (still does) and had his own band called Grin. At the dawn of the 21st century, Little Steven rejoined the E Street Band, but Nils stayed on, giving the band a triple guitar threat (counting Springsteen himself). While Little Steven’s flamboyance is obviously compelling, Nils Lofgren should not be ignored.




I have written about the song “Land of Hope and Dreams” many times in this blog. It became one of my favorites from the first time I heard it as a new song in 1999. Much later, “Land of Hope and Dreams” became sacred writ to me when Springsteen played it solo on a snowy, empty Lincoln Memorial for President Joe Biden’s COVID-era inauguration, mere days after the attempted insurrection (See Entry #53). It was also the song that Springsteen played for saxophonist Clarence Clemons in the hospital before the friend he called the “Big Man” passed away. Springsteen has pulled the song out occasionally on this tour, and though I had heard it already a few times, I was so pleased he played “Land of Hope and Dreams” at this particular concert. To me, “Land of Hope and Dreams” is Springsteen’s best articulation yet about what he means all those times he has namechecked the term “promised land” in his songs (See Entry #83). It is a vision that is currently under attack, but tonight all of us saints, sinners, losers, winners, lost and broken-hearted souls, fools and kings, we got right on board.
One of Springsteen’s main messages is that though it is necessary to boldly face and respond to the many challenges in our lives and in society, we shouldn’t stop feeling good and having fun. In fact, the two go hand in hand. There isn’t a Bruce Springsteen concert I’ve attended in the past two years that didn’t include “Badlands” and its defiant chant, “It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive!” Of course, many of come to the awareness of that truth at Springsteen shows-as one review in Billboard put it, “A Springsteen concert is one of the places where we feel alive and at our most vibrant.”
As I teased in the last post, Springsteen did ultimately play a song requested on a fan-held sign, but it wasn’t mine. (See Entry #138). I knew it was too late in the night for Springsteen to play a relatively obscure song like “If I Was The Priest,” so I had already folded up my sign and put it in my pocket for a souvenir. From my experience with these shows, it really wasn’t the time for anything except the final encore. But, Springsteen surprised us. During “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out,” when Springsteen does a lap even deeper into the audience than the stage extension, he grabbed a sign from a fan and carried it with him back to the stage.
It read, “Devil With The Blue Dress For Edmonton.” In the photo above, the band looks bemused because normally, this was their time to exit the stage and leave Springsteen to close the show with a solo acoustic number. But, The Boss wanted one more, so they regrouped. Springsteen propped the sign up against the mic stand, and ripped into his iconic cover of Mitch Ryder’s “Devil With The Blue Dress.”
Springsteen still ended the concert with “I’ll See You In My Dreams,” pushing this penultimate show of his tour a few minutes past the three-hour mark. I will conclude this review in the next post with a video snippet from that last song, a few more pictures, the setlist, and some concluding reflections. Like I felt at the end of this concert, I just want to draw it out a bit more, linger with it all a little longer.
Day 9