Great show at the Key Arena with Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen is one of those artists who is in the iconic category and one which everyone should see in concert at least once. I know that some folks follow him around from city to city and throughout the world, and after seeing him tonight for the first time, I can totally understand why. He puts on such an incredible show. I have to admit that I was never a real hard core Springsteen fan, but did like to hear his music on the radio and many of the songs he played tonight brought me back in time to when I first heard them, reminding me of good time….like all good music should do.

One of the thing that I appreciated about the show was that the stage was not elaborate and neither was the lighting, and there are no unreasonable costume changes…just a basic set-up designed to focus on the music and not the theatrics. This was actually quite refreshing from such a big show such as this.

The setlist was jam packed with material…of course he played the entire The River album, 5 sign request songs including tour premier, Adam Raised a Cain and an additional 10 songs bringing the total for the night up to 35 songs in all. Absolutely amazing!

He came on stages a little after 8:00pm and I don’t think he left the stage until after 12:30….although Toni and I had to leave during Rosalita (Come out Tonight) which was just the forth of his six encore songs. One of the coolest things at the show was his crowd surf from the small stage out on the floor back to the main stage….it was a slow surf, but he made it without getting dropped… that was pretty cool that he trusts his fans so much. It was also super cool that he took signs from people in the audience with song titles on them and then performed those songs… I understand this is common for a Springsteen show and makes each show unique I think.

As customary with concerts in Seattle, there has to be mention of the music culture and scene that is one of things Seattle is most known for, but Bruce took it one level higher and actually brought Eddy Vedder from Pearl Jam out during the first of the encore songs and they performed the song Bobby Jean. Eddy was’t the only local musician at the show, Kim Thayil (lead guitar from Soundgarden) was sitting two rows in front of me.

Great night of fun music.