The short verdict on Springsteen at Madison Square Garden, NYC: after seeing him live about 30 times over 25 years and then not seeing him live for 10 years, my expectations were running high. And he lived up to them! A solid three hours.

I also realized during the show what’s missing from every rock concert in HK – an audience that knows how to act at a rock concert. Tonight, 20,000 people on their feet, dancing, singing along, a true party atmosphere that of course feeds back to the band on stage and gives them even more energy and inspiration.

Seeing as how I got to my seat early (and I was alone), I spent time bouncing back and forth between email, Facebook and Twitter. For my iPhone, I have both TweetDeck and Tweetie and found it more intuitive to set up a search on #Springsteen on Tweetie. I got the word that the start of the show was delayed because almost all tickets were “will call” and they were having tech problems at the booth. And someone posted a photo of the handwritten set list, which turned out to be 99% correct. I had a very good seat – alongside the stage, about 10 or 15 rows up, on the Charlie/Clarence side.

During this final leg of the tour, Springsteen’s been playing a different album each night as part of the set. Tonight was the first and possibly only time he chose to do his second album, The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle. That’s a difficult album to recreate live and the already huge E. Street Band (10 people including Bruce) was expanded to include 2 back-up singers, 5 horns, 8 strings and one percussion (which turned out to be Richard Blackwell, who had played on the original album). An extended version of Kitty’s Back, featuring jazzy solos from Roy, Charles (Giordano, who has taken over the second keyboard spot following Danny Federici’s untimely death), Nils, Steven, Soozie, Clarence and all 5 horns was possibly my favorite song of the night.

Oh, and he opened the show with Thunder Crack – a true concert rarity and one of my early faves. Clarence is still recovering from surgery on both knees earlier this year and sat for more than half the show. (And during the band introductions at the end, he held up his book. Which I’ve started reading and finding it better than I expected. But still.)

Another new concert staple – halfway through the show, during Raise Your Hand, people hold up large signs with requests. Springsteen walks around, collects the signs and after RYH, picks one, holds it up for the band to see, and they go into it. And then picks a second one, same drill.

Of course you don’t get the spontaneity of shows from 35 years ago. But you do get a lot of energy. I got the feeling that Springsteen still actually enjoys almost every moment of this. Hey, he’s 60 now and he’s been doing this for 40 years. But he still gives the impression that he cares about putting on a good show, about entertaining the audience, about trying to toss in a little bit of new stuff amidst all the old, and that he will go on doing this for as long as he’s physically able.

For three hours he’s non-stop action, practically a blur. He still lifts a girl out of the audience to dance with him during Dancing in the Dark – and I mean lifts her up, holds her in his arms and swings her around several times. By the time he finished the 7 songs of Wild, Innocent, it was 90 minutes into the show, just halfway through, and I was exhausted! I was thinking that after they took their bows for that run of songs there might be a 15 minute break but they kept going. And even after the 20 songs of the “main set” were finished, when the lights when dim and the audience was going nuts, they didn’t leave the stage, none of this faux encore bullshit.

For those who care, the song list:

Thunder Crack
Seeds
Prove It All Night
Hungry Heart
Working on a Dream
E Street Shuffle
Sandy
Kitty’s Back
Wild Billy’s Circus Story
Incident on 57th Street
Rosalita
New York City Serenade
Waiting on a Sunny Day
Raise Your Hand
request 1 – Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Stret
request 2 – Glory Days?
Human Touch
Lonesome Day
The Rising
Born to Run

“encores”
Wrecking Ball (with lyrics adapted for Madison Square Garden)
Bobby Jean
American Land
Dancing in the Dark
Higher and Higher (with Elvis Costello)

The only negative, if you can call it that – I only brought my Nikon D300 to the US and my gf took the Canon G-10 with her to Manila. I could have got the Canon in and would have gotten great shots from where I was sitting. But I only had my iPhone. Tried taking photos with the camera and several camera apps (Snapture, Best Camera, Photoshop Mobile). Tried a bit of video too. Will look at it later on but I doubt there’s anything of even relatively decent quality there. My one attempt at audio recording, using iTalk Light, is so distorted it’s painful to listen to. But I expect at least decent audience recordings to show up on the Springsteen usenet group within a couple of days.