1042 replies to this topic

[Red Day]

Bonedaddy, on Jun 28 2009, 09:02 PM, said:

Gauging from overhearing passing comments from on-site, i'd say 9/10 thought he was a load of crap.  Personally I was in the Avalon for Wonder Stuff, who were cracking and played what a crowd wanted to hear!

Wondersuff were great and a lot of my mates who went to Springsteen were not overly impressed .   Main comments was the set to about 90 mins to get started.

I wasn't there but that seemed to be the general opinion.

[strummer77]

Any idea where I could get a DVD of the performance from- bootleg obviously. I know BBC have some of it on website but its missing Coma Girl and one or two others and I loved Coma Girl etc.

For the record, I thought it was the best gig I've seen in the 3 years I've been to the festival.

[bombfrog]

I thought it was fairly dull to be honest.

Played absolutely loads of stuff that only his fans would know and absolutely no interaction with the crowd. He just got to the end of each song, shouted "1,2,3,4" and then launched straight into the next one.

[MJMilz14]

He was sublime as were all the pyramid headliners.

Fair play Mr Eavis. Stunning set of headliners.

[micawber]

To be fair to the critics, the reviews are all over the place. There were two in the Guardian - one a five star - and the other from a miserable hack (meaning a hack who was miserable!). Mojo and BBC loved it. NME said it was hard going. Real marmite stuff then.

[TrevK]

bombfrog, on Jun 29 2009, 06:53 PM, said:

I thought it was fairly dull to be honest.

Played absolutely loads of stuff that only his fans would know and absolutely no interaction with the crowd. He just got to the end of each song, shouted "1,2,3,4" and then launched straight into the next one.

No interaction with the crowd ??? Did you see the same set as everyone else ?? He spent a load of time with the people in the pit - why do you think they put the steps up and had the overturned flight cases by the barrier ?
And if he spent 2 or 3 minutes chatting about nothing between songs people would be moaning about that as well - how many songs exactly did he play ?

[spammachine]

8 from our group went to see him and on meeting them later their opinion was "he was sh**e". Although a huge fan from the camp next to us said he was amazing. So perhaps one for the Springsteen fans only?

At the time I was up at the park watching Bon Iver (who I thoroughly enjoyed )

Edited by spammachine, 29 June 2009 - 06:37 PM.

[chrisdebag]

TrevK, on Jun 29 2009, 07:25 PM, said:

No interaction with the crowd ??? Did you see the same set as everyone else ?? He spent a load of time with the people in the pit - why do you think they put the steps up and had the overturned flight cases by the barrier ?
And if he spent 2 or 3 minutes chatting about nothing between songs people would be moaning about that as well - how many songs exactly did he play ?

a couple of things i have noticed

the people moaning didnt actually see him but seemed to be watching the wonder stuff

they are the same people who were moaning about bruce headlining to begin with

bruce interacted more with the crowd then anyone

he drew one of the biggest crowds ever seen at glastonbury and th vast majority loved it

[Red Day]

chrisdebag, on Jun 29 2009, 07:37 PM, said:

a couple of things i have noticed

the people moaning didnt actually see him but seemed to be watching the wonder stuff

they are the same people who were moaning about bruce headlining to begin with

bruce interacted more with the crowd then anyone

he drew one of the biggest crowds ever seen at glastonbury and th vast majority loved it

How can someone who was watching the Wonderstuff moan about the Springsteen set ? Don't understand what you're getting at.

I didn't go but others who were with me didn't think he was that great.  They felt the set took about 90 mins to get going.

Hope it's okay with you for me to post about what others said.

[daveinafield]

coma girl was my best moment ever in 16 yrs of going to glasto, my 2 music icons merged (repeat from other thread)

[bombfrog]

TrevK, on Jun 29 2009, 07:25 PM, said:

No interaction with the crowd ??? Did you see the same set as everyone else ?? He spent a load of time with the people in the pit - why do you think they put the steps up and had the overturned flight cases by the barrier ?
And if he spent 2 or 3 minutes chatting about nothing between songs people would be moaning about that as well - how many songs exactly did he play ?

About 10 too many?

[zero000]

I touched his Guitar

Phenomenal performance

[bombfrog]

chrisdebag, on Jun 29 2009, 07:37 PM, said:

the people moaning didnt actually see him but seemed to be watching the wonder stuff

That makes no sense. I was right there watching him.

chrisdebag, on Jun 29 2009, 07:37 PM, said:

they are the same people who were moaning about bruce headlining to begin with

Rubbish, I was looking forward to him, I'd heard great things.

chrisdebag, on Jun 29 2009, 07:37 PM, said:

bruce interacted more with the crowd then anyone

I couldn't see him or the screens from the mixing desk because of all the flippin' flags but I was listening and he took no time to talk to the crowd at all.

chrisdebag, on Jun 29 2009, 07:37 PM, said:

he drew one of the biggest crowds ever seen at glastonbury and th vast majority loved it

Can you back that up in any way whatsoever? It was fairly busy but hardly a crush?

The main thing that I have noticed is that Bruce Springsteen fans are a little bit mental and seem to think that everybody else has to love him as much as they do.

I thought he was OK but no big deal.

[StevieF]

I thought he was great.  Didn't quite get the whole crowd together like Blur, which isn't really a huge surprise as they have more songs that the audience will already know.  But everyone around me seemed to be enjoying themselves.

[ml1dch]

micawber, on Jun 29 2009, 07:18 PM, said:

To be fair to the critics, the reviews are all over the place. There were two in the Guardian - one a five star - and the other from a miserable hack (meaning a hack who was miserable!). Mojo and BBC loved it. NME said it was hard going. Real marmite stuff then.

If the NME review is the example of one of the bad ones then no, it was more or less universal praise from the majority of the press (not that that is any absolute guarantee of reading popular opinion).

The headline of the review isn't "Hard Work" it is "Bruce Springsteen At Glastonbury Was Hard Work, But Brilliant"

Quote

...But, in truth, this was a proper fan’s set. It wasn’t pitched at the curious, or those looking for a drunken singalong, or the kind of people who actually call him ‘The Boss’ – a name Springsteen hates, and genuine fans never use.

It was, however, well thought-out. Opening with a cover of Joe Strummer’s Mescaleros-era track ‘Coma Girl’ – hardly a crowd-pleaser, but a song inspired by Glastonbury – suggests Springsteen had digested the Glastonbury information pack that Michael Eavis had sent him when trying to persuade him to sign up.

And for those of us who value the spooked and skeletal side of Springsteen, rather than the fist-pumping cartoon version, the set was crammed with pleasures, in particular a desolate double-whammy of ‘Johnny 99’, a song about a murderer who begs to be executed - and ‘The Ghost Of Tom Joad’, a song inspired by John Steinbeck’s Great Depression novel ‘The Grapes Of Wrath’.

A boozy communal rave-up this was not. But then, no-one should have expected that.

Springsteen’s greatest talent is for articulating male blankness – not the thrilling open highway of ‘Born To Run’, but rather the lonesome road to nowhere depicted on the ‘Nebraska’ sleeve. Indeed, his most anthemic album, ‘Born In The USA’, and ‘Nebraska’, his bleakest, were written at the same time. Strip away the production and they have a lot in common.

All these nuances were in evidence during Springsteen’s two-and-a-half hour set. It wasn’t a knees-up. It required concentration, and patience. But at the tail-end of a festival that offers non-stop ephemeral thrills and untrammelled hedonism, perhaps a drop of the hard stuff was what we all needed.

Hardly a scathing review from NME.com.

Edited by ml1dch, 29 June 2009 - 10:48 PM.

[future_shock]

I watched the whole set and I was very underwhelmed by it if I'm honest.  I was really looking forward to it as well.  I can imagine though if you were a hardcore fan it was pretty amazing.  

Not convinced by the biggest crowd statement, certainly not by the end of the set anyways.

[gregor1984]

I'm biased as a big Springsteen fan, but I thought it was utterly incredible. I was right down the front and it was bouncing.

I'm not entirely sure what the people who complained he didn't "play enough hits" wanted. Born in the USA? It's well known he doesn't play it live (certainly never in its original arrangement) and it's a pretty average song anyway.

I'm gonna ebay a ticket for the Glasgow gig. Told myself I wasn't going to cos it's quite far to go from Liverpool and it'll cost me a bit in travel and digs, but I can't help myself.

[benissright]

Went with a group of 21 year olds. The only headliner all 7 of us saw. 4 thought it was absolutely incredible, 3 thought it was tosh. Thats what you get with Springsteen.

The NME review lost me the moment it said genuine fans dont call him the boss....when the nickname was started by the rest of the band! Jesus...talk about your shoddy reporting. Bruce acepted the Boss as a nickname years ago.

Personally. I loved it. He did everything i thought he would. Springsteen (like many of the musicians at the festival) is an artist, not a puppet. He doesnt HAVE to do anything. Why should he have to dumb down his set because he is playing a festival? Why not allow all those people who normally wouldnt see a Springsteen show, see a Springsteen show? The shows that have made him the biggest live act in the world. He was also 10x better than he was at Emirates last year, though maybe thats because i saw a lot of other 21 year oldd celebrating the 'dad rock' that we supposedly hate...

Oh and i saw him at gaslight. Can anyone answer me why that is not more widely reported? Its like it didnt happen! A headliner guesting in the John Peel tent to play to a demographic that largely despises his music? And going down an absolute storm. Oh yeah, its because everyone at radio 1 was salivating over Dizzee Rascal who we've only seen like at every festival this year /rant

[TheBoyInTheBubble]

gregor1984, on Jun 29 2009, 11:51 PM, said:

I'm biased as a big Springsteen fan, but I thought it was utterly incredible. I was right down the front and it was bouncing.

I'm not entirely sure what the people who complained he didn't "play enough hits" wanted. Born in the USA? It's well known he doesn't play it live (certainly never in its original arrangement) and it's a pretty average song anyway.

I'm gonna ebay a ticket for the Glasgow gig. Told myself I wasn't going to cos it's quite far to go from Liverpool and it'll cost me a bit in travel and digs, but I can't help myself.

It's not necessarily well-known that he doesn't perform it or that he doesn't perform it in the original manner.  As I've stated in another Springsteen thread, whilst the set was good and he is talented, he has never picked up on how you need to structure a set at a festival because he's never played them before (and quite probably won't again after this summer as he'll have his legions of fans buying tickets for stadiums across the globe).  A top of the range, special, uber-popular song is needed near to the start of a festival set to just get everybody dancing/singing.  If you're attempting to be a singalong headliner, which is what Springsteen was trying, then you need to create a party atmosphere most of all.

[gregor1984]

TheBoyInTheBubble, on Jun 29 2009, 11:57 PM, said:

It's not necessarily well-known that he doesn't perform it or that he doesn't perform it in the original manner.  As I've stated in another Springsteen thread, whilst the set was good and he is talented, he has never picked up on how you need to structure a set at a festival because he's never played them before (and quite probably won't again after this summer as he'll have his legions of fans buying tickets for stadiums across the globe).  A top of the range, special, uber-popular song is needed near to the start of a festival set to just get everybody dancing/singing.  If you're attempting to be a singalong headliner, which is what Springsteen was trying, then you need to create a party atmosphere most of all.

Would it have really made a massive difference though? Playing one song that he didn't? I very much doubt that would have changed anyone's opinion from him being "crap" to "good".

Personally, I was pleased he didn't play Born... as I don't really rate it and I'd much rather he played something like The Ghost of Tom Joad or This Promised Land with as much verve and passion as he did, rather than going through the motions with a song he doesn't like playing.

I'd have loved to hear Atlantic City, Growin' Up, Jungleland and I'm On Fire, but I didn't get them. For a man with such an enormous back catalouge though, he can't play everything. What he did play was superb, IMO obviously.