Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band closed their three-night stand at Giants Stadium with a show for the ages, and one which by all inside accounts may be the final appearance of this legendary unit in its home state. The band performed for nearly three and a half hours, and closed the evening at 1 a.m. with a crowd favorite from the early years, “Rosalita”.

The death of original E-Street keyboardist Danny Federici, the age and fragile health of sax player Clarence Clemons, and the impending move of drummer Max Weinberg to LA to join Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show have all led to the unmistakable conclusion that this is the final tour for the E Street Band. Thursday night’s performance was the final New Jersey night on the tour.

When we saw Springsteen in the Fall of 2007 and this past Spring, the setlists were still quite heavy in Magic material. Last night, as he has all Summer, Bruce collected placards of song requests from the front seating area. While the sign “collection” did take some of the momentum from the performance, these requests yielded some rare nuggets, including “Blinded By The Light”, “Candy’s Room” and “Incident on 57th Street”, along with Bruce’s own selection of the third-ever performance of “Pretty Flamingo”.

Ultimately, there was little reference in the songs or the banter to historical relevance of the evening, other than Bruce’s apparent emotional response near the end of the “Jungleland” — and of course the sheer length of this concert.

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Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
2008-07-31
Giants Stadium
East Rutherford, NJ USA

Setlist:
[Total Time 3:14:42]
01 Summertime Blues
02 Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
03 Radio Nowhere
04 Prove It All Night
05 Two Hearts
06 The Promised Land
07 Spirit In The Night
08 Light Of Day
09 Brilliant Disguise
10 Pretty Flamingo
11 Blinded By The Light
12 Cadillac Ranch
13 Candy’s Room
14 Night
15 Because the Night
16 She’s the One
17 Livin’ in the Future
18 Mary’s Place
19 Incident on 57th Street
20 The Rising
21 Last to Die
22 Long Walk Home
23 Badlands
24 [encore break]
25 Jungleland
26 Born to Run
27 Bobby Jean
28 Dancing in the Dark
29 American Land
30 Jersey Girl
31 Rosalita

A recording of this concert may be found at the dimeadozen website [here].

We reported a couple of months ago that nyctaper recordings were used for some of the sections of the new Fiery Furnaces live album Remember. When we spoke to Matt Friedberger after we recorded the Furnaces at East River Park a couple of weeks ago, he confirmed that nyctaper recording were on the record in at least 3 spots, and also that we were thanked in the liner notes. Thrill Jockey Records confirms that we are on the liner notes by name.

The 2-CD / 3-LP release is due in stores on August 19. All merch copies were sold out before the Furnaces arrived back in NYC, but we expect our copy in the mail any day. In the mean time, Thrill Jockey has released a sample MP3 from the release. The sample track sounds like a multitrack soundboard recording.

Download:
Fiery Furnaces – Wicker Whatnots (Remember CD) MP3

[photo credit]

Fresh off the outstanding performance of his classic Can You Fly at Maxwell’s, Freedy Johnston announced on his website today that he will appear on following dates over the next two months at The Living Room (154 Ludlow Street) in Manhattan:

August 12th- The Living Room – New York, NY
August 19th- The Living Room – New York, NY
August 26th- The Living Room – New York, NY
September 3rd- The Living Room – New York, NY
September 10th- The Living Room – New York, NY
September 17th- The Living Room – New York, NY
September 24th- The Living Room – New York, NY

As The Living Room has its own in-house recording system, and an exclusive contract with XM Satellite Radio, its unclear whether nyctaper will be permitted by the venue to capture any of these performances. We will post any updates.

Carla Bozulich‘s Evangelista have announced a bunch of Summer US dates on their tour page, including an August 28 show at Bowery Ballroom opening for Xiu Xiu. As our previously scheduled August 28 recording date has been canceled, we expect to capture this set.

The more interesting part of Carla’s Summer tour announcement is the “Experience Experiment”, contained at the bottom of the tour page:

For the cost of us traveling plus $100 for each bandmember, Carla Bozulich’s Evangelista will play for at least an hour at your birthday party, graduation,funeral, going away party, existential malaise, excorcism, body aches, muscle soreness, clean/sober birthday or anniversary celebration, decapitation, wedding, art opening and closings, dance party, magazine, store or yaught launchings, cult-removal, viking funerals, removal of orthodontic contraptions and/or root canal, chili cook-off, catcentrics, batmitzvah, pet lizard funeral, et cetera.

And to make it more enticing:

included in this fee we will also:
1. write a song expecially for you and your friends.
2. arrange and perform any one cover song of your choosing, or any request from back catalog
3.give you one mix-tape made just for you from EACH BANDMEMBER.
[etc]

As we informed our readers last week, The Feelies will perform again in NYC this Fall. Today it was announced that The Feelies will play Music Hall of Williamsburg on September 20, and Bowery Ballroom on September 21. Tickets for both of these concerts go on sale on Friday August 1.

Our recording of the Feelies reunion at Maxwell’s and our correspondent recording at Battery Park have been two of the more popular downloads in recent months at nyctaper, and the download requests include two from members of the band! We hope to again capture this legendary band’s return to performance in September.