This is a funky recording bootlegged from the October 31, 2012, Springsteen concert in Rochester, NY, during which The Boss sang My City of Ruins. The video jiggles, cuts off in the middle, and features a nearby woman fan warbling along with the Boss. But it’s the only recording that anyone’s been able to find of this central moment in the bittersweet concert in which Springsteen referenced the storm repeatedly, as he also did in the concert on November 1, at the Bryce Jordan Center at Penn State University, where song after song reportedly had laced through it echoes of the flooding and damage. When he launched into the chorus of his song, Atlantic City…
Well now, everything dies, baby, that’s a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City
….there was evidently widespread swiping of eyes in the audience.
Thus it seemed right to put up the bootleg, in all its messiness, with our heartfelt wishes for safety, recovery and healing for our friends on the east coast who have been so drastically affected by Sandy.
Here’s some of what Bruce said in Rochester:
We wish you a happy Halloween, but we are a rock ‘n’ roll band from the Jersey Shore, and tonight we carry a lot of sadness in our hearts. This was originally a song about my adopted hometown struggling to get on its feet — it struggled for 25 years, a quarter century, while we waited and watched for Asbury to come back. And we are very proud to say over the past decade, it has risen up and flourished in a way I wasn’t ever sure I’d see in my lifetime. And it will do so again…..
We’re a band that you can’t separate from the Jersey shore. We’re still basically a glorified bar band… at your service! So we’re gonna do this tonight from our hometown to your hometown. We’ll send this out to all the people working down there: the police officers, the firemen, and also to the Governor, who has done such a hard job this past week…..”
Springsteen will be among the headliners for a storm recovery fundraiser in the form of an NBC telethon to air Friday night (tonight), 8-9 pm.
(By the way, here’s a link to the full song as played in Barcelona during happier times.)