Bruce Springsteen live at the RDS

No bluster, no bombast, no bullshit. Just three and a quarter hours of unrelenting rock and roll, drenched in decency, crackling with positivity. It was not so much a gig as a sustained explosion of communal joy.

The key moment came half way through, as he blazed through , ‘41 Shots’, hard anger in a warm breast, ‘Johnny 99’ a single for now, swindlers in suits take your house away, debts that no honest man can pay, ‘Hungry Heart’ food for the famished soul, ‘Lonesome Day’ segueing into a plea for mass action, ’The Rising’, ‘American Land’ a MacGowan hooley, all the way from an opening choral ‘Athenry’ to ‘Twist And Shout’ for final euphoria this was an eruption of authenticity, an outcrop of integrity, wonderful to be part of, swept up, borne aloft by the whoosh of it all, born again.

No bubbles of ersatz benignity here. No glassy-eyed invocation of a vaguely apprehended Power Above Us. Springsteen looks at us level and speaks direct.
Puts loads into it, and then more, every gig as draining as a stage in the Tour, hooked like he is bio-connected into the energy of the audience. Does a lot of that running with elbows pumping along the gangways, offering physical contact. Was there ever a man with haunches more stroked by comely youths and fit maidens?

Ní beidh a leithéid ann arís. Not until next year anyway.