Boss and Band Still Boffo

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band wrapped up the second most lucrative North American tour ever last weekend. But that isn’t what was important about it. I have a commentary on MSNBC about it:

With the benediction, ‘Till we meet again,” the Boss and his band strode off the temporary stage at New York City’s Shea Stadium just before midnight Saturday, the final moment of a wondrous 14-month tour, leaving 50,000 celebrants drained, exalted and impervious to the unseasonable cold. The delirious throng now knew what the almost 3 million who had attended the tour’s other 119 shows in 82 cities around the world knew: there is still nothing like a Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concert.

IN A CYNICAL, fragmented, battered era, the 54-year-old Springsteen and his troupe of New Jersey boyhood friends and family took it as their righteous duty to squeeze three-plus hours of blood, sweat and rock ‘n’ roll energy out of themselves and their audience until there was nothing left to give.

At every show Bruce and the band proved their belief that it’s not too late: rock ‘n’ roll can still inspire, can still unite any number of strangers on the strength of rhythm, melody, the sting of an electric guitar, and the faith that, in the words of the Springsteen classic “Thunder Road,” even now there is “magic in the night.”….