On Saturday, August 7, 2010, Phish played the final show of a sold-out three-night stand at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, CA. The bar was set high with the previous two shows and expectations soared. The 2010 Greek run found the band reaching higher each night, basking in the glow of this historic venue and attentive crowd. The show opened with an old school pairing of AC/DC Bag > Foam followed by Gotta Jibboo – all played with the same patient, open approach displayed over the previous shows. Next came a soaring Reba as Trey’s new guitar emitted a flow of pretty leads and staccato runs amidst Page’s intricate Rhodes runs. 2010’s last Sleep Again and Army Of One provided a moment of reflection before a sizzling 46 Days > Tube. Mike held Tube’s last bass note, providing the bridge to a sing-a-long Character Zero to end set I.
After another sunset over the San Francisco Bay, the band kicked off set II with Wilson > Light. The Greek Light climbed to pinnacle heights, bending and floating to a sublime place before resolving into The Golden State’s first Twenty Years Later. Harry Hood followed, with ghost notes on a second snare drum, press rolls, and percussion wizardry from Fish while the music hung in the night air and reverberated across the Greek’s open bowl. Theme From The Bottom came next and then they shook the trees with 2001 > Suzy Greenberg and a spacious Slave To The Traffic Light. The first The Lizards encore in nearly fifteen years came next and First Tube put the finishing touch on an incredible three days of music at one of the most stunning spots there is.
Today we’ve added legendary performances from one of the greatest rock bands of all time to our catalog. The Who are now available in the nugs.net app and on our web player. Fans can enjoy three timeless shows that drop them into the crowd in 1970, 1980, and 2015. Here’s everything you need to know about these classic shows.
Filmed on June 26, 2015 as The Who celebrated their 50th anniversary, this stunning show with 65,000 fans in attendance at London’s famous Hyde Park is a triumphant return to their home city. This massive event formed a fitting culmination to The Who’s 50th anniversary celebrations and the set includes classics like “My Generation,” “Pinball Wizard,” “Baba O’Riley,” “Pictures Of Lily,” “I Can’t Explain,” “You Better You Bet,” “Who Are You,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Join Together,” “The Kids Are Alright,” “I Can See For Miles,” and many more! This grand scale concert, complete with huge screens surrounding the stage and an exceptional light show, holds true to Pete Townshend’s promise at the start of the set: “You’re a long way away…but we will reach you!”.
The Who (Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle, and Kenney Jones) delivered both classic tracks and rarely performed songs: “Pinball Wizard,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “My Generation,” “Substitute,” “Who Are You,” “I Can’t Explain,” “See Me Feel Me,” “Baba O’Riley,” and many more. The tour promoted the 1982 album It’s Hard and the set list was comprised of several tracks from that album, some of which the band would only play live on this tour. The Who’s 1982 North American tour was their last to feature Kenney Jones on drums and the band did not tour again until 1989. This concert film features the show from the second of their two nights at New York’s Shea Stadium and was filmed on October 13th 1982.
This new edition of Murray Lerner’s film of The Who’s legendary performance at the 1970 Isle Of Wight Festival features newly restored pictures and remixed sound to finally give this amazing concert the quality release it deserves. Accept no substitute and play it loud! The tracklist includes:
1) Heaven And Hell 2) I Can’t Explain 3) Young Man Blues 4) I Don’t Even Know Myself 5) Water 6) Medley: Shakin’ All Over / Spoonful / Twist And Shout 7) Summertime Blues 8) My Generation 9) Magic Bus
From “Tommy”: 10) Overture 11) It’s A Boy 12) Eyesight To The Blind (The Hawker) 13) Christmas 14) The Acid Queen 15) Pinball Wizard 16) Do You Think It’s Alright 17) Fiddle About 18) Go To The Mirror 19) Miracle Cure 20) I’m Free 21) We’re Not Gonna Take It 22) See Me Feel Me / Listening To You 23) Tommy Can You Hear Me?
Many nations can lay claim to being Bruce Springsteen’s second home or adopted country. Italy has a strong case, given the ancestral roots of Bruce’s mother Adele (maiden name Zerilli) and a history of special shows that took place there, particularly in Milano. England is in the conversation too, with an incredible run of concerts dating back to 1975, and the passion of Spanish fans is well documented on Live in Barcelona. Australia may be a latecomer, but there’s no denying the love affair between Bruce and the land down under that played out in two major tours in 2014 and 2017.
Yet it would be hard to deny Sweden the symbolic honor of first among equals. Sverige’s history with Springsteen also dates back to 1975, when it was one of three markets Springsteen played on a brief European sojourn on the Born to Run tour. But the special relationship really starts with a pair of shows inside the very building in which this Devils & Dust performance takes place. Then called Johanneshovs Isstadion, the venue was the site of two legendary nights on the 1981 European leg of the River tour, memorialized on the famous vinyl bootlegs Follow That Dream and Teardrops on the City.
Four years later, Gothenburg cemented its place in the narrative with two dates at Springsteen’s home away from home in Sweden, Ullevi Stadium. Legend has it the passionate response of fans in Ullevi actually caused structural damage to the building in ‘85, and Springsteen has played the stadium nine times since that human rumble took its toll. Throw in the 1988 radio broadcast from Stockholms Stadion, the Tom Joad tour at Cirkus, and many other celebrated gigs, and the case is quite compelling. The country’s passion for Springsteen never wanes. Case in point: He sold out three stadium shows in Gothenburg alone in 2016, where it would appear he is as popular now as he was in 1985.
You can hear the special bond with Bruce’s Swedish fans on Stockholm 2005. Jon Altschiller’s mix showcases the audience-artist dynamic and the interplay between the two that makes live performance so special and so missed in these times of social isolation.
One element that made the Devils & Dust tour so bewitching was ever-changing setlists. At nearly every stop, Bruce dusted off a few songs that had been sitting on the shelf awhile and added them to a common core. In Stockholm, he opens with the tour debut of “Downbound Train,” hearkening back to those Ullevi ’85 shows. Boldly, the second song of the night is one of the highlights of that common core, “Reason to Believe.” Springsteen completely reimagined the song on this tour, transforming “Reason to Believe” into a Delta blues stomper with his inventive use of the bullet microphone.
Bullet mics are designed for harmonicas, with intentionally limited frequency range (usually cutting anything above 5,000 khz) and distortion. For his new take on “Reason to Believe,” Bruce played harmonica and sang his vocals through the bullet mic, distorting his voice and crunching down the sound to an eerily narrow slice.
The result sounds like an otherworldly transmission from the Crossroads or a lost Bluebird 78 RPM record spinning in the past. Rearranging his own songs is something Springsteen has excelled at going all the way back to “E Street Shuffle,” but this radical and riveting “Reason to Believe” is one of his most memorable and a standout every night of the Devils & Dust tour.
https://youtu.be/o2GxcTjeu58
“Empty Sky” from The Rising had a second act on the tour as well, making close to two dozen appearances. The mournful tale rides Springsteen’s percussive acoustic guitar and focused vocals. Two guitar songs follow, the heartfelt parental reflection “Long Time Comin’,” which gains poignancy when Springsteen sings off-microphone, and the least-played track from Devils & Dust, “Black Cowboys,” which made 16 setlists in 2005.
Bruce moves to the keys for a rare outing of “The Promise,” in its first ever performance in Sweden. What a moment that must have been for diehard fans, five years before it became the title of the Darkness on the Edge of Town box set. We go down to “The River” on piano as well, with a striking prelude that starts with a single note, builds, swells and then settles solemnly before Bruce sings the evocative first lines.
Though it had been a standard feature on the Tunnel of Love Express tour, Bruce’s entertaining evolution tale, “Part Man, Part Monkey,” had its own second life on the Devils & Dust tour, a narrative befitting the candor Bruce was expressing about human behavior in story and song during the shows, sometimes in deeply contrasting ways. Several Link Wray guitar turns only add to the appeal.
“All I’m Thinking About” is an underrated charmer. Sung in a faltering falsetto, it’s a series of sweet, real-life snapshots (little boys carrying fishing poles, little girls picking huckleberries) set to a simple chorus of devotion (or obsession?). Two songs later in “Reno,” fishing poles and blueberries give way to a price list of front and back door sexual access. Damn.
Snuck in between (no pun intended) is “Across the Border,” played for the first time since the Joad tour, augmented with a rich, accordion-like harmonica. You’d never know Springsteen hadn’t played it in so long, his reading is faultless.
Over to the irresistible eclectic piano we go for “Point Blank,” sounding more haunting and knowing than ever, then a true gift, “Walk Like a Man,” making its second archive appearance this year. Springsteen starts it on electric piano (not unlike the arrangement of “Tunnel of Love” from the previously released Grand Rapids 2005 show) and it unfolds warmly. It’s interesting to note that when he last played the song in 1988, he had no children of his own. Singing it here, Bruce is son and father. The song’s gravitas rises for the final verse as Bruce switches to full piano and the arrangement grows richer and more confident. What a gift to have two incredible live versions in our hands now.
That theme of fatherhood is enhanced with the piano pairing of “Walk Like a Man” with “My Hometown” in a powerful, straight-ahead reading where every line rings true. With that, the first half of the show concludes and we move back to guitar for “The Rising” and an intense take of “Lucky Town,” with Bruce strumming his acoustic with physicality and conviction like “Darkness on the Edge of Town” at the 1990 Christic Institute performances.
The back nine of the show rides his conviction to excellent performances of a trio of story songs, “This Hard Land,” “The Hitter,” and “Matamoros Banks.” One might go so far as to call “The Hitter” the closest thing to an unpublished screenplay Springsteen has penned since “Highway Patrolman” and until Western Stars, where it could have slotted in nicely. As character studies go, it is one of his finest.
As he does so masterfully, Springsteen rounds the bend and lightens the mood with a storming, Seeger-ized “Ramrod,” Dylan-ized “Bobby Jean” and a true-blue “Blinded By the Light,” making its Scandinavian premiere 32 years after its release.
The show wraps with the soul-stirring Devils & Dust tour pairing of “The Promised Land” and a cover of Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream,” both offered in meditative, at times mantra-like arrangements. In “Dream Baby Dream,” the words “keep on dreaming” and “I just want to see you smile” sink into our subconscious, floating on dark-cloud organ notes that brighten as they turn towards heaven. Given the genuine dark clouds that so many of us are weathering, the spiritual power of the “Dream Baby Dream” mantra may provide genuine solace.
