Workingman's anthems of Boss cloaked in irony (SPRINGSTEEN BOMBS OUT IN CHICAGO)

Pete Seeger sings songs of peace, hope and the working class. Bruce Springsteen's idea to reinterpret the Seeger songbook with broad strokes of street jazz and gospel is a noble thought. Unfortunately, Springsteen's Tuesday night "Seeger Sessions" concert was outsourced to the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre in Tinley Park.

Springsteen and his raucous 17-piece band failed to even fill the pavilion. Roughly 5,500 fans showed up, and the $92 ticket price knocked out the working-class audience that Springsteen and Seeger have championed. This is First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre, as in cha-ching. A Corona beer was $10. "Seeger Session" programs were $20. I know many fans who would have taken a chance on the show had tickets been $50 or less. So who's left? People who may not share Seeger and Springsteen's political beliefs.

How do I know this? Springsteen's first encore was an evocative version of "Bring Them Home (If You Love Your Uncle Sam)," which Seeger wrote in 1966 as an anti-Vietnam War song. Back then, thousands of people sang with Seeger on the chorus: "Bring 'em home, bring 'em home, but I got a right to sing this song. ..."

But after Tuesday's rendition, there was a smattering of applause to a message that is as much about freedom of expression as it is against war. The starchy atmosphere was not lost on the Boss, who earlier in the concert remarked, "Tinley Park. I don't know where the hell that is -- some big black box outside of Chicago?"

So Springsteen tried his best, especially in the second portion of the 2-1/2-hour show. (In what is becoming a Springsteen tradition, he kicked off the concert almost an hour after the advertised 7:30 p.m. start.) He rearranged "Ramrod" into a Tex-Mex-meets-ska roadhouse number with tuba solos, and "You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)" continues to embrace the zydeco seasonings Springsteen deployed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

New Orleans is still much on Springsteen's mind. He wasn't as vocal about President Bush as he was in New Orleans, explaining that he doesn't "like to kick a man when he's down." But Springsteen's hard-rockin' reworking of Blind Alfred Reed's "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live" continues to be an emotional cornerstone of the set.

Springsteen added his own post-Katrina lyrics to the 1929 blues song that reflected on the Great Depression. On Tuesday, he sang of "bodies floatin' on Canal and the levees gone to hell" with raw conviction and empathy. Moments earlier, Springsteen shared vocals with Marc Anthony Thompson (Chocolate Genius) as they recast "Long Black Veil" through pure country gospel.

The stage was basked in shades of red, and I found the three chandeliers above the band very ironic. Here's a news flash: There are places in Chicago like the Auditorium Theatre and Orchestra Hall that have storied chandeliers, where Seeger and the Weavers actually performed, and are more accessible for older folk music fans than a shed among the little boxes that Seeger himself sang about in 1963's ode to suburbia "Little Boxes (Ticky Tacky)."

You make some good points. Bruce may have become more of a lefty loco over the years, but many of his songs are still great in my opinion to wit:

Backstreets
Incident of 57th Street
Independence Day
Jungleland
Drive all Night
The River
New York City Serenade
Night
No Surrender (accoustic version)
Rosalita
Sandy
She's The One
Thunder Road (especially the accoustic version)
Trapped (live)
Ties That Bind
Wild Bill's Circus Story
Candy's Room
Open all Night
Stolen Car
Reason To Believe
Johnny 99

etc, etc, etc.

All great tunes, all prior to 1985. I can separate the politics from the artist.

"5,500 tickets sold out of 30,000 seats, not very good "Bruuuce"."

A couple of years ago my wife surprised me with some tickets to a Blue Man Group concert in Columbus at Polaris (now called Germain Amphitheater) The Concert was awesome!

First off it was a tour based on making fun of Modern Day Rock Stars (some of the stuff they did to ridicule "Rock Stars" was funny enough to make me gasp for breath from laughing so hard and I was joined by a majority of the concert goers in mirthful appreciation of their antics)

Second, they not only are very good musicians banging on PVC pipes and what not (their rendition of the Who's Babah O'Reilly is sensational) they have a host of damn fine musicians who back them up. I would pay just to see the rhythm section of that back up group. And of course the guest singers they have are exceptional (The lead singer for guest group Venus Hum in her electrified Rainbow dress singing the old Disco hit I feel Love is something everyone should experience live!)

But thirdly and most important the whole show cost 25 bucks a ticket for excellent seats and included parking. The place was sold out and rocking hard.

Maybe Bruce ought to get him some blue face paint and a couple truckloads of PVC pipe and maybe then he can revitalize his career!

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