Bruce Springsteen has just issued Anaheim – May 22nd, 2000 — the latest official bootleg in his ongoing monthly archive series. The show, which was culled his 1999/2000 reunion tour with the E Street Band, marks the sixth pick from the historic tour, with the previous shows being Philadelphia – September 25th, 1999; Chicago – September 30th, 1999; Los Angeles – October 23, 1999; New York City – June 27th, 2000; and New York City – July 1st, 2000.
Highlights include the then-recently released Tracks tunes “Take 'Em They Come” and “Rendezvous,” the solo-era “Roll Of The Dice” finally showcasing the power of the E Street Band, a full-band bluegrass version of “No Surrender,” the legendary “Glory Days” B-side, “Stand On It,” and a one-off cover of Van Morrison's Them classic, “Gloria.”
Bruce Springsteen looks back on the reunion tour after a decade apart from the band as being one of the most meaningful of his career: “The nicest thing about it was that we were able to reconstitute the band as an ongoing, sort of creative unit, y'know? And I think that it was a great time for all of us — that was a big, big, part of our own lives, y'know? And of our audience's lives — and we wanted to live up to that thing, and we wanted to continue to serve in the fashion that we served before.”
Patti Scialfa explained that the band needs to always be ready for whatever song Springsteen — or in many cases, the crowd — calls out: “You study up. If there's something that's a little more difficult or complicated, sometime we'll be in the hall before we go out and Bruce will say, 'Maybe we'll do this tonight' and everybody can run it over in their head. Or if it's really difficult we'll run it over in one of the dressing rooms.”
