I know I am a bore on this subject but bet at least one person will enjoy this. I was reading a book before falling asleep and for some reason had an urge to see Bruce Springsteen perform "The Rising" in concert. Sure enough, it's on YouTube. (What isn't?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVgfoTNLEx4The second guitarist, Miami Steve Van Zandt, is familiar to Sopranos fans as Silvio. The redhead is Patti Scialfa, a.k.a. Mrs. Springsteen. The keyboard player, seen only at the end, is Danny Federici. He died about a year ago.
IMO this is one of the best songs Bruce has ever written. He was the first major artist to check in after 9/11. NYC is his back yard and he even had a line in a song about the World Trade Centers. One of the most inspiring things I have ever read was in the New York Times series about the victims of the attack. It went on for weeks and weeks, a picture and a paragraph or two about each one of them. One was a firefighter who died in the collapse. Bruce read that he was a big Springsteen fan and called up the widow. She said he talked to her for an hour and a half. The phone call helped her get over her grief, she said.
"The Rising" is almost but not quite my favorite Bruce song. That would be "Candy's Room."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oTFJhhWW8g
