We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this: Bruce’s 2006 Jazz Fest set is on YouTube, in its entirety, for us all to enjoy.

Now I wasn’t there. I was in high school and juuust coming on to the Boss’ stuff in 2006. But, it was a special show, and you don’t have to take my word for it.

There was one show in America that stood out as not only one of the finest of but one of the most meaningful of my work life: New Orleans. I’d been invited to play the first post-Katrina New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival as a headliner…

… I thought of the city’s unofficial theme song, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” I was compelled to seek out all the lyrics. I saw most of them had never been heard and that this was a much deeper piece of music than what had been popularly known over the years. I slowed the song down to a meditation on resilience, survival, and commitment to a dream that lives on through storm, wreckage, and ruin…

… We walked on to a nice round of applause … I immediately sensed the crowd was not going to be easy. They were seeing something even our fans who were there to support us hadn’t before… So we went to work…

… It turned into a beautiful evening. We were in the last hour before sundown and the weather was glorious. Gradually, things moved, loosened up…

… We closed exactly at sunset. I walked to the front of the stage, where to my left, over the field’s rim, the sun sat, a red ball on the horizon. I let its golden light wash over me like no spotlight could and I felt the band and the crowd fall into each other’s arms. We finished with our prayerful arrangement of “Saints”.

– from Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography, Born to Run