Bruce played the following songs at the Amnesty International concert last night in Paris: The Ghost of Tom Joad Born in the USA Working on the Highway No Surrender (courtesy Julien Denoulet) The doors of Bercy opened at 5:30 p.m. We arrived in the arena to see the end of the soundcheck. As soon as I'd found my seat, guess who's coming on stage? Yep, Bruce himself! He said hello to everybody, picked up his guitar and since there was already a lot of people in the building, he gave us a real performance of 'Born in the USA'. It couldn't start any better! Now the show: After a short speech from one of the sponsors, Bruce, Tracy Chapman, Peter Gabriel and Youssou N'Dour (the four 'survivors' from the 88 Amnesty tour) came in to sing 'Get Up, Stand Up'. After that, Gabriel remained onstage to introduce Bruce. Unfortunately, his performance was perturbed by a lot of technical incidents. Here's the setlist: - The Ghost of Tom Joad: the sound was a little bit muddy but it wasn't really annoying. It was much faster than during the accoustic tour. Great version, I really think it could work with a band. - Born in the USA: Halfway through the song, the sound broke down. Bruce tried to change guitars but it still wasn't working. So he had to leave the stage for a minute while the technicians were repairing. When he came back, you could see he was pretty irritated. He started the song again and he gave everything that he had. The song was much better than on Wednesday night with a lot of guitar point. The highlight of his set for me. - Working on the Highway: Bruce picked up an other guitar, started strumming... to realize his guitar was totally out of tune!! So he had to fix that up and began the song. I guess from that point of the show, since there wasn't a whole lot of Bruce fanatics, he prefered to stick with well-known material. - No Surrender: with harmonica solos. Pretty nice, and more related to the event than 'Working...'. No technical problems on this one. Strangely, Bruce was reading the words on a sheet. When he finished the song, he said goodbye and left the stage. Bruce was followed by...the Dalai Lama (no he didn't play anything}. He gave a short speech, in which he said that as a monk, he didn't understand that dance very well, but he was happy to see all these smiles on our faces. Bruce came back later on to introduce - in French, risky job but he did it well - Peter Gabriel. Best performances last night were Chapman, Gabriel & N'Dour and Radiohead. Overall it was a great night. I don't know if opening the show was an advantage. It was very early (6 p.m) and 40% of the arena was empty, all the lights were on (I don't know if it was intended but it got darker with each performer, maybe the television wanted to give the impression that it was an outdoor show), add this to the technical problems and you have mixed feelings about Bruce's appearance (Even if his playing and singing was great, as usual). But it was still nice to see him onstage.

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