The Boss Is In Hartford.

When Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band perform in Hartford Wednesday night, it will be the band's fourth visit in the past 22 months and the third time they've opened a tour leg here since October 2007. What keeps them coming back? "I'm not sure what it is about Hartford, but we've had great shows there; the audiences have been great," says E Street guitarist Nils Lofgren. "We love playing for people that want to hear us, and obviously going back to a city this frequently means there's a good demand for it, which we're thrilled about." The last time the band was here, in April, Springsteen did a stump-the-band bit in the middle of the show, resulting in off-the-cuff performances of "Wild Thing" and "Rockin' All Over the World." It's indicative of a looser vibe in the group in recent years. "I've been in the band 25 years, and I have to say, the last two years, Bruce has taken us much more to an improv, seat-of-your-pants presentation, with the personal requirement of wanting the night to still build, to be a catharsis," Lofgren says. "That is a whole new challenge as a bandleader that I don't think he's ever taken on before." Although Lofgren used to want a set list before starting the show so he would know what was coming, that's no longer the case. "The set list became useless last tour," he says. "We did a lot of audibles, or had people out of the audience sending signs up that Bruce would acknowledge, and we got in the habit of playing songs we hadn't played in decades, or sometimes a Bruce song we might have never played as a group together.

when MJ died, everyone was going to balls to walls and calling him the greatest live performer and rightfully so. I just don't understand how people could say no one could even hold a candle to him. Springsteen is clearly one of the greatest, if not the greatest to play live. Sure, he doesn't dance or put on a light display but every note he sings is straight from the heart and he has consistently a clear and vivid connection the audience. And if you don't like Bruce then you don't like America, John Grady.