The show's opener, "My Love Will Not Let You Down," set the tone for the night. Recorded in the early eighties but not released until recently, on the Springsteen boxed set Tracks, the song was far from an obvious choice with which to return to the stage with his E Street Band. But the straight-ahead romantic rock of "My Love" was recast here, as if Springsteen were saying to his audience, Believe in me, and I will not let you down.

Sure, it would be hard to let down an audience as devoted as this one; the night's set moved, sometimes uncomfortably, through profoundly unrelated (one could even say themeless) territory. There was the gritty optimism of "Promised Land"; the desolate, almost unbearable grimness of "Youngstown," a depiction of factory life from his Dylanesque album The Ghost of Tom Joad; the blue-collar, live-for-the-weekend escapism of "Out in the Street"; and the broken dreams of "The River" -- with scarcely few pop moments (excluding a rousing version of "Hungry Heart" and a house-lights-on, all-guns-blazing version of "Born to Run") to bring the audience together in an easy unity.

Much of the show's considerable power lay in Springsteen's ability to recontextualize songs about heartbreak and reconciliation into his relationship with the E Street Band, whom he laid off at the end of the eighties. In other words, this wasn't a show for Springsteen-obscurity hounds or set-list geeks. "If I Should Fall Behind," an often overlooked, beautifully written love song to wife Patti Scialfa from his 1992 solo album Lucky Town, gained new resonance as members of the E Street Band took a turn at the microphone reciting the lyric: "I'll wait for you / If I should fall behind / Wait for me."

Springsteen interrupted "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" to relate, preacher-style, that he had "traveled down the avenue of fear, the avenue of depression, the avenue of sexual pleasure . . . but I was always alone." And then he introduced each band member, the band's camaraderie clearly serving as a salve to Springsteen's loneliness. Springsteen and the E Street Band's sense of self-mockery kept this from devolving into a rock-and-roll version of a locker-room pat on the back: When Springsteen introduced Steven Van Zandt as a cast member of The Sopranos, the guitarist plucked out a twangy version of the theme from The Godfather.

It's this sort of humor that Springsteen's detractors -- who see him as an earnest poster boy for the proletariat -- always seem to miss. Even as he held magisterial power over the audience (he asked for quiet and got it) during the autobiographical "Freehold," Springsteen offered not an oversincere paean to his hometown but an acerbically funny look at small-town life.

Springsteen's consistent defiance of his audience's expectations and refusal to cater to their worst instincts is, in many ways, the very definition of punk rock. That's probably heresy to young music crits. Springsteen's belief in the transformative power of rock and roll and the ecstasy to which music can take us makes him truly oppositional in a world where irony and sarcasm pass for insight.

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