The Johan Cruijff ArenA is a beautiful arena with a retractable roof and a capacity of 50,00 during concerts. It is the main stadium of the Dutch capital city of Amsterdam and the home stadium of football club AFC Ajax. It is located in the borough Amsterdam-Zuidooost. The area also has the AFAS Live arena (“the Black Box”) and the Ziggy Dome making it a big-entertainment area with lots of bars, restaurants and hotels.
Since both Oliver and I arrived to Amsterdam at the day of the show, we didn’t bother to do any roll calls this time. Instead we had quite a pleasant day dawdling in the surroundings of the arena while waiting for the doors to open.
We knew that when arriving so “late” we wouldn’t get our usual spot at the rails in the back of the pit. We ended up somewhere in the middle. The pit was quite crowded but there was still room for me to bounce around. Regrettably there were all tall (probably Dutch) people in front of me so my view was restricted most of the time. I had to rely a lot on the big screens for the visual.
The 29-song setlist was more or less the typical “second show setlist” with My Love Will Not Let You Down as an opener followed by Death to My Hometown, but with Ramrod as a surprise song before the outro I’ll See You In My Dreams.
During Ghost Bruce suddenly vanished after being on the lower podium and I heard a loud gasp from the audience. After what seemed like minutes I saw him on the screen being lifted at his armpits by one of the guards. Turns out that he had tripped on the stairs and fallen. Luckily he wasn’t hurt. Looking a little shook and embarrassed he got up, took the guitar and continued playing. At the end of the show he jokingly said: “if any of you caught that fall on picture, please delete it”. The clip of him falling has, of course, gone viral since then.
It was another good concert, over three hours long, with great energy. It was good to be back after two weeks hiatus. I met a friend that I hadn’t met for a long time (nine years) and we had a lovely Sunday in the picturesque city of Utrecht. All in all a very good weekend!
Next show (for me): 21 June in Düsseldorf.
SETLIST:
- My Love Will Not Let You Down
- Death To My Hometown
- No Surrender
- Ghosts
- Prove It All Night
- Darkness On The Edge Of Town
- Letter To You
- The Promised Land
- Out In The Street
- Kitty’s Back
- Nightshift
- Mary’s Place
- E Street Shuffle
- Last Man Standing
- Backstreets
- Because The Night
- She’s The One
- Wrecking Ball
- The Rising
- Badlands
- Thunder Road
- Born In The USA
- Born To Run
- Bobby Jean
- Glory Days
- Dancing In The Dark
- 10th Avenue Freeze Out
- Ramrod
- I’ll See You In My Dreams
Stray Bullet 
Leave a comment