Bruce charms the crowd at benefit concert

Anticipation was high as scalpers worked the neighborhod, and a long line of ticket seekers snaked down the block. Tickets of $100, $500, and $1,000 had sold out long ago - and the crowd that had them was feeling lucky, to say the least. "I've seen him in big places, but never a small theater like this. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity," said Randi Millman, who books T. T. the Bear's in Cambridge.

"We're extraordinarily grateful. What else can you say?" noted Tom Lowenstein of DoubleTake magazine, whose office abuts the theater. No financial figures were given, but the two shows may gross approximately $800,000 to $900,000.

DoubleTake's Coles introduced Springsteen as an "American hero," though he sputtered a bit and kept it short. Springsteen let him off the hook by joking that "Bob Coles will never rival Clarence (Springsteen's saxophonist in the E Street Band), but he did pretty good."

Then Springsteen did even better, playing a two-and-a-half hour show that was almost beyond transcendent, mixing songs from throughout his career, reworking many dramatically, and giving verbal commentary that illuminated many of them like never before. He was fully prepared: He had practiced at home for this, according to manager Jon Landau, then arrived and did a two-hour-plus soundcheck yesterday afternoon.

The show was much more people-friendly than the acoustic dates that Springsteen did at the Orpheum Theatre for the "Tom Joad" tour back in 1995. Those had been severe, rather joyless evenings, as Springsteen was locked into a mode of a socially conscious troubadour who was angry at how migrant labor is treated. Last night, he did some "Tom Joad" material, but not until two hours into the evening and not before he had done a batch of his better-known tunes from "Thunder Road" and "The River" (written after he'd been "listening to Hank Williams") to "Born in the U.S.A.," done on slide guitar with a cosmic, Led Zeppelin "Kashmir" feel.