I went to see Mumford & Sons last night at the Forest Hills Stadium in Queens (thanks to a friend with hookups). It’s a cool venue that holds about 17,000 people but there isn’t really a bad seat in the house, and it was the first concert at the stadium in years. I was expecting a super hipster crowd, but it looked more like a Dave Matthews Band concert (which made me stop and reevaluate my life choices) and just about as white bread as they come. Lots of Bros around, talking through the songs they didn’t know (which was basically anything slow and not on the radio…Bros are the worst). The venue was a lot like the one in the video below, and the guys did this same rendition of Springsteen’s classic… and had similar trouble getting the crowd to simmer down. Turns out the worst way to get a stadium full of caucasians to be quiet is to invoke Bruce. At Forest Hills we had to stop for a minute to wonder if the crowd was booing, but they were really just yelling “Bruuuuce!” (The name Mumford & Sons doesn’t lend itself to chanting.) My favorite part of this video is when the other people shush the “Wooers”

Anyway, it was a good time. It was nice to be able to actually see the band, and the lack of a jumbotron was refreshing. And, since we were in a tennis stadium, the Mumford and his various sons started using their instruments as rackets and launching balls into the crowd. The Forest Hills crowd was big on singing along (especially for “I’m On Fire”, during which they sounded like a chorus), but unfortunately most of the video of that seems to be from far away — so far, anyhow. (The crowd turned into a sea of Smartphones as soon as they played “Little Lion Man.”)

But here’s my real reason for writing this: Guys, if you’re out there reading this somewhere, we’d like to request “Into the Mystic” as your next cover.