watched many other performances during the Magic Tour. Springsteen's 2009 Working on a Dream Tour posed a problem for Max Weinberg, as The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien in Los Angeles – for which he was the Max Weinberg 7 bandleader – was starting at the same time that the tour would be in progress. Springsteen's manager Jon Landau viewed Weinberg as the "secret weapon" to substitute for his father without losing fan satisfaction. Both Landau and E Street guitarist Steve Van Zandt attributed Jay Weinberg's skills to a genetic gift. Once the initial portion of the tour began in early April 2009, Weinberg played from several songs to half the show on most of the dates. He received a very positive reaction from both audiences and reviewers as a re-energizing "spark plug" for the much-older band, with his vigorous, long-hair-flying style inviting comparisons to Dave Grohl and his potential for replacing his father drawing allusions to Wally Pipp. He began playing complete shows in mid-May 2009 during the tour's American first leg, as his father went to California to prepare test runs for The Tonight Show start. Modern Drummer magazine's editor said that a college freshman playing on one of the year's biggest rock tours is "certainly a unique story". Weinberg played a number of dates early on in the European second leg of the tour, including at the Dutch Pinkpop festival in Landgraaf, Netherlands in addition to Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tennessee. He also played during a few dates of the American third and final leg. When not needed for the Springsteen tour, he continued to play for the Reveling, often before audiences that were three orders of magnitude smaller; he said of the difference, "I liked the duality of it all ... I like doing this just as much as I like doing that." Madball In February 2010, Weinberg began playing with Madball, a hardcore band based out of New York City. In June of that year, it was announced that he would become the drummer for their upcoming album Empire and a tour. However, in September 2010 the group discharged him, with Madball vocalist Freddy Cricien saying, "I'm letting Jay go [mid-tour] in Canada because I just feel he doesn't represent this band well on a character level." In response, Weinberg said that he had already quit the group by that time, and that "while I really