Word: springsteens
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...wait on the corner for Kenny's truck or call Lory to place a phone order, there are a few things to keep in mind. The record company, busy turning out some 1.7 million copies, has kept the lid on tight, so very little has been known about Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Live/1975-85 until now. It is a 40-song live set, spanning the past decade in the performing life of America's greatest rocker and the country's hottest band: that rumor is right. It wholesales for about $19: right again...
There has also been more argument and speculation about the contents of the album than about what happened at the Reykjavik summit. Yes, classics like Born to Run are there, jumping out of a superb audio mix like a Maserati off the mark. But so are Springsteen standards like Thunder Road and No Surrender, performed with newly spare instrumentation, sounding entirely different and stronger than ever. There are tunes Springsteen wrote for other performers that he has never recorded (Fire, Because the Night), as well as songs that he has borrowed from others (This Land Is Your Land, War, Raise...
...there are two new tunes. Paradise by the "C", a surfside 1978 instrumental titled in tribute to Saxman Clarence Clemons, is get-down beach music in extremis and in excelsis. The breadth of Springsteen's spirit and the range of his gifts can handily be measured in the distance between Paradise and Seeds, a workingman's testament of pride, helplessness and hopelessness from the 1985 tour that is one of his best tunes, and certainly one of his angriest. With all this, there is one more thing. Just incidental, of course, considering that Springsteen is now a certifiable sociological phenomenon...
Live/1975-85 is a great record. It puts the life back in live albums, , vividly encapsulating a decade of change into three hours and 35 minutes of rock 'n' roll that gives no quarter but makes demands that few other musicians today will risk. Springsteen wants your heart to hear. And he wants you to bring your conscience...
...album could conceivably outsell Springsteen's classic Born in the U.S.A., which has sold about 20 million copies, but may not catch Michael Jackson's Thriller (35 million copies). Even so, the price of the Springsteen package is more than three times what Thriller costs (about $8), and thus the Boss's live recordings could easily generate more revenue than any other product in music history...