Born To Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set (CD/2DVD)good

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List Price : $39.98 Price : $21.95

Album Description

30th ANNIVERSARY 3 DISC SET

CONCERT DVD Never-before-seen 1975 concert from Hammersmith Odeon, London featuring over 2 hours of music.

DOCUMENTARY DVD Definitive story of "Wings For Wheels: The Making of Born to Run" with new interviews & rare archival footage.

BORN TO RUN CD First time in newly-remastered digital sound. Includes 48 page booklet of rare and unpublished photos.

Amazon.com

The first retooling of any album in the mighty Springsteen catalog is an exemplary labor of love by Columbia. The original 1975 release was the make-or-break record of Bruce's career and arguably still his best collection of material. It is presented here on one disc unsullied by outtakes or inferior versions--just pristine digital remasters of those eight grittily romantic songs of street life that defined the artist's signature styles. The substantial bonuses are two new DVD programs, one featuring a full concert performance by Bruce and the E Street Band on their first date outside the U.S. at London's Hammersmith Odeon in November 1975, and the other a "making of" documentary including band interviews and contemporary concert footage. The whole handsome box truly honors a legendary recording while providing generous value for fans.

The meat of the bonus material is the London show. A mythology has built around it that the band were so disorientated by travel and culture shock and Bruce so enraged by label-generated hype that they gave one of the worst performances of their career. Primitively shot by today's standards, the footage captures the brilliance of the relatively new band's ensemble playing. Highlights include a "Thunder Road" accompanied only by keyboards that opens the show, fiery solos on "Kitty's Back," a dynamic "Saint in the City," and a number of songs that have long since been retired. It's certainly notable how pensive and joyless Springsteen appears when compared to his later, animated stadium persona, but it's also fun to see the far greater role as foil played by Clarence Clemons. As he now testifies in the sleeve notes, putting lie to the myth, on that night they had "gone for broke," and as this writer can bear witness, the British audience exalted the show as the arrival of the greatest live performer of his generation. --Rob Stewart

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The Best of Bruce
by guest editor Steve Perry
Steve is the editor-in-chief of City Pages newspaper in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle (1973)
After a folk-rockish debut album that bubbled with ideas and dense lyrical play, this is where Springsteen began to find his voice as a rocker and as a songwriter. The prisoner-of-love romanticism of "Rosalita" and "Incident on 57th Street" hinted at what was coming, and this early version of the E Street Band--jazzier and more spare than later versions, thanks largely to David Sancious's piano--sounds great, if a little ragged, these many years later.

Born to Run (1975) and Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)
These two records, which belong on any compilation of the top 100 rock albums of all time, sketched the themes that he would spend his whole career chasing, and defined the expectations fans would bring to his records ever after. The first chords of "Born to Run" sounded like freedom itself the first time I heard them on the radio, and the album lived up to them. "Thunder Road" is still the greatest rock & roll love song anyone's ever written. The record sounded so big and impassioned and propulsive it was easy to miss the dread running underneath it. Darkness... put the dread front and center. There are more of his best songs here than anywhere else, even if the sound is muddy and leaden at times.

Nebraska (1982)
After The River (the best record that didn't make this list) and the ensuing tour answered his rock & roll prayers--he was a big star now, not just a perennial critics' favorite--Springsteen holed up in a rented house on the Jersey shore, where he wrote these songs and sang them into a four-track recorder in his living room. The tape was supposed to be a demo for the band, but after several false tries he concluded that the tape he'd been carrying around in his pocket was the record. Quiet and bleak, Nebraska nonetheless grabbed you by the collar and made you listen as surely as his rock & roll records ever had.

Tunnel of Love (1987)
The glare and hubbub surrounding the Born in the USA tour (the tour was great--the record itself overrated) made him pull back again, this time to write a cycle of songs about love and fear and self-doubt. After this, Springsteen's first marriage broke up, and he started a family with Patti Scialfa, disappearing for the better part of 10 years, notwithstanding the pair of not-bad, just-disappointing albums he released in 1992, Human Touch and Lucky Town.

The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995)
Some call it Nebraska II, but his second acoustic album was not a repeat of his first--the characters and settings had changed, and their circumstances were more expressly desperate, and social--though it did share the same interest in what happens to people whose isolation or marginal status renders them invisible.

The Rising (2002)
Everybody, including Springsteen, seemed to think it was a record about 9/11, but the subject was broader--death and loss as seen from more than halfway down life's road. Dave Marsh nailed it: "A middle-aged man confronts death and chooses life" Brendan O'Brien's production sounds great.

Born To Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set (CD/2DVD) Reviews

Born To Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set (CD/2DVD) Reviews

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89 of 95 people found the following review helpful: 30 Years & Still Running, November 15, 2005 By  Thomas Magnum (NJ, USA) - See all my reviews          This review is from: Born To Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set (CD/2DVD) (Audio CD) Born To Run is the album that took Bruce Springsteen from a struggling recording artist who was almost dropped by his label to simultaneous covers of Time & Newsweek. All the hype surrounding the album is justified as it is a brilliant collection of songs. From the opening harmonica on "Thunder Road" to the closing of the mini-opera "Jungleland", Bruce tells us about Wendy, Terry, Mary, The Magic Rat & Barefoot girl and we hear their stories. Most of the songs deal with escaping one's dull and dreary life for something better. The means of escape are the highways and backstreets. "Born To Run" is an all time classic and I get chills up my spine every time I hear the opening riffs. "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" tells of the origins of the E Street Band. "Meeting Across The River" is underrated and when Bruce played it on his recent tour, it got huge applauses. The production has a big sound to it. On some songs it sounds like a hundred instruments are playing. Bruce wanted a Phil Spector... Read more Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  Was this review helpful to you?  Report abuse | Permalink   Comment (1) 17 of 17 people found the following review helpful: Even long time fans will find new discoveries, November 28, 2005 By  35-year Technology Consumer "8-tracks to 802.11" (Mid Atlantic, USA) - See all my reviews    Amazon Verified Purchase( What's this?) This review is from: Born To Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set (CD/2DVD) (Audio CD) First, a technical issue: Another reviewer was incorrect. This release DOES NOT contain the Sony DRM/rootkit software. Don't take my word for it, look at Sony's official list: Amazon doesn't like URL's but you can Google "Sony DRM albums" and find many resources...icluding Sony's own...that list the offending albums. This one is not one of them. Now: I am fortunate enough to have grown up on the Jersey shore, and knew who Bruce Springsteen was before 1975. I've followed his growth since then, and have seen him in a number of his tours over the year. I'm an unabashed, unapologetic fan, and he is the only artist of whom I own every title in their discography. So do this: watch the "Making of Born to Run" DVD first, and then listen to BTR again. In the car --where this album was meant to be played-- or by yourself. The eight songs on this album are damned near each one a home run. Collectively they are an amazing piece of American... Read more Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  Was this review helpful to you?  Report abuse | Permalink   Comment (1) 30 of 33 people found the following review helpful: Incomparable! It does not get better than this. Raw, magnificent passion!, November 15, 2005 By  M. Zabaroff (London, UK) - See all my reviews    This review is from: Born To Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set (CD/2DVD) (Audio CD) If you like Bruce then you already have this, know what it means and understand. If you're thinking about getting this then don't think twice it's alright. If you are not interested then how comes you've read this much already!? The album easily stands the test of time. It is quite simply the essence of what rock'n'roll music is all about. The passion, innocence and power of the songs still have an enormous effect on me 30 years later. I had tears in my eyes by the end of Thunder Road and was walking on air at the end of Jungleland. In 1975 rock music had lost it's spark and passion. It was treading water. What most people don't understand is that this album woke the whole industry and record buying public up. The hype that followed was incredible but not Springsteen's doing. The fact that 30 years later he is still such a major important artist says everything about his character and talent. The Hammersmith show? I WAS THERE! It changed my life. I had never understood how powerful... Read more Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  Was this review helpful to you?  Report abuse | Permalink   Comment (1)

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