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Rating: It's time to talk about it.
We've left it there, shelved like a good wine. We've tasted it, several times, and now we can discuss it calmly.
Necessary premise: the Boss's music has always been a great passion for me, just like many others. For the past three years, since we've been touring bars and squares with our tribute, it has obviously become a religion. So, as in American detective stories, everything I say can be used against me.
I will therefore try to be serious, composed, impartial, and not let myself go into preadolescent squeals that, although perhaps well-written, would be excessively revealing.
In short: the Boss decided, after so many, so many years since that quintuple LP from the eighties that already seemed like the Holy Grail to us, to also devote himself to live documents, lately especially audio-visual and not just audio anymore.
Wrong choice? I wouldn't say so. The classic saying "people are divided into two categories: those who adore the Boss and those who have never seen him live" has more than one reason to exist, especially when the E-Street Band is involved, one of the best sound machines in rock history.
And so, we must make the effort to keep the discussion on two levels: on a general level (is this product advisable or not for those who do not know Springsteen's music well?) and on a doctrinal-didactic-nuisance level (is it really, as many—almost everyone—say, the best live performance of the Boss?).
Let's start with the first level: the answer is definitely "yes". It is highly recommended to those who love rock in general and American rock in particular, while perhaps it is not advisable for those who do not consider rock among the preferred expressive forms of life. But it can be debated: it is an important piece of American culture, transcending rock 'n roll alone.
And, anyway, here every note exudes pure rock 'n roll, of the purest American school, full of citations, covers, winks, playfulness. That rock that is joy, fun, smiles, but that can transform, in a split second, into thought, reflection, sometimes emotion.
But it's on the second level that we can debate, perhaps to the point of arguing: for me, this work is supreme from every point of view, but it is not the best (official, of course) live performance of the Boss. The best for me remains the New York live, recorded in 2000 and released in 2001. It risks being an endless arbitration without a final verdict. Also because we're talking about two products scoring a ten…: it's just deciding who to give the praise to.
If the live in NY (which we will discuss thoroughly another time) was a masterpiece of enthusiasm from a rediscovered E-Street, but also of precision and peak form from everyone, the London one is the proof of mileage, chemistry, and mutual understanding of a sound machine in uninterrupted "war" for a long time.
If everything there was cleaner, here everything is dirtier.
Certainly, this concert more accurately reflects the Boss's concert for what it is, with lots of requests, improvisations, mistakes, and explosive laughter.
It reflects the philosophy of the best rock on the road, the one that has proven to be ageless, and indeed, to even improve with age.
The advice, not meant for lovers like me (we, boys, already know what we think...) is to sit comfortably on the couch, perhaps with the requisite beer in hand, and watch it all in one go.
And then, only after, at the end, pass judgment. I may be presumptuous, perhaps, but I believe it's very difficult for the judgment to be anything less than enthusiastic.
Because this is a concert by Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, the fruit of two very long and practically back-to-back tours, full of covers, improvisations, full performances of historic albums.
A tour that, taken as a whole, was an absolute masterpiece and, we strongly fear (also for meanly anagraphic reasons) unrepeatable.
And this DVD is a splendid record of it (in the Darkness box set—Holy Grail—there will be another, and we will talk about it).
In the end, the advice for everyone is: buy it sight unseen.
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