Bruce Springsteen
London Calling, live in Hyde Park

Anyone who has seen Springsteen at least once in their life knows what to expect from this new DVD, but more importantly, is sure they have witnessed the best in terms of authenticity, professionalism, passion, and total openness to the audience in an exchange of give and take that has few equals in rock history. His live marathons have become something epic, and although the four-hour concerts from many years ago are now unattainable due to declared age limits, rest assured that you won't be going home before three hours of music. When, unfortunately, the concert comes to an end, you'll still be there shouting his name, hoping he'll come out again and go overtime as he did two years ago in Milan (...The latest news reports complete acquittal for promoter Trotta, but what a disgrace for Milan and its governors. The city lost the major live events of this summer, and justly so...).

After the nineties spent somewhat quietly, it seems that in the new millennium, Bruce wants to make up for lost time and race against time, aware that his war machine, the E-Street Band, is beginning to creak under the blows of that ugly beast called old age.
Having lost his friend Danny Federici along the way, Bruce has spent the last three years on stages around the world, almost as if to exorcise the loss of his keyboardist friend. What has taken the stage in these concerts is something that approaches the best Springsteen has done in his youth in front of his loyal audience.
This DVD was released to demonstrate all this, how a sixty-year-old can hold a stage like a youngster, without the rockstar arrogance or sermons and self-congratulation that his peers and others seem to have when they are face to face with their audience. A stage where the music and the musicians' sweat are still the most important things. If someone tries to hide the advancing age by creating stage setups and special effects from a thousand and one nights, he is content with his trusted musician friends and an audience now composed of at least three generations.
He may be a rockstar, but his desire to maintain a human connection with the audience makes him almost a loyal friend who rarely betrays you.

London Calling, live in Hyde Park captures the performance held in London during the Hard Rock Calling festival on June 28, 2009, in London. The concert opens with that London Calling, which perhaps, a bit cunningly, wants to be a tribute to the city hosting him and to the great Joe Strummer, who in life always praised the work of the former Freehold boy. The performance is almost faithful to the original and presents a charged and almost angry Springsteen. He remains so for almost the entire first hour of the concert, featuring a trio of aces like Badlands, Night, and She's the One at the start. Before melting away and letting himself be embraced by the audience to the notes of Good Lovin', there's time for Johnny 99 in full band version and Seeds. It's the awaited moment of collecting the songs requested by the audience, a little interlude that Bruce invented in the last two years of concerts. A moment that gives the opportunity to hear requested songs, not included on the setlist, sometimes featuring truly remarkable gems. His greatness is also this. Here in London, you can hear a rare Trapped, a cover of his Jamaican friend Jimmy Cliff, or a No Surrender with Brian Fallon of the Gaslight Anthem called on stage to duet with a bit of reverent fear for his musical idol.

The second DVD presents all the epicness of the seventies Springsteen with three long rides like Born to Run, Jungleland, and Rosalita. There's time for the choral Hard Times by Stephen Foster and the party-style Irish folk of American Land, which has become a small classic of recent concerts. It concludes with two hits from the eighties, Glory Days and Dancing in the Dark, although we would have preferred the Detroit Medley as happened in recent Italian tours.
The peculiarity of this live DVD is that it was recorded mostly with daylight still present, so the details of the musicians, their instruments, and shots of the audience benefit from it. A mention for the little fan that Bruce makes sing during Waitin' on a Sunny Day.

Unfortunately, as a bonus, there's very little: a performance of The River recorded at Glastonbury also in 2009 and the video of the unreleased Wrecking Ball. This 2010, for now, seems to be a year of absolute rest for the boss and his warriors, hoping this is not one of the last live video testimonies of the E-Street Band, as rumored around.