Customer Reviews

Rockin' Live from Italy- 1993

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a total ripoff. This was clearly recorded from the audience. Even Bruce completists should stay away. Next time, I'll bring an old hand held cassette recorder to a Bruce show, hit the record button and then burn a cd from the tape. It will probably sound just like this waste of money.

I suspected, when I saw this was labeled as an `import', that it was really basically a bootleg, and I was pretty much right. This is actually the second half of the April 11, 1993 show from Verona, Italy, from Bruce's "Human Touch/Lucky Town" tour. That it's probably available at all is likely due to Europe's loophole-laden copyright laws. If you're looking for some live material from this phase of his career, you'd be far better off buying the legitimate Columbia "Plugged" Cd, because this one here has several significant flaws, that render it pretty much for completists only:

1) It's not even a complete show - the two discs run around 100 min combined. What's here, though, are some good songs, but it's simply not representative of a whole show from this era.

2) It sounds like a decent quality audience recording, or at best, maybe a VERY un-EQ'd soundboard (I tend to believe it's the former) - vocals are way upfront, and there's a fair amount of distortion. Better to buy a `legit' live album on Columbia, if you want live Bruce.

3) There's a repeat of a couple of words around 1:54 into "Human Touch" - makes me wonder what the source of the recording is? Maybe a radio show?

4) I've seen a lot of Bruce shows, including one from 1992 in NJ on this tour, and I have to say, this is NOT a very good performance. In fact, Bruce flat out sounds TIRED, probably because he'd already been touring this material for almost a year at this point.

5) The background singers are way `over-souling' it - that is, trying to outshine each other/make their mark, to the point where it's distracting. Just another element of the performance here, that makes me VERY thankful Bruce got the E Street Band back together a couple of years later. This phase of his career (the `that other band' period) seems to not look so good, in retrospect.

So unless you're a Bruce completist, I'd say pass on this, and go for just about any of the legit live albums: the London '75 show, Live 75-85, Plugged (if you want something by this band) or save up for the Live In Hyde Park dvd/blu-ray that's coming out soon.

I've recently purchased this, and the box is labelled as having 5.1 surround sound, as well as promoting "unseen" recordings. It's even a shiny DVD. Aparently most of this could have been done in a single audio channel and the video is so bad that even die hard fans would only enjoy this with eyes closed. Stay away.

Recordings like these make Hellen Keller turn over in her grave.

-A

Vinyl album came well-packaged and very efficiently. Thank you very much. I would not hesitate to order again fromyou in the future.