Live In New York is a two-CD set of the live Springsteen performances that were broadcast on HBO in April. It includes all the performances from that broadcast, plus six songs that didn’t make the cut for the HBO special. Whether or not this set is worth buying depends on how you feel about Springsteen. If you’re a Boss fanatic like myself, the album is a must have despite its flaws. For casual Springsteen fans, however, there’s nothing on this CD worth $23.
The strong points of the album are the live performances of some of Springsteen’s early, stronger material. As far as I’m concerned, “Badlands” is one of the top 20 or so songs of the pop music era, and there can’t possibly be too many versions of it. Songs like “The River,” “Jungleland,” “Prove It All Night,” and even “Born to Run” (which is a “hidden” track on the first CD) have aged gracefully and still pack a lot of power.
On the other hand, Springsteen hasn’t aged gracefully and seems to be more than willing to fall into some of the same traps of other aging rock stars. First, except for the controversial “American Skin (41 Shots),” most of Springsteen’s more recent songs are extremely forgettable.
Part of the problem is the habit of muscisians to go from taking rock music seriously ato imbuing it with full blown pretension. This results in a wholly unlistenable version of “Born In the U.S.A.” which is performed acoustically as a ballad. Springsteen’s been doing this for several years with “Born In The U.S.A.,” and its as if he is embarrassed at the song’s, and by extension his own, success in the 1980s. Unfortunately Springsteen doesn’t have the voice nor “Born in the U.S.A.” the lyrics to survive a transformation into an acoustic ballad.
The same problem afflicts his new material — Springsteen’s started writing songs that self-consciously call out, “Hey, I’m an artist, not just a rock musician,” and the result so far has been less-than-compelling.
Still, for the hardcore Springsteen fans, Live In New York is a welcome edition to the plethora of Springsteen material (bootlegged and otherwise) out there.