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After issuing his first album in 1973, Bruce Springsteen spent more than a decade building a deserved reputation as the best live act in rock and roll. During that time, however, his discography consisted solely of studio albums. If you weren’t lucky enough to have seen him in concert, all you knew of his stage presence were the rave reviews from those who’d managed to score tickets.
That changed in late 1986 with the release of Live 1975/85. Unfortunately, its contents were stitched together from a variety of shows, and if you bought the five-LP vinyl version, the performance had to stop nine times while you changed or turned over a record. Still, it’s no wonder fans ordered a record-setting 1.5 million advance copies of the album and formed long lines at record stores, sending Live 1975/85 straight to the top of the Billboard charts upon its debut. Unless you’d been to a show, this was the first and only way to get any sense of why the concertgoers were so excited.
Not anymore. After Live 1975/85 came Chimes of Freedom, a live EP from Sweden; MTV Unplugged; Live in New York City; an EP from the Magic tour; and The Complete 1978 Radio Broadcasts, which delivered five stupendous concerts on 15 CDs—and all that was just for starters. A website has since made audio from more than 350 Springsteen concerts available for streaming or purchase, and you can see as well as hear his shows on a wide variety of DVDs and Blu-rays, such as Live in Barcelona, The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts, and Live in Hyde Park.
So, you may well be wondering why at this point anyone needs yet another live Springsteen album—namely, the new Live from Asbury Park 2024, a three-CD set that features Bruce and the E Street Band at the Sea.Hear.Now Festival.
One reason is that Springsteen’s return to his home turf lends a special flavor to this performance. Way back in 1973, he titled his debut album Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.; he opens this one by yelling, “Greetings, Asbury Park!” Then he performs numerous songs that reference his geographical roots, such as “4th of July, Asbury Park,” “Local Hero” (“I was driving through my hometown…”), “Wrecking Ball” (“I was raised…in the swamps of Jersey”), and a show-closing cover of Tom Waits’s “Jersey Girl,” which he ends with a shouted, “God bless Asbury Park!”
Reinforcing the back-to-my-roots theme, Springsteen features some of the tunes he composed during his early days in and around that town, such as “Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?,” “Growing Up,” “Thunder Crack,” and “Blinded by the Light,” which he introduces as a song “I wrote about 500 yards north” of the stage where he’s performing. And after playing “Thunder Road,” he gets emotional, telling the audience he recalls his band being “on that street corner when nobody was here, and I didn’t know when I’d see folks in this good town again. So, I just want to take a moment and thank all the people who’ve invested themselves in Asbury Park and brought the city back to life.”
While the hometown vibes help to distinguish this show, a bigger reason to seek out Live from Asbury Park 2024 is its musical diversity and excellence. The 30-song set taps songs from numerous eras and includes “a lot of stuff we haven’t played in a long fuckin’ time,” as Springsteen puts it. And they’re virtually all superbly performed. The Boss himself has called the concert “one of our top five shows of all time,” and while you could argue that there are lots of contenders for that group, this certainly qualifies as a candidate.
Memorable moments abound, starting with the 9/11-inspired concert opener, “Lonesome Day,” with Soozie Tyrell on violin. Other standouts in the three-and-a-quarter-hour show include virtually all the material mentioned above, plus “Racing in the Street” with Roy Bittan’s long, majestic piano bit in the instrumental second half; a high-octane “Dancing in the Dark”; “Tougher Than the Rest,” with backing vocal by Patti Scialfa; and a wild, supercharged rendition of “She’s the One.”
Springsteen seems to have loved interacting with his hometown audience. Judging by its response—which included singing the opening verses of “Hungry Heart” and numerous instances of thunderous applause—the feeling was mutual.
Also Noteworthy
The Knack, Knackology: The Zen Recordings. Granted, the Knack might not have been great enough to justify the hype that preceded a 10-label bidding war and its signing by Capitol for a record-breaking sum. That said, this power-pop band offered hooks galore, energy to spare, and a razor-sharp focus on teenage lust.
Several laudable retrospectives appeared during the 1990s, but this 19-track latest anthology offers as good an introduction as any. It collects previously released material that spans nearly two decades, including early demos, a live 1978 track, and a 1994 concert performance of “My Sharona,” the Knack’s chart-topping biggest hit. Among other highlights are live versions of “Oh, Tara” and “Good Girls Don’t” and a cover of Pete Ham’s “No Matter What” that first appeared on a Badfinger tribute CD.
Iris DeMent, The Way I Should. This remastered 30th-anniversary edition of Iris DeMent’s third album suggests she hasn’t changed much over three decades, but that’s good news. In 1996, she had the same compelling, instantly identifiable voice she has now, the same ability to tell poignant stories, and the same penchant for political truth-telling.
DeMent wrote (or in three cases co-wrote) all 11 tracks on The Way I Should, which Randy Scruggs produced and which features contributions from Merle Haggard, Delbert McClinton, and Mark Knopfler. The CD includes still-relevant commentary in songs like “There’s a Wall in Washington,” which addresses the Vietnam War; “Letter to Mom,” which concerns child sexual abuse; and “Wasteland of the Free,” which comments on income inequality, political corruption, and more. Other numbers, such as the title cut and “I’ll Take My Sorrow Straight,” are introspective and personal.
Rachelle Garniez, Born in Time. Listening to this latest album from jazz singer Rachelle Garniez can make you feel as if you’re in a small Paris café whose featured singer has strolled over to your table to serenade you. Backed most prominently by a trumpet player and her own accordion, Garniez turns in a consistently impressive performance characterized by inventive phrasing and intimate vocalizing.
The set, which includes two songs sung in French, embraces disparate material. The title cut is a cover of a standout on Bob Dylan’s otherwise mostly subpar Under a Red Sky LP. Also on the program are a version of James Shelton’s exquisite “Lilac Wine” that rivals Jeff Buckley’s superb rendition; the Irish standard, “Raglan Road”; and a gorgeous, languid reading of the classic “Harbor Lights,” which has been widely recorded, most notably by Sammy Kaye and the Platters.
R.W. Hampton, My Country. Lifelong cowboy and longtime Western singer/songwriter R.W. Hampton, whose resonant voice recalls Merle Haggard, delivers a consistently likable program on My Country. Hampton, who wrote or co-wrote most of the songs, describes them as “love letters to the land, the people, and the way of life that have shaped me to who I am.”
The set includes three evocative odes to the singer’s native state: the Western swing–influenced “Texas Bein’ Texas” and “West Texas Town” and the traditional “Yellow Rose of Texas.” Other winners include the bouncy “Bonnie,” a reportedly autobiographical number about how Hampton met his wife; “Donnie Catch a Horse,” which quotes the classic “Shenandoah”; and a cover of Bob Thiele and George David Weiss’s “What a Wonderful World” that Hampton performs solo with guitar.
