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DiscountDelight - Born to Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set
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List Price: $39.98
Our Price: $19.99
Your Save: $ 19.99 ( 50% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Sony
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0827969417522
Format: Original recording remastered
Label: Sony
Manufacturer: Sony
Number Of Discs: 3
Publisher: Sony
Release Date: 2005-11-15
Studio: Sony
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Sony Throws Us A Bone
Comment: This is going to sound like a cop-out, maybe even a laughable bid for credibility, but I gave up on Bruce Springsteen years ago when he decided that making some sort of grand political statement was much more important than writing a really good song, i.e., about 1984.
HOWEVER, this handsomely boxed version of his magnum opus, complete with glory-years concert DVD and "making of" documentary, spools back 30 years to the pre-punk dark ages when none of us knew any better, Springsteen standing tall and singing into the light, mostly about, er, cars and girls. Careers (and legends) have been built on much less.
Springsteen ain't everyone's cup of grog, most of his oeuvre making you either want to stand up and shout or sit down and weep, but with "Born To Run," he was just about the greatest thing rolling. Based on the documentary disc, it's understandable why he never tried anything like this again.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Legendary & Essential; Springsteen Conquers America
Comment: After his first two album sold very poorly this would become his make or brake sessions. Springsteen could hardly pay his band anymore and his legendary scruffy look of the time had more to do with him not being able to buy new clothes than carefull image building. The music press were raving about him. Both Rolling Stone and Time magazine featured article with him on the cover. The sales not on par with the hype. Not everybody was confident he could make it at the time, even in his innercircle. After recording the Rock & Roll classic Born to Run his drummer and keyboard player left the band. The Born to Run sessions found Springsteen plagued by insecurity but determinate to hit big. He stripped down his writing creating songs that had a cinematic quality to them. The opening lyrics of the album continue to be some of the most vivid songwriting in history of Rock.
"The screen door slams
Mary's dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch
As the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that's me and I want you only
Don't turn me home again
I just can't face myself alone again"
The Album finds Springsteen trying to find everything he's ever loved in R&R and cramp it into one album. He puts layer on layer. Trying to recreate the Phil Spector sound he loves. He keeps scratching away at the words in an attempt to equal the mini opera's of Orbison. His guitar scream as uninhibited as Chuck Berry's and the horns shout Sweet "Stax" Soul Music at you. This record has to be everything R&R symbolizes, not only to Springsteen but to us all.. "Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades hustling for the record machine, The hungry and the hunted explode into rock'n'roll bands, That face off against each other out in the street down in Jungleland", as Springsteen realizes the competition is big.
Born to Run marks a important turning point in Springsteen's career. Although much of the album still deals with his experiences in New Jersey, it's the first album we find Springsteen looking out on the road to the rest of America. "When the change was made uptown And the Big Man joined the band, From the coastline to the city, All the little pretties raise their hands" Springsteen sings in 10th avenue. Here he's still the punk with a R&R dream getting his band together. But by the time we get to Born to Run he realizes the confinements of the Jersey shore. "Baby this town rips the bones from your back, It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap, We gotta get out while we're young, 'Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run" he screams, he's ready to go for broke. "the poets down here
Don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be" he rants in Jungle Land as he realizes R&R should be more, lager than life. And that's just what he's about to become.
The special edition features an insightful documentary and a live concert at the Hammersmith Odeon. This live DVD is also an excellent demonstration of Springsteens Live performance. Something that made him even more legendary than his songs. Some performances would stretch out for four hours. His E-Street band is as much part of his reputation as his songs are.
Customer Rating:
Summary: History Lesson: The Making of a Rock Star
Comment: Without a doubt, the highlight is the DVD of the 1975 show in London. "Born to Run," the album, had put him on the cover of "Time" and "Newsweek" the same week in October, 1975, one of the very few times that has happened for a non-news story.
The publicity and hype generated by Columbia records was so overwhelming that there was a backlash: "Nobody can be that good."
So here we see his first show ever in the UK, playing to an audience of professional critics and amateur skeptics, people thinking, "hey, 'Rock and Roll Future,' this is the land of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who - who do you think you're kidding. No unknown kid from America deserves 'Time' and 'Newsweek.'"
The show begins in almost total darkness, a piano softly plays, then harmonica, and a soft spotlight lights the kid from New Jersey who sings "Thunder Road," accompanied by only piano. An unknown song at the time, "Thunder Road" has become a Springsteen classic. IMHO, especially given the expectations, it is a perfect understated opening.
The DVD has the entire show, including everything from the hard rock of "She's the One," and "Born to Run," the song, to a much slowed down version of "For You," an underated sleeper on his first album, "Greeting From Asbuty park, NJ." Bruce accompanies himself on the piano and I swear, this version of "For You" is so beautiful it could be the scruffy New Jersey kid channeling god.
Any skeptic who walked out of this show thinking Springsteen was merely hype has no ears, no taste, or was xenophobic. The show gives more than a big hint that this Springsteen guy is for real, as a songwriter and performer, and that "Born to Run," especially, is an extraodinary album. There are only eight songs, but none are fill. Repeated listenings of the four corners of the album (before CDs) "Backstreets," "Jungleland," Thunder Road," and the title song are so good they become... well, addictive, works of genius, and lead to still more listening. "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out," "Night," and especially "She's the One" could each be the centerpiece of almost any other album. Even the whispered "Meeting Across the River," fits and helps the album become a coherent whole. The songs taken together are more than the sum of the parts.
As a footnote I'll offer the opinion that Bruce only wrote one other album that is as good as "Born to Run" and that is his next one, "Darkness on the Edge of Town." Everything he has released is good; a good bit of it is great, but I don't think anything else matches "Born To Run" or "Darkness." I don't know if two other back to back albums this good have ever been released.
The DVD of the show gives us a big early peek at the guy who would develop into rock's greatest performer. By 1985 he would be the biggest rock star in the world, selling out multiple nights at football stadiums.
The remastered CD is nothing special to my ears. Perhaps an audiophile could hear improvement. The DVD, "The Making of 'Born to Run,'" is interesting, but will probably appeal mainly to fans.
However the DVD of the 1975 London show ought to appeal to anyone who likes Bruce, or rock & roll, or showmanship, or history. Its a treat.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: CD remastering could be much better
Comment: First, let me state that I'm not that big a Springsteen fan, and that I bought the collection for my wife. The added material in the package is great and lends tons of information to the casual fan. But after listening to all the hard work that went into the album on the "making of" DVD, I was HIGHLY disappointed in the remastering job. Extremely flat and lifeless. I understand that we're talking about an old recording, but give me a break! Listen to "Lazy" on the 25th aniversary Deep Purple "Machine Head" CD if you want to hear excellent remastering. Or the Beatles "One" CD. I could go on with tons more examples. I wanted to be blown away by the disc, but can't say I have been. Great for people who have to have everything, but don't buy it for the remaster.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Dance with me partner !!
Comment: This collection is worth the money alone just for the live version of " Thundercrack " For those complaining of not hearing any quality difference in the sound I think it is time to get a new stereo . I hear things that i missed for the last 30 years . Remember this is recorded way before digital when the dvd wasnt even a thought . We were still suffering through post Partridge family , Seasons in the sun by Terry Jacks , and the emergence of the Bay City Rollers .Bruce offers refreshing lyrics and music that wasnt being heard at that time . the total collection to me is a gift at the price compared to mariah carey rereleasing the same cd for the holiday season . I thank Bruce for taking care of his fans BRUUUUUUCE !!!!
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Editorial Reviews:
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The first retooling of any album in the mighty Springsteen catalog is an exemplary labor of love by Columbia. The original 1975 release was the make-or-break record of Bruce's career and arguably still his best collection of material. It is presented here on one disc unsullied by outtakes or inferior versions--just pristine digital remasters of those eight grittily romantic songs of street life that defined the artist's signature styles. The substantial bonuses are two new DVD programs, one featuring a full concert performance by Bruce and the E Street Band on their first date outside the U.S. at London's Hammersmith Odeon in November 1975, and the other a "making of" documentary including band interviews and contemporary concert footage. The whole handsome box truly honors a legendary recording while providing generous value for fans. The meat of the bonus material is the London show. A mythology has built around it that the band were so disorientated by travel and culture shock and Bruce so enraged by label-generated hype that they gave one of the worst performances of their career. Primitively shot by today's standards, the footage captures the brilliance of the relatively new band's ensemble playing. Highlights include a "Thunder Road" accompanied only by keyboards that opens the show, fiery solos on "Kitty's Back," a dynamic "Saint in the City," and a number of songs that have long since been retired. It's certainly notable how pensive and joyless Springsteen appears when compared to his later, animated stadium persona, but it's also fun to see the far greater role as foil played by Clarence Clemons. As he now testifies in the sleeve notes, putting lie to the myth, on that night they had "gone for broke," and as this writer can bear witness, the British audience exalted the show as the arrival of the greatest live performer of his generation. --Rob Stewart
The Best of Bruce
by guest editor Steve Perry
Steve is the editor-in-chief of City Pages newspaper in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle (1973)
 After a folk-rockish debut album that bubbled with ideas and dense lyrical play, this is where Springsteen began to find his voice as a rocker and as a songwriter. The prisoner-of-love romanticism of "Rosalita" and "Incident on 57th Street" hinted at what was coming, and this early version of the E Street Band--jazzier and more spare than later versions, thanks largely to David Sancious's piano--sounds great, if a little ragged, these many years later.
Born to Run (1975) and Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)
  These two records, which belong on any compilation of the top 100 rock albums of all time, sketched the themes that he would spend his whole career chasing, and defined the expectations fans would bring to his records ever after. The first chords of "Born to Run" sounded like freedom itself the first time I heard them on the radio, and the album lived up to them. "Thunder Road" is still the greatest rock & roll love song anyone's ever written. The record sounded so big and impassioned and propulsive it was easy to miss the dread running underneath it. Darkness... put the dread front and center. There are more of his best songs here than anywhere else, even if the sound is muddy and leaden at times.
Nebraska (1982)
 After The River (the best record that didn't make this list) and the ensuing tour answered his rock & roll prayers--he was a big star now, not just a perennial critics' favorite--Springsteen holed up in a rented house on the Jersey shore, where he wrote these songs and sang them into a four-track recorder in his living room. The tape was supposed to be a demo for the band, but after several false tries he concluded that the tape he'd been carrying around in his pocket was the record. Quiet and bleak, Nebraska nonetheless grabbed you by the collar and made you listen as surely as his rock & roll records ever had.
Tunnel of Love (1987)
 The glare and hubbub surrounding the Born in the USA tour (the tour was great--the record itself overrated) made him pull back again, this time to write a cycle of songs about love and fear and self-doubt. After this, Springsteen's first marriage broke up, and he started a family with Patti Scialfa, disappearing for the better part of 10 years, notwithstanding the pair of not-bad, just-disappointing albums he released in 1992, Human Touch and Lucky Town.
The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995)
 Some call it Nebraska II, but his second acoustic album was not a repeat of his first--the characters and settings had changed, and their circumstances were more expressly desperate, and social--though it did share the same interest in what happens to people whose isolation or marginal status renders them invisible.
The Rising (2002)
 Everybody, including Springsteen, seemed to think it was a record about 9/11, but the subject was broader--death and loss as seen from more than halfway down life's road. Dave Marsh nailed it: "A middle-aged man confronts death and chooses life" Brendan O'Brien's production sounds great.
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