This album is a real disappointment. The only reason to get it would be for the version of "Thunder Road" with just Bruce and the piano. Otherwise, this is really a monotonous album, very heavy handed, repetitive, with dull arrangements, repetitive guitar work, repetitive chords, repetitive tunes that all end up sounding like the same old song. It would be a better idea to get the video "No Nukes", which has a great fresh version of "The River".

Bruce Springsteen is wihout a doubt, a staple of rock 'n' roll. This 3-disc set comprises his hits from '75 to '85 live with the E Street Band. I'm more into U2, Coldplay, and Green Day myself but this is good. I especially like the story at the beginning of "The River" about his youth.

Bruce has put out other good work but this, this is really great. It's got most of his songs in this period, polished to such a shine it's impossible to ignore. His gravelly voice (not too much unlike Elvis) mixed with some pounding beats will have you singing along in no time.

There are a couple of mediocre tracks, like "Darlington County" but the rest of the album(s) make up for it.

From the pumped-up "Adam Raised a Cain" and "War" to the soft "The River" this album is an important part of my music collection. But the greatest song on this, the greatest that he's ever done, is "Born To Run". The song is stunning. Buy the cd if only for that.

If you liked it I reccommend:

Devils And Dust by Bruce Springsteen
The Joshua Tree by U2
Stand Up by the Dave Matthews Band

God bless! Peace

Perhaps never in the history of rock and roll had an album been as hyped before its release. Spring's concerts were raved about by fans, but Spring had always been too insecure to release a live album. Desperate for some big bucks, his manager finally convinced his act that now was the time to strike, and strike they did, with enough pre-sales to make this 5-LP (3-CD) set debut at number one on the charts and keep them in gravy for years.

It started out promisingly enough with a 1975 song on piano. Spring performs, solo, a song that still means something to him, released on LP in 1975. Then the box takes a nosedive, jumping forward a few years. That's right, *one* song from 1975, no songs from 1976 and 1977. Knowledgeable Spring fans knew there was trouble the second they read when the songs were from. Spring and his manager-producer had decided to skip over his best concert years since they didn't have multi-track recordings of them to fiddle with and tweak.

Compounding the mistake, the general rule is that the performances selected are of songs originally released in studio versions years earlier. 1978 performances are of 1975 songs, 1981 performances are of 1978 songs, and so on. Spring has clearly lost the original inspiration he had when writing the material and plays every song as an oldie, covered as nostalgia. Spring's camp actually thought the most important thing was to have the backing group, the notoriously overrated E Street Band, not make as many mistakes (since they'd have played the songs hundreds of times by the recording dates). They didn't care that the performances themselves lacked any hint of vitality, and sounded exactly like they were, tired re-treads.

This box set also lacks any sense of flow, of sensible sequence. Compiled from numerous sources, it does not have any automatic coherence. And the multiple producers can't create any, either, from these lackluster renditions.

The sad thing is that *every* honest Spring fan knows that they've been sold a bill of goods with this set, but many drink the kool-aid all the same. All these 5-star reviews are a joke. It doesn't deserve even one star. If Spring had simply released one of the several 1978 3-hour radio broadcasts of his show, straight as-is, he'd have given fans a record of what he was all about live. What he sold fans instead was a travesty, a miserably failed attempt at tampering with his own music past, making him over as the Born-in-the-USA man.