Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY
(Columbia)

Springsteen’s 2000 tour served up equal parts rock-and-soul revue and amped-up folk troubadour — musical history, social commentary, and narrative portraiture were all of a piece. On this double CD from Madison Square Garden, direct interpolations of Marvin Gaye, Al Green, and Curtis Mayfield segue into distillations of country and folk that feature the full panoply of Springsteen places, characters, and events: rock-and-roll studs, New York cops and Amadou Diallo, Youngstown steelworkers and Vietnam vets. Woody Guthrie is alluded to in the fine new " Land of Hope and Dreams " (with its " This train . . .  " refrain harking to Woody’s " Bound for Glory " ). The previously overblown " Born in the U.S.A. " is reclaimed as a hookless, affecting slide-guitar country blues.

Issue Date: April 26 - May 2, 2001