Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: London Calling: Live In Hyde Park
(2009)
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: London Calling: Live In Hyde Park Blu-ray delivers stunning video and reference-quality audio in this exceptional Blu-ray release
Captured in London at the Hard Rock Calling Festival on June 28, 2009, this film documents 26 tracks of live Springsteen that begin in daylight and progress through a gorgeous sunset into night. It conveys both the experience of being on-stage and the vast crowd experience of the festival environment. Viewers are able to see Springsteen spontaneously directing the E Street Band and shaping the show as it evolves.
My wife, who has seen Bruce Springsteen live in concert three times, has informed me the only way to properly recreate a live Springsteen concert experience is to make The Boss an indistinguishable blob seen from a long way away. Luckily that perhaps sad but true fact isn't the case with this amazing live performance captured on Blu-ray from London's immense Hyde Park. This up close and personal look at Springsteen and the E Street Band in action gives hope to all of us who may be getting to AARP status a little quicker than we'd like. Bruce is 60, unbelievably so when you take into account the nonstop fury with which he attacks an incredible 27 songs in this nearly three hour long concert. With little fuss and bother, no big light shows, no bells and whistles other than some projection screens on the stage's wings so that those in the audience who can only make out indistinguishable blobs are able to see something, no dances, no typical rock star "hoo hah," Bruce and the boys (and the wonderful Soozie Tyrell on violin and vocals) simply come out and put on one hell of a show. It may be a commonly accepted cliché that James Brown was "the hardest working man in show business," but you'd be hard pressed to prove that after witnessing Springsteen's dynamo of energy on display here in a concert that lasts long enough for bright sunshine to give way to the shadows of nighttime.
Bruce works hard, so he's allowed to sweat.
Springsteen has always been one of the most unpretentious musicians of his generation, a "regular guy" that most of us find instantly accessible and real. That working class ethic shines through the London Calling concert, when from the first thrashing moments of the title song, Bruce and band simply let loose with a good, thumping rock beat and pretty much never let it go for the rest of the three hour tour. Springsteen visits all eras of his now multi-decade career, hitting a lot of the expected hits ("Born to Run" and "Dancing in the Dark"—albeit without a Courtney Cox stand-in ushered up on stage) to lesser known and/or newer material from his Working on a Dream album. (There are some notable missing tunes like "Hungry Heart," so read the set list at the bottom of this review if you're looking for some tune in particular). Through it all, Springsteen doesn't just perform the songs, he embodies them physically, with a grimacing face and often tightly shut eyes, as if he's being transported away to some private island of creativity. Springsteen is one of those rare performers who seems to really enjoy what he's doing, and manages to convey that without a scintilla of pretense. This is just good, basic rock and roll, delivered honestly and with a lot of integrity.
London Calling: Live in Hyde Park is an ambitious concert documentary by any stretch of the imagination. First, there's the incredible length of the piece: Bruce and band come on stage and then rip through one song after another for an astonishing two hours and fifty-plus minutes. There's little chit-chat, just the occasional count off by Bruce as the band lights into yet another rock classic. But the filmmakers also had to contend with the awesome size of the crowd, which seems to go on for miles. Lots of aerial crane shots capture the teeming masses that are there to adore their hero, and it's really a breathtaking sight to see so many thousands swaying in unison. But perhaps most ambitious of all is the lack of high-tech magic to supposedly distract us into believing the music is better than it is, so often the refuge of other, less gifted artists who tend to rely on the visual rather than the aural to make their live concerts memorable. This is a mostly well-filmed concert with an unusually wide array of angles and shots, and most importantly, it gets the viewer right up there next to Bruce for the bulk of the evening. Some may quibble about a couple of botched shots in terms of capturing soloists and the like, but the overall proximity to Bruce and his crack players more than makes up for these passing qualms.
There's rarely a break to catch a breath throughout the evening. In fact I was repeatedly struck by the lack of ballads and lower key material on the main concert offering (there is a nicely reflective version of "The River" included as a bonus performance). How can Bruce and the band keep their energy so unflagging for so long? They obviously suck in waves of love from the audience, and Bruce does make a foray or two out at least close to the front row, at one point taking a handful of huge poster "requests" back to the stage. At another point, he jokingly falls down in exhaustion after having hiked out to the audience and then back up a long flight of stairs. But within a moment he's up on his feat, thrashing at his guitar and emoting with that husky, almost hoarse, voice that has become his trademark. This is a guy who's obviously in it for the music, both for what that music provides to him personally and how it communicates something ineffable to his audience. It's such a refreshing pleasure to see someone performing honest, down to earth rock music without any frills. A lot of Johnny-come-lately's could take a lesson from The Boss, as London Calling amply proves. Bruce and the E Street Band may indeed be senior citizens in official terminology, but their music is timeless and this concert proves that age is no obstacle for good, old fashioned rock 'n' roll.
Bruce's set list includes:
London Calling
Badlands
Night
She's the One
Outlaw Pete
Out in the Street
Working on a Dream
Seeds
Johnny 99
Youngstown
Good Lovin'
Bobby Jean
Trapped
No Surrender
Waiting' on a Sunny Day
Promised Land
Racing in the Street
Radio Nowhere
Lonesome Day
The Rising
Born to Run
Rosalita
Hard Times
Jungleland
American Land
Glory Days
Dancing in the Dark
Raise Your Hand
London Calling: Live in Hyde Park bursts onto Blu-ray with one of the best looking live concert images I've seen recently. Encoded via AVC and delivered with a 1080i "live" image in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the concert looks sharp and incredibly well detailed from the first notes in the bright sunshine to Bruce's final "We love you" delivered in the black of night some three hours later. Bruce's black shirt is always clearly delineated from the dark backdrop, which speaks well of black levels and contrast, and colors (mostly in the audience and the sideboards off of the stage) look lifelike and are extremely well saturated. Things actually improve somewhat the darker the evening gets; you'll therefore start to notice dust flecks and the occasional bug flying around (one gets dangerously close to being sucked up Clarence's nose at one point). Close-ups reveal a wealth of detail, and there's an unusual amount of lens refraction utilized here, which throws nice rainbow arcs out over the band.
London Calling offers two lossless audio options, an LPCM 5.1 and an LPCM 2.0, and (somewhat strangely) a standard Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. I spent about 99% of the concert listening to the LPCM 5.1 mix, but toggled briefly to the uncompressed stereo mix and the DD 5.1 mix just for comparison's sake. This is a thumpingly bombastic soundtrack by any measure. Those of you who may have read my review of the new Tom Petty audio Blu-ray may remember I was a bit surprised at how low the bass was mixed on that effort, but there's none of that here. Live in London virtually assaults the listener with a very, very robust low end, which never dissolved into crackling or distortion. Bruce, truth be told, is not the greatest singer in the world, and his hoarseness does very occasionally get gobbled up in the mass of sound the band is putting out, but that's about the only complaint I have with this concert. Otherwise we get a remarkably clean and clear reproduction of the music with no obtrusive audience noise. Separation is excellent, but it's the remarkable fidelity that will impress most right off the bat. Turn this one up to 12--11 won't be quite enough.
Two nice extra performances are featured, both in HD and both clocking in at 6:24. "The River" is performed from the Glastonbury Festival and finally shows Bruce in a more laid back, introspective light. This live performance also looks really cool, with a bunch of flags floating in the breeze. It also features a mournful harmonica solo by The Boss. "Wrecking Ball" is also on tap, in its original music video version memorializing the destruction of Giants Stadium. This one has some great vintage footage of a young, bearded Bruce.
There's no reason to settle for indistinguishable blobs any longer. If you've been lucky enough to supposedly "see" Bruce live, but haven't been lucky enough to be in the front row, or if you've never seen The Boss in concert, Live in London is a tour-de-force performance that will leave you breathless. Even if you are a longtime fan and have had the good fortune to get up close and personal at a live performance, you're going to want to check out this remarkable Blu-ray, which comes very, very highly recommended.
On June 22, Columbia Records/Sony Music will release Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band's London Calling: Live In Hyde Park concert film on Blu-Ray disc. Captured in London at the Hard Rock Calling Festival on June 28, 2009 in HD, this release marks the first ...
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