"Get a Producer."

I've got mixed feelings about Springsteen and the E Street Band Live in Barca. Parts of it are very good; parts of it are not. For the first couple of songs (both from The Rising) the sound seemed to be of bootleg quality; it ebbed and flowed. But then they went into Prove it All Night, and all was well.

Except now I sound like one of those fans who only likes the older stuff, which is not a cap I like to wear. All you need to know about me was that I was one of the few who really loved his 1992 releases, Lucky Town and Human Touch, so it's not a usual thing for me to dislike something just because it's different to what came before.

But a couple of things Bruce has done recently don't sit well with me. One concerns the trendy new producer, Brendan O'Brien, who certainly gave a slightly newer sound to the record, but not exactly better. A deal of clarity has been lost. There was a story I read once about Springsteen meeting up with Phil Spector, after all the praise heaped upon Born to Run and it's Spector-like wall o' sound. Spector is reported to have said something like, "If I was working with you, your records would be better, and clearer."

And the follow-up, Darkness on the Edge of Town was substantially clearer. So clear, in fact, that it took on a sort of nightmare hyper-real quality. There was an alive-ness and edge to it that was very different to what had gone before.

Springsteen will always have that, something few artists get the chance to have, that trajectory from messy-but-interesting first two albums, through breakthrough Born to Run, succeeded by the powerful negation/affirmation of Darkness. Take the 3 central records of his career, Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, and The River, and you have his version of Dylan's Bringing it All Back Home to Blonde on Blonde trilogy. Everything after that is so much more difficult.

But whereas Dylan live is more often than not disappointing (I'd say that about 5 of the 6 times I saw him play), Springsteen has always been able to give his songs something extra on stage. This was always true of the Darkness songs. You hear the bootlegs from 1978, and you get something of the flavour, something of the reason his shows are always described as "legendary." It was always better when he had less material to draw from. A 3 hour show based on the first 4 albums (and unreleased songs) was miles better than a 2 and a half hour show based on 12. The long, long intros you used to get were wonderful. And Darkness songs still form the backbone of his live set.

When "Prove it All Night" kicks off on this DVD you don't get the long intro anymore, but you do get a sense of things coming right. The arrangements are well worn now, but the band and the song fit together so well. The problem with some of the newer material, for me, is that he is obviously having trouble singing it. His voice is all over the place. You'd think he's lost the ability to sing in the way that Dylan did (wouldn't be a surprise after Springsteen's career), but then he sits at the piano and sings "Incident on 57th Street," and you realise that it isn't the singer, but the song.

The new songs are wrong. Whatever he's been doing, using different chords, capos, or whatever, forcing himself to sing in an unfamiliar register, is adversely affecting his ability to perform well. That said, the two best live songs from the newer record are two of the so-so ones. "Mary's Place" and "Waiting on a Sunny Day" fit right into the set as if they've always been there.

In places this is very moving to me, and I've no regrets about ownership. But close your eyes and listen to the best songs, and they're the old songs, played in the old way. As for the Band, they are a great road band, and always have been. But there are probably too many of them. Too many guitars on stage, and no thought seems to have been given to arranging the songs so that all the guitars fit. Bruce, Nils, Steve, and Patti are all playing guitar at some points, and you can't really hear what's going on. It's just a mush. Springsteen's guitar playing is not what it was, and Nils Lofgren is underused. When Steve Van Zandt steps forward to shout his vocals along with Bruce, it seems unnecessarily aggressive and ugly. Lofgren is a much more understated performer, standing on tip toe at his mic, and gently crooning his BVs... and he's clearly, by now, the best guitar player in the band.

By way of contrast (and unfair comparison) Shania Twain - Live In Chicago shows how good a big road band (with lots of guitars) can be. These players know when not to play, and the sound on this TV special is excellent. You don't quite get the emotional connection, and there's no "Promised Land" in her repertoire, but it's a lot of fun. It was nice, too, seeing one of her guitarists (Brent Barcus) playing a Variax. If only Shania got quite as sweaty as Bruce, this would be the complete entertainment.

The standout tracks on Live in Barcelona for me are the aforementioned "Incident on 57th Street" and "She's the One," both dating from the 70s. They have a freshness born out of having not been played for a few years, but they also fit in with the sound the E Street Band makes. Above all, they remind you what it is about this music that you fell in love with as a teenager, and what a rich vein of material Springsteen has to mine. It wasn't the Reagan years that made his career, but the Nixon/Ford/Carter years that came before.