Press Red for Bruce

Digital viewers who press red this week are able to access a couple of snippets of Springsteen from the session which will be on BBC4 on Friday. It's looking quite good really. His version of John Henry is most entertaining, although the sound engineer deserves a good kicking.*

It always amazes me, watching him play, that he doesn't break strings all the time.

You can also watch a 20 minute preview here. 20 minutes! That's a third of what's scheduled! Might be a bit of a slow download with a 28k modem, though.

On this evidence, I might have to buy the album after all, if I see it cheap.

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*UPDATE: The sound engineer is forgiven, because the mix was fixed for the actual broadcast, which was clever.

The whole gig was great entertainment, and judging from the bizarre content of some of the Google referrals today, was viewed by people who had never seen Broooooooce before (as I explained on another post, no they really weren't booing, folks). I do hope they stayed on for the 1975 concert afterwards. Springsteen gave all the trad material a shot of adrenaline, and the ensemble was pretty decent, if a bit too polished(!). There was much to please me there - two fiddles, pedal steel guitar, lap steel, organ, accordion. I thought the acoustic guitars were a bit weedy in the mix (what does Patty Scialfa do? 4/4 time all the time?), and it was odd how quiet Springsteen's Jumbo sounded even compared to the smaller bodied model he used on "We Shall Overcome."

Great stuff.