Your moment of Bruce: a more uptempo live version of Atlantic City than usual, from a Parkinson’s benefit show – and yet another reminder that while Springsteen’s voice may be awfully gravelly these days, he’s at his peak now as a guitarist:
Bonus: Code of Silence:
That’s pretty much the same version he’s been playing w/Grushecky since 1995, and w/the E Street Band since ’99. See Live in NYC for an absolutely majestic version from July 2000.
Of course he had better hair back then.
If you mean the arrangement, it’s longer than that – the version on his 1993 MTV CD is even better than the Live in NYC version. But this was definitely a faster tempo.
BTW, that MTV “Plugged” CD is great, if hard to find these days – the version of “Light of Day” is awesome.
Dude — Light of Day with the ’92 band has to be one of the most excruciating versions ever. Ugh. That was a great soul band, but they were complete strangers to straight ahead rock’n roll. At one point early in the tour Roy Bittan was tasked with teaching them how to play “Born to Run”. He had problems from the get go because the new drummer and base player had never heard of the song, let alone played it.
Go back and find some tapes from the ’88 tour with the E Street band + horn section where Bruce was dropping “Born to be Wild” and “Land of a Thousand Dances” in the middle of Light of Day and you’ll hear what I’m talking about. Now that was rock ‘n roll.