Month: December 2017

It’s Just Me and You Tonight


Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Capitol Theater, Passaic, New Jersey, September 20, 1978

By Erik Flannigan

It was a homecoming when Bruce and the E Street Band returned to the Capitol Theater for a three-night run in September 1978. The Passaic shows were the band’s first New Jersey appearances on the Darkness tour, coming at the end of a run that saw Springsteen play 22 shows in 32 nights, nine of which took place within the 14-mile radius encompassing Madison Square Garden (three sold-out nights), the Palladium (another three sold-out nights) and the Capitol Theater. If you’re looking for the heart of the Darkness tour, look no further than the Passaic stand.

To mark the occasion, a special marquee was commissioned for the theater, and, most famously, it was decided that opening night at the Capitol, September 19th, would be broadcast live on FM stations from Maine to Virginia including WNEW-FM in New York City. The Passaic broadcast was a culmination of much of the success that had been earned on the Darkness tour, and, thanks to tapes and bootlegs of the broadcast, it was helped seal the legend of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band live in concert.

But the next night the pressure was off, and that’s what makes the Capitol Theater, September 20, 1978 such an exceptional performance and an essential addition to the archival download series. “It’s just me and you tonight,” says Bruce before launching into the show-opening cover of “Good Rockin’ Tonight.” If night one in Passaic was playing to Bruce’s entire east-coast fanbase listening on the radio, night two was playing for himself and many of his longtime Jersey fans.

What follows is an electric, 22-song performance that delivers much of the core ‘78 tour set along with special selections for those stalwart local supporters, including a long, band-showcasing “Kitty’s Back”; the galvanizing cover of the Animals’ “It’s My Life” (frequently played at 1976-77 shows but uncommon in ‘78); and a very rare live coupling a la the album of “Incident on 57th Street” into “Rosalita” which justifiably brings the house down. Smashing stuff.

As great as those special additions are, Darkness on the Edge of Town material is performed here at its peak, so the versions of “Badlands,” “The Promised Land,” “Prove It All Night” (with its long instrumental intro), “Candy’s Room” and the title track capture Bruce and the band at the height of their powers, augmented by the album outtakes “Fire” and “Because the Night” in equally fine form. If you’re looking for “Racing in the Street,” Bruce subs “It’s My Life” in its place, seemingly to honor an audience request you can make out clearly in the recording.

Add in future River songs “Independence Day” and “Point Blank” and there is no denying the intensity of the September 20 performance and the total commitment of the musicians. Even on tape, you can feel it as much as you hear it.

Yet the magic of a Springsteen concert is the balance of darkness and light. Here, with only 102 shopping days left until Christmas, the playfulness comes as Bruce performs “Santa Claus is Coming To Town” for the first time since 1975. Likewise, the encore is pure release, first firing a turbo-charged “Born to Run,” followed by an ebullient “Tenth Avenue Freeze-out,” “Detroit Medley” and finally, what else but “Twist and Shout.” As the latter comes to an end, a sweat-drenched Springsteen takes off his coat, throws it over his shoulder and shouts triumphantly, “I’m goin’ home!” He was already there.

Line recordings of the September 20 show have circulated for many years, initially in mono (pulled from an in-house video recording) and later in stereo from soundboard tapes. For the first time, this release comes from multi-track reels captured by the Record Plant’s mobile recording unit and mixed by Bob Clearmountain, after restoration by Jamie Howarth at Plangent Processes.

Compared to even the best of the bootlegs, Clearmountain’s mix is next level, fixing instrumental and vocal balance, while adding dimensionality, depth and a polish that this sparkling performance fully deserves. The Darkness tour has never sounded better than this.

Brothers and Sisters Don’t You Cry, There’ll Be Better Times By and By


Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band
New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, New Orleans, LA
April 30, 2006

By Erik Flannigan

Some things are meant to be. That Bruce Springsteen’s immersion into roots music, The Seeger Sessions, was released just six days before he and the band of the same name appeared at the first New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival post-Hurricane Katrina had to be an act of benevolent fate. Rarely has the subject matter and style of a particular set of music felt so apropos to a moment.

Often it is the confluence of occasion and performance that distinguishes a great show from an all-timer and on those grounds, Jazz Fest 2006 has come to be considered one for the ages. “This…felt even above and beyond Springsteen’s high performance standards,” wrote LA Times critic Randy Lewis in his contemporary review, “a concert infused with the shout-out jubilation of an unfettered hootenanny.”

Reverent reflections on Bruce’s Jazz Fest performance have continued ever since. “I am not alone in ranking that show as quite likely the best, and certainly most emotional, musical experience of my life,” wrote New Orleans Times-Picyune critic Keith Spera in 2012.

Spera’s opinion is shared by none other than Springsteen himself, who wrote in Born to Run, “There was one show in America that stood out as not only one of the finest but one of the most meaningful of my work life: New Orleans.”

With such heady endorsements, Jazz Fest 2006 fully merits inclusion as the latest release in the archival download series. For those not lucky enough to witness the show in person, the official recording also represents a fresh opportunity to re-experience the performance, previously only available via audience recording.

The sound here, mixed from multi-tracks by Jon Altschiller, is full-bodied and warm, with a wide-stereo mix that gives space to all 20 or so players and singers on stage, and just the right amount of crowd response to capture the full bilateral experience.

“Alright, this is our first gig, let’s hope it goes well,” Bruce says at the top, summing up a spirit that’s equal parts purpose and looseness.

The former comes from being in New Orleans, post Katrina, a subject Bruce addresses head-on, notably in his intro to “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?,” reflecting on the devastation he witnessed while touring the city the day before the show and calling out the failure of government officials, from then President Bush on down, to address the situation. He goes so far as to dedicate the song to “President Bystander.”

The looseness is there by design in the very act of assembling and bringing this seemingly unwieldy number of accomplished players to the stage to play timeless folk and protest music (save for a few reworkings of Bruce’s own songs) for the first time on the road, as Jazz Fest also doubled as opening night of the Seeger Sessions tour.

The result is a Springsteen performance that’s fully in the moment and delightfully off the cuff. One minute he’s solemnly addressing the difficult times many in the Jazz Fest audience were experiencing, the next he’s mocking his own inability to tune a guitar or having an amusing wardrobe malfunction with his belt.

The music follows the same recipe for catharsis. “We Shall Overcome” is majestic and poignant, “Eyes On the Prize” elegiac and “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?” triumphant, each brilliantly arranged to showcase the capabilities of the band. Elsewhere singalong songs like “Buffalo Gals” and “Pay Me My Money Down” offer rollicking fun and feel right at home on the Jazz Fest stage. As Springsteen himself wrote in Born to Run: “I finally had a band that I felt would contextually fit Jazz Fest and might be able to pull the weight of that position.”

Of the Seeger-ized originals played here, “Open All Night,” reimagined as a big-band rave-up, is the standout, but another of Bruce’s own compositions, written with this kind of band already in mind, provided the night’s emotional crescendo.

“This is a song I originally wrote for my adopted hometown, Asbury Park,” Springsteen says introducing “My City of Ruins.” “Parts of it look a lot like parts of New Orleans right now….so I wanna sing this and dedicate it to the people and the city of New Orleans tonight.”

The fitting question the song asks, “How will I begin again?”, and the empowering answer, “Come on, rise up,” struck a deep chord with many in attendance. Wrote Spera in his original Times-Picyune review, “Thousands lifted their hands to the sky. I wept, my wife wept. And we were not alone.”

Throughout the set, lyric after lyric from the Seeger Sessions material feels penned for the New Orleans audience. “What happened to you poor folks just ain’t fair,” Springsteen declares in “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?,” while “O Mary Don’t You Weep” prophesies, “Brothers and sisters don’t you cry, there’ll be good times by and by.” Hearing such words of acknowledgement and hope sung out in such a musically engaging performance translates wonderfully in the Jazz Fest 2006 recording.

Perhaps the LA Times’ Randy Lewis summed it up best: “One concert, of course, cannot even begin to undo such monumental destruction as Katrina left, but Springsteen seemed to understand that even a moment of renewal can make a huge difference.” Amen to that.