| 1. Cut Finally. There are a handful of shows in the annals of Brucedom that have taken on legendary status and Seattle Center Arena '78 is one of them. In this particular case the legend owes to the show being written about passionately and extensively by the Springsteen fanzine Backstreets. And for good reason: its not only a stunning, late-tour performance with some notable changes from the Winterland broadcast just five days earlier, but it famously includes a two-song bonus encore that began some 10-15 minutes after the show had ended, the lights had come up and the crew was starting to take down the stage. Of the few hundreds still left in the arena at that moment, Taper Hall of Famer (if only there was such a thing) S of JEMS was there, and when Bruce and the band returned he started the deck back up to capture the shocking results. Of note is the fact that this show was recorded on a Tandberg reel to reel in full-track mono which means every millimeter of tape was going in one direction and capturing the sound across the entire width of the tape. That gives this recording a depth that even the best audience cassettes of the tour don't have good as they are. Wider tape, faster speed, better recording. As the only known recording of this show, JEMS' tape has circulated before and it is the originating source of the bootlegs Pretty Flamingo and This Is For the Crazies. The latter was a material upgrade to the former but never has this show been presented from the true masters. Nor have the first two songs of the show widely circulated in part because they are cut due to some technical difficulties that night. For this fresh 2009 transfer, every minute JEMS recorded is available for the first time including the start of the show where you can hear the problems that were eventually rectified by the end of "Streets of Fire." When the surprise encore happened at the end of the night and its second song, "Twist and Shout," began, S turned the recording speed down one notch to make sure he had enough tape to get it. The quality drops slightly because of that but the tradeoff was "Twist" is preserved in its entirety. This 24/96 capture from the master reels and the original deck was then passed to EV2 for his mastering touch which, though light, makes a difference. The show is being presented both in CD-friendly 16/44.1 (remastered into "stereo" from the mono source) and high-res 24/96 (straight mono, which helps keep the file size down) versions. If you ever wanted to hear the benefit of an analog audience tape benefitting from 24/96, this might be your test case. There are many highlights to be had, too numerous to mention really, but if you have heard about this show or even if you haven't, its one of the key Springsteen audience tapes to get. And it has never sounded better than it does now. Samples provided. /Butterking for JEMS |
2 comments:
Brilliant, simply brilliant. Thank you for sharing these, it's a great bonus to have access to shows like this as I'm rebuilding my collection (long story which sux but that's life!). Major credit to ya :)
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