Bruce Springsteen The Palladium New York City, NY September 17, 1978 (Soundboard) (1st Generation Cassettes > DAT) Transfer: 1st Generation Tape > AK DAT Clone > .wav > iZotope RX 4 / ozone 5 > Peak Pro 6 > xACT 2.39 > FLAC 01 Badlands 02 Streets Of Fire 03 Spirit In The Night 04 Darkness On The Edge Of Town 05 Independence Day 06 Factory 07 The Promised Land 08 Prove It All Night 09 Racing In The Street 10 Thunder Road 11 Meeting Across The River 12 Jungleland 13 Kitty’s Back 14 Fire 15 Candy’s Room 16 Because The Night 17 Point Blank 18 Not Fade Away > She’s The One 19 Incident On 57th Street 20 Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) 21 Born To Run 22 Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out 23 Detroit Medley Known Faults: -Prove It All Night: splice -Detroit Medley: end cut -Quarter To Three: missing Occasionally, news items characterized a Bruce Springsteen concert as a warm-up for another one. A San Francisco Chronicle article in 1984, for example, implied that two shows in Tacoma were somehow a staging ground for the Bay Area dates. As if. Whatever the journalistic shorthand, Springsteen was in a constant state of preparedness, especially on the 1978 tour. It was a continuum, really, where the standard he set remained impossibly high from start to finish. Some nights, things went supernova. This concert, recorded on September 17, 1978 at the Palladium in New York City, preceded a gig two nights later, across the river in Passaic, New Jersey. Surely, you’re familiar with that one. But the Palladium is no warm-up, or even a dress rehearsal. It's a standard Darkness tour installment, albeit with a few bonuses in the set: “Incident on 57th Street,” and, by request, the first “Meeting Across the River” since 1976. This upgrade makes for a wonderful listening experience. Springsteen surely knew that his next gig was an FM radio broadcast and a stop where professional recording would capture the music. This Palladium date could be the one after which he handed off his trusty Fender (the Esquire, as it’s known) to ace luthier Phil Petillo for a mid-tour tune-up. The calendar and his remarks in Passaic make that a possibility. He and the E Street Band sound relaxed and ready. They'd consistently added new material to the set, and kept that going through the turn into autumn, surely pleasing the repeat customers from the August run at Madison Square Garden. Once again, we’re graced with an amazing stereo recording from the soundboard. There’s a lot to pick up on here, whether the terrific separation or roomy ambiance — dig the interplay between Roy Bittan and the rest of the band as “Kitty’s Back” moves into the three- and four-minute marks. Springsteen’s guitar work is equally superb. Like the upgrade from Kansas City, one wonders whether a precise recording was planned to prepare for the broadcast two nights later. This is an excellent material upgrade to all circulating versions, the Hussey Remaster of the "Lost Soundboard" tape features "Prove It All Night" 'complete' but we have confirmed that all verified 1st Gen > DAT copies that are not in circulation, that we know of, contain the cut in "Prove It All Night". Not knowing the actual source of the portion we would have used to patch and the fact the frequency signature is very different (big quality drop) we have chosen to leave as is with the splice in place (smoothed of course). This one was a JEMS group project beginning with AK's fantastic DAT clone off of the 1st generation cassettes of the Soundboard. Our partner Professor Goody added his pitch perfect ear to get us in tune along with a number of other tweaks to the file, mjk5510 did the final mastering work and post production, Butterking oversaw the project keeping us all on track providing his unmatched mastering knowledge and slipkid68 lent his formidable writing skills to the notes. Artwork and samples included... A JEMS Group Project