Bruce Springsteen is continuing his live Archive Series of CDs which began last year with the release of the Apollo Theater, New York City concert of March 12, 2012 and the Agora Theatre, Cleveland show of August 9, 1978 (from The Darkness on the Edge of Town tour). The newest release, for which pre-orders began Tuesday, takes fans back to the Tower Theatre, Philadelphia, on December 31, 1975 when Springsteen and the E Street Band held the stage for an electrifying night.
The last night of 1975 was also the last night of the Born to Run tour. As the press information for this new release indicates, “engineer Jimmy Iovine brought The Record Plant Remote truck out for the occasion. Front of house recordings of this show have circulated for years, along with partial tapes of stereo mixes from the multi-tracks. This marks the first time the entire show has been mixed for release.”
Toby Scott at Thrill Hill remixed the tracks just last month, and Adam Ayan at Gateway Mastering mastered them for this release. The nineteen-song rock and roll extravaganza includes seven of the eight songs from Born to Run (sorry, “Meeting Across the River” fans) as well as favorites from Springsteen's first two albums (“It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City,” “4th of July Asbury Park (Sandy),” “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight”) and choice covers such as the epic reinvention of The Animals’ “It’s My Life,” “Mountain of Love,” “Pretty Flamingo,” the Detroit Medley, “Quarter to Three” and the show-closing “Twist and Shout.”
As with the other releases in Springsteen’s live series, Tower Theater Philadelphia 1975 is available in multiple formats: MP3 ($9.95, 256 kbps), FLAC or Apple Lossless ($12.95), HD-Audio ($24.95, 24 bit/192 kHz, FLAC-HD or ALAC-HD) and CD ($23.00). CDs will not begin shipping until March 10, but those purchasing the CD have the usual option to pay $5.00 extra to obtain MP3s now.
All three volumes of The Bruce Springsteen Archive Series – plus a number of recent concerts from 2014 – are available at Springsteen’s official live store for download and physical purchase. You can also sample tracks at this link!
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Tower Theater Philadelphia 1975 (Columbia/Nugs.net, 2015)
- Intro
- Night
- Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
- Spirit in the Night
- Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?
- It’s My Life
- She’s the One
- Born to Run
- Pretty Flamingo
- It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City
- Backstreets
- Mountain of Love
- Jungleland
- Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
- 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
- Detroit Medley
- Quarter to Three
- Thunder Road
- Twist and Shout
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As with the recent Agora show from 1978, they offer the option of an instantaneous MP3 download for $5 more if you purchase the CDs now. It's nice to have a version of the music so quickly, but the audio quality is, as you might suspect, significantly lower than the CD.
Thanks, Ron!
The MP3-right-now-for-an-extra-$5 offer to CD buyers is available for all of the Springsteen shows, not just this one and the Agora shows (as some may have inferred from ronfrankl's comment).
Another difference between the download and the CDs is that the downloads have a short gap of silence between each track, whereas on the CDs there's no audio "break."
This release is a perfect bookend to the Main Point in Bryn Mawr shows in Feb of the same year. (Bryn Mawr is only a few miles from the Tower Theater.)
The Main Point shows are available if you search for them. They are line recordings from WMMR Philadelphia's broadcast. A much smaller and more intimate coffee house crowd.
Main Point was just before the release of Born To Run (Thunder Road was still WINGS FOR WHEELS) bur it was a hell of a show, and these two show how much Bruce exploded in one short year.
The Main Point show is the one where Bruce does a gorgeous version of Dylan's "I Want You" slowed way down, correct? Amazing show, and a top-notch recording. Glad they're not releasing that one, as the bootleg sounds so good there's really no need. Better to release other stuff.
Haven't listened to it in a few years, but I think I'll dig out in anticipating of this Tower Theatre release!
I'm hoping we'll get a really great show from The River tour next. 12/31/80 would be an obvious choice, but the Vietnam Veteran show, or the "Follow that Dream" show would make great choices too (not to mention the obvious sound upgrades an official release would bring).
Yep, that's the one. I believe after this show, he played Widener Univ and then all hell broke loos with Born To Run coming out. There is a very slight line feed at a couple of spots early on, but it is such a classic small crowd show.
Now if I could find out if a recording exists for the Oct 73 show at Villanova when he opened for Jackson Browne, That was my first Bruce show and I paid $4 and sat fourth row.
Bruce references that tour when he inducted Jackson Browne into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame.
I don't have a gap on my Agora downloads, loving that Bruce is finally opening up the vaults. A professionally mixed, mastered Main Point show would be a nice addition!
I agree. There's a grey market version of the Main Point concert available as an import from Amazon. It's fine, but sonically it's not an upgrade from the versions that have circulated the last 40 years. Silver-backed CDs, though.
It sounds like the CDs are CD-Rs unfortunately.
I'd love if anybody here could confirm. I've purchased one set from the archive (not one of the three designated Archive Series releases, but a 2014 concert) and the discs were indeed CD-Rs. I've read reports on other forums praising the discs from the Archive Series (i.e. the Apollo and Agora shows) as actual factory-pressed CDs. Could anybody confirm or deny? Thanks!
They are cd-rs according to the people posting on the Backstreets website. Personally, a waste of my time, never knowing as to whether or not the music will deteriorate over the years.
I have the Agora CDs in front of me. They look like CD-Rs but with printed tops. Shame. For what they are charging, they should be factory pressed.
That is a shame. It'll be FLAC for me, then. Cheaper, lossless, and I can supply my own discs. Same for the Agora show, which I still need to get.
If, in fact, these are CD-Rs, then I wouldn't touch them. Certainly not at these prices.
This is the best Springsteen show I've ever heard. And I've heard many. Wow!!!
Deeply buried in the FAQs to the Live.BruceSpringsteen.net it says:
"CDs are professionally printed and duplicated on the highest quality silver CDRs and packaged in cardboard slipcases with custom artwork including the track listing".
So it seems this applies to all CDs coming from the site
With all the comments here regarding pressed CDs vs. CD-Rs, I guess it's as good a place as any to mention this:
I haven't been able to find confirmation on the net, but the major labels *might* (?) be beginning to manufacture "new" CD-R copies of older catalog albums, without labeling them as such.
A few months ago, I bought a new copy of Depeche Mode's 2001 album Exciter from bestbuy.com; the package arrives and I open it only to find a CD-R with a printed top (replicating the original artwork) and what looks like a photocopy-reprint of the liner notes/packaging. (In other words, better quality than what Average Joe could create with his CD burner & color printer at home, but clearly not what one would expect in this case.) I double check the item listing online, and it is indeed described as a brand new audio CD.
I halfheartedly try to get my money back, and the response is exactly what I expect: after explaining the situation to three or more employees of the company (at various paygrades), every single person either fails to understand my complaint, or just doesn't care. All I get is the standard "copywrited material must be unopened etc etc" and I'm left with what might be a pretty coaster in five years.
Like I said, I couldn't find anything online to indicate if this is a trend for the future, but I guess it's buyer beware from now on if you're shopping for a title that's older and/or not-so-popular.
I've been seeing it, too, with fairly obscure items (jazz and older rock) that have been licensed to tiny companies for reissues. Amazon, for one, seems to do a decent job of mentioning it in the item description. I would be pretty angry if I got a CD-R version without prior notice.
It's back to vinyl, folks! 🙂
Except - majors are making the same mistakes over and over again, and trying to sink a blooming market by charging ridiculous prices...
I'm curious what other people think about the new mix of this show (I know there has long been a soundboard recording available of 12/31/75 as well as multitrack mixes made in 1976 of a few of the songs for a possible live album assembly that never was); the artificial reverb added seems to be over-the-top in my estimation. This one is less enjoyable than Agora 1978 for that reason, classic show that it may be.