Bruce Springsteen
War Memorial Theater
Trenton, New Jersey
November 29, 1974 
(Joe Kivak Master Tapes via JEMS)

JEMS 2023 Transfer: Joe Kivak Master Cassettes > Nakamichi RX-505 azimuth-adjusted playback > Sound Devices USBPre2 > Audacity 3.1 capture > iZotope RX > iZotope RX9 Advanced and Ozone 9 > MBIT+ resample to 16/44.1 > Audacity > xACT 2.50 > FLAC

01 Incident On 57th Street
02 Spirit In The Night
03 Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street?	
04 I Want You
05 Growin’ Up
06 It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City
07 The E Street Shuffle	
08 Jungleland
09 Kitty's Back
10 New York City Serenade
11 Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
12 4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
13 A Love So Fine
14 Wear My Ring Around Your Neck
15 Quarter To Three	

Known Faults:
-The E Street Shuffle: two patches of 25 seconds and 24 seconds
-Kitty’s Back: 38 seconds patched

Our third installment from the master tapes of Joe Kivak revisits Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s November 29, 1974 performance in Trenton, New Jersey. It joins another master recording of this concert by Big A. While Joe’s recording has circulated, this file set presents a transfer directly from Joe’s cassette tapes, judicious 2024 mastering, and pitch correction — just in time for its 50th anniversary.

Joe Kivak was unquestionably the first serious and committed taper of Springsteen concerts, with dozens, even hundreds, of dates under his belt. His efforts in 1974 merit special attention, as they provide essential documentation prior to the Born to Run era: see our restorations of Kivak captures from New York’s Bottom Line (July 13) and Avery Fisher Hall (October 4).

Trenton finds Springsteen and the new-look E Street Band — at this point, nearly complete in the iteration that would take it deep into its classic era — stretching out on numbers like “The E Street Shuffle” and “New York City Serenade.” Such labyrinth-like arrangements were hallmarks of this era, as were covers like “I Want You” and “Quarter to Three.” Whether his own compositions or borrowed ones, Springsteen used studio recordings for reference as he and the E Street Band proceeded to reimagine them on stage. 

After constant change that year — evolving musical styles, three drummers, and withering status with Columbia Records, history shows that Springsteen was poised for success. He’d already met Jon Landau, who wrote that spring that after seeing Bruce play that he had seen “rock and roll future.” New songs would soon underscore his future manager’s famous line: “Born to Run,” “She’s the One,” “Jungleland,” and “A Love So Fine” were all in various stages of development. November 29 features the latter two (and like the Avery Fisher Hall date, it curiously omits “Born to Run”).

Last year, Joe graciously loaned the first portion of his master tapes to JEMS so we could attempt a modern and (we hope) definitive preservation, capturing the sound, correcting the pitch, and fixing issues to provide the best representation of this terrific and historic performance.

For the first time, we offer Kivak's capture with both respectfully new mastering and fully patched making it 100% complete. For our release of the Big A source, we included a patched version of Kivak’s cut “Kitty’s Back” as a bonus track. Until work began on this new transfer, we didn’t know that two additional cuts appear in “The E Street Shuffle.” We are happy to report that even though the Big A source is incomplete, patches were available for both — thus, “The E Street Shuffle” is complete here.

More important than what we did, let’s salute Joe once again for another contribution to Bruce’s early years as a performer. He and Big A make Trenton the second confirmed two-source show. (The first confirmed two recorder source show took place a month before, on October 18, in Passaic, New Jersey.)

Huge respect to Joe Kivak for the foresight to capture Bruce multiple times before his star really took off. Thanks for allowing us to revisit your work! Thanks also to SE, who got the ball rolling on our little project and Goody for his never-ending work to ensure we present all our shows at the proper pitch.

mjk5510 and slipkid68 for JEMS