Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
featuring the Miami Horns
Are You Ready For The Final Moment?

Music Hall
Boston, MA
March 25, 1977
24/96 Hi-Res Version
(also includes Repair Kit for 3/22/77 see below)

Steve Hopkins master via JEMS 

Taping Gear: Sony ECM-99A > Sony TC-158SD (recorded on three Maxell UD 90-minute tapes, Dolby B encode) 

JEMS 2012 transfer: SH master cassettes > Nakamichi CR-7A (Dolby B decode) > Sound Devices USBPre2 (24/96) > Audacity 2.0 > Peak Pro 6.2 with iZotope Ozone > FLAC

01 Night
02 Don't Look Back
03 Spirit in the Night
04 Incident on 57th Street
05 Thunder Road
06 Mona > She's the One
07 Tenth Avenue Freeze-out
08 Action in the Streets
09 It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City
10 Backstreets
11 Jungleland
12 Rosalita
13 Born to Run
14 Quarter to Three
15 Little Latin Lupe Lu
16 You Can't Sit Down
17 Higher and Higher

"Are you ready for the final moment? Are you ready for the last time?"

Night four of what I consider Springsteen's greatest concert stand ever is the final show in the run and a contender for one of Springsteen's finest performances, though that could be said of any night in this remarkable Boston '77 run.

It is certainly a show I have listened to a hundred times or more both on tape and its previous bootleg CD incarnations, all of which suffered to varying degrees from pitch issues. For these 2012 transfers, Steve Hopkins' masters have been pitch tested and corrected (thanks J) and we can now hear this show in all its resplendent glory. I know every nook and cranny of the performance so hearing it sound so fresh has been immensely satisfying.

The fourth night returns the Miami Horns' showcase "Action in the Streets" to the set in the place of "Growin' Up" and preserves the remarkable encore addition of Jackie Wilson's "Higher and Higher," more poignant than ever in the final concert before the lawsuit settles and Bruce finally returns to the studio.

It was this version of "Don't Look Back" that I practically wore out on tape and it still feels like the ultimate performance of the song. The one-two punch with "Night" as the opener has never been bettered. Add to that a marvelous "Incident on 57th Street" and a stunning "Backstreets" that builds to the "SHE LIED"/"JUST BLOW IT ALL AWAY" crescendo that gives even the finest "Sad Eyes" interlude a run for its money. 

This performance, and the three previous, Springsteen is alive and electric. I can't imagine a show where he is more in the moment. Hear for yourself. Samples provided. Ticket stub, too, as well as a great photo (cover material you designers out there) of Hopkins' color-coded, Dymo-labeled stack of masters cassettes of the complete Boston run. Over the course of four nights, I think he missed fewer than 90 seconds of music as he flipped tapes, which in itself is incredible. And there's nary a cut this night.

I want to personally thank Steve for putting up with a few years of my gentle pestering to torrent his masters. That he would come to allow me transfer them and prove to be such a fantastic partner in this whole project has been a genuine pleasure. Yeah, I know, it is just a hobby. And we are hobbyists. But putting out the Boston '77 recordings that have meant so much to me and other fans for so long transcends the underground fraternity of which we are all a part. 

ALSO included in this torrent is a 3/22/77 Repair Kit: two corrected tracks that fix an issue in the torrent JEMS posted of Hopkins' first night, recording, 3/22/77. hobbes4444 wrote to me awhile back and correctly pointed out (thank you) that there was an editing error in the 3/22/77 tracks that misplaced the intro to "You Can't Sit Down" at the end of "Jungleland." In order to have track IDs at the start of songs and given where the tape flips occur, we sometimes move the intro to a song to the end of the prior song in terms of the file. In this case, instead of tacking the intro of "You Can't Sit Down" to the end of "Quarter to Three" (the song that precedes it), I inadvertently tacked it onto the end of "Jungleland." Happily, the correction only required new versions of two tracks: "Jungleland" (YCSD intro removed) and "Quarter to Three" (YCSD intro added at the end). These should be seamless, so go ahead and drop them into your folder for 3/22/77 and throw away the original files for tracks 10 and 14.


BK for JEMS