Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
March 2, 1981
Hampton Roads Coliseum
Hampton, Virginia
Recorder 4
(JEMS Archive)

Transfer: JEMS Archives Low Gen (likely 1st)Tape > Nakamichi DR-01 (azimuth adjusted) > Sound Devices USB Pre2 > Audacity 1.3.11 > Peak Pro 6 (pitch adjusted) > iZotope RX / Ozone 5 (mastered) > Peak Pro 6 (post production) >  xACT 2.37 > FLAC

01 Prove It All Night
02 Out In The Street
03 Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
04 Darkness On The Edge Of Town
05 Independence Day
06 Who'll Stop The Rain
07 Two Hearts
08 The Promised Land
09 This Land Is Your Land
10 The River
11 Badlands
12 Thunder Road
13 Ramrod
14 Fire
15 Candy's Room
16 You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
17 4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
18 For You
19 Wreck On The Highway
20 Racing In The Street
21 Cadillac Ranch
22 Sherry Darling
23 Hungry Heart
24 Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
25 I'm A Rocker
26 Jungleland
27 Born To Run
28 Detroit Medley

Known Faults:
-You Can Look: 8 seconds patched at the start with Recorder 2
-Rosalita: 5 seconds patched at the start with Recorder 2

Though the JEMS team continues to be focused on the weekly releases of Mike Millard's extraordinary legacy, work continues on mining the archives for upgrades and alternate sources. We have come across an exciting alternate source for the artist that began the JEMS collective all those decades ago.

Virginia was something of a second home to Bruce Springsteen, where his band Steel Mill generated a considerable following. By 1981, of course, Springsteen had grown much bigger than his old band ever had, but he and the E Street Band still came around.

Maybe the region’s appeal is why Hampton was initially scheduled as the last stop of the winter tour. But dates in Lexington and Indianapolis had to be made up from February, when Springsteen apparently came down with strep throat. Hampton may have lost its chance for the title, but got an outstanding show nonetheless.

The March 2 concert at Hampton Roads Coliseum typifies the 1981 structure: shorter performances, with fewer songs each night from The River than 1980 dates featured. Whether for creative, narrative, or health considerations, Springsteen narrowed the scope when he returned to the road in the new year. (Shows in New York in December, 1980, were among the longest he and the E Street Band ever played.)

Now, they stuck to a set list that, while not quite static, seemed designed to get the job done. Its streamlined nature still left room to rotate songs: here, we get a representative range, including 11 from The River (“Wreck on the Highway,” “I’m a Rocker”), as well as “Fire", “Racing in the Street,” and “Jungleland.” 

The first set sounds strong throughout, from a well-paced opening three-pack to a heartfelt reading of “Independence Day,” and on through to the still-in-progress arrangements of “Who’ll Stop the Rain” and “This Land is Your Land.”

While those covers would grow prominently as the year went on, the former gets a little extra Virginia love; Springsteen’s remarks to set up the latter are chilling in their prescience.

In the second set, a shuffled set list finds “Ramrod” opening, moving the customary trio of River rockers to the back: here’s your chance to cue up a recording where “Hungry Heart” gets played just before “Rosalita” — do not attempt to fix the file set! That’s how it went down, though the reason why isn’t known.

We do know how lucky we are to present the previously uncirculated fourth known recording source. Found hiding in plane sight in the JEMS Archives this source should easily become the go to version for this show and clearly puts on display how powerful a show this was.

The unknown taper, lost to history, was clearly not new to his craft and knew what they were doing. Is it possible it was one of the legendary Dead tapers extremely active in the area at the time?

Though slightly back from the stage this is a full bodied capture with excellent stereo dynamics and only 13 seconds of music missed, patched with Recorder 2. The audience noise is kept to a minimum and the show is stable throughout.

As mentioned previously, this leg of shows were shorter than the epic Winter 1980 shows possibly gearing up the band for the tightly focused European leg yet to come. We feel this release highlights this performance as one of the very best shows during this leg of the tour.

This one was a group effort with BK mining the archives and handling transfer duties, mjk5510 providing the end to end mastering and slipkid68 articulating the excellent performance notes.

Artwork and samples provided...

BK, mjk5510 and slipkid68 for JEMS