Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Rosemont Horizon
Rosemont, IL
September 11, 1981
(JEMS Archive)

Transfer: JEMS Low Gen Tape > Nakamichi DR-01 (azimuth adjusted) > Audacity > Peak Pro 6 (pitch adjusted) > iZotope RX / ozone 5 (mastered) > Peak Pro 6 (patch / edit) > xACT > FLAC

01 Thunder Road
02 Prove It All Night
03 Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
04 Darkness On The Edge Of Town
05 Jersey Girl
06 Independence Day
07 Trapped
08 Two Hearts
09 Out In The Street
10 The Promised Land
11 The River
12 This Land Is Your Land
13 Who'll Stop The Rain
14 Badlands
15 Hungry Heart
16 It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City
17 For You
18 Cadillac Ranch
19 Sherry Darling
20 I Wanna Marry You
21 Backstreets
22 Ramrod
23 Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
24 Jungleland
25 Born To Run
26 Detroit Medley
27 Quarter To Three

Known Faults:
-The Promised Land: 4 Seconds patched at the start
-Set 1 Outro: 37 seconds of audience & dialogue patched
-Rosalita: 3 patches throughout the song of 6 seconds, 2 seconds and 7 seconds


The work at JEMS Archive continues, bringing the best-possible field recordings to one and all. You’ve surely seen the ongoing Mike Millard series; while those entries earn the acclaim they merit, so do lesser-known efforts made by his fellow tapers, many whose identities we’ll never know.

That anonymity even applies in some instances where we have a first-generation copy. But if the quality is high, we’re happy to put them in the hopper. That’s been the case with a run from Bruce Springsteen’s 1981 tour.

In the past year or so, we’ve shared new or better sources for at least a half-dozen River tour recordings, from Hampton, Virginia; Berlin; Zurich; Rotterdam; and Copenhagen (two for Hampton, for those keeping score at home). Returning to 1981 for such upgrades pleases us to no end.

With that, this file set presents a new take on something of a sleeper hit: the last of three nights in Rosemont, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. The River tour would end three nights later in Cincinnati; within months, Springsteen would record what became Nebraska, then begin the marathon sessions that yielded Born in the U.S.A.

Initially, the 11-month, 140-date River tour was to have ended in San Diego on September 2. But dates in Chicago and Cincinnati got pushed back when Bruce had taken ill. To finish, they merely loaded up the serendipity that had kicked in as the summer tour went along, and returned to the Midwest. The 27-song set in Chicago plays out like a celebration. 

And we’re good with that: after the success of The River, which included a Top-10 single, a Number One record, an enormously successful European tour, and raising the profile of the Vietnam Veterans Movement, give Springsteen credit for throwing himself a party.

Nine songs from The River appear, as do others Springsteen and the E Street Band had worked up over the past ten months, including a superb take on Tom Waits’ “Jersey Girl.” The tour’s first “Saint in the City” is a welcome break-out (last played: 1/1/79, Richfield), while “For You” and “I Wanna Marry You” take their last bows for well over a decade. “Quarter to Three” gets another nod to close things out.

Like other finds, these cassettes were simply cataloged in the JEMS Archive, waiting for evaluation and transfer.

The one circulating source for this show is described on Brucebase as having "tinny" sound. That is a fairly accurate description, it has never been a show that elicits more than a passing curiosity due to the quality of what has circulated.

This share from the JEMS Archives is the same source that currently circulates but it's hard to believe that it comes from the same recorder. It has plenty of low end that's missing from the current source and is quite rich in frequencies. 

As an added bonus, the mjk5510 archives has produced a second source, uncirculated in the torrent era, that has given us the ability to patch this source resulting in the show for the first time being heard complete and uncut. The second source is remarkably close in quality to this source, however, it does suffer from instrument drag throughout the show. Fortunately, the patches needed were not long enough to result in any drag and are relatively seamless.

As with the recent Hampton release, this one comes to you as a group effort from BK, mjk5510 and slipkid68.

We hope you enjoy this upgrade and give this show the time it deserves, no longer a passing curiosity, we can now clearly hear that after almost a year on the road, Bruce and company still had plenty of gas left in the tank to raise the roof in celebration with 18,000 of their closest friends.

BK, mjk5510 and slipkid68 for JEMS