Bruce Springsteen
Oakland Coliseum Arena
Oakland, CA
October 22, 1984
(Recorder 4)
35th Anniversary Edition

Transfer: Master Cassettes > DAT > Fostex D-5 > Audacity 2.39 (16/48) > Peak Pro 6 (pitch adjusted) > iZotope RX / ozone 5 (mastered) > Peak Pro 6 (patch / post production) > 16/44 > xACT > FLAC

01 Born In The U.S.A.
02 Prove It All Night
03 Out In The Street
04 Atlantic City
05 Johnny 99
06 Nebraska
07 Highway Patrolman
08 I’m Goin’ Down
09 Darlington County
10 Glory Days
11 The Promised Land
12 Shut Out The Light
13 Darkness On The Edge Of Town
14 Badlands
15 Thunder Road
16 Hungry Heart
17 Dancing In The Dark
18 Cadillac Ranch
19 Sherry Darling
20 Stolen Car
21 Downbound Train
22 I’m On Fire
23 Cover Me
24 Pink Cadillac
25 Bobby Jean
26 Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
27 I’m A Rocker
28 Street Fighting Man
29 Follow That Dream
30 Born To Run
31 Detroit Medley > Travelin’ Band
32 Twist And Shout > Do You Love Me
33 Santa Clause Is Comin’ To Town

Known Faults:
-Darlington County: 19 seconds patched with Recorder 2

After we posted the double shot of master tapes for the fabulous first night of a two night stand in Oakland. It's time to set sights on the tighter and more focused night two from a previously uncirculated source and like the previous night's captures, it is a top tier capture of a top tier show.

Whatever Bruce Springsteen put in the tank before the October 22, 1984 performance, the result was a clean burn, marked by efficiency and exacting versions of everything he and the E Street Band played.

The concert, the second of two at the Oakland Coliseum Arena, included songs that any setlist-watching fan would notice. But listen to how the band plays: by now they were a unit, and here they sound magnificent. Even “I’m Goin’ Down” — which Springsteen questioned because they couldn’t quite find the right live arrangement — sounds like a natural.

The pivot from the summer to autumn found the Nebraska songs taking on more prominence: 10/22 features a neat quartet, including both the title track and “Highway Patrolman", which meant that anyone who went both nights heard eight of the LP’s ten tracks. Overall, Springsteen had swapped in ten songs that hadn’t appeared the first night.

Two of these were big ones. In the first set, “Shut Out the Light” made its debut. Unreleased at the time, it left fans scrambling at intermission to discover its origins (it would emerge the next week as the B-side to the “Born in the U.S.A. single). In the second set, Springsteen honored Greil Marcus’s request for “Stolen Car,” which he hadn’t played since August, 1981.

Change was in the air: a third single was in the works, the most from any Springsteen LP at that point, “Dancing in the Dark” was all over MTV, and a few nights prior “Rosalita” had sat out for the first time in over a decade (“Racing in the Street” took over officially a week after this show, on October 29 in Los Angeles). 

Through all that, the band just kept getting better. Given the dynamic performance from the night before (and its own surprises), October 22 is a hidden gem. Strip out the billboard numbers, and what remains is straight-ahead and business-like.

This 35th Anniversary fourth source comes from an anonymous taper, anonymous for two reasons, 1) I do not have permission to identify him or her and 2) I don't have a record who I got it from over two decades ago, only the DAT tape labeled as "from the master cassettes".

The taper did a fantastic job capturing the night with only one cut right after the start of "Darlington County". All previous sources have the start of "Darlington County" cut, fortunately on this source the taper caught the first few seconds before flipping the tape so even though the Recorder 2 source is missing the start, it picks up before the tape flip in this Recorder 4 source. Therefore, I was able to seamlessly patch the start and this is the first time we get the show 100% complete.

One other detail, besides the excellent quality, makes this source stand out and that's the surprising lack of audience noise. Most of the shows I work on take hours of work cleaning up external audience noises and mic bumps. Other than a few mic bumps, the taper was able to find a spot of relative quiet in a crowd of tens of thousands rabid Bruce fans.

Thanks to the anonymous taper and to 'slipkid68' for his detailed perspective of the actual performance you enjoyed above.

Samples and artwork provided...

mjk5510