RACING IN THE STREET

Live 15 Dec 1978 version

[Spoken intro:] It's Roy Bittan on the piano, Dan Federici on the organ. And that was Max, on the drums, playing drums for you. Alright. Back home... One, two. Can we get this up a little bit, Bobby? Alright. Back home there's a... (someone yells out a request) We'll get to that later, ok? That's a surprise, I can't say. Back home there's this, there's this like uh, there's two streets, Kingsley Avenue and Ocean Avenue. You couldn't ever have been there. (chuckles) And it's like, and they form this big oval on Friday and Saturday nights, in the summertime they burn up about half the gas in the United States, I guess. But this is for everybody back home at Sixth Avenue in Asbury Park who I'm sure will hear this someday through the magic of bootlegging, alright? Here's "Racing In The Street".

I got a '69 Chevy with a 396, fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor
She's waiting tonight down in the parking lot outside the 7-Eleven store
Me and my partner Sonny built her straight out of scratch and he rides with me from town to town
We only run for the money, got no strings attached, we shut 'em up then we shut 'em down

Tonight, tonight the strip's just right, I wanna blow 'em off in my first heat
The summer's here and the time is right, we're going racing in the street

Well we take all the action we can meet and we cover California state
When the strip shuts down we run 'em in the street from the fire roads to the interstates
Now some guys they just give up living and start dying little by little, piece by piece
Some guys come home from work and wash up and go racing in the street

Tonight, tonight the strip's just right, I wanna blow 'em all out of their seats
We're calling out around the world, we're going racing in the street

Well I met her on the strip three years ago in a Camaro with this dude from L.A.
I blew that Camaro off my back and drove that little girl away
But now there's wrinkles 'round my baby's eyes and she cries herself to sleep at night
And when I come home the house is dark, she sighs "Baby did you make it all right"
She just sits on the porch of her daddy's house, now all her pretty dreams been torn
She stares off alone into the night with the eyes of one who hates for just being born
And for all the shut down strangers and hot rod angels rumbling through this promised land
Tonight my baby and me we're gonna ride to the sea and wash these sins off our hands

Tonight, tonight the highway's bright, out of our way mister you best keep
'Cause summer's gone and the time is right, we're going racing in the street

Info

The above lyrics are for the live 15 Dec 1978 performance of RACING IN THE STREET at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, CA, during the Darkness On The Edge Of Town Tour.

The 15 Dec 1978 Show

During the Darkness On The Edge Of Town Tour, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band performed two consecutive shows at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, CA, on 15 and 16 Dec 1978. According to Billboard magazine, both nights sold-out well in advance ─ a total of 10,800 tickets were sold with gross receipts of $80,975.

Winterland Ballroom opened in 1928 as an ice skating rink that could be converted into a seated entertainment venue. In 1971, concert promoter Bill Graham took over the facility. He renovated it and converted it to exclusive use as a 5,400-capacity music venue. At the end of 1978, Winterland Ballroom closed down. Graham explained to Billboard that spiraling costs in operating the facility, which is used only sporadically, along with continuing pressure from various Fillmore District neighborhood organizations, are the reasons for the closing. To commemorate the final days of use of Winterland Ballroom, Gragam booked shows nearly every night in December 1978. Acts included Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Kenny Loggins, Ramones, Greg Kihn Band, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Blondie, and Grateful Dead, among others.

According to Brucebase, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band's two shows at Winterland Ballroom may have been filmed on the in-house video system, but no concrete evidence has ever emerged that indicate that this is the case. There is plenty of video footage of other artists at the venue from around the same period, but the most likely scenario is that any film of those two night was lost in a fire at Bill Graham's San Francisco warehouse offices in 1985. It is possible that a copy may still reside in Springsteen's vaults.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band's 15 Dec 1978 concert was broadcast live on local radio station KSAN-FM and also simulcast to audiences in Sacramento, Eugene, Portland, and Seattle on their respective rock stations. This also marked the fifth and final live radio broadcast from the Darkness On The Edge Of Town Tour. Home recordings of the show were taped off the airways and have since circulated among fans. The last three songs ─ TENTH AVENUE FREEZE-OUT, RAISE YOUR HAND, and QUARTER TO THREE ─ were not part of the broadcast, but they are available on soundboard tapes that have long circulated among fans.

A fan who was present at the show recalls with a certain degree of certainty that when the show was over and the stage was cleared, Springsteen and the band returned some minutes later to perform one more song, TWIST AND SHOUT, for those who remained. However, it's unlikely that the song was performed on this night based on the available recordings and the lack of any supporting evidence.

Promotional poster for the 15 and 16 Dec 1978 shows at Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, CA

Ticket stub for the 15 Dec 1978 show at Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, CA

In December 2019, the complete 15 Dec 1978 concert was officially released on Live.BruceSpringsteen.net (see the "Official Live Downloads" section below for more details). The concert was recorded live with the Record Plant Remote Truck by Pete Carlson. Three reel-to-reel tape recorders were in action: two 2-inch, 24-track machines jointly recorded the concert and a high quality 15-IPS, 2-track recorder served as a back-up/reference capturing the front-of-house mix as it happened. The surviving multi-track reels from that night cover less than half the show, either because some tapes were lost over time or because there were complications during the recording. Luckily, four decades later, the 15-IPS, 2-track master tapes were discovered. They were transferred by Jamie Howarth in 2019 at Plangent Processes, with audio engineering and restoration by Jon Altschiller and additional engineering by Danielle Warman. Small portions of THE PROMISED LAND, JUNGLELAND, FIRE, QUARTER TO THREE, and Bill Graham's introduction are missing on the master tapes; a two-track broadcast recording was used to complete the show. The recording was mastered to DSD and PCM by Adam Ayan at Gateway Mastering Studios in Portland, ME.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band -- Winterland 12/15/78

The 15 Dec 1978 broadcast from Winterland Ballroom was commercially released in Europe. Since 2005 some enterprising record labels in Europe (mostly in the UK) have been releasing Bruce Springsteen radio and TV broadcasts (and some soundboard recordings) from the seventies, eighties, and nineties. Though these releases are not authorized by Bruce Springsteen or his record company, they are lawful due to a legal loophole in Europe.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band -- Winterland Night 1978

3xCD - Leftfield Media (LFM3CD532) - UK, 2014

This release contains the 15 Dec 1978 broadcast from Winterland Ballroom.

Bruce Springsteen -- Winterland 15th December 1978

3xCD - Echoes (ECHO3CD2001) - UK, 2014

This release contains the 15 Dec 1978 broadcast from Winterland Ballroom.

Bruce Springsteen -- Winterland 15th December 1978

4xLP - Echoes (ECHO4LP2001) - UK, 2014

This release contains the 15 Dec 1978 broadcast from Winterland Ballroom.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band -- Winterland Night 1978 Volume One

2xLP - Let Them Eat Vinyl (LETV257LP) - UK, 2015

This release contains part 1 of three of the 15 Dec 1978 broadcast from Winterland Ballroom.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band -- Winterland Night 1978 Volume Two

2xLP - Let Them Eat Vinyl (LETV258LP) - UK, 2015

This release contains part 2 of three of the 15 Dec 1978 broadcast from Winterland Ballroom.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band -- Winterland Night 1978 Volume Three

LP - Let Them Eat Vinyl (LETV259LP) - UK, 2015

This release contains part 3 of three of the 15 Dec 1978 broadcast from Winterland Ballroom.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band -- Winterland Night 1978

Digital album - Lilith Records (no catalog number) - UK, 2016

This is a download-only digital album. It contains the 15 Dec 1978 broadcast from Winterland Ballroom.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band -- The Complete 1978 Radio Broadcasts

15xCD - Sound Stage (SSCDBOX10) - UK, 2015

This release contains the 09 Aug 1978 broadcast from The Agora, the 07 Jul 1978 broadcast from The Roxy Theatre, the 19 Sep 1978 broadcast from Capitol Theatre, the 30 Sep 1978 broadcast from Fox Theatre, and the 15 Dec 1978 broadcast from Winterland Ballroom.

Bruce Springsteen -- The Broadcast Collection 1975-1995

5xCD - Cult Legends (CL93154) - Europe, 2023

This release contains the 05 Feb 1975 broadcast from The Main Point, the 15 Dec 1978 broadcast from Winterland Ballroom, and the 14 Dec 1995 broadcast of the Columbia Records Radio Hour radio show.

Official Live Downloads

Prior to the High Hopes Tour, Bruce Springsteen's management announced a new service allowing fans to download concert recordings approximately 48 hours after each show. The initial plan required fans to purchase a special USB wristband, which could then be used to download a single High Hopes Tour show of the purchaser's choice and also functions as a regular reusable USB flash drive. The wristband, which could be purchased online or at the concert venue, was priced at $40. Following some negative response from fans over the high cost for the wristband, Springsteen's management subsequently announced a separate cheaper option for purchasing shows directly, without the need for the wristband. The shows were available for purchase and download via Live Nation, Bruce Springsteen's concert promoter, priced at $9.99 for MP3 and $14.99 for FLAC. Audio recordings for 31 of the 34 High Hopes Tour dates (all except 16 Feb 2014, 06 Apr 2014, and 03 May 2014) were released as such and they were available until 30 Jun 2014.

On 17 Nov 2014, Live.BruceSpringsteen.net was launched. It's a new addition to the official website, serving as an online store offering high-quality live concert recordings as well as high-resolution digital releases of Springsteen's album catalog. The download store is powered by Nugs.net in cooperation with Columbia Records. Audio recordings for 30 of the 34 High Hopes Tour dates (all except 16 Feb 2014, 06 Apr 2014, 03 May 2014, and 18 May 2014) were re-released on the new download store in multiple formats, including MP3, lossless CD-quality FLAC or ALAC, and 24-bit HD FLAC or ALAC or MQA, as well as audio CD-R with custom artwork. Nugs.net adopted the MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) format on 24 May 2017. From then on, all Bruce Springsteen live concert recordings, including the previously released ones, became also available in MQA.

Audio recordings for all 75 The River Tour 2016 dates were also released on Live.BruceSpringsteen.net in multiple formats, including MP3, lossless CD-quality FLAC or ALAC, and 24-bit HD FLAC or ALAC or MQA, as well as audio CD-R with custom artwork. Each show was generally released within a month after it took place.

Audio recordings for all 14 Summer '17 Tour dates were also released on Live.BruceSpringsteen.net in multiple formats, including MP3, lossless CD-quality FLAC or ALAC, and 24-bit HD FLAC or ALAC or MQA, as well as audio CD-R with custom artwork. Each show was generally released within a month after it took place.

Archival releases were periodically released on the same site, as part of the Bruce Springsteen Archive Series. These shows were also made available in multiple formats, including MP3, lossless FLAC or ALAC, 24-bit FLAC or ALAC or MQA, DSD, and audio CD-R. So far 90 shows (or sets of shows) were released from the ongoing series.

Available Versions

List of available versions of RACING IN THE STREET on this website:

Page last updated: 25 Dec 2019