Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band
McDonough Arena
Georgetown University
Washington D.C.
December 5, 1975
(DS Archives Volume Eight)

Transfer: Low Gen (presumed 2nd) via DS Archives > Nakamichi DR-01 (azimuth adjusted) > Peak Pro XT (pitch adjustment / volume smoothing / subtle tweak / edit / index) > xACT 2.21 > FLAC

01 Thunder Road
02 Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
03 Spirit In The Night
04 Lost In The Flood
05 She's The One
06 Born To Run
07 Pretty Flamingo
08 Growin' Up
09 It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City
10 Backstreets
11 Kitty's Back
12 Jungleland
13 Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
14 4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
15 Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town
16 Detroit Medley
17 For You
18 Quarter To Three
BONUS
19 WHFS Christmas Message (WHFS Bethesda, MD 1975-12-05)

Known Faults:
-First few notes cut on a number of songs
-Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out: volume drop (corrected), very small splice
-Growin' Up: splice

We continue our journey through the DS Archives staying in 1975 and a brilliant show at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., the first of three nights at the McDonough Arena.

First some interesting early history of McDonough Arena and musical events. McDonough began hosting shows in 1963 with Ray Charles gracing it's stage, along with many fairly obscure bands, heavier and more well known acts began to perform. The Who played McDonough in November 1969, available on a well known soundboard recording, but it was The Grateful Dead's October 1970 show that just about shut down music events at McDonough for years to come. As one witness describes their arrival, "It all started when, instead of being left at McDonough Gymnasium, they were dropped off at the main gate. Their resultant walk around the campus undoubtedly shook up a few of the alumni who had returned for Saturday's Homecoming game." (Rohter via www.geochaching.com)
More than six thousand fans turned out for the show exceeding the acceptable range for fire regulations by about two thousand. The combination of the Dead's reputation regarding drug use and the size of the crowd led the Vice President of Student Development to have "questions concerning the flagrant violations of drug laws during the concert". Against their better judgement the university allowed a November 15th performance by Traffic to go forward with the same, if not worse, results. Once again six thousand turned out and ultimately the gym was vandalized and in November 1970 the university cancelled all rock concerts going forward.
Slowly, in the following years, music returned to McDonough Arena. By 1974 the Arena was once again hosting major acts. In March 1974 Bruce and band played two shows at the smaller 740 seat Gaston Hall, by late 1975 behind the success of Born To Run the band moved up to the larger arena for a three night stand.

The opening night captured here is nothing short of brilliant, DC is only about 100 miles from the band's second home of Richmond, VA (see volume three of our series for the fantastic August 1st Richmond, VA show) so the band is in a sweet spot for fan support and as usual rises to the challenge.

The back half of the tour continues to be a nice mix of old and new material and now features a beautiful performance of "Lost In The Flood" added to the set during the November shows in London.

In 2013, I was able to upgrade this show from my own archives presenting a complete version that did not have the tape warp found on the most common version. A number of songs have the first few notes cut but in my opinion these small cuts don't interfere with the overall enjoyment of the recording. The lower generation tape confirms the taper had a good location for taping and did an overall excellent job capturing the complete performance. With the release of this version we move this show from "for collectors" to a highly listenable capture that I'm confident will elicit repeat playings. The more I worked on it, listening to it again and again, it quickly rose as one of my favorite shows of the Born To Run era. Samples provided.

We round out our release with two short Christmas messages Bruce and the band recorded for radio station WHFS in Bethesda the day of the show (sometimes incorrectly dated as December 6th).

Once again, thanks go out to a number of folks that helped put me in touch with Dan, their assistance and passion for Bruce and getting this music in your hands continues to be invaluable...IvannF, EarlMv, Oats1jvo as well as E from JEMS for the use of the NAK DR-1.
The biggest thanks goes to Dan for making his archives available for us all to enjoy...

mjk5510

Previous DS Archives Releases:
Volume 1: Bruce Springsteen 1980-10-11 Chicago, IL (1st Gen)
Volume 2: Bruce Springsteen 1975-09-21 Minneapolis, MN (2nd Gen)
Volume 3: Bruce Springsteen 1975-08-01 Richmond, VA (Low Gen)
Volume 4: Bruce Springsteen 1975-09-16 Dallas, TX (Low Gen)
Volume 5: Bruce Springsteen 1975-09-16 Dallas, TX (Recorder 2 Un-circulated)
Volume 6: Bruce Springsteen 1975-11-01 Santa Barbara, CA (2nd Gen)
Volume 7: Bruce Springsteen 1975-10-04 Detroit, MI (1st Gen Aud Un-circulated)

Images for all shows as well as full size images for this show.

Images for this show: