Bruce Springsteen
This Is Called The Promise

Paramount Northwest Theatre
Seattle, Washington
June 25, 1978

Label: JEMS/Ev2
From the Series: JEMS: The Darkness Tour Masters Revisited
Format: 2CD
Source: Audience
Lineage: Master Reels @ full track mono > Tandberg Model 11 > Wavelab 96/24 1ch mono > wav 44.1/16 2ch mono > flac.
Taping Gear: Tandberg Model 11 R2R deck, Sony ECM-22P mic.


Recorded and Transferred by JEMS; Mastered by EV2

Disc One:
01 Badlands
02 Night
03 Spirit In The Night
04 Darkness On The Edge Of Town
05 Introduction
06 For You
07 The Promised Land
08 Paradise By The C
09 Fire
10 Adam Raised A Cain
11 Mona / Not Fade Away
12 She's The One
13 Growin' Up

Disc Two:
01 Backstreets
02 Intro
03 Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
04 "This Is Called The Promise"
05 The Promise
06 Born To Run
07 Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
08 I Fought The Law
09 Quarter To Three

"For years, only half of this superb Darkness tour concert circulated. Why? Serious technical difficulties.

Like many JEMS masters of the era, the Paramount show was recorded on a Tandberg portable reel-to-reel recorder on seven-inch reels. The deck ran on ten D cel batteries, and the tape reels literally hung off the edges of the recorder. As we have previously recounted, that night, the tape of the first set began to spool onto the floor, which was as sticky and nasty as you can imagine a 1978 concert floor being. S gathered up the wad of tape and it sat (as I recall in a plastic bag) for years.

But because the show was recorded in full-track mono, even though the tape was damaged and oxide was shed, once the tape was cleaned and repacked onto a reel, we were able to restore several songs from the first set. To be clear, four important songs are missing (�Prove It All Night,� �Racing in the Street,� �Thunder Road� and �Jungleland) and there are issues with �Badlands� at the start and later with �Promised Land,� not to mention sound-quality degradation with �Quarter to Three� because S had to drop the speed on the recorder to make sure he could record the whole song.

But what IS there is special. For my money this is one of the most appealing audience recordings of the entire tour, with incredible clarity and a very cooperative crowd from a taping perspective. It was recorded from row JJ, the last row of the Paramount on the main floor, with a Sony microphone hung in the curtain sash as we did for many years and many concerts. I hear things on this recording I don�t remember hearing in other shows.

It also contains what I would argue is THE definitive solo piano performance of �The Promise.� Here, that cooperative crowd really comes into play as the song is stunningly performed to rapt silence. If for no other reason, you should download this show (or at least the track) to hear �The Promise� as it was performed this night.

Samples of that song and others are provided. For this release, the original reels were freshly transferred on the original Tandberg deck at 24/96 and Erno provided very gentle mastering and minor fixes.

There are three more Darkness tour masters to go. Sorry it has taken so long but this one is well worth the wait."

Butterking for JEMS

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