Among the Bruce Fan nation, among the most legendary concerts ever were the three night stand the E Street Band did at the Captol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey on September 19-21, 1978, deep in the middle of the Darkness on the Edge of Town tour.
It was, by all accounts, a very special engagement – it was right around Springsteen’s 29th birthday, it the midst of a “comeback” of sorts, as Springsteen celebrated both the critical and commercial triumph of Darkness, and a tour where he was finally being regarded on a national rather than regional stage as one of the best live performers of the day.
The series was broadcast live on the radio – leading to the concert being among the most bootlegged concerts in history, with examples of widely-varying quality surfacing all over the place for the past 33 years.
Anyway – through the miracle of Youtube, videotapes of the concerts have finally been popping up over the past year or so. I’ve been putting bits and pieces out there – but since the Springsteen fan/maniac community is so very thorough about keeping things like setlists and posting them online, I figured it was time to reconstruct these dates in all their original glory.
The concert is below the fold – the whole page takes some time to load, with all the separate video containers.
Enjoy.
Watch this show for a while, and the biggest things that smack you are…
- How vital Clarence Clemons was to the show back then.
- The whole band – everybody, Roy and Danny and even Gary Tallent, everyone but Max, really – singing?
01 Badlands
02 Streets of fire
03 Spirit in the night
04 Darkness on the edge of town
05 Independence day
06 The promised land
07 Prove it all night [With long guitar intro]
08 Racing in the street
09 Thunder road
10 Meeting across The river
11 Jungleland
12 Kitty’s back
13 Fire
14 Candy’s room
15 Because the night
16 Point blank
17 Not fade away – with the whole band
18 She’s the one
19 Backstreets
20 Rosalita (Come out tonight)
21 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
22 Born to run
23 10th avenue freeze-out
24 Detroit Medley
25 Raise your hand
I have this bootleg…Piece De Resistance..the best of all the boots. Cool to see the videos!
Thank you.
All that needs to be said.
I had seen some of these vids before, but never in order or in context. Wonderful stuff.
Still don’t care much for Bruce. But the dogs on main street howl. And Thunder Road will always be friggin awesome.