BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND - Bryn Mawr, PA 1975

I've been meaning to post this legendary Bruce gig for a while...at least since I went, courtesy of my bro David, to a fantastic E Street Band show down in Anaheim two Mondays ago. Yes, the one with Tom Morello's already-legendary, shrederrific guest spot on "The Ghost of Tom Joad".

Sadly, the death yesterday of longtime E Street keyboardist Danny Federici seems like the best possible reason to share, so here it is. (Federici was such a long-timer, in fact, that it was he who first invited Bruce to join his own band, some 40 years ago.)

Look on any list of Best Boss Boots and you will find this one – variously titled The Saint, the Incident & the Main Point Shuffle, You Can Trust Your Car to the Man That Wears the Star, Main Point Night or, since a recent remaster, Prodigal Son – very near the top. It contains, among other gems, Bruce covering Dylan’s "I Want You" and Chuck Berry's "Back in the U.S.A."; a wonderfully energetic "Growin’ Up," my first and still all-time fave Boss tune; and the earliest known performance of "Thunder Road," when the song was still called "Wings for Wheels," with substantially different lyrics and arrangement (i.e., Mary of the waving dress used to be named Angelina – who knew?) The hot-off-the-press Born to Run numbers are so new that, for example, there's not a peep from the audience during the piano intro to "Jungleland."

Even better, since the show was broadcast on WMMR-FM in Philadelphia, it's perfectly recorded; we're talking A+ dead-on 100% flawlessly perfect. Yet the thing remains thick with smoky-clubby atmosphere. Also, at 160 minutes, it was one of longest shows up to this point (though there would certainly be longer ones down the road…) Like all tip-top quality bootlegs, how this was never officially released is a mystery.

Quibbles? Only one: no "10th Avenue Freeze-Out." But hey, Bruce can tell ya that life ain’t no prom dance...

R.I.P. Danny Federici!

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND
The Main Point - Bryn Mawr, PA - February 2, 1975 (FMB)
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