Born To Run tour, and as Rolling Stone had just run a Greil Marcus-authored review of the album, there's hunger in the air from both the band and the audience. The E. Street band was in Tampa for a two-night stand at the venue called Jai Alai; this was the first of the two nights. Highlights including a swaggering"10th Ave."/"Spirit In The Night" double-punch, a still-fresh "Born To Run" and an incredible 17-minute "Kitty's Back." I'm told that this bootleg was from a well-regarded (if slightly fast) and apparently unbooted audience tape then put a lot of work into equalization, noise reduction and speed correction. Consulting the Bruce Base website of setlists, it indicates original tape in circulation cut off near the end of "Quarter To Three,' but it's complete here. (The Bruce Base site also speculates that this is a soundboard, but it's not.) Some dropouts and tape-saturation distortion are still audible; there's a cut at the beginning of "Backstreets." Pro-CD-R! label Anubis specializes in vintage resurrections (some remastering jobs of classic vinyl bootleg titles), and this is a very nice job all around. Vocals and keyboards are terrific, making this a key artifact of this time period and tour - just before the hype went into overdrive. The artwork is great too: black/white live photos from the BTR era (possibly this show?), two separate four-page booklets included, one reproducing an excerpt from the Marcus review; picture labels on the discs. The art, by the way, is designed to go into a slimline jewel case but, as per most Anubis numbered/limited-to-99 editions, the package arrives in a sealed/numbered envelope, with each disc coming housed in a cello-line CD envelope. ANUBIS # 2211/12 (2003) |
