Huge Springsteen news (about downloads)!*

In an interview in Backstreets magazine #82 Ed Sciaky offers some important information, "We didn't have a phone line from the Main Point, so they had to tape the show in hour-long segments and then drive them to the station and put them on the air... and after the final reel had played, Bruce's lighting guy Marc Brickman (lighting director) took all of the tapes. So we (WMMR) never got a good copy of the show”. The concert broadcast was also likely to have been subjected to some kind of auto-limiter, designed to limit the volume difference between loud and quiet segments.

 

According to http://brucebase.wikispaces.com/1975:

Contrary to myth the police siren heard at the conclusion of “Incident On 57th Street” is an audio prop that had been utilized at a few of Bruce’s shows just prior to this one, i.e. it was not a real vehicle.

If you track down other performances of "Incident" from around this time you'll hear the siren again...

 

It was unrealistic to think individual song downloads would be available. Being unrealistic, for the 2014 concerts that is something I would have especially embraced. Easier for me to spend a dollar here and a dollar there and crank up a playlist of say 50 covers, rarities, favorites, and newer songs, spanning the 30 shows, as opposed to buying complete shows, where I don't have time to listen to the complete concert and not inclined to hear the same warhorses. I know, that is unrealistic of me.

 

This is the only thing that would get me to purchase a recent show. I think there is a real opportunity to increase sales with a big compilation from each tour.
Just making up numbers, if a single show runs $20-30, I could see spending $50 for a 50-80 song compilation. I don't think I would be alone in that.

 

whatever, doesn't really matter after 40 years

 

What site are you on? Of course it matters....it all matters! Ask any Beatles fan.

 

I wouldn't. I'm not a fan of live releases with tracks from different shows. I own some, of course, but I prefer a complete, unedited show and would choose that every time if given a choice. If Bruce offered individual live tracks for purchase I'm sure there would be some that pick and choose but I'm not one.

 

Some people asked earlier in the thread about sound quality and mixing approach for Nugs.net downloads. It deserves to be pointed out again that this is completely up to the artist.

I'm not completely sure what every band on their site does, but I can use Phish as a good example since Nugs.net was basically created to serve up their show downloads starting in 2002. From 2002 until 2004, the "new show" recordings were released from FOH engineer Paul Languedoc's "reference 2-track mix" off of the SBD. I'm assuming that this was not exactly the FOH mix but something he ran off of an aux bus on the board for archival purposes. The band has recorded each show on multitrack since the mid-90s, but these recordings are rarely used even for archival releases (probably due to the overhead of mixing and mastering them for a release). Most archival releases used the 2-track recording, but a few have been mixed from the multitracks.

When the band came back after a 5-year hiatus in 2009, the recordings continued to be direct from the SBD by new FOH engineer Garry Brown, but fans complained (rightly so) about poor sound quality. Starting in 2010, they hired a recording engineer who sits in a room back stage with a separate board and feed of every input and mixes the recordings in real time.

Keep in mind that one of Phish's goals is to have the recordings available for download as quickly as possible (usually about 20 minutes after the show ends). Springsteen's approach may be different in that they may decide to mix the recordings later if they're not concerned with an immediate release. I think this is closer to what Pearl Jam and Metallica do.

 

Totally agreed! (I'm a Beatles fan as well so maybe that has something to do with it!) Ever since I'd first heard this show on boot (back in '87), I had assumed the siren was just a fortune coincidence. Recently, I listened to other '75-era recordings of Incident to see if they had the siren as well (as by now I'd heard it was a planned thing) but came up empty. If you would, please list another show or two that had this very cool sound effect. Thanks!

 

It's interesting that you bring that up. I was playing around with an old outtake of this performance recently and thought I'd try to resurrect it. 3 audio and 1 video sources later, here's the result:



(Note: there's no video between 5:20 and 8:30)

It's clear that there was some additional audio recorded for the soundtrack release, but regardless, this is a great performance.

 

Good job JA

 

Google search came up with this:
http://www.collectorsmusicreviews.c...-incident-on-philly-masterpiece-esb-11174a-b/

The siren was used in late 74 during Saint in the City. I'll have to dig up some old shows and try to find it.

 

Finally got round to downloading the Apollo show last night. Sounding great in HD flac. Hopefully we won't have to wait to long before something else is available. Funny that it was tagged as 'disc 1' and 'disc 2', but then again this is the first live show I've downloaded and besides the odd iTunes track (and my free U2 album!) I'm still pretty green to all this stuff.

 

Sorry for the delay in responding (I was in the UK for the Procol Harum/BBC Symphony concert)!

The download is FAR superior to the Sirius broadcast - no contest!

(I cancelled my Sirius/XM subscription, as satellite radio music sounds like 64kbps MP3s to me)

 

Just got the CD-R of the Apollo show. The CDs are scratched to heck, but so far playing. Sound seems okay. Cardboard package with a glued on cover. The songs are listed on the back, but not indexed (for example, the first two tracks are just intros/track 3 is We Take Care of Our Own). It may make sense to stick to downloads.

 

Does anyone have the Hdtracks 44/24 of The River that can comment how it sounds compared to the Redbook in the box set?

 

Agora '78 is released, remastered with the Plangent Process in 24/192!

http://live.brucespringsteen.net/li...download-8-9-1978-The-Agora-Cleveland-OH.html

 

Now we are talking! This may very well indeed be my first Springsteen download.

 

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

 

Downloading the 24bit right now.

 

Glad we got a classic show before year's end. A good way to cap a pretty exciting year for live Bruce.

 

This may be a stupid question, but if I download the files, how do I play it thru my stereo?

 

It depends on your computers outputs and the media player you are using.

If you have iTunes the easiest way is to get the ALAC version, but the best quality is the FLAC 24/192 but you would need to be sure your media player supports these files

 

Ditto!

 

I'd love to hear a review of the sound of the Agora. I only know the squashed FM version I first got on cassette, in another lifetime.

Killer show.