Floom2

Here’s one: Jungleland is a pretentious bombastic mess along the lines of that Meatloaf song about the dashboard. Live it up.

Great post. The Bottom Line was great because it was live Bruce, but the sound quality suffered greatly, as I recall. I think the first boot I had was Main Point, ‘75? My history of Springsteen bootlegs ain’t what it once was, but that Main Point set...You Can Trust Your Car, on the Tarkyphone label? Can that be right? Had to be one of the first. And The Jersey Devil. Love these posts. Takes me waaaay back.

It really is that wonderful/brilliant/intense. And I’ve been listening to this show for decades. This I hear with new ears.

For fans of a certain age, there's no way to put a price on this one. Springsteen's live rep was solid long before 1978, but this tour, aided by the radio broadcasts, started the big ball rolling. For most of us, this show was like a ghost...a myth...the Loch Ness Monster of bootlegs. We'd heard about it (the first pressing was called Piece de Resistance) and after the publication of one or two books cataloging Springsteen's bootleg discography (Most notably The Hunt/Humphries book Blinded By The Light, which listed Piece de Resistance as far beyond essential) this became the Holy Grail of boots. Now, this very excellent recording is NOT Piece de Resistance. Piece was a beautiful box set with a great black and white cover and a pretty damn good vinyl pressing of the broadcast. I was lucky to have a pressing of this boot, the ownership of which solidified my fandom. I'm into Darkness right now, and this most certainly is NOT Piece de Resistance. The sound and detail is far beyond my modest vinyl bootleg. For the Rock historians among us, this is pretty close to the first printing of the Declaration of Independence. I await, of course, for the ACTUAL Declaration of Independece: Bottom Line, 1975.

I've met Barry, he is a quiet kind unassuming guy, and completely deserving of the attention he is getting for these excellent images.

Of course you clowns list every possible show. There is only ONE Holy Grail... ...come to think of it, there is no Holy Grail. My Grail is whatever the best Bottom Line show is, unless somehow the tapes are terrible. The Lennon show comes to mind.

On a serious note: I saw Tunnel into Boom Boom, Frankfurt, ‘88. That was pretty damned explosive.

China Cat into Rider.

I actually love that whole set. I know there are many versions of seemingly inconsequential songs, but I could listen to any number of versions of Up To Me, Meet Me In The Morning, et al. Every set has been worth it to me, except the Jesus thing. Dylan never sounded more insane then on that tour, literally preaching. I wonder if that whole Jesus period wasn’t his reaction to what very well could have been his abominable behavior to that point.

I think Springsteen simply doesn’t have the material. Dylan clearly has been prolific.

well, you and I agree regarding the cost. I think I paid 120.00 bucks for the vinyl Agora '78. Jeepers, I paid almost that much for Teardrops On The City, and that was an audience recording. The broadcasts were uniformly brilliant though.

You have no soul, my good man.

Back in the late 70’s and through the early 80’s there was a dearth (a DEARTH) of Springsteen material available. Shit, by 1983, before USA we had the studio albums and some singles with, like, 2 unreleased b sides (Maybe just Be True) thats 6 official LP’s plus that tease of a thing from No Nukes, and the CW Post Santa and in Philly anyway the Fever boot was played occasionally. That’s it. After 10 years. So those of us obsessed, bootlegs were one way to scratch that itch. You guys have no idea what you have now. A literal store full of riches. I have no guilt for my bootleg purchases. And Springsteen knew the value of the boots to his myth, as well. I forgot The Big Payback.

None of us may never know, but I suspect that Springsteen would agree that this first Christic show was musically tame. I kind of think that post-USA he was trying to figure out where he wanted to go next. Should he be the "USA!" guy for the next 20 years, or try to keep exploring his muse. I like to think of this first Christic show as his baby steps toward whatever was next. Regarding Dylan: I used to wonder why the folkies got so incensed when he plugged in at Newport. It wasn't till I heard some of those very early shows in NYC that I got it. He was so powerful and his music so very different and challenging than anyone else at the time. The folkies were reacting to the end of all that, which seems quaint now, given the music that Dylan has made since. 1961

Yeah I hate to be the "Back in MY Day" guy, but I paid loads of cash for boots in the mid 80's, and was happy to have the music. Agora '78, Winterland and Passaic were hard to get AND expensive.