Bruce SpringsteenAvery Fisher Hall
New York City, NY
October 4, 1974
(Joe Kivak Master Tapes via JEMS)
JEMS 2023 Transfer: Joe Kivak Master Cassettes > Nakamichi RX-505 azimuth-adjusted playback > Sound Devices USBPre2 > Audacity 3.1 capture > iZotope RX > iZotope RX9 Advanced and Ozone 9 > MBIT+ resample to 16/44.1 > Audacity > xACT 2.50 > FLAC
01 Incident On 57th Street
02 Spirit In The Night
03 Does The Bus Stop At 82nd Street?
04 The E Street Shuffle > Havin' A Party
05 Cupid
06 It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City
07 Lost In The Flood
08 She's The One
09 Jungleland
10 A Love So Fine
11 Kitty's Back
12 New York City Serenade
13 Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
14 4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
15 Quarter To Three
Known Faults:
-Incident On 57th Street: opening notes cut
This release features Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performing live at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, October 4, 1974. It was recorded by Joe Kivak, unquestionably the first serious and committed taper of Springsteen concerts. While he would go on to tape Springsteen dozens, even hundreds of times, his earliest efforts starting in the summer of 1974 provide essential and otherwise unavailable documentation of Bruce’s artistic development before the release of Born to Run in August 1975.
Joe would influence others to follow in his lead, notably Cliff B, and the entire hobby of recording and sharing live Springsteen recordings celebrates its 50th anniversary this year thanks to him. To call Kivak the Godfather of Springsteen concert taping is not hyperbole.
Maybe you’re familiar with this era, or perhaps even the show itself (which circulated previously under the titles “Incident at Avery Fisher Hall,” “I Saw Rock and Roll Future,” "LDB Special Series #461 (RLR Collection)" and “5th Gen. Tape”). Last year, Joe graciously loaned his master tapes to JEMS so we could attempt a modern and hopefully definitive preservation, capturing the sound, correcting the pitch and fixing issues to provide the best representation of this terrific and historic performance.
Let’s start with obvious attributes: it’s a (nearly) complete recording of the first New York City concert with the new-look E Street Band, featuring pianist Roy Bittan and drummer Max Weinberg, who joined in August and made their stage debuts in September. The show also marks the beginning of violinist Suki Lahav’s live E Street residency (she departed the following March). Her contributions to the band’s arrangements gave shows during her tenure a distinct sound and tone.
Change was constant for Springsteen in 1974. Shifts included evolving musical styles and his standing at CBS Records, on shaky ground after his second album tanked. He met Jon Landau, who wrote that spring that after seeing Bruce play that he had seen “rock and roll future.” Springsteen had penned a number of new songs that would soon underscore his future manager’s famous line: “Born to Run,” “She’s the One,” “Jungleland,” and “A Love So Fine” were all in various stages of development.
On paper, the shows in the autumn of ’74 hinted at that future. October 4 features three new songs (and curiously omits “Born to Run,” which was on the setlist). Springsteen peppers the balance of the 15-song set with classic ’74 sounds: a sprightly “Saint in the City” and a cover of Sam Cooke’s “Cupid,” for example. Roy Bittan stretches out on a long, languid piece to set up “Lost in the Flood.” And Lahav brings a new dimension to “Jungleland”: violin at the outset, a perfect first take.
The show came to an abrupt end when part of the stage collapsed. “On Broadway” was planned as the final number — Avery Fisher Hall is part of Lincoln Center, located at 64th Street and Broadway — but Joe’s report and voices on the PA strongly suggest that “Quarter to Three” was it. (It’s hard to know at which point in the song the trouble began, but Springsteen vamps in a way that makes it seem like he was aware of the problem.)
Regardless of how the show ended, its story doesn’t: when the opportunity arose for JEMS to revisit Kivak's pioneering work we jumped. The first show we wanted to take on was this one, with all the firsts already mentioned. It's a legendary date and a bridge to a new era as Bruce and the new-look E Street Band's live performances evolved.
More important than what we did, let’s take a moment to acknowledge what Joe did: all the circulating audio from October 4 — tape copies, silvers, remasters — springs from his source. As far as we can tell, he was the only one out on the wire that night and he is the only one to tell the story today. (The first confirmed two recorder source show would take place two weeks later at the October 18th Passaic, New Jersey show.)
We’re grateful that Joe had the vision to capture the music. While we occasionally lament the dearth of official Springsteen recordings from before 1975, more often we’re grateful for Joe and his efforts — something to celebrate a half-century later. Truly an effort worthy of Broadway — thank you, Joe!
While we did not reference all previous iterations, we generally consider the release closest to the master as the go-to for comparison. In this case, it's the "Fanatic Records" (thanks, Rob) edition, which first appeared around 2010 from a transfer by "Mr. Anonymous" to CDR then CDR to torrent (and was incidentally the first Kivak Master to circulate). Our goal was a material upgrade to that version.
This is the first azimuth-adjusted transfer directly from Joe's master tapes. As far as cuts, the recording has almost no issues — something of a miracle, given its vintage. There is one near the opening notes of "Incident On 57th Street" (the previous edition has a small gap and the tell-tale stop/start 1970's recorder sound). We have removed the gap and the stop/start tape drag, smoothing the cut to make it as seamless as possible. We think it’s a nice improvement.
Next, "The E Street Shuffle" had a major flaw: approximately 31 seconds in, mic movement and a lot of static make 26 seconds unlistenable. The "Fanatic Records" release cut and smoothed the section; other releases out there keep it in, with all its problematic sound.
We spent a couple hours on this issue alone, manually removing the static and mic bumps, restoring all 26 seconds without the static. This restored area starts at 00:31.504 and ends at 00:58.445. It's not perfect: at one point, the music, which is already very quiet in its natural state, pretty much disappears for about four seconds but the song is now entirely intact… the things we go through in search of completeness for a mere 26 seconds!
Another major issue we always found frustrating was the audience's tendency to clap along to songs like "Jungleland," a track that wouldn't be released for another year. Normally, this would not be a big deal, but Kivak's capture has a close, lone clapper who had a knack for clapping when no one else was and was positioned fairly close to the mic. These sharp clap sounds were embedded enough that de-click would not remove them all. The vast majority of these one-off claps have been manually removed.
Finally, we set out to tame the high-end distortion. The left channel on many releases is at its limit, and beyond! We also restored a bit of the low end, allowing more breathing room and hopefully restoring more detail. Though Joe appears to have been positioned some distance from the stage, he did an excellent job capturing the show, equipment limitations most tapers experienced in that era be damned.
Some will question the point of doing all this work on a tape of this admittedly mid-tier quality but we feel — and mjk5510 especially — that not only does every tape deserve to be heard, but the extra work here hopefully serves as a special incentive to revisit this historically important "bridge" show between Springsteen’s first two albums and his forthcoming third.
Huge respect to Joe Kivak for the foresight to capture Bruce multiple times before his star really took off. Thanks for allowing us to revisit your work! Thanks also to SE, who got the ball rolling on our little project and Goody for his never-ending work to ensure we present all our shows at the proper pitch.
mjk5510 and slipkid68 for JEMS
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