Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Uptown Theater
Milwaukee, WI
October 2, 1975
ER Archives via JEMS

Somebody Tried to Blow Us Up Tonight

Audience Recording (equipment unknown)
Soundboard Recording (equipment unknown)

JEMS Transfer: very likely 2nd generation reel to reel tapes > Otari
5050mkII azimuth-adjusted transfer  > Sound Devices USBPre 2 >
Audacity 2.0 (24/96) capture > iZotope RX click repair > Peak 6.0 with
iZotope Ozone 5.0 (speed correction) > resample 16/44.1 > FLAC

Disc 1 (Audience Recording)
01 Meeting Across the River
02 Tenth Avenue Freeze-out
03 Spirit in the Night
04 Pretty Flamingo
05 She's the One
06 Born to Run
07 Thunder Road
08 Bomb Scare

Remainder of show from soundboard recording
Disc 2
1. Little Queenie
2. The E Street Shuffle > Havin' a Party
3. Saint in the City
4. Sha La La
5. Kitty's Back

Disc 3
1. Jungleland
2. Intro (to Rosalita)
3. Rosalita
4. Detroit Medley
5. Sandy
6. Quarter to Three

Welcome back to the sixth in a series of releases from the ER
Archives, the collection of an active '70s taper and trader who
stepped away from collecting, leaving his tapes pretty much dormant
until now. ER's collection contains previously uncirculated shows as
well as upgrades to circulating tapes, both audience and soundboard.
He used high-end tape decks and good tape, so his copies of even
well-known shows may well be improvements.

Installment No. 6 is an upgrade to a soundboard classic: The Bomb
Scare Show, Uptown Theater, Milwaukee, WI, October 2, 1975. Now is as
good a time as any to explain how it is that ER came to possess these
superior copies of classic board tapes:

"I went bowling one cold evening at the Erlton Bowl and Lounge in
Cherry Hill, NJ, December 22, 1973. Rolled a few frames and stepped
into Uncle Al's Theatre Lounge attached to the alley for a few beers.
A sparse crowd was there and the small stage was stuffed with a gaggle
of musicians readying to play. It was Bruce Springsteen and the E
Street Band. They played to the assembled few and absofuckinglutely
blew us away! I immediately planned an excursion over to the Main
Point since that was where they were playing next, nearby. That
experience cemented my opinion that this was the next great rock band!
After that I tried to see them at every opportunity: Le Garage on LBI,
Tower Theater, Trenton War Memorial, Kutztown State, Painters Mill,
all before the stadiums. Three or more times a week I was out at one
venue or another seeing every show I could.

Along the way I met Ed Sciaky, WMMR DJ and kindred Bruce spirit.
Eventually I visited his apartment in Philly off Lincoln Drive
overlooking the Schuylkill River. I walked in and the place was
wall-to-wall LPs: In the hall, the dining room, the living room,
everywhere! We talked several times about getting good copies of
Bruce's live shows since Ed had them and about music, always music!
Eventually, I convinced him to let me copy the Bruce shows he had. Ed,
being quite protective of Bruce and his live tape source, was
reluctant, so I had restrictions: He gave me only one then two shows
at a time and I had to have them back within 24 hours. So I copied the
shows and got them back to him over the bridge and got another set to
copy. I did this for close to a week--it was about all I did--and the
end result was a rushed, but hopefully quality copy of about 8 shows.
I promised to keep them from the public, bootleg and commercial,
for-profit distribution. I used only the best tape and copied from my
Akai 4-track to my Tandberg stereo deck."

Milwaukee and other soundboard recordings from the late Ed Sciaky have
circulated for many years, and Sciaky's collection seems to fall into
two batches which we'll call here for simplicity's sake, early and
late. The late batch includes some '78 boards, the early is all '76 or
earlier. ER copied only the early batch and many years later, tapes
from the late batch were copied from Ed's reels to DAT by others.
While some tapes from the early batch were also copied to DAT, not all
of them were. JEMS believes Milwaukee, along with the previously
torrented Cleveland '76, and a few other '75 boards still to come from
the ER Archive have never circulated from a known lineage and were
never digitally transferred from Sciaky's reels. We can't state that
definitively, but based on the research we've done it appears to be
the case. So this copy of Milwaukee, we believe, is the lowest
generation source ever transferred and torrented.

And to our ears it is a clear upgrade. Milwaukee has always been one
of the better boards, but the clarity here, both in the high and low
end, is striking. Compared to the previous best circulating copy, the
new Milwaukee board transfer is lush and full, brighter and deeper in
a way the old one never was. It has a true "you are there" quality.
Samples provided.

Unfortunately the audience portion of the show is still crappy, but
this copy should be better than you've heard it before. The start of
the show isn't cut as it is on other copies, and while it remains a
poor recording, you can still make out what's going on.

As for the Bomb Scare itself, the story has been told many times
before so we'll skip it here. If for some reason you don't know the
tale, Brucebase does a good job recapping the night:
http://brucebase.wikispaces.com/1975#0210

The most famous performance from this night is Chuck Berry's "Little
Queenie," which Brucebase justifiably calls "outrageous." If you've
never heard Bruce shout "are you loose?!" when it is patently obvious
he is, you have a great piece of Springsteen live performance history
to look forward to. But while Milwaukee is indeed loose, it isn't a
sloppy show and in fact it boasts a couple of epic performances
including a record-breaking "E Street Shuffle" that, with its long
intro, clocks in at well over 20 mins, plus a "Kitty's Back" that is
nearly as long. Two other great covers, a breakneck "Sha La La" and
one of the earliest "Detroit Medley"s, provide additional highlights.
And if you're a Little Stephen fan (and who the fuck isn't?), you're
going to love this mix, as his guitar and voice are high in it, which
helps make this an especially fine night for "Saint in the City," too.

Thanks once again to the ER Archive for opening up the vault doors and
sharing this recording with the fans. Feel free to let him know how
you feel in the comments.

The ER Archive will return.

Wayne Darlington for JEMS and the ER Archives