Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Kansas City Baby
Kemper Arena
Kansas City, MO
February 5, 1981

Recording Gear: Sennheiser 421 > Sony D5

2013 Transfer: Maxell UD-XLIIS 90 first-generation cassettes > Nakamichi CR-7A (azimuth-adjusted) > Sound Devices USBPre2 (24/96 Audacity 2.0 capture) > Peak 6.0 with iZotope Ozone > iZotope MBIT+ convert to 16/44.1 > FLAC

01 Prove It All Night
02 Two Hearts
03 Tenth Avenue Freeze-out
04 Darkness on the Edge of Town
05 Independence Day
06 Who'll Stop the Rain
07 The Promised Land
08 Out in the Street
09 I Fought the Law
10 Racing in the Street
11 The River
12 Badlands
13 Thunder Road
14 Cadillac Ranch
15 Sherry Darling
16 Hungry Heart
17 Fire
18 You Can Look But You Better Not Touch
19 Sandy
20 Because the Night
21 Wreck on the Highway
22 Point Blank
23 Candy's Room
24 Ramrod
25 Rosalita
26 Kansas City
27 Jungleland
28 Born to Run
29 Detroit Medley > I Hear a Train

While 1980 leg of the River tour is well-documented, well-recorded and oft-revisited, the early '81 leg through secondary markets and Canada is much less so. The reasons why are understandable: the East Coast concerts in December were covered by established tapers, and because of their epic durations, often pushing past three and a half hours, those sets have earned a certain legendary status.

When the tour resumed in late January 1981, the show shortened a bit and the cities visited were more like Toronto, Ottawa and Ames, not Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Also, the European dates that followed these in early April took on a legendary status of their own. As such, the second leg of the River tour has a kind of middle-child syndrome, to stretch an analogy well beyond appropriateness.

Needless to say early '81 is no slouch and it is filled with some excellent sets. It is a tighter show, eschewing the kind of second set stretch of long sad songs we heard in December, though not walking away from it completely.

Kansas City Baby is a fine representative of this leg, with the core of the first set relatively unchanged from '80 (though with two nice covers included, "Who'll Stop the Rain" and "I Fought the Law), and the second set starting off with a bang before moving into a powerful three pack of "Because the Night," "Wreck in the Highway" and a terrific "Point Blank," giving us a bit of the dark ride we heard in '80, but without that extra long addition of a "Stolen Car" or "Drive All Night." One thing Bruce tends to do in secondary markets is what you might call the "localized cover song," and tonight its a spirited take of Wilbert Harrison's "Kansas City," one of the show's highlights.

Our recording was done by a very capable taper with excellent gear (something not often seen on recordings outside of Bruce's home courts in this era) and it is quite good: close, full and clear. The first generation cassettes used for this transfer were copied by our friend DL off the master tapes again using good gear, but there is one big catch: While he would of course do it differently if he had it to do all over again, back in 1981, blank tapes, especially high-quality Maxell UD-XLIIS tapes, weren't exactly cheap, especially if you didn't have a lot of money. So in an effort to preserve the show on two blanks instead of having to buy three, DL faded out and back up between some songs to cut out the audience. There are several such cuts across this tape, which can be annoying, but more often than not the audio resumes at the start of the next song, perhaps clipping the first note or two on occasion but often coming back right in time. For instance, "Once Upon a Time in the West" is retained as the intro to "Badlands," and compared to last week's release 12/19/80, listen for Danny's contribution to the passage which you don't hear in the other.

Unfortunately there is no other known recording of the show, and all circulating copies of KC have these fadeouts. DL hopes that one day he might track down the masters from his old friend, but that's a long shot. Until then, this is what we've got. I will say that after you hear the fades the first time or two, it isn't too bad. The show is still well preserved and well documented, and all the performances are pretty much intact. If you've had a copy of this show before (such as Convicted & Sentenced: Life Without Parole), you should find Kansas City Baby a material upgrade. Samples provided.

Thanks very much to DL for reaching out and loaning us his first-generation tapes and providing photos from the show that Ivan has used for his artwork.

There's more River to come and other tours, too. Maybe even some studio material;)

Wayne Darlington