Bruce Springsteen
Coup de Grace
Capitol Theatre
Passaic, NJ
September 21, 1978
JEMS Archive

2011 transfer: 1/2-track, 15 IPS master soundboard reels >
azimuth-adjusted playback on professional reel to reel > 24/96 capture
to .wav > Nuendo 4 edit, mastering and resample with iZotope, Waves
and Slate plug-ins > Ozone MBIT+ Dither + Resample > FLAC

01 Intro
02 High School Confidential (patch at the start from extant board tape)
03 Badlands
04 Spirit in the Night
05 Darkness on the Edge of Town
06 Sweet Little Sixteen
07 Independence Day
08 The Promised Land
09 Prove It All Night
10 Racing in the Street
11 Thunder Road
12 Meeting Across the River
13 Jungleland
14 Set Outro
15 Set Intro
16 Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town
17 Fire
18 Candy's Room
19 Because the Night
20 Point Blank
21 Kitty's Back
22 The Fever
23 Incident on 57th Street
24 Rosalita
25 Born to Run
26 Tenth Avenue Freeze-out
27 Quarter to Three

Like The Dark Knight Rises, so too must the Passaic trilogy come to an end.

JEMS is pleased to release another significant Darkness tour upgrade,
this the third and final show at the Capitol Theatre, two nights
removed from the historic radio broadcast that would go on to become
one of, if not the most bootlegged recordings in Springsteen history,
Piece De Resistance. In homage to that bootleg classic, and in keeping
with our upgraded second night title, Douceur de Vivre, we've dubbed
the third night Coup de Grace, apropos, as it translates to "the
finishing blow." Of course there's a case to be made for going with
Bon Anniversaire, as at this show Bruce's birthday (still two days
hence) was celebrated with a giant cake featuring an unusual filling.

The set continues the looser vibe of the previous night and offers
some appealing changes, including the return of "Racing in the
Street," covers of "High School Confidential" and "Sweet Little
Sixteen" (introduced, per Brucebase Wiki, as "a birthday song to
myself") and a welcome performance of "The Fever." The show is also
one of seven known performances of "Incident on 57th Street" straight
into "Rosalita."

Like Douceur de Vivre, what makes Coup de Grace so special is that it
was professionally recorded on reel to reel by a mobile recording
truck outside the theatre. The result is another live-as-it-happened
recording of incredible clarity. Again, that isn't to say it is a
multi-track, mixdown; Coup is a raw, mixed-on-the-fly, wide stereo
recording done on 1/2 track at 15 inches per second. Compared to the
cassette sources circulating of other raw board tapes from this tour,
the quality here should be a revelation. Samples provided.

The transfer was handled as JEMS did for last year's upgrade of The
Ties That Bind and Douceur de Vivre so I'll quote those notes once
more: "There was baking involved, as the tapes had degraded in the [33
years that had passed]. The reel-to-reel tape deck was best of breed,
what the pros use, in a proper studio, calibrated and adjusted in
every way for optimal playback and capture at 24/96 using the best
possible sound card, cabling, etc."

There was one missing piece on the new reels, oddly right at the start
where somebody must have forgotten to push record and missed the
beginning of "High School Confidential." WWe've patched that in from
the extant cassette board source (thank you A). On the bright side,
"Tenth Avenue Freeze-out" is now complete and we get to hear for the
first time ever the previously missing encore-closer, "Twist and
Shout."

Your guest mastering engineer this time around is our respected
colleague and friend Hoserama, who you should know from his incredible
work (often described as better than official releases) on matrix
recordings from recent tours. He made these tapes sound as good as
they possibly could. Thanks H.

Please respect our wishes DO NOT post this on DIME.
Please respect our wishes and DO NOT REMASTER AND CIRCULATE any new or
remastered versions of this recording.

Wayne Darlington