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Bruce Springsteen releases Tunnel of Love era live show

By Paul Sinclair

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21

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Bruce Springsteen yesterday released a 1988 live show via his Live Bruce Springsteen website which he launched late last year.

This concert performance is from the 28 April 1988 and was the 28th show on the Tunnel of Love Express tour where the band were augmented by ‘The Horns of Love’. It was the second night of a five night stand at the Sports Arena in Los Angeles.

The tour was obviously supporting Springsteen’s eighth studio album, 1987’s superb Tunnel of Love, which had been issued the previous October, and most of the tracks on that record get a live workout on this Californian evening (Cautious Man, Walk Like A Man, When You’re Alone and Valentine’s Day are the ones not performed from the album).

Amongst the 31 songs in the set are the debut of The Sonics’ Have Love Will Travel  and the first appearance on the tour of Sweet Soul Music.

The show has been mixed from digital multitrack masters by Toby Scott, is available now exclusively from the Springsteen site in several download formats (including DSD and 24 bit/192 kHz HD files). More importantly, you can order a physical three-CD set too but they won’t ship until early August. You can add a set of MP3s to your CD order for $5, which is a bit much in this era of ‘autorip’, but at least you get to hear the audio now while you wait for the CDs. To be fair $23 for a three-CD set isn’t bad and most fans are going to be very happy to support this initiative.

Track listing

SET ONE

1.TUNNEL OF LOVE 7:59
2.BE TRUE 4:52
3. ADAM RAISED A CAIN 5:51
4. TWO FACES 4:39
5. ALL THAT HEAVEN WILL ALLOW 11:21
6. SEEDS 5:47
7. ROULETTE 4:22
8. COVER ME 7:31
9. BRILLIANT DISGUISE 5:11
10. SPARE PARTS 10:09
11. WAR 2:59
12. BORN IN THE U.S.A.  8:18
SET TWO

1. TOUGHER THAN THE REST 6:02
2. AIN’T GOT YOU 2:33
3. SHE’S THE ONE 6:57
4. YOU CAN LOOK (BUT YOU BETTER NOT TOUCH) 6:00
5. I’M A COWARD 9:42
6. I’M ON FIRE 4:19
7. ONE STEP UP 5:49
8. PART MAN, PART MONKEY 4:53
9. BACKSTREETS 7:52
10. DANCING IN THE DARK 6:22
11. LIGHT OF DAY 7:36
FIRST ENCORE

1. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ROY ORBISON 3:06
2. BORN TO RUN 5:32
3. HUNGRY HEART 5:00
4. GLORY DAYS 8:58
5. ROSALITA (COME OUT TONIGHT) 10:26
SECOND ENCORE

1. HAVE LOVE, WILL TRAVEL 5:47
2. TENTH AVENUE FREEZE-OUT 4:34
3. SWEET SOUL MUSIC 3:28
4. RAISE YOUR HAND 6:37

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21 Comments

21 thoughts on “Bruce Springsteen releases Tunnel of Love era live show”

  2. i think i go for downloads

    because the cds with tax and fee to Danish post

    i will end op with about 38.50 pund for each cd

    so thats a no go for me,i have to pay tax when Price are over 8.00pund

  3. Picked up the Cleveland show. A mindblowing 3.5+ hours of music. Always loved that era of music. And in the case of the show, it is also a New Years Eve show – so a few extras thrown in.
    Packaging is generic and comes in a cardboard case plua a see-through plastic envelope to [I guess] protect it.

  5. I can’t see why they don’t just bundle in artwork to print off with the downloads and forgo sending out CD-Rs. Apart from the cash natch

  6. I’ve bought a few of these in physical form and have been very pleased. The presentation is certainly minimalist but not inelegant, sturdier than it might sound and carefully packaged for the flight to Australia.

    Track listings, venue and recording details included but no extra notes.

  7. CDRs is leaving me unexcited. Suddenly £21 doesn’t seem quite such a great deal. Oh well, still want to have this music ‘in my hand’ to quote a phrase :)

  8. I’ve bought every show released to date by Bruce Inc. and have settled for the lossless download – The price of the CD option does not put me off, its simply the fact they are releasing CDRs. At around £10 per set, its a bargain as far as I’m concerned.

    The quality of these archive shows improves with each release. They are far beyond the quality of the initial official download releases from the South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and US shows from 2012.

  9. Does anyone have photos of the packaging as cardboard slip cases and CDRs doesn’t sound enough to tempt me to buy the physical product

  10. I’ve been going with the Flac downloads. The CDs that they make are actually CDRs so I don’t really see the point in paying extra for the CDs when I can just download the Flac files and make the CDRs myself.

    Having said that, I am really happy with this one. Several of the previous releases (Apollo Theater 2012, Cleveland 1978, Philadelphia 1975) had already been circulating in high quality bootlegs so they hadn’t really been giving the fans anything they didn’t have before. This show had never circulated before in anything other than an average quality audience recording so it really feels like something new in my live Springsteen collection. The mix is also better on this one than the last release (New Jersey 1984.) If you like this era of Bruce, you won’t be disappointed.

  11. Just a couple of amendments – the performance if from 23 April 1988 and there are 32 tracks. I opted for the MP3 download (that’s ripped at 256kbps). You can pay via PayPal and it works out at approx £6.50. I’m not a huge Springsteen fan (hence the reason I opted for the MP3 download instead of the CD) but I do like the Tunnel of Love album a lot. Unless you’ve got Java installed on your PC, you’ve got to download each track individually and it’s a long and slow download.

  12. I’ve bought all the other concerts, never bothered with the CD’s though, just downloads.
    Gotta say the overall sound is great so far, so looking forward to this Tunnel of Love show. The last show they issued, from Born In The USA sounded great, but it had a few warts musicianship-wise. I guess that might be the appeal.

  13. I’ve ordered all Archive cds and they come in a foldout cardboard sleeve. As for custom fees, on the customs form on the packaging they put that the contents are valued at £10, so I’ve never had to pay any duties.

    2. That’s good to hear about the contents been valued at £10, sorry for panicking everyone…… you can go fill yer boots now :)

  14. The potential problem I see here is that the price is right on the cusp for been charged customs fees/VAT, depending what conversion rate is used, so you could potentially (if that goes over that threshold) be paying around another £10 on top of what you’ve already paid (UK), that in turn would make it a very expensive 3 CD Set

  15. 3CD set works out at about £21 shipped to UK with MP3s. About £18 without the MP3s. I don’t think that is too bad myself. Not sure what the packaging is like for the CDs – anyone ordered any of the previous sets?

    1. The package is very generic. Brown outer cardboard with a three panel fold out to hold the 3 cd’s. Front cover is a photo from the show or tour. The writing resembles the tour of which album they are touring with. The back cover lists band members, songs, date of show. They also come with resealable plastic sleeves. No other book or info. Also the cd’s are cd-r. For the record I had an issue with one of the cd’s in one of my sets and the customer support team sent me a new replacement very quickly with no questions asked. I prefer the cd’s over the downloads because they do not have a pause between each track. Just like being at Bruce show. The sound on the sets I ordered sound better then some “official” live recordings. Highly recommended for any Bruce fan.

    2. hello everyone. bought some previous set. of course packaging is very minimalist. but the sound is great and I agree price is cheap for 3 cds.

  17. As much as I love Broooce I reckon $23 plus postage, about $12 is way too much for a 3 CD set. I reckon I will chuck in with a few mates and get the high rez files, you know the rest.

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