BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN'S VINYL VAULTS
THE LP'S
LIVE LP Index
First of all - the usual disclaimer - sorry but it's necessary - This is an
ARCHIVAL REFERENCE FILE - nothing more - it's not a catalog from
which to obtain ANY of the items described. This is provided to compliment the
Brucebase section of the website which is why all the many dedicated studio
bootlegs are not listed here. Go to the STUDIOBOOTS
section of the site for them.
Please note - this is still an early build of the Vinyl Vaults - so there
is no navigation built into the pages - please use the back button on your browser
to return to previous pages - Nav will be built into later releases.
Finally -
I don't have them or know how you can get them - nor do these pages provide
any of the latter information. There are no links to sites which stock the material
and indeed much of it is completely unobtainable anyway - it's a reference work
and historical dataset. Now we've got that straight - enjoy.
Introduction
I don't know about you, but my first introduction to the wide world of unauthorised
recordings was visiting a little dingy backstreet store in Manchester UK back
in 1976. Inside was a thin youth with long hair, a lot of jos-sticks and row
upon row of records mainly from TAKRL, TMOQ etc. I came across a record called,
You Can Trust Your Car To The Man Who Wears The Star, by Bruce Springsteen with
a wonderful bright green cover and a tremendous line art drawing and bought
it. Well the rest is quite literally history, and thats what I aim to capture
here - the complete vinyl history of Bruce's live records on bootleg - with
appropriate references to source material and comment on the quality and historical
value of the LP's in question. Studio related releases are detailed in the companion
guide Studioboots
These days, it's getting more and more difficult to get hold of the old vinyl
that so many of us depended upon for Bruce studio and live content that would
otherwise have not reached our ears - unless you were a tape trader with the
right connections. Many fans won't even have seen a vinyl bootleg having been
brought up on (and lucky them) the current more traditional fare of CD, CDR
and MP3 and the like. At the time of writing it is fairly easy, with a little
patience to locate, download and burn a Bruce concert in reasonable to excellent
quality in a day or so. Wow.
In the old days, oh for it to be so easy - bootlegs were hunted and oppressed
by the industry, and the artists alike, mostly. A fairly standard sort of weekend
for my generation would be to find a suitable record fair, pay an entrance fee
and then sort through endless stalls , most of which didn't have bootlegs -
and even those that did had the same ones. Even when you found something apparently
new, and I use the word apparently with extreme prejudice, once you got it home
and onto the turntable, you found that it was often a copy of something - or
a collection of the same material already released or that it was recorded a
few miles from the stadium on a 10cent recorder - and that the dog had a hand
in the mix down.
So it was that the bootleg guide was born - and even these were hard to find
and the producers were subject to the same treatment as the record vendors,
Hot Wacks being a prime example. Most of them were just listings, some with
cover art and one, produced by myself and two other fans actually graded them
- more on this in sources which details the main sources
of the info - other than my own knowledge - ie the bits I've nicked :-)
- Coming soon -
Historical References - In print references or useful URL's for further reading.
The Top Albums - details, in no particular order the albums that defined the
genre - the ones that made you come back for more - the ones that really hacked
off the record companies or even Bruce himself.
This is a fairly complete list of known live LP boot releases - some of which
link to relevant information and pictures of the actual item. Also included
is a bootleg live single section which covers all the vinyl releases for archival
completeness. If you have pictures or information not here please get in touch.
Grateful thanks to all the fellow fans out there who have helped in supplying
information or graphic files with special thank-yous to Steven, Inge, Yosuke
and especially Maki, whose datasets and pictures have been invaluable.
Pages updated June 23, 2008
The Complete listing is the most up
to date method of checking on a particular album.
Complete Listing