The Shea Theatre,
Buffalo, NY
presents...
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
AND THE E STREET BAND
23rd May 1978
" The tour began in Buffalo on 23/5/78, a couple of weeks before Darkness On The Edge Of Town received its official US release, which meant the luck audience were treated to a set of largely unfamiliar material, with no less than nine songs gaining their public premiere.
The set, like the forthcoming album, kicked off in fine style with Badlands, which was immediately followed by the displaced former opening number, Night. This is then followed by the only song from Darkness that had been performed in concert before, Something In The Night. This song retains it's 1977 arrangement, with it's typically overwrought vocal. A real suprise follows this song, a full band arrangement of For You, which is suprisingly effective, considering the more stripped down nature of the new songs that were now dominating the set. After the shock of all these new or rearranged songs, Bruce plays it safe for a couple of numbers, with the tried and tested Thunder Road and Spirit In The Night, both in their usual arrangements. The fixation with the word Night continued unabated, with the first live appearance of Prove It All Night, (the fourth song in seven to feature the word Night in the title). The live version features a unique piano introduction, which is joined by a blistering and very appropriate guitar solo, which leads into the actual song very effectively. The version at this show however, like many of the other songs from the new album, is very hesitant and undeveloped compared to the performances that would come a little later when the band becomes more confident, and the shows better paced. It is apparent even from this show however, that the new material was well suited to live performance.
The next three songs all feature on the forthcoming album; Racing In The Street, Candy's Room and The Promised Land. All three do not differ too significantly from their studio counterparts, though all are performed with more energy.
The mid point of the show is marked by the presence of an interval, something that will feature at nearly all shows in the future, both on this tour and indeed up to the present day.
The second set opened with the instrumental Paradise By The C, yet another incarnation of the melody that had graced A Love So Fine and Action In The Streets, though this does seem to be the arrangement that Bruce seemed the most happy with as this track was eventually realized on the live 75-85 box set. The next track was a new song that did not feature on Darkness, the rockabilly ballad, Fire. This song is performed in a somewhat straight manner with none of the clowning around or audience participation that would appear in later renditions.
The title song of the new album is performed next, complete with a short keyboard introduction not featured on the studio take. The ration of new songs continues with the premier of Streets Of Fire, before Bruce returns to the tried and tested Mona/She's the One medley, though the style of performance shows something of a development on the 1977 model; indeed it will continue to be worked on for sometime. Adam raised A Cain makes it's debut next, making it a near complete set of Darkness On The Edge Of Town songs, with only Factory missing from the line up.
Backstreets retains it's position as the penultimate song of the main set, though the middle section dramas introduced on the 1977 tour show further refinement, even gaining an unofficial title of Sad Eyes, as a kind of song within a song. As with She's The One, this is a song that will continue to be worked on throughout the tour, with no one version quite like another. The now traditional Rosalita ends the second set.
The encores begin with a real rarity, the one and only known concert performance of the still unreleased classic The Promise in full E Street Band arrangement. The song was recorded in this arrangement for the Darkness album, but was not included on the finished release. The rest of the four song encore includes the predictable Born To Run, 10th Avenue Freeze Out in it's first ever encore role, and the occasional 1976-77 encore You Can't Sit Down to end the show.
All in all the show comes across as rather hesitant and uncomfortable, though most of the material certainly shows much potential. "
Nick Carruthers
Published in For "True
Rockers Only" summer 1993 edition
