Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Memorial Auditorium
Buffalo, NY
December 4, 1980

mackeck master via JEMS

Recording Gear: handheld portable cassette recorder with built-in mic

2013 Transfer: Maxell UD-90 master cassettes > Nakamichi CR-7A (azimuth-adjusted) > Sound Devices USBPre2 (24/96 Audacity 2.0 capture) > iZotope RX 3 click removal and gap fixes > iZotope MBIT+ convert to 16/44.1 .wav > Peak Pro XT (patch / indexing) > xACT > FLAC

Tracked with no breaks, suggested breaks for burning to CD below…

101 Born To Run
102 Out In The Street
103 Tenth Avenue Freeze Out
104 Two Hearts
105 The Price You Pay
106 Factory
107 Independence Day
108 I Fought The Law
109 Prove It All Night
110 Racing In The Streets
111 The River
112 Badlands
201 Thunder Road
202 Cadillac Ranch
203 Sherry Darling
204 Hungry Heart
205 Fire
206 Candy’s Room
207 Because The Night
208 I Wanna Marry You
209 For You
210 The Ties That Bind
210 Wreck On The Highway
212 Stolen Car
213 Ramrod
301 You Can Look
302 Drive All Night
303 Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
304 Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
305 Jungleland
306 I’m A Rocker
307 Detroit Medley
308 Raise Your Hand

Known Faults:
-Prove It All Night: 5 seconds patched with Recorder 2 (kshavo source)

Just a few days removed from the 33rd anniversary of Bruce’s River stop in Buffalo, JEMS is pleased to present an uncirculated third source recording of the show from the master tapes.

d.j.mackeck reached out earlier this year to report that his dad had recorded several Bruce shows between 1978 and 1984 in their hometown of Toronto, as well as cities within spitting distance like Detroit and Buffalo. He was kind enough to ship an initial batch of three masters, from which we made fresh transfers here at JEMS South.

The shows were recorded on a small portable recorder with built in-mic (likely a Toshiba or Sony, but memories have faded) in mono. D.J. shared how this particular night went down:

“My dad couldn’t make it to the Buffalo show, as he was going to be in the Bahamas during that time. So he gave his ticket and the task of recording the show to my uncle. My uncle was 18 at that time, and this was his first time seeing Springsteen. So he, another uncle, my aunt and my mother drove down from Toronto to the Memorial Auditorium.

When they were going in, security stopped my uncle because of the recorder. But he managed to sneak the recorder into his boot and got in through another gate. The rest is history! My dad kept the tapes along with other recordings he made. I came across the tapes, listened to them and sent them to JEMS. In my opinion, my uncle did a really good job of recording the show as far as getting all of the songs recorded and flipping the tapes over at the appropriate times. This is the first of my dad’s tapes to be transferred to digital form. He may have dubbed a copy for my uncle, but other than that, none of my dad’s tapes have ever been shared or traded.”

Uncle Mackeck did do a really solid job. There’s a remarkable lack of audience chatter or noise on the tape, and though the gear wasn’t state of the art, the recording is clear, relatively close and the best of the now three known Buffalo recordings. Uncle Mackeck only cut one song, on his first flip during “Prove It All Night,” which has been patched with Recorder 2 (Kshavo source).

The only material flaw in the new Buffalo recording was micro gaps. In 20-25 random spots across the three hours, the recorder cuts out momentarily leaving an audible gap. Having cut my teeth on a “basic handheld recorder” myself, I learned the hard way that they can be unreliable and if jostled or perhaps held in the wrong position, drop outs can occur.

On the Buffalo recording, the micro gaps were all well under a second in length, though absolutely noticeable. But happily for us, it isn’t 1980 but 2013 and audio technology has come a long way. Using iZotope RX and its magical “Spectral Repair” plug in, JEMS was able to repair the gaps in a manner that should make them audibly invisible to all but the most committed and headphone-wearing trainspotter. The software uses an extrapolation algorithm to pull information from both sides of the gap and fill in like spackle. It worked like a charm.

To take this one the last mile and provide the patching is our comrade and the unchallenged king of multiple source recordings, MJK5510. Thanks to him for final finishing and prepping.

And a big thanks to d.j. mackeck and his dad for loaning JEMS their masters, and to Uncle for recording the show so well in the first place.

There are more mackeck masters to come.

BK for JEMS