09.04.1981
Germany, West Berlin, ICC Berlin
Live in Berlin 1981 (The Jungleland Edition)
exc. Audience

01. Factory [2:08]
02. Prove It All Night [5:09]
03. Out In The Street [5:07]
04. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out [5:30]
05. Darkness On The Edge Of Town [4:40]
06. Independence Day [7:33]
07. Who’ll Stop The Rain [3:22]
08. Two Hearts [2:57]
09. The Promised Land [8:17]
10. This Land Is Your Land [2:50]
11. The River [6:40]
12. Badlands [5:59]
13. Thunder Road [6:30]
14. Cadillac Ranch [5:30]
15. Sherry Darling [4:50]
16. Hungry Heart [4:31]
17. Fire [3:54]
18. You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch) [4:20]
19. Wreck On The Highway [4:38]
20. Racing In The Street [7:51]
21. Backstreets [8:06]
22. Ramrod [4:21]
23. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) [14:13]
24. Born Tu Run [4:36]
25. Detroit Medley [13:12]
26. Rockin’ All Over The World [3:22]
27. Audience [6:29]
28. Twist And Shout [6:14]

Total Running Time: [2:43:01]

Known Faults:
-Ramrod: splice at beginning

JEMS 2019 Transfer: presumed first-generation reel at 3.75 IPS > Otari 5050 mkII azimuth-adjusted > Sound Devices USBPre 2 > Audacity 2.0 capture > Peak Pro 6 (pitch adjusted +22 cents) > iZotope RX7 and Ozone 6 (mastered) > Peak Pro 6 (post production) > xACT 2.39 > FLAC

JEMS Archive recently undertook a housecleaning. The extended team — slipkid68, mjk5510, and slowburn — came together for a long weekend, meeting JEMS heart and soul BK at the JEMS south archive to organize what we had — and to catalog many new additions as well. 

Some of those came from one of the earliest-known Bruce tapers out there, CB. You’ll remember CB from amazing captures over four decades, like his wonderful Roxy ’75 recording. 

As a collector, his discerning taste offers two major dividends: lower generations and better sound, and perhaps sources that have not circulated in the BitTorrent era. Moreover, everything he collected from other tapers remains in superb condition: tape boxes look sharp, and each is marked clearly with a red Dymo label — very old school! Real beauty, and we hadn’t even opened them.

While working, we decided to audition reels. Our attention turned immediately to 1981. Why not Berlin, someone asked? It was near the beginning of the European tour — was it was superior to what circulates? Brother mjk5510 was ready with that information: the Brucebase entry indicated that the extant version sounded “a little distant and muffled.” but the show was “enjoyable nonetheless.”

Threading up the reel confirmed that. But distant and muffled? That’s not what we heard. On the lucky dip, we had a winner, and transferred it on the spot — a step we gladly repeated as the weekend went on. It was transferred to a zip drive and was one of many shows that found their way back from the trip for future release.

An upgrade from early in the European trek — April 9 was the second stop — balances out the gravitas of Stockholm (May 7 and 8) and the official release from London (June 5). It’s easy to overlook the early shows; listening anew should add a layer of intrigue, beginning with the first acoustic “Factory” and ending with a lengthy segment where the audience cheers for a good six and a half minutes to coax the band back for a final encore of “Twist and Shout.”

The crowd not settling is a testament to both the performance and Springsteen’s determination to not repeat Europe 1975. That’s why we chose to leave in every minute of the audience demanding one more — it really gives the show a unique feel. Overall, the 27-song set is the model-A goodness of Europe 1981: 

Berlin has two known unique recorded sources. The first recorder has seen at least three releases: River Flood, Simba version and RLR Collection. Brucebase describes Recorder 1 as distant and muffled, but to our ears, while it’s slightly distant, it’s not muffled (at least this low gen reel isn't). Circulating versions are good representations of the show, but have issues ranging from tape drag during “Factory” to each release running too fast or too slow to underlying generational noise. After a +22 cents adjustment, we believe this is the first release of this show at the correct pitch. The first set of all versions suffer in various places from slight high level distortion. This version was no different in that respect, however, we've gone through the entire first set and isolated those areas correcting them as much as possible, this was a painstakingly manual task resulting in triple digit corrections but we think the extra time and attention was worth it for such a tightly focused performance.

Our goal was to get a stable transfer, address all the flaws in the source recording and provide a material upgrade of Recorder 1 from CB’s low generation reel — we feel like we have accomplished this. 

The second set is a tick better quality than the first set which is where the intermittent high level distortion lives.

Oddly, only one song from Recorder 2 circulates: it’s included on a bonus single as part of “The Boss Hits The Badlands” LP package (if you can find one with the single). Some collector sites list this single as sourcing from 1985 but this is incorrect; rest assured, it’s Berlin ’81. For those who do not have it, we have included it as a bonus track in this release. 

The search continues for the complete Recorder 2 tape — we would welcome a found copy to give it the transfer it deserves — it can be identified by individual audience yells at the end of “Twist & Shout.” Can you blame them?

This one was truly a group collaboration, thanks to CB for sharing his vast archives with JEMS, BK for the transfer, advice and guidance, mjk5510 for the mastering, slipkid68 for the detailed notes, slowburn for the encouragement and pushing the group forward and most importantly to the original taper who went to the effort of documenting this moment in Bruce's performance history so well. 

Share it freely, and for free!

- BK, mjk5510, slipkid68 and slowburn