Bientôt un coffret de raretés seventies de Bruce Springsteen ?

Avancée il y a quelques semaines par le magazine Q (lire mon post ici), l’éventualité d’un coffret de raretés seventies de Bruce Springsteen a été évoquée par la radio Sirius.

Ce projet se substituerait-il au coffret Darkness annoncé il y a quelques mois ? Ou y aura-t-il deux coffrets ? Le débat fait rage sur les forums.

Des vidéos inédites projetées le week-end dernier lors du FanFest au Rock’n'Roll Hall of Fame de Cleveland pourraient figurer au menu du coffret.

Voici des détails sur ces documents (source Fabrice sur le forum LOHAD).

We ate lunch at around 11:45am, then headed straight to Theater 4 for the main event of the day: Thom Zimny’s presentation of rare and mostly unseen video footage. There were 2 sessions: 12:30pm and 2:00pm. I only stayed for the first session, since I had to drive back to Zanesville.
Zimny was fresh off seeing Bruce and the band at Bonnaroo last night, and his fatigue showed at times while he was speaking. He was still fascinating to listen to though, and I totally envy his job. After a brief talk with Lauren Onkey, he proceeded to present footage and give background on each. Here is my synopsis of the footage:
1) “Born To Run” unaired commercial: This was filmed by Columbia Records back in 1975 but never broadcast. It was very typical of 70’s era commercials by musical artists, but still great to see.
2) “E Street Shuffle” from Lennox, Massachusetts 1975: Some of this footage appears in the “Wings For Wheels” documentary, but what Zimny showed was almost 10 minutes of the song, starting from the introduction to the final verse. This was an outdoor show and it’s filmed from the pit, only 1 camera. The striking feature of the video was seeing Steve Van Zandt wearing a bandanna instead of a fedora which he commonly wore in 1975; a sign of things to come I guess.
3) “Everytime You Walk In The Room” from the Bottom Line 1975: Here we got the full song, filmed with 1 camera at the back of the venue. Wow, can’t believe how tiny the place is! It’s amazing that footage exists from this legendary stand.
4) Studio footage of Bruce singing alternate version of “Jungleland” from 1975: Again, some of this footage shows up in “Wings For Wheels”, but here we saw the song from beginning to second solo. Since this was the alternate version of the song, the second solo at the time was the duel guitar/violin solo. The only downside was that the video looked very old with lots of color-bleeding.
5) Video for “Night Of The Jersey Devil”: This is definitely not unseen, although some may say it’s rare. It was fun hearing Zimny talk about the filming of the video, which started at 8:00am and continued until midnight, with Bruce coming up with new ideas of what he wanted and how he wanted them filmed.
6) “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” from the Carlton Theater, Red Bank, New Jersey in 1976: This was 3 camera mix footage of the full song. Zimny mentioned that he specifically mixed the footage for this presentation. This was hands down for me the best footage of the session: Bruce is in total “hyper, super-excited” mode and the performance is electrifying. The complete video of this show needs to be released officially. Just the performance of this 1 song blows all of Hammersmith ‘75 out of the water.
7) “Sherry Darling” from River rehearsals in 1980: Single camera footage of Bruce and the band rehearsing for The River tour has been around a long time, but this footage was different. Whereas the existing footage is filmed from a single tripod-mounted camera showing the whole stage, this footage is handheld and the person filming is onstage with the band. So all facial expressions are clear as day, and it’s fun to see Bruce mug at the camera at one point. Not essential footage, but fun to see.
“Prove It All Night” from 1978: To close out the session, we got a full, multi-camera shot performance of Prove It All Night, complete with introductory guitar solo from 1978. Next to the Red Bank footage noted in (6), this footage/performance is a strong second behind it. No mention was made of where the footage was from; Zimny told me afterwards that they are still trying to figure it out. I mentioned to him that it could be from Red Rocks, given that at one point Bruce says “This one’s for you guys up on the hill”. Red Rocks is an outdoor venue and very, very few outdoor shows were played on the 1978 tour.
When the session was done, I hung around and was able to talk with Thom Zimny for a few minutes. He admitted that he was going on only 2 hours sleep since yesterday’s Bonnaroo show, but that he was happy to be here and give his presentation. The rest of the conversation involved me thanking him for all his work: like I said, I envy this man’s job. I also got to see and thank Lauren Onkey again for all her efforts in putting together the weekend’s events.
So a shorter Day 2, but equally as satisfying as Day 1. Thanks to all those who gave presentations (Chris, Lauren, Jim and Thom) and to all the Bruce fans I met.