Southside Johnny & Bruce Springsteen @ the Cleveland Agora, 8/31/1978

Pencil Storm e-mail Journalism, part three; Occasionally the e-mails between Pencil Storm editors & contributors turn out to be little mini-blogs all on their own, without any afterthought or punching-up. This one - from Ricki C. to Colin - is our latest in this series to run…….

Colin - OH MAN, this is SO GREAT. Thank you for sending me this, I've never seen it before (and I've watched A LOT of 1978 Bruce on YouTube, as you might suspect/expect). (Actually I think A BUNCH of Springsteen fans have never seen it before, there's only 22,000 views, some of those Bruce videos are over a MILLION views.)

I did some research; this is only three weeks after that Cleveland Agora WMMS radio broadcast my favorite Bruce bootleg of all time comes from. (I remember sitting at my kitchen table taping that show off Q-FM, staring at my boombox and thinking, "This might be the greatest live show I have EVER HEARD on the radio.")

And the E Street Band played Richfield Coliseum the night before this show. (In '78 I saw them at Vet's Memorial September 5th, that's the difference in ticket sales between Cleveland & Columbus in the same tour. Crazy.) (editor’s note; Richfield Coliseum’s capacity was upwards of 20,000, Veteran’s Memorial in Columbus was 3,000. And this video - according to the person posting - was RIGHT AFTER the Springsteen show at Richfield, in the wee small hours of August 31st, 1978.)

Again, thank you.

Ricki C.

ps. I love how you can SEE Miami Steve keep trying to take over the band that HE put together for Southside Johnny before he joined Bruce after Born To Run.

SONGS - “THE FEVER” / “I DON’T WANT TO GO HOME” / “HAVIN’ A PARTY”