Boot Tracker; July 7th 2008, Oslo

I was really looking forward to the Oslo recording. During this show half the Born in the USA album was played, including a very rare appearance of "Cover Me". Though Born in the USA is far from a favorite amongst fanatic fans, those songs always make for quite the house party. I always wonder why it is that us fanatics have a kind of love and hate relation toward the album. Is it because the album that made our little secret a little bit too widely know. Or is it because Born in the USA was, in all honesty, a little too slick sometimes. The River still had quite a few epics that felt close enough to the epics on the Wild, the Innocent and the E-street Shuffle, to make that portion of the fan base that was attracted to that aspect of Springsteen feel right at home. Born in the USA and Nebraska were the last step in the process that started with Born to Run, where Springsteen started to get to the core of a song, stripping away all extras. By the time the Born in the USA tour started, the Boss had no need to include any R&R classics. He had written some effective three minute gems of his own.

Like I said Born in the USA ensures hard rocking shows. Cover Me., Glory Days, and No Surrender are very effective house wreckers, especially when they are paired with trail blazers as Cadillac Ranch. Unfortunately, we won't get to enjoy that party from this recording. This Oslo tape is easily amongst the worst tapes I've heard. Its a distant bucket of mud, with a few people clapping of beat to make matters worse. I'm sure the taper managed to bring back the evening with the help of this tape. But I seriously doubt that having witnessed the concert will do much to increase this tape's enjoyment. I'm sorry to say that this recording goes straight to the garbage bin on my desktop next. With my apologies to the taper. I understand he slept in a truck to get his efforts to us. I can imagine that the results were somewhat disappointing to himself as well after going through such an ordeal. The things us fanatics do to get to a show! Half a Born in the USA album or not, its worth it isn't it?

"Cover Me"

MP3 File

Download the full show in mp3 here
A small request, use mp3s for personal use only. Keep them in your iPod or on your computer but never use a mp3 based CD in a trade. The quality of mp3s deteriorate rapidly every time a CD is ripped. Using high quality music files such as FLACs is essential in keeping the trading pool healthy.

Recording: 1 out of 5
Show: 4 out of 5
Artwork: none