Received the Limited Edition Deluxe Collection of Bruce Springsteen’s 2 CD set The Promise and digitally remaster CD of Darkness On The Edge Of Town yesterday, which also includes 3 Blu-ray DVDs of The Making of Darkness…, a live concert of Darkness at the Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park, and a full concert recorded in Houston on the 1978 Darkness tour.  Oh, and it also came with a replica t-shirt from the Darkness tour.  And a poster from the Darkness tour.

The packaging is also pretty cool – it is all contained in a replica notebook of Bruce’s handwritten notes from the songs that made it onto Darkness as well as those that were unreleased until The Promise.

Watching all of the DVDs in this set will take over 6 hours, so I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance to watch them all, but I did watch a little of the Houston concert, to compare the version of Prove It All Night against the version from the Capitol Theatre on September 19, 1978.  I must say, although I’ve listed to the Capitol version so many times over the years I can hear it in my sleep, the Houston version is pretty darn good too.  I’ll watch Because The Night and Point Blank next, to see how they stack up, but all in all I am pleased with my purchase – which at $125, is a very good thing.

I did watch the band’s 2009 performance of Darkness in Asbury Park – obviously Bruce and the band have aged, and Danny is gone, but the performance is actually very, very good (except I hate when Bruce rushes his lyrics, as he is prone to do nowadays) and they sound as good as the 1978 tour on Prove It All Night and Racing In The Street.   Probably my favorite song from the Darkness studio recordings is Something In The Night, which I think I’ve only ever seen Bruce perform once live, but again, Bruce, Max and the band deliver.  On the same DVD are some archival videos of Bruce c. 1976 – 1978, including the Phoenix show which aired on The Old Whistle Stop, and they perform with all of the energy that later appears in Houston and Passaic.

It wasn’t until the end of the Phoenix show and watching the Asbury Park performance that I realized that not only did the band perform so well together, so consistently, but also that there was something missing, which made watching and listening to the band perform so enjoyable: Patti was not included in any of the performances.  Again, a very good thing.