Passaic Night

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Bruce Springsteen has played over a thousand shows across the last four decades, nearly all of which will live forever in the hearts and memories of the fans who attended, and some of these gigs have been to known to change, or even save, lives. However, there are a handful of shows that are so well-known and legendary that they are referred to simply by one name: Agora, Passaic, and Winterland. These shows have become part of a Springsteen fan's vernacular and used as a point of reference when discussing just about every aspect of Bruce's career. These abbreviations of course refer to the following concerts Bruce and the E. Streeters performed in the wake of the Darkness album in 1978 Agora: The Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, OH, August 9, 1978 Passaic: Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ, September 19, 1978 Winterland: The Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, CA, December 15, 1978 In addition to all being from the same tour, they were also all broadcast live on the radio. And they were transmitted through the surrounding areas -- the Agora show was heard throughout the Mid West; Passaic was heard up and down the Northeast, and Winterland was broadcast in Northern California up through Seattle, Washington - indeed all areas that had supported Bruce in the first five years of his career, and through extended time between the Born to Run album and its 1978 follow-up, Darkness on the Edge of Town. And what has become evident is that more than just a handful of the thousands of listeners at home were the broadcasts to be listened to over and over again. It didn't matter if the was made using expensive, state-of-the-art stereo equipment or by holding a Radio Shack cassette player up to the speakers of a transistor radio, those tapes were treated like gold by many of those home-tapers. There have been countless stories posted to various online Springsteen forums over the years of how people played those tapes until they literally disintegrated.