Kingdom of Days: March 28

New for 2024: Audio for 2012; video for 2016

1970: Steel Mill plays a second night at the Hullabaloo in Richmond.

1976: Bruce and the E Street Band play a gig at Duke University, where “Raise Your Hand” makes its proper live debut.

1979: Three Mile Island nuclear power plant partially melts down in Pennsylvania. The incident inspires Bruce to write “Roulette.”

1981: Bruce postpones a show in Birmingham to recover from the previous leg of the River Tour.

1985: At their fifth and final night in Sydney on the Born in the U.S.A. Tour, Bruce and the E Street Band play “Wreck on the Highway.” It will be a full twenty-five years before anyone hears the E Street Band perform it again.

1988: A rather significant show from the Tunnel of Love Express Tour in Detroit–the live recording of “Be True” that appears on Chimes of Freedom hails from this date. Also, Inside the Tunnel of Love, an MTV special, will air late this year, featuring footage from this night. The entire show is available as part of Bruce’s official archive series–get it here. Backstage before the show, Bruce meets Gino Washington, the original recording artist for “Gino is a Coward,” for the first time. (Bruce has been covering Gino’s song in a transformed version called “I’m a Coward” nightly.)

2003: Bruce and the E Street Band play their first-ever show in New Zealand at the Western Springs Stadium in Auckland.

2008: The Magic Tour begins its Pacific Northwest swing with a show at the Rose Garden in Portland. For more highlights, see my Where the Band Was report from this show.

2012: At the first of two nights at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, “Seaside Bar Song” makes a very rare appearance.

2016: At Madison Square Garden in NYC, Bruce breaks out the tour premiere of “Meeting Across the River” with its classic segue into “Jungleland” in the post-album set.

2018: Springsteen on Broadway reaches a milestone–the 100th show–in its theatrical run at the Walter Kerr Theater in New York City. Michael Bloomberg is in attendance tonight.