Maybe someone over here is curious about this thing:
I'm gonna give a wild claim, and say that the 1971-10-23 - KELLER HALL GYMNASIUM, UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND, RICHMOND, VA audio is from Challenger Eastern Surfboards, Highlands, NJ 1972 sessions.
1. Sounds like a band rehearsal (maybe to a very limited audience?)
2. Sound is way too good to be an audience recording. Even thought the high generation tape sounds like crap, but I'm 100% sure this is not an audience tape.
3. Audience parts sounds like they have been mixed in later (Maybe by Tinker at Challenger Eastern Surfboards when mixing the tapes?)
4. Song selection
5. Only Bruce talking. Usually Stevie would participate
6. Original March 14, 1972 date could be right after all. Very similar "recording" sessions with the same songs was taken 3 days from this.
7. Sound is very very similar.
I'd wish there would be an own section for Brucebase on this forum, or at Greasylake or at SPL to talk about these things. They have their own forum on wikispaces, but it's going to be closed down soon.
Here's the original notes from Brucebase:
1971-10-23 - KELLER HALL GYMNASIUM, UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND, RICHMOND, VA
GOT MY MOJO WORKING / IT'S ALL OVER NOW, BABY BLUE / DO IT WITH A FEELING / CHEROKEE QUEEN / LOOK TOWARDS THE LAND / NOT FADE AWAY - GUNSLINGER / COMING HOME / HOOCHIE COOCHIE MAN / KEY TO THE HIGHWAY / WHEN YOU DANCE / GOIN' BACK TO GEORGIA / DON'T LOOK BACK
One show, triple bill, with The Bruce Springsteen Band headlining. Trumpet player Harvey Cherlin and backup singers Barbara Dinkins and Delores Holmes are not featured. They are absent. The band is comprised of only the five core members; Springsteen, Van Zandt, Tallent, Sancious and Lopez. Undercards were the New Jersey-based outfits Tumbleweed and Black Forrest Rhodes, both had recently become involved with Tinker West’s Blah Productions. The three-member, acoustic-orientated Tumbleweed deserves special mention. They had recently returned from studio sessions in Nashville (booked under the name Montana Flintlock), events orchestrated by Mike Appel. Tumbleweed would turn out to be the original connection between Tinker West and Appel, one that would soon have Tinker driving Springsteen to New York to meet Mike.
The majority of the audio listed above was previously listed under the date, March 17, 1972, at Richmond Arena, Richmond, VA. However, the discovery of two reels in the collection of a highly respected collector has led us to move the audio to this date. The reels have excellent pedigree, originally belonging to Mike Appel, and are marked with this date and location.
The discovery of these reels is significant for a number of reasons. First, it includes the complete (aside from small edits due to tape changes) twelve-song, 127-minute show in the correct order, including two songs not found in the previously circulating audio. The sound quality is a significant upgrade over the old tapes, with distinctive improvements in clarity, separation, and a lack of background noise and hiss. The first additional song, the blues-standard "Key To The Highway", is known from a subsequent performance at the Student Prince in December, but the audio quality here is a vast improvement over the fair-quality audience recording from that show. However, it's the discovery of the second new song that is most important, a previously unknown Springsteen composition, the set closing "Don't Look Back", introduced by Bruce with that title (unrelated to the outtake from Darkness On The Edge Of Town). It is a slow, dirge-like song led by Springsteen on the piano and is nearly eleven minutes long. It is extremely reminiscent of some of the solo material that he would go on to record in the spring of 1972. "Don't Look Back" is about a struggling, previously successful singer and perhaps could be autobiographical, at least in part. Part of the final verse reads:
They'll take you, they'll make you and break you until you're almost gone / And they'll throw you to the street hounds to pick your bones / Till you're so damned stoned and confused and you can't sing nothing but the blues / You're just another winner whose turn it was to lose / Now them days for you are over and you're lucky to have survived / Here you go again with another rock n roll band, just playing to keep yourself breathing
Audio recordings from this show have been in circulation with collectors since the early 1980s, although they tended to circulate in bits and pieces and were incorrectly dated. For many years this tape was incorrectly attributed to a November 1970 Steel Mill gig in Richmond. However this is clearly not Steel Mill, as Robbin Thompson is not present, Springsteen and Van Zandt share lead guitar duties and David Sancious is on keyboards. Springsteen plays piano on both “Cherokee Queen” and “Look Toward The Land” (with Sancious handling organ). Only “Cherokee Queen” has appeared on any mainstream bootleg since it was pressed on acetate as a Sioux City publishing demo later in 1972. In 2007, a veteran collector, audio2575, discovered an old tape long overlooked in his collection that contained a previously undocumented, additional song from this show (the Springsteen composition “Coming Home”) which is one of the performance highlights. Shortly thereafter that same collector released the contents of his tapes as the 'Non Über Project Volume One', which is ten songs and ninety-five minutes long. For the very first time, this release presented the music in stereo even "Cherokee Queen", which was originally pressed on acetate in mono. However, the songs were still in the incorrect order of appearance. Like all previous releases, it was attributed to the incorrect date and venue, March 17, 1972 at the Richmond Arena, Richmond, VA. The incomplete show is also available on CDR 'Fantastic Virginia' the Vintage Masters label. Unfortunately the opening and closing couple of minutes of “When You Dance” are cut on all currently circulating tapes, however, both are intact on the newly discovered reels. For the first encore, voices can be heard near the front of the stage yelling for “Resurrection” (a song Bruce stopped playing when Steel Mill folded). Bruce doesn't oblige, but instead delivers “Goin’ Back To Georgia”, itself rarely played by the Bruce Springsteen Band. Bruce performs a condensed arrangement, without any band harmony vocals.