Bruce Springsteen - Blood Brothers - Non-Album Tracks (1993-1995)

I recently updated all the 22 volumes of Bruce Springsteen's live covers collection that I've made. I changed the mp3 tags to be more iTunes friendly and fixed the volume balance between songs. I also improved the sound quality of some songs by using versions from recently released official live albums (he's putting out a steady stream of those, though only through the Internet). To draw attention to that, I wanted to post something else by Bruce Springsteen. 

However, there isn't much need to post concerts from him, due to all those official Internet releases. And when it comes to studio material, I'm still waiting for a second "Tracks" archival box set, since that has been heavily hinted for a long time now, and I'm sure there's lots of key material there. That said, there's a cluster of very good songs released in 1993 to 1995 that make for an obvious album that should exist. So here it is.

For most of the 1970s and 1980s, Springsteen did all his recording and touring with his band, the E Street Band. But he stopped working with them for about ten years, from the end of 1989 to 1999. One key exception is that he recorded some new tracks with them in 1995 - "Secret Garden," "Blood Brothers," and "This Hard Land," to be added to a best of collection called "Greatest Hits." A couple more songs from that reunion, "High Hopes" and "Without You," were released on the "Blood Brothers" EP a year later. Other songs were released at the time as contributions to other albums: "Streets of Philadelphia," "Gypsy Woman," and "Dead Man Walkin'." "Streets of Philadelphia" in particular was acclaimed and won an Academy Award for best song, as well as four Grammy awards. It also was a big hit, particularly in Europe, where it hit Number One in some countries.

Additionally, there were more songs written that didn't get released at the time. "Brothers Under the Bridge" and "Back in Your Arms" came out later in the "Tracks" box set. "Homestead" and "Waiting on the End of the World" remain unreleased. "It's the Little Things that Count" was done live only at the time, and has since come out on some of those Internet only live albums I previously mentioned.

So that's a lot of material. It would have made sense to put out a studio album instead of scattering some songs here and there. Knowing how prolific he is, there probably are even more than remain in the vault and haven't been bootlegged. He even released a documentary about the E Street Band reunion called "Blood Brothers," which makes it especially strange he didn't release an album at the same time.

I've included three bonus tracks. He did the song "Blood Brothers" in two very different versions. So I included the alternate version just as a bonus track. "Here Comes the Night" is a cover song, first made famous by Van Morrison's 1960s band "Them." Springsteen did it once during a soundcheck in France, but never in an actual concert. He didn't really have it together for the soundtrack, and stopped and started the song a couple of times. I edited it together to make one complete version. The sound quality is fairly good, but it's only a bonus track because the performance is rather rough and tentative. Finally, there's a version of "Murder Incorporated." This song was first released on the 1995 "Greatest Hits" album, but it was actually recorded in 1982. I didn't include it, since it belongs to another era. But he did record it live in 1995, so that's the bonus version here.

This album is 52 minutes long, without the bonus tracks.

01 Blood Brothers (Bruce Springsteen)
02 Streets of Philadelphia (Bruce Springsteen)
03 Secret Garden (Bruce Springsteen)
04 Gypsy Woman (Bruce Springsteen)
05 Homestead (Bruce Springsteen)
06 Missing (Bruce Springsteen)
07 Dead Man Walkin' (Bruce Springsteen)
08 Brothers Under the Bridge (Bruce Springsteen)
09 High Hopes (Bruce Springsteen)
10 Without You (Bruce Springsteen)
11 Waiting on the End of the World (Bruce Springsteen)
12 Back in Your Arms (Bruce Springsteen)
13 It's the Little Things that Count (Bruce Springsteen)

Blood Brothers [Alternate Version] (Bruce Springsteen)
Here Comes the Night [Edit] (Bruce Springsteen)
Murder Incorporated [Live] (Bruce Springsteen)

https://www.imagenetz.de/bi5uA

The cover is just the cover of the 1996 EP "Blood Brothers,"unchanged.