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One (informal) show. This famous performance was organized by Mike Appel within hours of the morning audition meeting with John Hammond. The 300 seat Gaslight Au Go Go had opened in April 1971 as a financially necessitated merger of two long-established Greenwich Village clubs, the rock-dominated Café Au Go Go and the folk-orientated Village Gaslight (the 100 seat McDougal Street club made famous by Bob Dylan). The merged entity was called 'Gaslight Au Go Go' and it was located in the 152 Bleeker Street home of the former Café Au Go Go. The legendary Sam Hood owned both the old and new Gaslight businesses. The Gaslight Au Go Go wasn't Bruce's preferred choice for this performance. The Bitter End, Max's Kansas City and Kenny's Castaways were approached first, but none could accommodate a Springsteen billing on such short notice. John Hammond attended this show, was impressed, and invited Springsteen back to CBS the following day to make a studio demo audition tape. Evidence from surviving promotional material indicates the scheduled performers at Gaslight Au Go Go on the night of May 2 were Charlie Musselwhite (headlining) with Garland Jeffreys (support). It is likely they were performing two shows at the club's regular starting times of 9:00pm and 11:30pm. Springsteen was slotted into a very early evening time slot, well before the first of the Musselwhite / Jeffreys shows started. There is evidence (from comments made by Springsteen and Appel) that this early evening time slot this night may have been booked with unadvertised amateur comedy acts. Bruce's performance lasted about 30 minutes and included around five-six songs. Both Springsteen and Appel have mentioned the first two listed setlist tracks as having been played, and Bruce makes note of the other two in Born To Run. He claims the club was Gerde's Folk City, but could well be mistaken since he correctly identifies the manager as Sam Hood. There is no circulating audio/video from this performance, although both video and audio from Springsteen performances at Max's Kansas City in mid-August are sometimes incorrectly attributed to this gig.
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