Overview
These are songs written or recorded during the February 1971-March 1972 "Dr Zoom & The Sonic Boom / Sundance Blues Band / Bruce Springsteen Band" era. Springsteen did not record any material in a professional recording studio during this period, however "studio" (rehearsal) sessions were frequently conducted at Challenger Eastern Surfboards Factory. The primary purpose of the sessions was to prepare for live shows, not to make audio recordings, so only a fraction of the rehearsals were ever recorded, and the reel-to-reel tapes made at Challenger East were often erased and reused as part of the recording of live shows. Only one rehearsal session survived on tape, but live concert recordings of many of the below-mentioned songs are in circulation (refer to Brucebase timeline details).
The audio of the one Challenger East session known to exist was a continuous eight-song, 83-minute segment that took place at Highlands, NJ on March 14, 1972, engineered and produced by Carl "Tinker" West. The session lineup was Springsteen, Van Zandt, Sancious, Tallent and Lopez. For more information, see the March 14, 1972 entry on Brucebase.