Bruce Springsteen The Live Series:

The Tunnel of Love tour again? That’s surely a sentiment some are expressing with this month’s release of New York 5/16/88, the outstanding opening night performance from the final, five-show stand on the US leg of the 1988 tour.

We often cite the Reunion tour as a demarcation between the “classic” and “modern” Springsteen eras. Yet this April already marks 23 years since the start of the Reunion tour in Barcelona. Do the math, and the E Street Band’s return in 1999 is inching ever closer to being the midpoint of their overall career—a line to be reached in 2026, at which point it will have been 27 years from the start of Reunion; and Reunion itself was 27 years after the band formed in 1972. Time flies.

When news first emerged in late 1989 that the E Street Band had been dismissed indefinitely by Bruce Springsteen, it began nine years of uncertainty and speculation as to when, if ever, they would join forces again. They did come back together to record new material for Greatest Hits in 1995 and undertook a small series of promotional appearances in support of it, but the fact that they parted ways again without touring only made the odds of a full return feel even longer.

A memorable six-night stand in the City of Brotherly Love ends on a high note with some old friends on Philadelphia '99. The 22-song set begins in jaw-dropping fashion with the long-awaited return of “Incident On 57th Street,” last played in December 1980, and features the first Reunion tour performances of “Point Blank,” “Sherry Darling” “Streets of Philadelphia,” “Jungleland” and “Raise Your Hand” to appear in the Archive Series. Philadelphia ’99 also includes one of only five stagings of the epic “New York City Serenade” circa 1999-2000 following a 24-year hiatus.