Keith Sousa's video: County Fair - Bruce Springsteen the E Street Band - w lyrics

Born In The U.S.A. outtake released for the first time on The Essential Bruce Springsteen bonus disc in 2003. This detailed portrait of a small-town end-of-summer fair could be viewed as a sequel to WILD BILLY'S CIRCUS STORY which was written over 10 years earlier. * Some sources replace this line with "You'll be braggin' that you wasn't even scared"; hard to distinguish which one Bruce sings. ** On The Essential Bruce Springsteen booklet, this line is "As it (bells) at the county fair", but I think it should be "Baby, down at the county fair". The song was recorded between mid-Jan and mid-Feb 1983 at Springsteen's home studio (Hollywood Hills Garage Studio, Los Angeles, CA) after the Nebraska sessions. There are two studio versions of this song in circulation. The first one appears on The Lost Masters vol. 17 (Labour Of Love) bootleg. According to the liner notes on The Lost Masters vol. 17, that version is a solo outtake recorded by Bruce between Jan and May 1983 at Hollywood Hills Garage Studio, Los Angeles, CA. The second one, and the more popular of the two, first appeared on The Lost Masters vol. 19 (Labour Of Love), The Lost Masters Essential Collection (Labour Of Love), The Genuine Tracks (Scorpio), and several other bootlegs, and it is the same one that was later officially released on The Essential Bruce Springsteen bonus disc. According to the liner notes on The Lost Masters vol. 19, that version was recorded by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band on 09 Nov 1983 at The Power Station Studios, New York City, NY. These two versions appear to be two different remixes of the same recording. It is very obvious that it is exactly the same vocal used on both, with full E Street Band instrumental and female vocals added to the mix later to form what became the second/official version. This yields to the conclusion that this is a solo acoustic song recorded in early 1983 at Springsteen's home studio in Hollywood Hills after the Nebraska sessions -- and that is consistent with the liner notes on The Essential Bruce Springsteen booklet. It might be the remixing that took place on 09 Nov 1983 at The Power Station Studios, New York City, NY. It should be also noted that during the early 1983 Hollywood Hills solo sessions, Bruce was playing all the instruments and using a drum machine. This gave him the freedom to try variants of the different songs prior to choosing the version that fitted his mood best. This is the instrumental that can be heard on the first version mentioned above.