Last week and this week Bruce and the band have been rehearsing extensively for the upcoming tour. But contrary to the last few times around, fans haven't been able to get a good impression of what goes on inside the Convention Hall. Big speakers have been set up outside the building blasting rock radio stations and drowning out any sounds coming from inside. Well, I'll take a wild guess and say that they are rehearsing a bunch of new songs and a bunch of old songs, and in between that, Bruce is walking around the stage telling jokes. Read more

   

Well, sort of... After about 1? years of actual blogging I've decided to go back to the way it used to be. But not quite. This will combine the best of two worlds: I will report the news and rumors like before, but I will do so in perhaps a more personal manner with my personal opinions and observations mixed in. Another thing I will borrow from the world of blogging is to open up for user comments. That way you, the reader, can add your views or perhaps additional information. However, to avoid spammers and rude people, your comments will be quarantined until I approve them.

I hope you will like this new format and stay tuned as we enter this new and exciting era of Bruce! Read more

   

I don?t know where my head has been (probably in pain after I had a couple of wisdom teeth pulled the other day), but I wasn?t expecting the tour announcement that came today. And I certainly wasn?t expecting one for Europe. I figured December was so far away it would probably be a while before it would all be official. But not only is it now official? my own capital, Copenhagen, is included. He will be playing the Forum in the center of Copenhagen in front of only 6,000 people! Is that the smallest E Street Band show outside of New Jersey since the Darkness Tour? One thing is certain, the ticket sale will be brutal and if you don?t hear from me after this next Monday, it will be because I had a nervous breakdown and have been submitted to a mental institution.

Anyway, you can see the complete tour schedule and all the dates on Backstreets along with an interview with Bruce conducted by Backstreets in which Bruce, among other things, declares that there will never be a farewell tour for the E Street Band. As far as he is concerned they will continue for many more years. I guess we?ll see, but it?s a nice attitude!

I will of course also have the tour schedule on Greasy Lake, but it?s possible I will wait until the new version is published, which I hope will happen within the next week or two. It?s a lot of work to keep the old site updated while working on the new one. Hope you can forgive me. By then, the tour schedule may include additional shows in Philadelphia, Washington DC, Boston and Los Angeles. At least, that?s what rumors suggest will happen. Stay tuned and good luck to everyone in the upcoming ticket frenzy. (But if you?re getting tickets for Copenhagen please wait until I?ve been there.) Read more

   

Well, the first song from the new album is now being played on selected radio stations in the US. Of course, it didn?t take many seconds for someone to save it to an mp3 file and start circulating it. I hope most of you have had a chance to listen to it out there. If not, you are in for a treat. I was personally blown away by it from the very first listen. For my money this may be one of the best sounding studio tracks Bruce has ever released. It?s hard-rocking with loads of guitar and loads of energy. It?s certainly the best thing Brendan O?Brien has done for Bruce, production-wise. I love The Rising album, but there has always been something about the production of that album that bothered me a little. Maybe it was a bit too muddy-sounding or something. Not so with ?Radio Nowhere?. Not that you can decipher every instrument, let alone on this recording taken from the radio, but somehow the sound is just more defined and the guitars are much more prominent, which in my book is a big plus. All of this makes it pretty easy to forgive that this isn?t Bruce at his lyrically best. I don?t think this song was ever meant to be deep or particularly meaningful. It?s meant as a call to arms. A signal to his fans that he?s ready to rock again. And not least, it?s meant to be a kick-ass show opener that will make the crowds jump up and down and sing along from the first note of music. Look for this song to develop into a six-minute tour de force before the end of the year.

All in all, an extremely promising first look at the Magic album. I personally can?t rule out that some of the old, classic albums will have to struggle hard to keep their position in the hierarchy if ?Radio Nowhere? is an indication of the overall sound and quality of Magic. Read more

   

As anyone who made it to here probably already discovered, the long-awaited announcement was published today: Bruce is releasing a new album on October 2 called Magic.  You can read the complete press release on the official site if you haven't already. The news has been received with overwhelming enthusiasm that I personally haven't seen since The Rising was announced more than five years ago. It's like suddenly the decline that started with Bruce's involvement in the 2004 presidential campaign and that hit rock bottom in the US with the Seeger Sessions album and tour has been turned around, and all the fans who have been laying low for 2-3 years are coming out of their hiding places and back into the fold. A good indication is that traffic on this site has been at least twice what it ever was during the recently closed Seeger era, including when that tour was announced and key setlists posted. Of course, everything may not be as rosy as it seems right now. A lot of people have been waiting for this moment for years and may see it as Bruce's last chance to redeem himself. So if the new album doesn't live up to their expectations and the E Street Band just isn't up to par anymore, those fans may decide that Bruce just isn't worth the attention anymore regardless of what he comes up with next. Personally I don't belong to that category. All right, the Devils & Dust album did very little for me, I must admit, but the tour was one of the best ever. And after a hesitant start I had to surrender to the Seeger Sessions band, and I rank Live in Dublin as Bruce's best live album to date. But like most everyone else, I consider an E Street Band album special. The real thing. The real Bruce. And I have absolutely no doubt that Magic will be amazing. And even if it isn't, I will probably always be around to see what he comes up with next. Bring it on! Read more

   

As a lot of you have heard by now, Bruce's friend and personal assistant Terry Magovern passed away last week. A lot of nice words have been said about Terry and no doubt they are all well-deserved. I didn't know him and never talked to him, but I have seen him on numerous occasions including in my younger days (and OK, last year, too) waiting for autographs outside Bruce's hotel in places like London, Warsaw, Copenhagen, etc., and at concerts when he would be assisting the local security people. At hotels he was always a sure sign that Bruce was in the vicinity. Whenever he appeared everyone knew it was time to line up. And you could be sure, as far as Terry was concerned, there would be no autographs for anyone unless there was an organized line and no pushing or shoving. Bruce didn't always go by that, but Terry always did what he could. But sometimes there was just too many people to even attempt an organized line. Then Bruce would just head straight into his waiting mini-bus before he was surrounded by zealous fans insisting on a handshake, an autograph, or a photo. On those occasions too did Terry play an important role with his impressive physical size. I remember, I think it was in 1993 outside Bruce's hotel in Copenhagen, how Terry singled-handedly held back a dozen people just by holding out his arm. People were pushing to get past him, but he never wavered, and Bruce managed to get into his car unapproached. In later days Terry didn't participate so much in the actual body guarding. He was more in the role of a coordinator, telling other security people what to do. The last time I saw him, on the fall European tour in 2006, he had lost much of his size and charisma. Whether it was due to illness, a diet, or stress, I just don't know. And I guess it doesn't matter. What matters is that Bruce has lost a, by all accounts, very close friend and that even to fans things won't quite be the same again. "I got your back," says Terry as Bruce signs autographs to fans in Warsaw, 1997 Read more

   

I'm still here. I haven't had a whole lot to say lately. I'm really busy working on a new version of the whole site. I think I can promise you some very nice improvements of existing features and a whole bunch of brand new stuff that I'm pretty sure will be to your liking. My goal is to launch the new version before Bruce launches his new project... the new E Street Band album and tour. Both of those things look like they will probably commence in October. If you don't check out various message boards, the album is said to include song titles such as "One Dead Ringer", which may be the title track, and "Blindspot", which may be a leftover from an unreleased 1994 album. The big mystery is whether this album will be mostly Bruce playing and with E Streeters dubbing their instruments later, or if the whole band has been together for a Seeger style session with everything being recorded live in the studio. Both scenarios have been reported to be the case. My guess is that we will know a whole lot more within the next month. If an early October release is true, as most signs indicate, expect an official release by mid-August at the latest. And when it comes, my guess is it will be very hard to miss. This will be at least as big as The Rising in terms of marketing. Especially if the rumors are true that the following tour will be the last with the entire E Street Band and will be marketed as such. I personally hope Bruce is too wise for that. More on that in a later post, I think. Read more

   

After my offline time, I've finally managed to catch up on a few things that were neglected in the last 1½ months. That included approving about two dozen concert eyewitness accounts that had been submitted. Among them was a whole bunch of accounts written by former Springsteen roadie and musician in his own right, Albee Tellone. He also played for Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom during their brief time on Earth. Provided they are legit, and I have absolutely no reason to think otherwise, these accounts offer a rare view at life on the road with Bruce and the early incarnations of the E Street Band around 1972. There are also accounts from the last shows Steel Mill played in January 1971. Go to the main site and the Magic in the Night section, choose Tours -> Early E Street Band -> Only show concerts with Eyewitness accounts. Many of the resulting hits will include an eyewitness account by Mr. Tellone. He also managed to set a few things straight in regard to dates of shows, so thank you for that. I hope I got the corrections right.

If you want to know more about Albee Tellone read this interview conducted by Torsten Mörke on Castiles.net in 2005. Read more

   

I'm back. Sorry about the long absence. Blame it on some serious ISP problems and brutal summer heat that made sitting in front of a computer screen and using your brain cells pure torture.

While I was gone the Live in Dublin DVD was of course released. Since I was offline, I didn't have the same sense of what the general expectations were among fans than is usually the case with a new release. That was kind of refreshing, I must admit. My view wasn't influenced by anything. It reminded me of the old days before the internet... heck, even before I started to subscribe to Backstreets magazine around 1990. Back then I had no idea there were fans out there who thought that anything Bruce had done was less than ingenious. To me, every single note he played, every song, every obscure performance was almost godly. And if I didn't think so right away, I figured there was something wrong with me, and if I just listened to the song a few more times, the brilliance would eventually hit me. That's what happened many times. That's how I got to love "Saint in the City", "Kitty's Back" and a bunch of other of those weird early songs that are considered classics by most. I kept listening. The same rule is to some extent still valid to me today. I do have a more realistic view on Bruce and his abilities and there are definitely things in his canon that is less than brilliant. A few things are almost embarrassing. I'm sure even Bruce would admit that. But a lot of the time songs that at first don't appeal to me suddenly open up and become favorites. "Countin' on a Miracle" comes to mind.

Since reading a comment in Backstreets that referred to my first show (to me a life-changing, mindblowing experience that was perfect from the first to the last note) as "rushed" I've had certain difficulties accepting that fans can be downright critical of Bruce. I even wrote a letter to the editor slamming those who dared dismiss anything he'd done. I've since gotten used to it, of course. I've had to. Running a Springsteen discussion forum kind of forces you to live with it. But it will probably always rub me the wrong way.

That's why it was nice to sit down and watch the Dublin DVD with no pre-conceived notion of what one ought to think of it if one wanted to be in line with the rest of the fan community. Needless to say I loved it to bits. So do a lot of others, I later found out. And others thought it sucked and could hardly watch it all the way to the end. And still others won't even buy it. Who cares? While knowing and communicating with other fans is pretty essential to the whole fan experience, in the end you're still in it on your own terms and for your own sake and you shouldn't have to be ashamed of liking anything with Bruce's name on it. If Human Touch is your favorite album and "Real Man" makes you want to get up and dance, more power to you. I happen to like both of them quite a bit myself :-). Read more

   

I was living at a dorm and one night a fire broke out in the kitchen that I was sharing with 16 other people. The firemen came and evacuated the whole place. We were standing outside in the cold for quite a while as they put out the fire and made sure it wouldn't start up again. When we were finally allowed back inside, the kitchen had turned into a black melted mess. It was completely ruined. Fortunately it hadn't spread to any of our rooms, so sometime after midnight I was able to settle down and try to come to terms with what had happened. It had been one of the scariest nights of my life.

Well, this took place in 1995. Greatest Hits had just been released. Instead of going to bed, I put the album in my CD player and listened to the four bonus tracks on repeat for at least an hour. Bruce was such a big part of my life that listening to the reunited E Street Band was one of the most comforting and reassuring things I could imagine doing. The gentle tones of "Secret Garden", the synthesis of the sax and harmonica at the end of "Blood Brothers", the fear expressed in "Murder Incorporated"... though none of those songs had anything to do with the actual situation, they were still exactly what I needed.

So why am I talking about that now? Well, I was just watching a DVD of outtakes from the Blood Brothers documentary. There's a lot of footage of the show Bruce and the band did at Tramps in New York City in connection with the "Murder Incorporated" video. The whole thing just brought me back to that year of 1995. And it made me think of how much had happened to Bruce in the 10 years that followed his incredible popularity of 1985. If you read my post further down about the Paris show in 1985, you get an impression of a man who knew exactly who he was, what he wanted, and how to get it... and who could do nothing wrong. Bruce may not agree if you asked him, but compared to 1995, that's sure how it seemed.

1995 was a year that pointed in all directions. It seemed like Bruce didn't have a clue what to do next. He had just scrapped an album of introverted "relationship" songs that a few months earlier had been all but finished. But the man who 10 years earlier could do nothing wrong, was now unsure of himself. He had just seen the first major backlash of his career with the cool reception of the Human Touch/Lucky Town albums, both on the artistic and the commercial level. He was no longer infallible. He was no longer beyond criticism. He needed something safe, and what was safer than reuniting the E Street Band and releasing a sure commercial success: a greatest hits album?

That summer the rumor mill was alive with talk of a full-blown E Street Band tour. Never late to spot a business opportunity, the Badlands fan club in the UK was even taking orders for concert trips across the pond to see Bruce and the reunited E Street Band. To this date I still have no clue if there was actual talk in the Bruce camp of doing a tour at that point or if it was all pure speculation. Whatever the case, it didn't happen for another four years. Instead, all of a sudden a gaping fan world saw Bruce over here in Europe playing "Hungry Heart" at a café in Berlin with a bunch of German musicians in order to make a video of it. It was completely surreal. I remember getting a call about it from one of my friends and simply not believing it. And I remember interrupting a cat-sitter job for my parents and riding 30 miles on my bike to my school in order to get on the Internet and check the LuckyTown Digest to have it confirmed. What the hell was the man thinking? There were even rumors of him doing a whole café tour like that in European cities. I was petrified that he would suddenly show up at some weird place in Copenhagen and me not being there.

Bruce, whatever you do, please never pull a stunt like that again.

Well, it soon became clear that this was a one-off thing. Bruce hadn't completely lost it. But what was perhaps worse, he seemed to have completely lost his voice. It hadn't sounded too good for his performances with the E Street Band earlier that year, but when footage was released from his Berlin stint, you started to seriously worry. His voice was all but gone. He could hardly make it through "Thunder Road". The voice that had woken up entire cities and surrounding areas with its "prisoner of rock 'n' roll" doomsday exclamation 10 years earlier, was now all but a whisper. Now, that was scary.

Adding to the confusion of what the heck was going on, just as all hope of a permanent E Street Band reunion had been given up, they did another mini-reunion in September for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opening in Cleveland. The good news was that the voice was more or less back. The bad news was that I have rarely seen a more lackluster performance by Bruce and the band. Even then it seemed pretty obvious that a permanent reunion was not in the cards at that point.

So it could hardly be described as a surprise when soon after Bruce did his umpteenth 180 degree turn of the year and announced an acoustic solo album and tour. Whatever your opinion about the Ghost of Tom Joad album and subsequent tour, when you think about it, it was probably pretty inevitable. He had been talking about a solo tour since 1987. He needed to get that out of his system before he was ready to look back or forward. An E Street Band tour at that point was simply not what he wanted and it might have ended up a disaster and the last we would have ever seen of the band.

So maybe everything happens for a reason. Back at the dorm we got a brand new kitchen that we had so desperately needed even before the fire, and four years later we got a killer E Street Band reunion when Bruce was all good and ready for it.

I'm still working on the reason for that "Hungry Heart" video, but as soon as I figure it out, I'll let you know. Read more