After a few years of embarrassing neglect, the Greasy Lake merchandise section has finally been updated to include some brand new cool designs and loads of new items. We also removed some items that no one was interested in. The new focus is on t-shirts and other types of clothing. Note in particular that several t-shirts now come in more than one color and that we now carry cool sweatshirts and hoodies. As usual our merchandise is based on the CafePress concept, which ensures high quality prints and washable textile. And remember, the proceeds of the sale goes to maintaining this site, so if you enjoy our services and need a new shirt for the upcoming preshow parties, you can kill two birds with one stone by doing a little shopping in our store. Find it at www.cafepress.com/greasylake.
The first North American leg of the Working on a Dream Tour came to an end last night at the Izod Center in New Jersey with an energetic show that included tour premieres of "Something in the Night", "Cover Me" and "Incident". The tour has been met with somewhat mixed reactions. The frontpage poll here on Greasy Lake indicates that about 25% of the fans feel that changes are needed. Criticism has mostly been about the lack of songs from the new album and that most of the setlist standards are old war horses that were also standards on the last two E Street Band tours.
What no one has disputed is that the energy level has been incredibly high right from the get-go, that Bruce himself is in top shape, and that the band can still rock the socks off even the last rows of any arena. And that includes whenever Jay Weinberg has stepped in for his dad on drums.
Some concern has been expressed over Clarence's mobility or lack thereof. His dancing days are apparently over and he only rarely moves away from his spot. But as long as he can still blow his horn, hopefully he will be able to continue touring.
As someone who has yet to see a show in person and only has setlists and bootlegs to refer to, I can say that I have joined the more than 60% of the fans who think the tour is fine and dandy. It is indeed a shame that we don't get to hear more of the new album, but overall the tour seems to have taken the spontaneity of the Magic Tour and combined it with the focus of, say, the Tunnel of Love Express Tour. The "depression" theme that runs through the entire night sets a nice serious tone without which the celebration and exhileration would become meaningless.
The tour continues in just a week when the band does their first European festival gig at the Pinkpop Festival in the Netherlands as the beginning of a two-month European leg.
Looks like the rumor is true: Bruce is scheduled to play three shows at Giants Stadium on September 3 and October 2 and 3 respectively. The shows will be the last major event at the old stadium, which is set to be demolished in 2010. Tickets for Bruce's shows will go on sale on Monday, June 1, so be prepared. Now, those are the facts, but lots of speculation remains: will these be the last shows of the Working on a Dream Tour? Will they be the last E Street Band shows? Will they even be the last Giants Stadium shows or will more be added? When it comes to more additions, a reliable source says that this will be it. Even if all three shows are sold out, there won't be anymore added. However, that remains to be seen for sure. Whatever the case, this definitely confirms that the tour won't be over after Europe, and it would be a big surprise if more shows aren't added before Giants Stadium in other parts of the US and perhaps Canada.
Resurfacing after a bad case of the Swine Flu (nah, just a bad cough), it's time for me to drag out a little pet peeve of mine. Just recently a fan-made video of "Surprise, Surprise" was posted on YouTube and has really taken the fan community by storm. Depicting the birthday of a young girl, the video goes overboard in "happy, shiny people" images and clichés in a way that's just incredibly charming and hilarious. While it does make a little fun of the song's lightweight nature, it actually makes you appreciate the song for what it is: A fun diddy and a damn good one, too.
And here's where my pet peeve comes out. Do you realize that if you were fan of Prince or REM or any Warner Music artist, a similar fan-made video would have been gone probably before it was even uploaded? Why? Because those artists, represented by their record companies, don't appreciate fans using their music for free. They don't allow this kind of human creativity and bursting inspiration. They don't approve when music does to you exactly what music is supposed to do to you and what it did to these kids: Make you so inspired that you go out and spend a day putting together an awesome video that brings joy to thousands of people. Oh no, we just can't have that, can we?
Well, fortunately Bruce has not taken this kind of stand. Yet. One can hope it's deliberate and that he and his organization can see what a huge backlash it would mean if they asked YouTube to pull a video like this. But one can also fear that it's only because it's flying under their radar and that they just haven't gotten around to dealing with stuff like this yet. What a great shame and a great sin it would be. Instead Bruce should invite these kids backstage at the next show in their town and tell them how wonderful it is that they took his music and made it even better.
What looked like a silly rumor now turns out to be true: the second Greatest Hits package of the year is set for release on June 2. The CD looks a lot like the infamous WalMart Greatest Hits that was released in January, but has a few more songs, including "Because the Night" and "Fire" from the Live 1975-85 box. The artwork is also a bit remiscent of the WalMart release, and altogether the disc seems like an attempt to make up for the exclusive WalMart disc that Bruce himself described as a mistake. One can only wonder what WalMart will think of a product that's a direct competition to what they thought was their exclusive goldmine, but is now an inferior release compared to the new one.
By the way, if you're hoping for previously unreleased bonus material, you are out of luck, although it can't be ruled out that some of the tracks have been remastered.
Tracklist:
01: Blinded By The Light
02: Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
03: Born To Run
04: Thunder Road
05: Badlands
06: Darkness On The Edge Of Town
07: Hungry Heart
08: The River
09: Born In The U.S.A.
10: I'm On Fire
11: Glory Days
12: Dancing In The Dark
13: The Rising
14: Lonesome Day
15: Radio Nowhere
16: Long Walk Home
17: Bonus: Because The Night live)(From Live 1975-85)
18: Bonus: Fire (live)(From Live 1975-85)
Another interesting release for the completists or new fans out there will be a no less than 7 disc package of the three live albums that feature the E Street Band: Live 1975-85, Live in New York City and Live at Hammersmith. The package will be released under the title Tour Pack on May 25.
For the first time in E Street Band history, one of the band's members will publish an autobiography about himself (obviously) and life with the band. The member in question is none other than the Big Man Clarence Clemons. The book entitled simply Big Man is set for release in October on Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group and will include "unbelievable, never before told legends of adventures with Bruce Springsteen". Sounds like a must-have book to me, and while it will no doubt be more about Clarence Clemons himself than about his Boss, it will be the first time since Dave Marsh's biographies that a real insider writes a book about Bruce Springsteen. Before his death Danny Federici was also said to be planning an autobiography, but whether he actually did any writing is unknown.
One of the purposes of Greasy Lake is to preserve Bruce history for new and coming generations of fans. When we create a record of every new show Bruce does, it is of course not least due to a "here and now" demand. People obviously want to study the setlist of the latest show and perhaps watch a Youtube clip.
But another important reason is to enable people five, ten or fifteen years from now (provided we're still around) to go back and get an impression of what a certain show or tour was like. An essential ingredience in this is the eyewitness accounts. We've been collecting them for almost 10 years and have more than 1600 of them. From the two-line exclamation to the page-long analysis and everything in between.
The current tour has so far generated about 30 accounts. That's pretty good, but not enough. A couple of shows like Tulsa and the latest Hartford show dont have any. So if you were present at those shows, or any other show, you should consider posting a comment. Surely you don't want "your" show to be the one no one can read about in fifteen years? And in the case of Hartford, do you really want a grumpy newspaper review to be the onlytestimony of what was no doubt much better than that?
So if you have a little time, head over to the Stage section, find your show and submit your words of wisdom. And it doesn't have to be a recent show. There are hundreds of shows from previous tours that still need comments. The next generations of fans will thank you.
We may not have seen much of the rumored Darkness anniversary edition yet, but here's a nice little compensation: the editor of the much acclaimed For You book, Lawrence Kirsch, has launched a new project.While For You consisted of fan tales from Bruce's entire career, the new book will focus exclusively on the Darkness album and tour. Other than that the concept is the same as last time. It will be fans like you and me who share their stories, photos and memorabilia about the legendary Darkness era, with Lawrence Kirsch selecting the best contributions and adding some exclusive never-seen-before pictures to the batch. The best thing is, you can already start to contribute now. A new website has been set up at www.thelightindarkness.com and is ready for your input. So whether you experienced 1978 yourself or just love the album and tour, Lawrence Kirsch wants to hear from you.
Six shows into the Working on a Dream Tour, the brand new album that the tour is named after seems to have outplayed its role in shaping the show's structure. At the last few shows, only four of the Working on a Dream songs were played, down from six at the first show in San Jose, which in itself is not a lot by Bruce standards at the beginning of a tour.
There is nothing unusual about the fact that over the cause of the tour, the album being officially promoted gives way to more songs from the back catalogue, but it usually doesn't happen until after the first or second leg. Not after two weeks as is the case here.
The question fans are asking themselves is whether Bruce doesn't feel the new songs are up to the usual standard, or if they are too hard to transform to a live setting, or if he just doesn't feel the fit in with the message he wants to deliver at this point. It may be a combination, but I think the third option is closest to the truth. It seems like Bruce is afraid the new songs don't touch the current spirit of America like they should. And maybe he's right. In a time when all people talk about is recession and financial crisis and unemployment, it does appear like the Working on a Dream songs' message of love and optimism is, at best, a little ahead of its time.
It's particularly striking that a song like "Lucky Day" which just lends itself to being played live as one of the opening numbers - as it was for the first week of shows - now seems to have fallen out of grace. It's a fine little song that worked really well live, but is it a little too happy for Bruce? Is he worried that fans and critics will accuse him of being an out-of-touch multi-millionaire if he centers the show around the Working on a Dream songs?
Whatever the case, it will certainly be interesting to see how the show develops when and if the economic key indicators start to show things turning around for the better. I would personally hate to see this tour come and go without songs like "What Love Can Do", "Surprise, Surprise" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" being given a chance to prove their worth live. Or we can hope that Robert Hilburn will once again review the imminent Los Angeles shows and do what he did in 1992 when his very critical review apparently made Bruce focus on his new material again rather than pleasing fans with old war-horses.
The Working on a Dream Tour was officially launched last night in San Jose, CA. And unlike what we reported yesterday as a silly April Fools joke, the entire E Street Band was present in name and person. Moreover, the band has been expanded with singers Curtis King and Cindy Mizelle from the Seeger Sessions band, allegedly to great effect. The first night offered a generous 26-song setlist structured much like the second rehearsal show, but with "Growin' Up" played as a request and "Good Rockin' Tonight" working as a bridge between a rather somber section of the show and a more loose section.
The new album was of course also richly featured, although with six songs it did seem to be on the low end for the start of a new tour. Apart from that, Bruce relies on older material to shape the night. Only three songs were played from the three studio albums that preceded Working on a Dream. I personally find that a little sad. In return, it's nice to see Bruce dust off old gems like "Seeds", "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and "Johnny 99" and play them in very different versions from what we're used to. "The Ghost of Tom Joad" for instance is the hard-rocking version that was created for a guest spot by Tom Morello on the Magic Tour and then laid to rest. Now it's back in all its glory with Nils on shining lead guitar.
Another interesting detail of the new tour is that for the first time since The River Tour, "Born to Run" has left the encores and now works as the main set closer (it did the same thing for one show on the Born in the USA Tour, but on this tour it looks like it might be more permanent). Also, "Badlands" is back as the the show opener, which is not an unusual role for it historically, but which still seems like a nice change.
Altogether, most reports are praising the new show. Not just for the setlist, but for the energy and looseness, which seems to have picked right up from where the Magic Tour left off. The usual first-night quirks and jitters were almost completely absent.
As always when a new tour starts, it's time to remind you to check out our Stage section regularly and to share your own experiences with other fans whenever you've been to a show. The form you need to fill out can be found under the show in question.
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