In his first stage performance in two months, Bruce joined Alejandro Escovedo at the Stone Pony last night. They did three songs together. "Always a Friend", "Faith" and a cover of Rolling Stones' "Beast of Burden". The performance was a return of the favor Bruce did to Alejandro two years ago in Houston when he invited the Texas singer/songwriter to join him on stage at the Toyota Center and when they also did "Always a Friend" together. The occasion was preserved for eternity on the Magic Tour Highlights EP. Last night's event, fortunately, can also be heard again through the below YouTube video.

See more videoes here.

Back in October Bruce and the band participated in the two Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame 25th anniversary shows at Madison Square Garden. Apart from performing a few of their own songs by themselves, they also worked as backing band for artists like John Fogerty, Sam Moore, Darlene Love and Billy Joel. Much of it was shown on TV, and it's that broadcast which is now set for official release. But the release will also include a bonus disc with performances that were not shown on TV, including Bruce doing "London Calling" with Tom Morello.

The whole thing will be out on September 28. Bluray buyers will have to go to Best Buy if they want it within the first 30 days. No word on a European release or other parts of the world, but we'd be surprised if it wasn't made available outside of North America. If not, it will be worth it trying to import it. Judging from what has been shown on TV, the show was absolutely awesome, and not just Bruce either. Artists like Simon & Garfunkel, U2, Metallica, and Crosby, Stills & Nash all did splendid sets.

Read more here.

4th of July is a very special day to most Americans. Barbecue, family, relaxation, fireworks on a bright summer night. It is of course also a celebration of American freedom and independence and everything that implies. It's a day full of symbolism and show, and as such, it's the perfect backdrop for artistic expression. And for someone like Bruce, who embodies America like few other artists, 4th of July is a slamdunk. It's no wonder that one of his songs has "4th of July" in the title and it's no wonder another one is called "Independence Day" or that those two songs topped last week's poll. That was to be expected.

Perhaps more interesting was how the other songs in the poll fared. "American Land", despite no mention of 4th of July, came in third, always a good accomplishment for a song that's less than five years old. "Land of Hope and Dreams" doesn't even mention America by name, but it is apparently still seen by many in an American context.

On 4th of July 2008, Bruce performed a show in Gothenburg, Sweden, and did several of the songs included in this poll. He opened the show with "Born in the USA" - no doubt in reference to the special day - but despite its title, that song, surprisingly, only received 6% of the poll votes.

Another small surprise perhaps was that "Darlington County" only received 2% of the votes. Except for "Sandy" and "Independence Day", it's the only song that takes place on 4th of July, and unlike those, it's actually a happy party song.

Here's the final result of the poll:

What's Bruce's most appropriate song for 4th of July?

4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)	41.4%
Independence Day	16.5%
American Land	11.4%
Land of Hope and Dreams	11.1%
Born in the USA	6.2%
Long Walk Home	5.1%
The Promised Land	4.0%
This Hard Land	2.4%
Darlington County	2.0%

This week it's time to take a look at Bruce's pop songs. The songs where Bruce obviously tried to write a hit and where both music and lyrics are easily accessible. Often disliked by real fans, but loved by the masses. Which one is his best? Hopefully I didn't forget any important ones.

When the London Calling DVD was announced a couple of months ago, it was met with a collective sigh from many fans. It wasn’t the release we wanted. We wanted the Darkness box. It wasn’t the show we wanted. We wanted one of the Italian shows or one of the Madison Square Garden shows. By many accounts, the Hyde Park show had stood in the shadow of the exertion of Glastonbury the previous night. Bruce was tired, his voice was shot, he was going through the motions.

While the first two statements may bear some merit – Bruce does seem to struggle with his voice during particularly the few slow songs - I have personally yet to see a Bruce show where he is going through the motions, and the Hyde Park show was definitely no exception. He is present in the moment and working as hard as he can to reach even the back row of the humongous crowd. And if Bruce is tired, it only adds to the goofiness with him demanding an elevator instead of the unusually high stairs leading back to the stage from the pit.

Speaking of the stage, if one must criticize the choice of show for an official release, you could point at the fact that the stage being used wasn’t Bruce’s own, but one that was supplied by the Hard Rock Festival. If the last two tours have been characterized by something – apart from sign requests – it would be the extremely close interaction with the crowd. It seemed like Bruce would spend half the show in physical contact with the audience, leaning on their stretched-out hands, high-fiving, letting them play his guitar. Heck, during the late part of the tour he would actually be crowd-surfing. Most of this was made possible by Bruce’s normal stage design that had a ramp leading straight from the center of the stage into the pit. And while we certainly do get some crowd interaction during the Hyde Park show, there is nowhere near as much of it as during just about any other show of the tour. And that’s a shame, because one of the things that truly sets Bruce apart from just about any other performer of his status is how much he allows the crowd to be part of the show. Even insists on it. That part is not documented as well as it could have been if a different show had been chosen.

Even with lack of crowd interaction, the crowd still plays an important part on this DVD by its mere size. When the camera pans over the ocean of people gathered in the park, your jaw drops several inches, and you start to understand why releasing a daylight show wasn’t the worst idea Bruce’s team ever had. The crowd may not be as super energetic as on Live in Barcelona, but you don’t really miss that.

Perhaps the most uplifting thing about this release is the sound. Connect your DVD player to your stereo and turn up the volume and you’ll know what I mean. This continues the positive trend of the last few live releases, starting with the Hammersmith show and continuing with Live in Dublin. The sound is simply stunning. Powerful, yet crystal clear. Maintaining the live feel while at the same time revealing details you never heard when you were there. Bob Clearmountain deserves a lot of credit for that.

Comparing with, for instance, Live in New York City, Live in Hyde Park also wins when it comes to the editing. Live in Hyde Park is a much more pleasant watch. The balance between closeups, stage shots and panning over the audience seems better. We don’t get too many of those really, really close closeups that Live in New York City was a victim of. At the same time, the DVD has time to give each band member a fair amount of exposure. Even Garry Tallent often fills up the whole screen, and you actually pay more attention to him, and most of the other band members, on this DVD than you ever would being there in person, when your eyes are fixed on Bruce 99% of the time.

No doubt this focus on the band is very deliberate. In return, one can wonder if it was also deliberate to show Patti Scialfa standing in the wings of the stage looking at the show instead of taking part in it. It sure baffled this viewer. It’s one thing that she can’t perform when she’s home taking care of the kids, but why would she not be on stage when she was actually in London? This is not to start any unfounded rumors of Bruce and Patti´s relationship (Patti looks like she’s enjoying watching her husband quite a bit), but it’s just another example of what can make a DVD more than just a bad souvenir of a live show. You pick up tons of details that you otherwise never would, and it will probably require several more viewings to get it all.

Watching Live in Hyde Park in one sitting and with the sound turned up may not be quite like being at the show in person, but it’s really not a bad substitute. As the sun slowly sets on the gigantic crowd and Bruce cranks up the intensity another nudge, you start to get the same feeling you do at a real-life show. It seems like the show just blew by in five minutes, but at the same time it’s like anything that happened before the show belongs in another lifetime. The power of Bruce and the E Street Band still manages to fill your soul, even through your TV screen. And despite its flaws – such as whether they should have chosen this show to begin with – that’s actually the highest praise a concert DVD can get.

So forget about your reservations. True or not, they are just not important in the big picture. The big picture being that this is as fine a representation of a post-reunion Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band show as your TV screen is likely to offer. That is not a bad thing.

The long-awaited DVD/bluray release London Calling: Live in Hyde Park has now been released in most of the world. Reception so far has been overwhelmingly positive with even many skeptics being swayed by the picture and sound quality. Fears that the show was sub-par, with a tired and out-of-voice Bruce, also seem to have been quenched. Bruce is as energetic and powerful as he always is, and he puts on a performance that may not have been the greatest of the tour, but is more than release-worthy.

An official Greasy Lake review will follow within the next few days.

As if Little Steven didn't have enough to do already with his radio and TV projects, last week he gave a presentation to eMusic members at City Winery in New York.  One of the people in attendance was former Sony Music Chairman Don Ienner who asked about how the song "Jungleland" came to be. Here's Steven's interesting answer:

More clips from Steven's presentation.

Sometimes you can be really surprised by one of these polls. I always had the impression that Born in the USA wasn't terribly popular among the "real" fans... the kind of fans who are crazy enough to frequent a Springsteen website like this. It was the album that broke Bruce to the masses and forever killed whatever was left of the illusion that Bruce was "our little secret". It's only natural that it would spur some resentment among the diehards, many of whom still keep their place in the ranks of Bruce's loyal fan base.

However, apparently their number wasn't enough to make up for the big majority of fans who rank Born in the USA among the top 5 albums. No less than 67% of you thought that it belonged there. What would be interesting to know is whether this majority also consist of people who became fans long after the whole Born in the USA era. Those of you who found Bruce post-E Street Band reunion, those of you to whom The Rising played a bigger role in shaping your fandom than the classic albums of the Seventies and Eighties.

Here's the complete result of the Born in the USA poll:

Born in the USA is Bruce's best selling album. How would you rate it quality-wise?

It's among his five best albums	67.4%
It's an average album for Bruce	24.9%
It's in his bottom five albums	3.5%
It's his very best album	3.3%
It's his very worst album	0.9%

This week's poll is about Bruce "affiliates". By Bruce affiliates I mean artists that have somehow become so connected to Bruce that you will hardly see an article about them without Bruce being mentioned in it. Some of them have had albums produced by Bruce or been given songs by him. Others have sung duets with him and perfomed with him live. Some of them are connected to him geographically with the Jersey Shore being their prime turf. Most of them can claim all of those things. But which of them is your favorite? It may be an unfair contest. They are definitely not equally known. But let's give it a chance. And as always with these polls, it's not always about the winner. It's often more interesting to look at the secondary positions.

Let the voting begin!

Last week's poll was a little different. It had nothing to do with his music or bands or time periods. We simply lined up a selection of the causes Bruce has supported over the years and asked which one you liked best. It was probably, to me, the most unpredictable poll we've had on here. I had no idea how it would turn out, except I didn't figure supporting DoubleTake Magazine or John Kerry would score too high.

Well, as it turns out, fans really like Bruce's habit of supporting food banks. He's done so since at least the Born in the USA Tour and still donates money to food banks in America. The result is interesting since we get a lot of visitors from particularly Europe where food banks are not common, if they exist at all. But in order to reach the 30%, a lot of Europeans must have voted for food banks too.

Supporting Amnesty International on the Human Rights Now! Tour back in 1988 came in second with 19% of the votes. This is not surprising considering the high profile of that tour and that occurred at a time when Bruce was still among the top three superstars in the world.

The highest ranking downright political or, shall we say controversial, cause Bruce has been involved in (human rights shouldn't be controversial to anyone in the free world) turned out to be the election of Barack Obama in the fourth spot. And yet, this received less than 10% of the votes indicating that Bruce fans are not crazy about him getting too deeply involved in politics.

Well, I'll let the rest be up to you to analyze. Here's the complete list of results:

Which of these causes that Bruce has supported is your favorite?

Food banks (ongoing)	30.7%
Amnesty International (human rights, 1988)	19.0%
The Danny Fund (melanoma cancer, ongoing)	11.5%
Election of Barack Obama (2008)	9.7%
Concert For Heroes (9/11 victims, 2001)	9.1%
Light of Day (Parkinson's disease, ongoing)	5.2%
Election of John Kerry (2004)	3.5%
No Nukes (anti nuclear energy, 1979)	3.3%
Kristin Ann Carr Fund (Sarcoma cancer, ongoing)	2.5%
Christic Institute (public interest law, 1990)	2.5%
School benefits (for his kids' schools, ongoing)	1.9%
DoubleTake Magazine (2003)	1.0%

In the coming week we'll step back in time again and look at the Born in the USA album. Are quality and sales connected? Or are those two factors actually inversely proportional? This shall be interesting to find out.

What does time do to people's opinion of a new album? That was the question of last week's poll. I thought it would be interesting to see how people's opinion about the Working on a Dream album had changed in the year after its release. The conclusion is: not very much. More than 50% said that their opinion was unchanged. This didn't say anything about whether they liked it or not. Only that they felt the same way about it now as they did upon its initial release.

So, if people's opinions had indeed changed, what was the trend? Well, the majority of the people whose opinion had changed, said that they liked the album then and that they like it even more now. Unfortunately for Bruce, the second biggest category among the opinion shifters said that they liked the album to begin with, but now they don't. Only 16 people had gone the opposite way and declared that they disliked the album then, but liked it now.

That's actually suprising to me. I have always felt that Bruce's music grew on you on repeated listenings. And that is the case for those who liked the album to begin with. But if you didn't like the album then, it seems like, in general, time hasn't changed that at all. On the contrary. Or maybe you just didn't give it enough chances?

Anyway, here's the result:

• I feel the same way about it now as I did then: 306 votes
• I liked it then, but I like it even more now: 124 votes
• I liked it then, but not so much now: 58 votes
• I disliked it then, but like it now: 16 votes
• I disliked it then and dislike it even more now: 50 votes

This week it's time to look at the causes Bruce has supported over the years. Not much has been as controversial as when Bruce has lent his voice to various more or less political causes, from anti-nuclear power to the election of presidents. Less controversial is his support for cancer research or other diseases. But which cause do you prefer? It has been impossible to list everything Bruce has supported over the years, but these are hopefully a good representation. Let the voting begin!

Seems like Bruce is attending every benefit concert he can find these days. Last night he was in New York to participate in the Gateway´s Gala Benefit Concert, supporting an education center for children with learning problems... and paying tribute to Jon Stewart who was an honoree. He performed a mini-set of seven songs and was joined by Patti Scialfa for two of them. His performance harked back to the Devils & Dust Tour complete with his "Please pull your pants down" story to introduce "For You". See more details, videos and setlist.