After a long period of nothing, the last couple of days have suddenly exploded in Bruce news. No, no new album or tour, but at this point we'll take anything we get. First of all, there's a new release coming out on May 5. Well, "new" may be stretching it. It's a separate release of The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town documentary that was included in The Promise box set. As a bonus, the disc will also include the five-song webcast that was broadcast online in December (consisting of live performances of some of The Promise songs plus "Blue Christmas") and a 20 minute excerpt of the question and answer session that Bruce did on E Street Radio on Sirius a while back, and which was filmed as well as broadcast on the radio. But altogether, if you've been keeping up with Bruce in the last few months, this release probably won't make you pee in your pants with excitement.

What almost made this fan pee in his pants was the news on Monday of the legendary February 5, 1975, Main Point show being slated for release in April. That is, until I realized it's not actually an officially official release, but some record company that seems to think - or want us to believe - that they have a right to put this show out on the market. Amazon and other online stores have fallen for it and are taking pre-orders. We'll see if Bruce's people manage to stop this before the April 18 release date that has been announced. And if not, whether it's just a copy of an existing bootleg or if they've tracked down a new recording that fixes the rather inferior sound that has marred the second half of previous bootleg releases of the show.

Finally, it was announced today that Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band have been crowned as the "Best Live Act of All Time" in a Rolling Stone readers' poll. When I saw it, I thought I'd been taken back to the Eighties in a time machine. Back then Bruce could have won the "Best female washboard player" category like he won all other categories in all reader polls. But that's a long time ago, and these days people usually don't seem to appreciate Bruce the way they used to. Well, maybe today's result is proof that things are turning around again. Of course, we all know that he's the best live act of all time, but it's a bit of a surprise that today's Rolling Stone readers didn't vote for Rhianna or Lady Gaga.