It was a very welcome piece of news to wake up to this morning when Backstreets Magazine announced that #88 is finally due in April. The latest issue was published before the Magic album was released in 2007, which means that one of the busiest periods of Bruce's entire career has gone uncovered by the most important Springsteen fanzine. An incredible shame and, some would say, wasted opportunity, and a source of wonder for most paying subscribers.

In his new "Editor's blog" Chris Phillips goes a long way to explain the delay and talk about how he envisions the future of the magazine, which according to him is far from dead. As someone who tries (and more often than not fails) to provide a Springsteen news service in these years of hyper activity by Bruce and constant bombardment of live performances, releases, guest appearances, awards, political activities, books, deaths, etc. etc. - while at the same time trying to have a personal life - I can easily relate to what a challenge it is to make sense of it all and boil it down to what is supposed to be a quarterly magazine.

In other words, no pointed fingers or hard feelings from here. Backstreets has just meant too much to me over the years to not deserve some slack. It was my entry to the whole idea of a Bruce community, way before the internet. During the Bruce drought of 1990-91 my weekly, incredibly expensive, phone call to the now defunct Backstreets Hotline fed my hopes for a new album and tour. And around the same time, a free ad looking for penpals opened a world of adventure to me and gave me friends all of the world, some of whom I still see - and go to Bruce shows with - today.

Most of all, when the internet became public knowledge, Backstreets Magazine helped inspire me to make my own online version of it that became Greasy Lake. In other words, without Backstreets there probably wouldn't be a Greasy Lake. Today the internet is covering a lot of the ground that Backstreet used to be the all-dominating player on, but there's no doubt that we still need Backstreets. The quality of the Bruce writing is still in a class of its own, and the knowledge and insight gathered through almost 30 years of existance is something the rest of us can only dream of.

So congratulations to Backstreets for finding their feet again and their impending 30th anniversary. Hopefully, their 30th anniversary edition will be slightly more timely than certain other 30th anniversary editions.