November 5, 2023
Today marks the official 50th anniversary of the release of The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle. In the afterglow of Bruce Springsteen himself having joined The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music in getting a jump on celebrating the album's golden jubilee last weekend, our friends at E Street Radio have cooked up something special for today's 50th anniversary proper. Jim Rotolo and Greg Drew (who's also one of our Letters To You contributors) will dive into the album track-by-track, discussing and playing each one, and even including some of the outtakes.
E Street Radio's The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle track-by-track special will make its on-air debut today, Sunday November 5, at 3pm ET on SiriusXM Channel 20. Other upcoming airdates and times are:
Monday, November 6 at 10am ET
Tuesday, November 7 at 4pm ET
Wednesday, November 8 at 8am ET
Thursday, November 9 at 6pm ET
Friday, November 10 at 9am ET
Saturday, November 11 at 5pm ET
SiriusXM subscribers can listen to this special program on-demand/online, as well, via the SiriusXM app.
Letters To You also is marking today's anniversary with a special "Temporary Tillie Takeover" of our website. Our standard postage-stamp logo is being replaced for a bit by another postage-stamp logo, also created by ace artist Stephen Winchell (with website consultant Brian Samelson applying a bit of his postmark-tweaking magic, as well.) This one, of course, features Tillie, the legendary Asbury Park Palace Amusements icon who remains immortal even in the face of shameful neglect - and sometimes worse - by certain Jersey Shore developers, politicians, bureaucrats, etc. Tillie also was a major figure in the original ad campaign for The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, as can be seen in the vintage full-page ad pictured above.
And for Washington, DC/Virginia-area fans, the WIESS@50 celebration will continue into Thanksgiving Weekend 2023, thanks to the DC-area special-musical-events production company known as Newmyer Flyer. On Saturday, November 25, a group of DC-based musicians will perform the songs from The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, as well as the songs from another classic album that was a major influence on Springsteen's second LP: Van Morrison's 1970 masterpiece Moondance. (Check out the poster designed for this event, too: an ingenious album-covers mashup that suggests the possibility that Moondance's influence might have been at least somewhat visual as well as musical.) This special concert will take place at The Barns at Wolf Trap in Vienna, VA. Click here for more info and to buy tickets.