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March 27, 2025 photo by Bill Hanrahan for Music Planet Radio Archive - www.musicplanetradio.com - used w/ permission Well, despite the old joke, he didn't "practice, practice, practice" to get to Carnegie Hall last night, since he wasn't part of the public-rehearsal event held the night before at City Winery NYC . But then again, Bruce Springsteen IS already rather familiar with how to play the Patti Smith song that he performed and sang lead on at yesterday's People Have The Power: A Celebration of Patti Smith tribute event, benefiting "music programs for kids" as per the show's poster (see below,) since he famously shares a co-writing credit for it with Smith and has been performing his own version of it since 1978. Springsteen wasn't even officially announced as part of the bill until earlier this week. Nevertheless, he came prepared to take the stage for the evening's penultimate slot before Patti Smith herself appeared to bring it all back home. Backed by the event's house band - The Red Hot Chili Peppers' bassist Flea; the most recent Rolling Stones touring drummer (as well as longtime friend/musical collaborator of Patti Scialfa,) Steve Jordan; Bob Dylan's former guitarist Charlie Sexton; Patti Smith Band guitarist Tony Shanahan; and legendary Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' keyboardist Benmont Tench - Springsteen introduced his performance of "Because The Night" (of course) as follows: “We love ya, Patti. Patti gave me this big hit, right here, I’m about to sing... If I had sung this song, it would not have been a hit. It needed her voice, and her incredible lyrics, so Patti, I have to thank you, so dearly, for our one big hit together. Thank you, darlin'. Play it, Benmont...” Tench then played the beautiful piano intro to the song, before Bruce and the entire band dove into its searing rock arrangement. Fittingly, Springsteen performed Smith's version of the song, featuring the lyrics she wrote for it. Although Bruce has performed the song live with the E Street Band many times over the years since 1978, he rarely performs this version of the song. Instead, he usually performs "Because The Night" using an alternate set of lyrics that he wrote for his own live performances of the song. (For his 2010 release The Promise , Springsteen also recorded with the E Street Band an in-studio version of "Because The Night" using Smith's lyrics.) photo by Bill Hanrahan for Music Planet Radio Archive - www.musicplanetradio.com  - used w/ permission At last night's event, Springsteen also joined all of the evening's other performers - including Julia Banks, Paul Banks, Courtney Barnett, Matt Berninger, Body/Head (Kim Gordon and Bill Nace,) Johnny Depp, Glen Hansard, Ben Harper, Susanna Hoffs, Jim Jarmusch, Scarlett Johansson, Lenny Kaye, Kronos Quartet, Andy LeMaster, Jesse Malin, Alison Mosshart, the Music Will Academy of Lower Manhattan Public Middle School, Karen O., Angel Olsen, Sean Penn, Maggie Rogers, Michael Shannon, Jesse Paris Smith, Michael Stipe, and Sharon Van Etten - in backing Patti Smith and the house band for a show-closing version of "People Have The Power," the inspiring anthem that Smith wrote with her late husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith of the MC5. Click here to read more about "People Have The Power" and other Smith/MC5/E Street intersections over the years.

artwork by Stephen Winchell April 1, 2024 Greetings from San Francisco, CA. It's Easter Monday, and jaws are still dropped 'round these parts, since last night actual jaw breakers , chocolate-peanut-butter eggs, Peeps, and jellybeans were thrown from the stage to audience-members at Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band's second show of a two-gig stand in the city's Chase Center. But by far the biggest Easter Sunday treat for fans was the MUCH "wider song selection" that Springsteen's been hinting at recently, in a major holiday-themed setlist shakeup. TEN , count 'em TEN tour debuts, with six of them being songs that Bruce Springsteen had never performed previously onstage anywhere, with or without the E Street Band, in a tour-record-setting thirty-two-songs-total set. The Easter Sunday fun - and the first-time-ever performances - started right out of the Golden Gate, with Bruce and the Band arriving onstage in bunny-ears to deliver a rocking, rollicking performance of the Gene Autry classic "Here Comes Peter Cottontail," adapted using the arrangement from Bay-area children's-music band The Hipwaders , who also got to meet Springsteen and his band during yesterday's soundcheck. Immediately afterwards, Springsteen threw off the rabbit-ears and quickly counted off "One! Two! Three! Four!" to have Max Weinberg launch into the deep, heart-pounding Bo-Diddley-like beats that introduced the first-ever Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band performance of The Strangeloves' classic "I Want Candy." Quite an Easter-themed opening double-shot of super-sweet covers, for sure. What came next, of course, also was led by a Max Weinberg intro, though this time on cymbals: "Candy's Room," last played on this tour in Foxborough, Massachusetts' Gillette Stadium on August 26, 2023. Then came an ever-so-brief moment for the crowd, on its feet and loudly cheering but also still rather eggshell-shocked, to catch its collective breath. "Good evening, San Francisco!," Bruce exulted, "And Happy Easter to all who celebrate! It is indeed Easter Sunday 2024, and the mighty E Street Band and I have some extra-special things planned for tonight. Now it's no secret that I've always had a bit of a love-hate thing goin' on with my Catholic upbringing, so tonight's show still will reflect some of that, but most of all we're here to celebrate with everyone the arrival of spring, renewal, the ultimate value of love and life over death, and of course... CANDY! Are you ready, band?" The candy theme then continued with the premiere live performance of "Candy's Boy," the cowbell-heavy alternate version of "Candy's Room" that wasn't released officially until 2010's box-set The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story . After that came what some fans online already have started referring to as "the Jesus six-pack," starting off with two back-to-back world-premiere Easter-themed covers of material by artists who already have strong historical connections to key Springsteen songs and performances of the past: a cover of Tom Waits' "Chocolate Jesus" (providing the perfect segue from the topic of candy to the topic of Christ) followed by a cover of Patti Smith Group's "Easter." Then came a great expanded E Street Band version of the Civil-War-era spiritual "O Mary Don't You Weep," sticking closely to the hybrid-gospel arrangement of Springsteen's Seeger Sessions recording. The last time Bruce performed this song onstage with the E Street Band was almost a decade ago, at the 2014 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Between Soozie Tyrell's klezmer-tinged fiddling parts, and the references to not just Jesus, but also Moses, Pharaoh, and Noah, you could feel that Springsteen was purposefully opening up this special night not just to those celebrating Easter, but also to everyone who'll be observing Passover later this month. The second half of "the Jesus six-pack" consisted of three of Springsteen's own songs that reference the Prince of Peace, starting with Letter To You 's deep-cut "If I Was The Priest," which apparently some in the crowd thought was an especially big deal. (Meh; to each... The song was last performed on this tour in Tulsa, OK on February 21, 2023.) Then came "Jesus Was An Only Son," another tour premiere and a song never before performed with the E Street Band, and finally "It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City," with Bruce and Stevie Van Zandt again providing those Jesus-vs.-the-Devil-guitar-duel-through-the-steam-of-the-street fireworks, last performed almost a year ago in Brooklyn, NY on April 3, 2023. Things then reverted somewhat to "business as usual" as the setlist dialed back a bit to some of what have become the more standard songs and structures of this tour. "No Surrender" was followed by "Ghosts," Prove It All Night," and "Letter To You," but Springsteen still wasn't quite done with shaking up the setlist for this special evening. The next song up was "Worlds Apart," last performed more than two decades ago on August 28, 2003 at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, which has since met the wrecking ball, of course. "Worlds Apart" expanded the spiritual scope of this special show even further to include a non-Judeo-Christian perspective, and addressed powerfully that "ultimate value of love and life over death" of which he spoke earlier in the evening. "Let love give what it gives" indeed. "Worlds Apart" was followed appropriately by "The Promised Land," which was followed by "Nightshift." Then it was really candy time. "Sugar, Sugar," the bubblegum-pop classic that first was a hit for pseudo-group The Archies, is a song that Springsteen himself actually has performed onstage a few times over the years, though for extremely small audiences, at some of those Stone Pony benefit shows for his children's schools back in the early 2000s. But last night's performance, not surprisingly based on legendary soul singer Wilson Pickett's recording of the song , was Bruce's first-ever performance of the song with the E Street Band, enhanced greatly by the E Street Choir and E Street Horns. It was sweet soul music all the way...literally, as everyone onstage was provided with a basket full of chocolate rabbits, candy eggs, jellybeans, marshmallow Peeps, and the like. All of the singers onstage, and any other musician with a free hand at the moment, proceeded to toss various items from their baskets into the crowd while Bruce and Curtis King, Jr. topped off the performance by trading off back-and-forth "Pour a little sugar on me!" lines, Sam-and-Dave style. "Last Man Standing," "Backstreets," etc. followed, with Springsteen again sticking to the basic plan he recently stated on E Street Radio, about the second half of his show's setlist being "built so solid that a lot of it will stay." It turned out to be a very smooth blend, since the special Easter-themed song-choices for last night fit nicely within the show's regular overarching themes of finding healing, resilience, and renewal in the face of aging and mortality. Nevertheless, Bruce had one more setlist surprise up his sleeve during last night's upbeat encores sequence. It wasn't another overtly Easter-themed one, either, but something just as special - if not more so - for the city by the bay. "Hey, Steve!," Bruce shouted as "Dancing In The Dark" ended and the band held those closing notes, "We can't leave here tonight without tippin' our bunny ears to one of San Francisco's greatest bands of all time, right? One! Two! Three! Four!" And for the first time ever onstage, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band delivered their own version of Sly and the Family Stone's immortal "Dance To The Music." Quite simply, fellow Springsteen fans, you haven't lived until you've heard Garry Tallent bellow out in the deepest voice he can muster, "I'm gonna add some bottom, so that the dancers just won't hide," Charlie Giordano exclaim, "You might like to hear my organ; I said a-ride, Sally, ride!" and Ada Dyer soulfully command, "All of the squares go home!" And thanks to LiveBruceSpringsteen.net and Nugs.net , it won't be very long until you'll be able to do just that. We also soon will be honored to supplement this special Letters To You concert report with a great set of photos taken by Danny Clinch, Pam Springsteen, and Frank Stefanko, each of whom was in the house and shot last night's show exclusively for us. We're just waiting for all of their developed film to get back from Fotomat. Stand by... mashup of Frank Stefanko's and Kai Z. Feng's photography first posted at Patti Scialfa's Instagram page on Easter Sunday 2016 Setlist from San Francisco, CA 3-31-2024 (Easter Sunday 2024) (tour debuts highlighted in bold font ) 1. Here Comes Peter Cottontail ( Gene Autry cover , using Bay-area children's-music band The Hipwaders' arrangement )  (never played before) 2. I Want Candy ( The Strangeloves cover ) (never played before) 3. Candy's Room 4. Candy's Boy (never played before) 5. Chocolate Jesus ( Tom Waits cover )  (never played before) 6. Easter ( Patti Smith Group cover )  (never played before) 7. O Mary Don't You Weep 8. If I Was The Priest 9. Jesus Was An Only Son  (never played with the E Street Band before) 10. It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City 11. No Surrender 12. Ghosts 13. Prove It All Night 14. Letter to You 14. Worlds Apart 15. The Promised Land 16. Nightshift 17. Sugar, Sugar (candy-distribution moment; The Archies cover , based on Wilson Pickett's version )  (never played with the E Street Band before) 18. Last Man Standing 19. Backstreets 20. Because The Night 21. She's The One 22. Wrecking Ball 23. The Rising 24. Badlands 25. Thunder Road 26. Born To Run 27. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) 28. Glory Days 29. Dancing in the Dark 30. Dance To The Music ( Sly and the Family Stone cover )  (never played before) 31. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out 32. I'll See You In My Dreams

February 9, 2025 No matter who wins tonight's Super Bowl, H.E.R. will be heard during the game's fourth quarter interpreting Bruce Springsteen's classic song "Born to Run" in a way that reinforces and expands upon what he used to say onstage before singing it in the mid-1980s: "Nobody wins unless everybody wins." The acclaimed California-born Filipino-African-American songwriter, musician, and singer has partnered with the beauty/personal-care brand Dove for an ad campaign designed to raise awareness of the impact that negative body talk can have on girls in sports, and Dove's support of the Body Confident Sport program , described in Dove's press release as "a first-of-its-kind and scientifically-proven set of coaching tools to build body confidence in 11-17-year-old girls and encourage them to stay in sports." Below you can watch two separate 30-second spots from the campaign: the one that will air tonight during the Super Bowl and another one that features even more of H.E.R.'s version of "Born to Run," which will be released officially in its full length tomorrow. (UPDATE: As of this writing, H.E.R.'s full-length version of "Born to Run" still has yet to be released, despite the Billboard article referenced below stating that it would be released on February 10, the day after Super Bowl LIX.) As an excellent Billboard feature on the ad campaign , which also features an exclusive interview with H.E.R. about the project, notes, "It’s a directive that feels especially poignant considering the popularity boom women’s sports have seen in recent years (thanks in no small part to powerhouses like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese), as well as the sociopolitical influx in online communities picking apart players’ appearances (the transphobic hate cisgender Algerian boxer Imane Khelif experienced during the 2024 Olympics comes to mind). And it’s definitely something that weighs on H.E.R.’s mind as a former athlete and role model to her 18-year-old and 3-year-old sisters, which is why she says she jumped at the chance to translate 'Born to Run' into a heartfelt tribute for young girls all over the world." For her part, H.E.R. tells Billboard , "The song itself is so iconic, I didn’t want to do a complete left turn in my recreation of it. It’s so uplifting and joyful, and 'born to run,' it’s the perfect lyric. It’s the perfect message, and kind of the perfect pace for a message like this. It was all about the image of this young girl — keeping that in mind was the most important thing. We started with drums to kind of keep the energy but still make it my own, and I played some guitars on it to keep that iconic lead. It was all about adding even more soul to it. That iconic line that’s usually just the guitar line, I turned into vocals. I like doing things like that — taking pieces from the instrumentation and turning them into vocals — and my vocals definitely make [the song] a little more feminine... I love Bruce. I grew up listening to a lot of Bruce with my dad. He’s iconic. I actually got to meet him two years ago and he was so sweet. I was like, 'I’m such a big fan, my name’s Gabi.' [H.E.R.'s real name is Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson. Her stage name is an acronym for Having Everything Revealed.] He was like, 'Oh my god, H.E.R., I’m such a big fan of you, I’ve mentioned you in interviews, you really rock out on stage.' And I’m like, 'Man, I get it from you!'” Click here to read Hannah Dailey's complete Billboard article "How H.E.R. Reimagined an Iconic Bruce Springsteen Hit to Remind Girls in Sports They’re ‘Born to Run’".

March 8, 2025 The recently resumed Springsteen/Nugs "First Friday" series continues with yesterday's release of Omaha, NE Nov 15, 2012 . As was the case last month, this month's official concert recording drops with no official press release or social-media announcements from Springsteen's own camp. (Last month's First Friday release didn't get any kind of acknowledgment from "Bruce, Inc." until the month was almost over, on February 25.) Very odd. Speaking of odd, the November 15, 2012 Wrecking Ball Tour show featured one of the tour's most unique setlists, during which Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band ended up performing six of the ten tracks from Nebraska throughout the evening. (A seventh Nebraska song, "My Father's House," was rehearsed during soundcheck but didn't make the cut for the show itself.) The night included a rare performance of the album's side-one closer, "State Trooper," in its last public performance to date: Presumably this was a specially designed setlist for the band's only 2012 gig in Nebraska at what was then known as the Centurylink Center (now known as CHI Health Center Omaha.) But just to keep the oddness going, the show didn't include a performance of Nebraska 's title track, which is the only song on the album that's actually set specifically in "The Cornhusker State." Another emotional highlight of the evening: Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band's first public performance of "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town" without Clarence Clemons onstage with them. And as usual, Nugs utilizes the sonic expertise of mixers/masterers Jon Altschiller, Danielle Warman, et. al. to allow us lucky listeners to experience house-engineer John Cooper's complete professional recording of this show in the best possible sound quality. Click here to order/stream Omaha, NE Nov 15, 2012 . You also may want to consider Nugs' current streaming-subscription promotion, especially now that monthly First Friday releases have resumed and regular releases of shows from the 2025 Springsteen tour are on the horizon. For $14.99 before taxes, which is the price of purchasing a single mp3 in the monthly Springsteen/Nugs archival-releases series, you can get access to a month of streaming everything available in the Nugs audio archives, not just all of Springsteen's recordings but everything from all other artists associated with Nugs: The Grateful Dead, Metallica, Pearl Jam, Phish, The Rolling Stones, Santana, Umphrey's McGee, Jack White/The White Stripes, etc. Not bad for $14.99/mo (plus any applicable taxes.) Click here for details. And finally, you can click here to read Columbia/Nugs archivist Erik Flannigan's essay on Omaha, NE Nov 15, 2012 , entitled "All Aboard, Nebraska's Our Next Stop."

photo courtesy of BigShotte Management Group - used with permission February 27, 2025 Happy 45th Birthday, and many, many more Happy Birthdays ahead, to Jake Clemons ! In a unique, special visual treat for our readers, we're pleased that Jake's camp has allowed us to share the above backstage photo of Jake with The Killers' Brandon Flowers. It was taken on October 1, 2022 at Madison Square Garden NYC, when Jake and Bruce Springsteen joined The Killers onstage for their concert encores, with Jake on sax for "Badlands" and "Born To Run." As we reported previously , professional recordings from that evening will be released in April as part of Record Store Day 2025, in the form of a limited-edition (only 5000 copies in an "RSD First" pressing) 12-inch vinyl single, containing officially released versions of all three songs performed by The Killers with special guests Bruce Springsteen and Jake Clemons on that night. SIDE A: 1. "Badlands" (Live) 2. "Dustland" (Live) SIDE B: 3. "Born To Run" (Live) photo by Tara Keane - used with permission But that's not the only officially released recording featuring Jake Clemons coming our way in 2025. Stay tuned for more details as they become available... photo by Tara Keane - used with permission Jake also will be performing on April 28 as part of "The Jersey Takeover" at Trombone Shorty's Shorty Fest 2025 , and performing with The Jake Clemons Band on July 19 at the Minnesota Yacht Club Festival . Be sure to visit regularly Jake's official website, JakeClemons.com , for all of his latest official announcements and updates. Happy Birthday, "Jakey!" We're looking forward to catching you in action, with and without the E Street Band, throughout 2025.

February 14, 2025

photo courtesy of Nils Lofgren February 14, 2025 EDITOR'S NOTE: Our friend and Letters To You contributor Joe Amodei of Virgil Films - the production/distribution company behind great films such as Clarence Clemons: Who Do I Think I Am? , Broken Poet , and Just Around The Corner: The Bob Benjamin Story - is a big fan of acclaimed mystery writer James Lee Burke 's novels. As Joe writes below, he's known for a while that Nils Lofgren is a big Burke fan, as well. What he didn't learn until more recently, however, is that Burke, in turn, is a great admirer of both Nils and Amy Lofgren. We'll let Joe take it from here... My first experience with the novels of James Lee Burke came many, many years ago when my good friend Chris and I were having one of those “What are you reading these days?” discussions. We both were and still are avid readers and Bruce Springsteen fans. This was long before anything called the internet was a thought in anyone’s minds and "social media" became a familiar term. It was back in the days when, well, people read books. Physical copies, too; not on a computer screen or tablet. But back to that day. Chris disappeared into another room and came back with two paperback books in his hand, saying, “You gotta try this guy out. He’s incredible.” The books were Black Cherry Blues and In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead . They both carried the tagline “A Dave Robicheaux Novel.” To say I devoured both books immediately is an understatement. I dove headfirst into the world of Cajun alcoholic ex-homicide cop Robicheaux and his sometimes partner and best friend Clete Purcell, as they moved like storms through the town of New Iberia, along the Bayou Teche area miles outside of New Orleans. Burke's words didn’t just jump off of the page for me. The seared themselves into my soul and took me on Robicheaux's journey through hell and back. The worlds he took me to were filled with crooked cops, sadistic gangsters, hardened criminals, and spirits rising up from the dead, haunting his every move. Robicheaux isn’t your average Sam Spade, but a character with a mixture of Jim Harrison, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler, all shook up in a bottle of booze and regrets. I had never read anything like this before. I became obsessed with his writing, going back and getting all of the books so I could read them in order. I have done so to this very day, with the publication of Clete , his latest in the Robicheaux series. So it was a pure delight when I opened up the latest Burke masterpiece and saw a great tribute to Nils Lofgren and his wife Amy: I knew Nils was a fan, but what I did not know was that James Lee Burke was a fan of Nils, as well, and a big E Street follower, too! I contacted Burke's folks and received the following letter shortly after… Thank you for inviting me to contribute to your article about Nils. Nils and I have never met geographically, but [I was] asked if I would send Nils a book. As I remember, the inscription was "Keep it in E-major." Then he sent me some of his recordings, and said he wanted to jam with me down the track. I thought that was one of the best compliments I ever received, somewhat similar to the inventor of the wheel asking me to take a spin. Since then Nils has supported and lauded my work all over the world, including making a video of a song he put together that was included with messages from other friends like Stephen King: He's a good guy, and obviously kind and spiritual, as is Ms. Lofgren. So I was very happy to dedicate my book Clete , the newest book in the Dave Robicheaux series, to them. Music is in all my work. I don't know how people can live without music. It's in the pulsing of our blood, the air we draw, the iambic beat in our words, and it's also in the spheres, and one of its greatest contemporary manifestations is the E Street Band. If you want to hear the red, white, and blue in four-four time, check out the video of "Johnny B. Goode"... I thought they were going to bring the stadium down. Anyway, I'm proud to be a friend of Nils and Miss Amy. I've never met any of the E Street Band, but it's obvious their talent is enormous. As Shakespeare's friend Ben Jonson would say, these guys are for the ages. All the best, James Lee Burke And as for Mr. Lofgren, well, here's what he had to say about James Lee Burke when Letters To You recently asked him: Speaking of James Lee Burke’s magnificent books, I’ll start with clarity. He is my favorite author, ever. I fell in love with the Dave Robicheaux series decades ago. I’d order four at a time and nearing completion of the second one, I’d order the next four. Then of course, once I was current, I’d have to wait patiently for the next gem. I believe my incredible wife Amy had befriended Jim’s daughter Alafair (another great writer) on social media long ago. Alafair was kind enough to put me in touch with her Dad, who I’ve greatly enjoyed corresponding with since. Having read just about everything Jim has written, I finally got my wife Amy, an avid, mostly non-fiction reader herself, to try House Of The Rising Sun , a Hackberry Holland book of that amazing series. Amy absolutely loved it, and it was so exciting for me to finally have my favorite person on Earth love and appreciate the genius of James Lee Burke. I’ve always felt a kinship with the characters in Jim’s books; their great internal struggles with the dark and light of the human soul touches me deeply. As I struggle with my own demons, they give me a roadmap and kinship in that rough journey we are all on in this magnificent, overwhelming life we’ve been blessed with. James Lee Burke’s characters remain living, breathing spirits and companions that have helped light my way through the earthly darkness we all confront at times in our lives. Truly life-altering and lifesaving work. Bless you, Jim, for sharing your gifts, and the healing and solace they continually offer us all. Love, Respect and Blessings to you and your family. -Nils Lofgren ---------- Thanks, Joe... and Messrs. Burke and Lofgren, of course. James Lee Burke fans can click here to read about and order his next novel, Don't Forget Me, Little Bessie , to be published in early June. (There's no doubt that mega-fans Nils Lofgren and Joe Amodei have placed their respective orders already.) And, if you haven't done so already, be sure to check out Nils Lofgren's two most recent releases: Mountains , which includes guest performances by Ringo Starr, Neil Young, Ron Carter, The Howard Gospel Choir, Cindy Mizelle, and David Crosby, and Spares , a Tracks -like collection of ones that have gotten away over the years. Click here to learn more about them at Nils' official website. Oh, and if you dig reading about guitar-slinging E Street Band members connecting with award-winning authors, you also might enjoy Stevie Van Zandt's recent online sitdown with James Patterson (currently available exclusively for subscribers to Patterson's Substack.) If so, click here .

February 12, 2025 The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music at Monmouth University (BSACAM) now has its monthly online Conversations with our Curator series , a set of author discussions hosted by BSACAM  curator Melissa Ziobro, booked through mid-year. Beginning tonight, and continuing through June, here's the currently scheduled lineup... Each of the Conversations with our Curator  events listed below will begin promptly at 7pm ET on the respective date. Ziobro's online conversation with each author will be followed by an audience Q&A session. Registration to attend any of these online events is free and open to the public. Individual links for each author's book and to register for each author's event are available below, as well: Tonight, Wednesday, February 12 - Josh Davidson , author of In Cahoots, In Asbury Park - Click here to register. Wednesday, March 19 - Dewar MacLeod , author of Making the Scene in the Garden State: Popular Music in New Jersey from Edison to Springsteen and Beyond - Click here to register. Wednesday, April 9 - John Massaro , author of Shades of Springsteen: Politics, Love, Sports, and Masculinity - Click here to register. Wednesday, May 14 - Michael C. Gabriele , author of New Jersey Folk Revival Music: History & Tradition - Click here to register. Wednesday, June 11 - Frank White and Alan Tecchio , authors of Jersey Metal: A History of the Garden State's Heavy Metal Scene, Volume One (1969-1986) - Click here to register. All past Conversations with our Curator  events also are archived at BSACAM's YouTube channel, so you always can catch up on any event that you might have missed, or re-watch any event. Click here to view the Archives' Conversations with our Curator   YouTube playlist.

February 8, 2025 Yesterday saw the first "First Friday" release from the Springsteen/Nugs archival concert series since last March's Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ, September 21,1978 . (Okay, actually it was a "Second Friday" release that month, most likely due to the Friday March 1, 2024 announcement of Best of Bruce Springsteen , as we reported at that time , but still...) That Capitol Theatre release also was the final archival concert release before the shutdown of the website that was the series' former online home: live.brucespringsteen.net Presumably continuing with monthly releases at least until the 2025 Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band tour commences in mid-May, the "First Friday" archival series has resumed this month with yesterday's drop of Vancouver, BC 2005 , recorded at Springsteen's August 13, 2005 Devils & Dust Tour show in "Pontiac Theatre" at what was then known as GM Place (now Rogers Arena.) It's another great show from that tour, opening with a rare solo-pump-organ version of "Living Proof" (the third of only eight such performances of the song on that tour,) an especially appropriate and moving choice given that the song's real-life inspiration, Springsteen's first-born son Evan, was working on the stage-crew that night: Other highlights of Vancouver, BC 2005 include Springsteen's last performance to date of the still-all-too-relevant "Paradise," and the only Devils & Dust Tour performance of "Because The Night," delivered in a unique solo version with Bruce also playing an electric piano. As usual, Jon Altchiller and his sonics team (this time around including Danielle Warman, Brad Serling, and Arya Jha) deliver another awesome new mix from multitrack master tapes. Click here to read more about Vancouver, BC 2005 in Columbia/Nugs archivist Erik Flannigan's essay, "Man on Wire." And click here to get Vancouver, BC 2005 from nugs.net's official Springsteen site.

February 6, 2025

January 29, 2025 This month has marked the 55th anniversary of the release of Back In The USA , the second album by the MC5 , released on January 15, 1970 and produced by a fella by the name of Jon Landau. Back In The USA was the hardest-rocking production work that Landau did before he began working with Bruce Springsteen a half-decade later. When Landau was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, the induction program featured an excerpt from MC5 lead guitarist and co-founder Wayne Kramer's 2018 memoir The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5, and My Life of Impossibilities , in which Kramer wrote: "Atlantic Records commissioned Jon Landau to write them a report on the MC5's strengths and weaknesses. Landau studied the band, and his report was insightful and knowledgeable. He recommended they sign the MC5... John [Sinclair, the MC5's manager] had been in discussions with all the stakeholders in our sphere, and he concluded that bringing in Landau to produce the [next] album was the best move we could make. After reading his ten-page report and talking with him at length, I liked him. I was impressed with his analysis of the MC5's strengths and weaknesses. He realized that the MC5 was the only group out there to really connect directly with the audience's concerns... He also saw the deficiencies that we needed to address. He saw it all. Landau would come out [to rehearsals] and listen and make suggestions. He and I would sit up in my bedroom and talk about music for hours on end. We talked about the MC5's problems and strong points... Landau once said that he thought [rhythm guitarist] Fred [Smith] and I should be referred to in the same way that Carlos Santana or Pete Townshend were. That we were every bit as good as our contemporaries, and better than most. I didn't disagree... We talked through the group's challenges in great depth... He was trying to get us to think for ourselves; to move past the groupthink that we were accustomed to... There were issues that I'd never addressed because of our band's boundless camaraderie... Landau didn't have the constraints that we did. He was hired to produce a record, and he spoke up... Landau forced me to see the reality of how the MC5 went about the business of creating music... He believed the band could be greatest American hard-rock group of our time, but we needed to face our weaknesses and fix them." Landau wasn't the only strongly Springsteen-connected person to also serve as an early champion of the MC5. Springsteen biographer and music writer Dave Marsh grew up in the Detroit area, and was among the most passionate of teenage MC5 fans in their late-1960s/early-1970s heyday. (After all, "the MC5" was an abbreviation of "The Motor City Five.") Marsh's 1971 piece for Creem , "The MC5: Back on Shakin' Street," as collected and heavily re-written for his 1985 anthology Fortunate Son: The Best of Dave Marsh , remains an illuminating and insightful read. In his 1985 introduction to the piece, Marsh, who already had invented the term "punk rock" in 1970 while writing in Creem about ? and the Mysterians (also a Michigan-based band,) wrote, "The MC5 helped get me my first full-time job in journalism, their incredible buzz-saw rock (echoes of which can be heard in the New York Dolls, the Sex Pistols and every other band that terms itself punk or hard core) illuminated the shadowy corners of my adolescence, their fusion of rock and politics expressed my own early, fumbling attempts to reconcile the two." Later in the anthology, in introducing some of his later writing on Springsteen, Marsh also wrote, "Bruce Springsteen offered not a single song, image or event that galvanized my passion and made me recall my roots, but a whole series of them, which in combination made me (I suppose) a fanatic for the first time since the demise of the MC5." And in his second Springsteen biography, 1987's Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s , Marsh described the version of "Adam Raised A Cain" that appears on Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band - Live/1975-85 as "frothing...with shouts and feedback akin to the MC5." In the latter part of his career, Marsh named his long-running satelite-radio series on music and politics Kick Out The Jams with Dave Marsh , after the MC5's most famous song . The latest Marsh anthology is also entitled Kick Out The Jams: Jibes, Barbs, Tributes, and Rallying Cries from 35 Years of Music Writing . Then there's the Patti Smith /Fred "Sonic" Smith connection. In 1976, former MC5 rhythm guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith met groundbreaking rocker and poet Patti Smith. They were introduced to each other by Patti Smith Group guitarist and key collaborator Lenny Kaye (also a major MC5 fan,) and were married four years later. (A running joke in their circle at the time was that any potential name-changing didn't even need to be considered.) During the Darkness on the Edge of Town sessions, then-recording-engineer Jimmy Iovine, who also was in the midst of producing Patti Smith Group's album Easter , asked Bruce Springsteen if he could give Springsteen's partially-completed-and-abandoned song "Because The Night" to Patti Smith to complete and record for her album project. As Smith herself related in Thom Zimny's 2010 documentary The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town , "I was in my apartment, and I was having a long-distance romance with Fred 'Sonic' Smith, who later became my husband. He was supposed to call me up, and I waited for him to call me for hours. I thought, 'Well, I'll listen to that darn song [the demo cassette for the partially completed 'Because The Night.'] It was so accessible. It had such an anthemic tone. It was in my key, and I kept letting it loop and play, and I still tried to resist it, but I filled in the blanks, and in the blanks, it tells the story of me waiting for Fred to call and of my love for Fred. Fred did call about three in the morning, and I wasn't mad at him, though, because by the time he called, I had written my share of the lyrics of my one and only hit song." In the documentary, Springsteen added that Patti Smith "took ['Because The Night'] and she turned it into this really beautiful love song. I have to thank Jimmy [Iovine] for recognizing what was in the song, and then [Smith] for the intensity and the personalness and the deep love that she put into it. Her work on it has been a tremendous gift to me." Decades after the creative completion of "Because The Night," Fred "Sonic" Smith and Patti Smith provided Springsteen - and the rest of the artists on the bill for the 2004 Vote for Change concert-tour spearheaded by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band - with yet another musical gift. The Smith/Smith composition "People Have The Power" became the beautifully appropriate closing song performed at the end of each of the Vote for Change concerts. Last October, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and notable Springsteen collaborator Tom Morello (who also has just been announced as a 2025 Springsteen Archives American Music Honoree ,) inducted the MC5 into the Hall at last. Below is a complete transcription of Morello's induction speech: The MC5 crystallized Sixties counterculture movement at its most volatile and threatening. They were as bold and as musically adventurous as experimental jazz, as militant and as stylish as The Black Panther Party, and as loud and as dangerous as a Detroit riot. But perhaps their greatest accomplishment was that the MC5, in sound and in attitude, laid the cornerstone for one of rock's most exciting and important genres. Before the Ramones, before The Sex Pistols, before The Clash... there was the MC5, inventing the template of raw power and irreverent attitude that became punk rock. Their previously unimagined amalgam of jazz improvisation, garage rock, and James Brown dance moves was forged with raw theory, molten adrenaline, and political purpose. And as a live act, they were without peer. As the tear-gas began to fly during the massive anti-war riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, every other band on the bill chickened out and cancelled. Only the MC5 stood firm and played a defiant eight-hours set for the protesters. And when they hit the stage and shouted, "Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!," the promise of Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock" was made reality, and the future path of every musician who dreamed of raging against the machine was made clear. In these few lines, they encapsulated the redemptive power of living, breathing, playing, and believing in the irresistible force of truly revolutionary music: "Let me up on the stand, and let me kick out the jams! Put that mike in my hand, and let me kick out the jams! Let me be who I am, and let me kick out the jams!" Their visionary poet of a manager, John Sinclair, vocalist Rob Tyner, bassist Michael Davis, drummer Dennis "Machine Gun" Thompson, guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith, and my dear forever friend and forever comrade, Brother Wayne Kramer, have sadly all passed away. But wherever and whenever any of us summon up the guts and the courage to get up on the stand and kick out the motherfuckin' jams, the spirit of the MC5 will be right there with us. MC5, welcome home to where you belong, in The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame! Later in the year, Morello organized and performed in two special Los Angeles tribute shows memorializing Wayne Kramer and benefiting Jail Guitar Doors USA , the organization that Kramer founded in partnership with fellow musician Billy Bragg. Below you can watch and listen to Stevie Van Zandt joining Morello and his band at the December 5th Roxy Theatre concert to perform the MC5's classic "Kick Out The Jams:" Finally, our friend Nick Mead, the filmmaker who directed Clarence Clemons: Who Do I Think I Am? , is about to premiere at next month's Santa Barbara International Film Festival his latest documentary, which he co-directed with Andre Relis, entitled I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol . The film is based on Glen Matlock's book of the same title, and it features Wayne Kramer's final filmed interview. Below, Nick was kind enough to share with us his reflections on having gotten to know Wayne Kramer over the years: Let me set the scene... I had long hair, a black leather motorcycle jacket, and a Triumph motorcycle that worked only occasionally. And I was always with my first girlfriend, Claire, the most beautiful girl in the world. On a Sunday afternoon, the place to be was a gathering of hippies and rockers at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm. The best of the headlining bands then were Hawkwind, The Pink Fairies, and Motörhead . Inside was the space that once housed a railway turntable and it was, and in my opinion still is, the best venue in London. On a Sunday, the hallways were made up of hippie stalls selling their wares, the air was thick with the smell of patchouli and marijuana, and the amplification was loud. There were three songs that always heralded the headlining act: “I'm Waiting For The Man,” “White Punks On Dope,“ and finally “Kick Out The Jams.” That was my first introduction to Wayne Kramer and the MC5, and I was hooked. I got into photography and was assisting the great and wonderful Sheila Rock when we photographed Wayne Kramer at her studio in Portland Road, Notting Hill. My job on that day was to arrange Christmas fairy lights around his head. I remember not wanting to be paid for that day because meeting this legend surpassed any thought of money. I was thrilled when I started making films with Motörhead that the link to Lemmy, Mick Farren and Motörhead with Wayne was a strong one. Mick Farren and Wayne were very close friends, collaborators and revolutionaries, both being part of the White Panther movement. I made my first film, Black Leather Jacket , with Mick, based on his book of the same name. Cut to years later. I’d made the film on Clarence, and was embarking on a film, I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol , with Glen Matlock. A friend introduced me to Wayne at his MC5 HQ, which was above the tailors where I had my wedding suit made. If only I had known... I started seeing Wayne regularly and was absolutely knocked out by what a lovely amiable, honest, and compassionate gentleman he was. He gave me a copy of his heart-wrenching book, The Hard Stuff , and we started talking about turning this into a narrative feature film. I’d managed to set up the Glen Matlock film and was delighted that Wayne agreed to sit down with us and give us an on-camera interview (which sadly would be his last.) He was articulate, passionate, genuine, and highly amusing, seeing the comparisons between the way the authorities, in the form of respective governments, tried to demonize and close down the MC5 and The Sex Pistols, and at the same time highlighting Glen’s contribution to the Pistols' legacy. We were talking more about turning Wayne's book into a film, and I stuck my producer's hat on and reached out to Thom Zimny, whom I’d met in Asbury Park. I had read that Thom was looking into directing narrative features, so I sent him the book (signed by Wayne to Thom!!!) and we were trying to arrange a get together as soon as we were all in town at the same time. A few weeks later, I was shooting in New York when I got a text from Thom telling me how sorry he was about Wayne. It was then I found out Wayne had passed. Sometimes it’s the journey and not the destination, and I am so very grateful for spending a little time with Wayne and very happy indeed that he’s a part of our film, I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol . The officially approved, limited-edition MC5 2024 logo t-shirt featuring a design by Jason Federici (Danny's son,) who also is the Art Director at Jail Guitar Doors USA. Click the t-shirt image above to buy your shirt(s.) UPDATE - Courtesy of reader Randy Severs (Thanks, Randy!): One more MC5/Springsteen connection... In June of 1970 I had tickets to see the double bill of Grand Funk Railroad and the MC5 in Brick, NJ. I was very disappointed to arrive and see that the MC5 had been replaced by Steel Mill (a group I had never heard of before.) [Apparently travel issues forced the MC5 to cancel, and Steel Mill to replace the MC5 on the bill. The cancellation/switch was so last-minute that all of the tickets still listed "The MC Five" and not "Steel Mill."] Sixty-five years later and I still remember the power of Steel Mill. They played a fairly long set for an opener, and when GFR took the stage the audience continued to yell “Steel Mill.” GFR did not appear to be happy, and played a very abbreviated set. [Click here to hear a bit of archival audio from that night: Steel Mill playing the rarely performed "Black Sun Rising."]

February 1, 2025 We're not surprised at all, though of course very pleased, to learn that our own contributing writer/film-scholar Caroline Madden remains very active elsewhere when she's not submitting great work for our website. The two latest examples... Madden is the Managing Editor of McGill University's Biannual Online-Journal Of Springsteen Studies (BOSS) , which has just published its newest issue . The journal's mission statement asserts that it "aims to publish scholarly, peer-reviewed essays pertaining to Bruce Springsteen. This open-access journal seeks to encourage consideration of Springsteen’s body of work primarily through the political, economic, and socio-cultural factors that have influenced his music and shaped its reception. BOSS welcomes broad interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to Springsteen’s songwriting and performance. The journal aims to secure a place for Springsteen Studies in the contemporary academy." Featured in this latest issue: Daniel Loughran's "Dialogic Praxis: Radical Pedagogy for a Runaway American Dream" (in which Loughran argues that Bruce Springsteen’s dialogue with his fans fosters a pedagogy similar to that of Brazil’s heroic social reformer and educational theorist Paulo Freire,) Timothy Penner's "'They wanted to know why I did what I did:' Reading Bruce Springsteen’s 'Nebraska' through Ernest Hemingway’s Iceberg Principle," Nick Sansone's "'Man Turns His Back On His Family': Domestic Precarity and Fragile Masculinity in The Indian Runner and 'Highway Patrolman',” Marian Jago's "It’s Only Rock & Roll: Springsteen, Cultural Value, and Self-Myth on Film," and Melissa Ziobro's "A Glimpse Inside the Collection of the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music at Monmouth University," along with reviews of Lorraine Mangione and Donna Luff's Mary Climbs In: The Journeys of Bruce Springsteen’s Women Fans (reviewed by Carrie Pitzulo,) Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen's book (based on their podcast) Renegades: Born in the USA (reviewed by James Tackach,) and Jesse Lawson's and Holly Casio's podcast Because the Boss Belongs to Us (reviewed by Lucas Crawford.) Madden writes in her introduction to the issue, "We hope these peer-reviewed articles from multiple academic disciplines, along with our reviews and inside look at the Springsteen archives, will appeal to both scholars and fans. Just as Bruce Springsteen continues to interrogate his own legacy, so too do we, the scholars and readers of BOSS. We appreciate the historical, cultural, and political dimensions of his work and are thrilled to see Springsteen Studies continue to thrive." The current issue and all previously published issues are available online to all interested readers, free of charge. Click here to read any and all issues of McGill University's Biannual Online-Journal Of Springsteen Studies (BOSS) . Caroline Madden also has contributed a new essay to Fun City Editions' upcoming Blu-ray release of John Sayles' great 1983 film Baby It's You , which was the first major-studio-released film to feature Springsteen music in its soundtrack. Sayles' film, starring Rosanna Arquette and Vincent Spano, has been restored from a 4K scan of its original camera negative for this Blu-ray release. Fun City Editions' Blu-ray version of Baby It's You will be released on April 15. Click here to pre-order your copy online.