U N C L E *B R U C E* S P R I N G S T E E N *

bruce was at the inauguration,
took these from the btx forums:



Here's a few pics from Corbis. Looks like he was amongst the crowd. Although I'm sure that it was the VIP part of the crowd. If you look closely at the screen in the last one, you can see that Biden is being sworn in.

The sad ballad of Bruce and Bono

Sat, Jan 24, 2009

PRESENT TENSE: YOU MUST HAVE heard Bono's words at this week's pre-
inauguration concert. "What a thrill for four Irish boys from the
northside of Dublin to honour you sir, Barack Obama, to be the next
president of the United States." writes SHANE HEGARTY.

And what a thrill it must have been. Even if only one of U2 actually
lives on the northside now. Or that Bono must have lived as much of
his life on the southside. Or that two of the band were born in
England, before moving to the north Co Dublin town of Malahide. Roddy
Doyle, you'll have noticed, never sets his novels in Malahide.

Why be so picky? Because even in a moment when he was trying to
express the personal pride he and the band were feeling, Bono sounded
a false note. In throwing in the reference to the northside, he was
grabbing some of the "impossible journey" narrative for himself and
the band.

In many ways, U2's journey from school band to global megastardom has
been improbable, but it's not because they came from Dublin's
northside. It's not as if most of Bono's friends are either dead or in
jail. Last time I looked, they were making soundtracks and bowls. When
not being a citizen of Dublin, Bono is a citizen of the world.

During the band's performance of In The Name of Love, he described
Martin Luther King's dream as "Not just an American dream – also an
Irish dream, a European dream, an African dream, an Israeli
dream . . ." And then, following a long pause reminiscent of a man
who'd just realised he'd left the gas on, he added, ". . . and also a
Palestinian dream." This was his big shout out to the Palestinians.
You know, it's easy – and not original – to have a pop at Bono's
bombast, but sometimes it's necessary to point it out and impossible
to resist.

He serves it up on a platter, writing newspaper columns and giving TV
interviews. And for all his undoubted sincerity and effort on the
issue of world poverty, you can't help but marvel at this latest
expression of Bono's Sesame Street view of the world. Hey Middle East,
we just have to have a dream to get along.

Just ignore the sound of those loud explosions and concentrate on
Bono's voice.

U2 debuted a new single this week. Get On Your Bootsis actually pretty
good, a reminder that the band still writes decent tunes, which is no
mean feat given how many legendary acts continue to rely on ancient
material. (The Rolling Stones have written almost nothing memorable
during the entire time that U2 have been around). But not for the
first time in U2's career, Get On Your Bootssounds like the work of a
band trying to find their voice in other people's sounds. And, also
not for the first time, it's lyrically vacuous. That shouldn't be a
big deal – it's only rock'n'roll after all – but it reminds us that
it's been some time since Bono and U2 have been musically relevant.

Also on the stage at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday was Bruce
Springsteen. Like U2, he released new music this week. In early
listens, the album Working On A Dreamis very strong in parts, if
unlikely to be remembered as one of his more substantial albums. It
lacks the grief and resilience that fuelled his post-9/11 album The
Rising; the honesty of Devils and Dust; and the anger that infused his
Bush-era America album Magic. Working On A Dreamis a romantic album, a
contented album, an album that sounds as if it marks the end of a
cycle in his songwriting.

It is, though, part of the continuing evolution of his music. He has
been singing about the same characters and themes through his entire
career, making his an epic, decades-long exercise in storytelling that
shows no sign of coming to an end. Springsteen has also been arguably
the most effective and popular protest songwriter of recent years. It
means that he remains essential in a way that few artists do. In a way
that U2, and Bono, are not.

Compared to Bono, Springsteen has always been on another plane as a
lyricist, but 40 years into his career he's writing songs that are not
just catchy, but actually say something intelligent about the world,
his country, his people. Like Bono, he's made enough money to remove
himself from the multitudes who pack his stadium shows, and yet he
still seems genuinely one of them.

Most importantly, he's politically brave in a way that Bono will not
be. He takes sides. He's not afraid to make enemies. Unlike Bono, pal
of all presidents, he will not sup with the devil, partly because he
knows what it's like when his political enemies misread and
misappropriate his music. And unlike Bono, who has a fascination with
America that displays itself as a cloying neediness, Springsteen
understands that country intimately. It means that Springsteen is
authentic and authoritative in a way that Bono can never hope to be,
no matter how much he mentions that he's from the northside.

© 2009 The Irish Times

http://www.1019rxp.com/feature/BruceSpringsteen2.aspx

The Ties That Bind

101.9 RXP "The New York Rock Experience" has begun airing "The Ties That Bind," a new morning show feature leading up to the new album release on January 27. Airing every day at 7 a.m. during "Matt Pinfield in the Morning," the segment is produced and hosted by Rich Russo of Anything Anything, who's got his facts learned real good and will be featuring a rarely played Springsteen song each day.

EXCLUSIVE SPRINGSTEEN SPECIAL

This weekend 1019RXP airs "Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: An Inside Look at 'Working On A Dream" . A one hour exclusive special where Bruce takes his fans on an inside look behind the making of the new release! "Working On A Dream" is Springsteen's 24th album and was recorded and mixed at Southern Tracks in Atlanta, GA with additional recording in New York, Los Angeles and New Jersey! The album was born out of the sessions for 2007's 'Magic'. Bruce explains, "Towards the end of recording 'Magic', excited by the return to pop production sounds, I continued writing. When my friend producer Brendan O'Brien heard the new songs, he said, 'Let's keep going'. Over the course of the next year, that's just what we did, recoridng with the E Street Band during the breaks on last year's tour. I hope 'Working On A Dream' has caught the energy of the band fresh off the road from some of the most exciting shows we've ever done. All the songs were written quickly, we usually used one of our first few takes, and we all had a blast making this one from beginning to end." Hear this exclusive one hour special commerical free this Saturday and Sunday night at 8pm on 1019RXP!!!

About Bruce Springsteen

When Bruce Springsteen finally broke through to national recognition in the fall of 1975 after a decade of trying, critics hailed him as the savior of rock & roll, the single artist who brought together all the exuberance of '50s rock and the thoughtfulness of '60s rock, molded into a '70s style. He rocked as hard as Jerry Lee Lewis, his lyrics were as complicated as Bob Dylan's, and his concerts were near-religious celebrations of all that was best in music. One critic became so enamored that he quit reviewing to become Springsteen's manager.

But the hosannas, when piped through the publicity machine of a major record company, were perceived as hype by a significant part of the public as well as the mainstream media -- Springsteen landed on the covers of Time and Newsweek, but both magazines were covering the phenomenon, not the music. Springsteen's album, Born to Run, became a hit, and he jumped to arena status as a live act, but as many people were turned off by the press campaign as turned on by the records and shows.

Two decades later, however, Springsteen remained an established star who could look back on a career that had produced one of the best-selling albums of all time, sold-out stadium shows, Grammy awards and an Oscar, and a group of imitators who constituted their own subgenre of popular music. If he no longer seemed divine, he remained popular enough for his Greatest Hits album to enter the charts at number one, and he had won over many of those skeptics from 1975.

Growing up in southern New Jersey, Springsteen turned to rock & roll as a teenager and played in a series of bands from the mid-'60s on, varying in style from garage rock to power trio blues-rock. By the early '70s, he was trying his hand at being a folky singer/songwriter in Greenwich Village. But when he was signed to Columbia Records in 1972, he brought into the studio many of the New Jersey-based musicians with whom he'd played over the years.

The result was Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (January 1973), which went unnoticed upon initial release, though Manfred Mann's Earth Band would turn its leadoff track, "Blinded by the Light," into a number one hit four years later. The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle (September 1973) also failed to sell despite some rave reviews. (Both albums have since gone platinum.)

The following year, Springsteen revised his backup group -- dubbed the E Street Band -- settling on a lineup that included saxophone player Clarence Clemons, second guitarist "Miami" Steve Van Zandt, organist Danny Federici, pianist Roy Bittan, bassist Garry Tallent, and drummer Max Weinberg. With this unit he barnstormed the country while working on his third and last chance with Columbia. By the time Born to Run (August 1975) was released, the critics and a significant cult audience were with him, and the title song became a Top 40 hit while the album reached the Top Ten.

What Springsteen needed to do in the wake of the hype, of course, was to play and record more to consolidate his position. He was prevented at least from the latter by a former manager, who kept him in court during the next couple of years. Meanwhile, the musical world changed. Part of the reason critics had welcomed Springsteen so enthusiastically in 1975 was that he seemed a return to basic rock & roll values in a world of soft rock, heavy metal, and art rock.

By the time Springsteen returned with his fourth album, Darkness on the Edge of Town (June 1978), however, the punk/new wave movement had outflanked him, pushing him from the vanguard to the mainstream. Similar sounding heartland rockers such as Bob Seger had appeared, so that Springsteen sounded less like an innovator than a member of an established genre.

Nevertheless, he set about winning fans with an album that found the lost children of his early albums stuck in factory jobs, still longing for some escape. The album was a hit, though it did not match the success of Born to Run. Springsteen returned with the double album The River (October 1980), which topped the charts and featured his first Top Ten hit, "Hungry Heart."

Nobody was calling him a hype anymore, but Springsteen retreated from his expanding success, next recording the low-key album Nebraska (September 1982), a virtual demo tape on vinyl. (Springsteen did not tour to promote the album, and in the interim E Street Band guitarist Van Zandt amicably left the group for a solo career, to be replaced by Nils Lofgren.)

But then came Born in the U.S.A. (June 1984) and a two-year international tour. The album threw off seven hit singles and sold over ten million copies, putting Springsteen in the pop heavens with Michael Jackson and Prince. After touring for more than a year, he released a five-LP/three-CD concert album, Live/1975-85 (November 1986), which topped the charts.

Characteristically, Springsteen returned with a more introverted effort, Tunnel of Love (October 1987), which presaged his divorce from his first wife. (He married a second time to singer Patti Scialfa, who had joined the E Street Band.)

After another marathon tour, Springsteen gave the E Street Band notice in November 1989, breaking up a celebrated unit who had stayed together 15 years. In March 1992, he simultaneously released Human Touch and Lucky Town, and though the albums premiered near the top of the charts, they were less successful with fans than previous efforts. In the fall, Springsteen taped an MTV Unplugged segment (though he plugged in after one song), and the performance was released as an album in Europe in 1993.

Springsteen continued to tour until July 1993. In the fall, he wrote and recorded "Streets of Philadelphia" for the soundtrack to the film Philadelphia, which concerned a lawyer dying of AIDS. The song became a Top Ten hit in 1994, winning the Academy Award for Best Song and cleaning up at the Grammys the following year. At the same time, Springsteen had readied his Greatest Hits album (February 1995), reassembling the E Street Band to record a few new tracks. The album was an immediate best-seller. Springsteen followed it with The Ghost of Tom Joad (November 1995), another low-key, downcast, near-acoustic effort and embarked upon a brief solo tour. In 1999, shortly after his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Springsteen reunited with the E Street Band (including both Lofgren and Van Zandt on guitars) and embarked on a world tour that lasted until mid-2000, its final dates resulting in the album Live in New York City.

He then made his first new full-length studio album to feature the group as a whole since Born in the U.S.A., The Rising, his first album of new studio recordings since The Ghost of Tom Joad. Released in July 2002, it was followed by another successful tour and recording sessions for a new album, released as Devils & Dust in 2005. One year later he released the first covers album of his career, a tribute to the songs of Pete Seeger titled We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. Live in Dublin, featuring concert tracks done on the tour supporting the Seeger project, was released on both CD and DVD in 2007. Then it was back to working with the E Street Band for the release of Magic in the fall of 2007. William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide


101.9 RXP is hosting Bruce Springsteen Listening Parties in your neighborhood! Everyone is invited to come out and listen to "Working On A Dream" and win copies of the new CD and Vinyl!


Monday, January 26th
The Downtown
10 West Front Street
Red Bank, NJ
tel: 732-741-2828
http://www.thedowntownnj.com/directions.html
No drink or appetizer specials as right now.