BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Western Stars (Sony) The song opens at dusk or dawn, it doesn’t matter, a man “searching for my love” with the resignation of one who knows she’s not going to be found. The chorus reaches up even as the strings pull down the sky, the backing voices arrive like a mildly scolding chorus of great aunts whispering “look what you’ve done”, and the snare drum is a clap of hands saying snap out of it - as if it can pull against the tide of the timpani and violins a

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Qudos Bank Arena, February 7 Trust. It matters. Of course, it does. You would be familiar with this from any team building exercise or management retreat and their mantras. Without it any organisation will fall, will turn on itself or walk away. In its absence customers or viewers or students have no reason to return. Blah blah. But with Bruce Springsteen it is not just a management shibboleth but something sacred. It's there in something as brutally simple

Jake Clemons is a 36-year-old saxophonist, singer and songwriter likely to forever be known as not just the nephew of Clarence Clemons, the “big man” of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, but the “kid” who five years ago stepped into the big man’s big shoes in that band. He’s ok with that. Even with a new solo album, a gentle and sometimes ruminative Fear & Love, out now as he tours the country with the E Street Band, the easy-going Clemons isn’t one for pushing himself too f

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Allphones Arena, February 19, 2014 It’s a communal thing. A two-way street. A give and you shall receive understanding we all grasp, on stage or off. It’s why this night is not really like any other night. It’s not just Bruce Springsteen, it’s not even just Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band; it’s them and us as one sweating entity. That roof-raising exultation in the soul-rousing, gospel power of Land Of Hope And Dreams or the way

As I said in an earlier post, I had to pick 50 songs from 50 years to mark a landmark that we don’t need to go over again here thank you very much (cos I still feel like the 13-year-old and I sure act like him often enough). Only one song per year, one song per artist, each with some significance for me. There was a CD, so along with the songs these are excerpts from the liner notes. (Of course there were liner notes.) The first tranche takes us from 1965 to 1989. 1965: The