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Count the band in, then kick into overdrive

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After an almost six-year break, the mighty E Street Band were back in action last night for the first night of Springsteen’s 2023 (and probably 2024) tour. Kicking off, maybe a little surprisingly, with ‘No Surrender’, the fairly tight 28 song set came in well under 3 hours suggesting that the days of epic shows may have gone the way of crowd surfing, knee slides and leaping off of pianos. Which is probably not a bad thing really. A good bit of ‘new’ in the set too – although nothing from Western Stars which is a bit of a shame.

Anyway, as we all know, our heroes aren’t going to last forever so it’s nice to see Bruce and the band back together doing what they were put on earth to do. Long may they run.

Bruce’s Ghosts

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Here’s the second release from Bruce Springsteen’s new record with the E Street Band. If you like the E Street Band live experience, you’ll love it. If you don’t you’ve probably already made up your mind!

I generally prefer my Bruce to be a little more subtle than this but there’s no doubt it’ll sound fantastic in arenas and stadiums. That’s if we ever get to hear music in arenas and stadiums again.

Springsteen’s latest tribute

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By now, those of you with any interest will have probably seen Springsteen and the E Streeters doing ‘Purple Rain’ as a tribute to Prince at the start of their show the other night. I wouldn’t go as far as to say he makes it his own (as if!) but it’s a pretty decent effort all the same. There’s a few versions of it online at the moment but this one’s probably the best – mixed, as it is, from various different fans’ recordings.

Even better is the audio version (link below) that his Bossness has made available as a free download on his website. More than makes up for the dodgy sound on the youtube clips. It’s probably only a matter of time before the audio is mixed in too.

Wonder if Bruce is running the band through ‘Me and Mrs Jones’ as I type..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifNyqjHHCGw

http://live.brucespringsteen.net/live-music/0,13914/Bruce-Springsteen—The-E-Street-Band-mp3-flac-download-4-23-2016-Barclays-Center-Brooklyn-NY.html

Springsteen does Bowie

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Springsteen kicked off his 1980 River tour in Pittsburgh last night, opening the encore with a tribute to David Bowie, one of his earliest supporters. Unsurprisingly he manages to make Rebel Rebel sound like just another foot-stomping Bruce Springsteen bar song. Nice try, I suppose, but there’s an air of ‘will this do?’ about it.

Incidentally, new tour, same old stage wardrobe for Bruce and the E Streeters. He truly is not the chameleon of rock. On the plus side he seems to have dropped about 8 non-essential members from the band. Just the 10 (ten) of them now.

George Harrison

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Just read that today is George Harrison’s anniversary. It’s 14 years since he left us – which seems like no time at all really.

Got any favourite George clips? This is one that I’ve listened to a lot since his music arrived on Spotify last month. Sounds perfect now on a gloomy grey Sunday morning. It’s also, surely, a contender for worst solo Fab video. And that’s a crowded field!