album by album
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Bruce Springsteen was talking about compromise last night. Adult compromise, as viewed by the kids startled to first discover Mom and Dad had hopes and dreams. The world takes some of those away. You choose to let go of others. These aren’t easy choices. What the kids don’t see, Bruce said, are “the blessings of compromise.”…
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A few weeks ago I drove out to Astoria to help my pal Matt Love tape a pilot episode for a radio show about writers and writing. We talked Springsteen and he asked me something along the lines of, “What’s your favorite record? Which record would you take to the desert island?” “Well, those are…
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Forty years ago today, Born to Run was released. Was finally released. Was unleashed. Born to Run changed everything for Bruce Springsteen. It’s full of hopes and dreams and desperate lust for a future somewhere other than here–wherever your particular here might be. It’s a hot summer night. It’s a screen door slamming. It’s a car speeding off…
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The studio where Bruce Springsteen made “Born to Run” is a carwash now. An “Auto Spa,” technically, and I guess there are much less sensical options. I mean, once Mary got in that car and they headed off down “Thunder Road,” it was bound to get dirty. This summer marks the 40th anniversary of Born…
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Happy New Year, friends. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love a good sunset, and if I had to pick one day from 2014 to take with me into the new year, it’d be a perfect evening at the beach with a bonfire, and great friends and family. If I had to take two days,…
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Reminder: If you’ve got a book you’d like signed for yourself or someone else, I’ll be hanging out at the Old Gold tonight starting at 6:30 p.m. It’s casual, not remotely a “book signing.” I’ve been calling it office hours, but really the Old Gold is one of my favorite bars in town and it’s…
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See that guy right there? That’s the fantastic Redray Frazier. Fantastic singer. Fantastic writer. Above all, fantastic human. And I say that not just because he sent me that photo via text from the coast just before Thanksgiving. He’d be all those things even if he hadn’t bought a copy of the book. Go check…
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I saw a local media outlet promoting a reporter whose job it is today to help the dear readers sort out the Black Friday chaos–as if Americans needed help buying stuff. It’s just about all we do well these days, and of course we’ve fetishized it and commoditized the oddest hours of the day. It’s…
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It was a strange and fun thing to hear–myself sounding not completely stupid on the radio, a lead-in to “Trapped.” It was nice to hear “Trapped.”
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“We live in a post–authentic world. And today authenticity is a house of mirrors. It’s all just what you’re bringing when the lights go down. It’s your teachers, your influences, your personal history; and at the end of the day, it’s the power and purpose of your music that still matters.” —Bruce Springsteen, SXSW keynote,…
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