TOMORROW ON E STREET RADIO: THE BEST SPRINGSTEEN COVERS

Tomorrow at 4 pm ET on SiriusXM E Street Radio, I will be part of a panel discussion about the best cover versions of Bruce Springsteen songs. E Street Radio's Jim Rotolo is hosting, and the other panelists include Ben Lazar (also often heard on E Street Radio), Nick Masi from Brooklyn Vegan (he also hosts Sirius XMU's Blog Radio one day a week) and singer/songwriter Jesse Malin. The event is to promote "Cover Me," a weekly show of Springsteen covers that Nick is going to host on E Street Radio. It was a lot of fun to be on this panel, I hope you can tune in.

In honor of that, here are some of my favorite Bruce covers, in no order:

• Bettye Lavette's "Streets Of Philadelphia" (which I was turned onto by Nick Masi)
• Rage Against The Machine's "The Ghost Of Tom Joad" 
• Chris Cornell's "State Trooper" and "Atlantic City" from the concert I attended a few weeks ago
• Johnny Cash's "Johnny 99," "I'm On Fire" and "Further On Up The Road" 
• Eddie Vedder's "My City Of Ruins" 
• Steve Earle's "Nebraska"

There are probably many more, but those are the first ones that come to mind.  What are your favorites? And by the way, if you don't have SiriusXM, what are you waiting for? Sign up for a free online trial here and tune in tomorrow. 

PETER GABRIEL'S NEXT PROJECT: "SCRATCH MY BACK"

A few months ago, I wrote about Peter Gabriel's new project, and that he has reunited with Bob Ezrin, who produced some of his early albums. Well, I just looked into it a bit, and it turns out that the album is going to be called Scratch My Back, according to Peter's website. The idea of the album is that is a "song-swap": Peter will cover songs by artists, who, in turn, will cover his songs. Stylistically, it is an acoustic, orchestral album, meaning that there will be no guitars, drums, or "world music" instruments. One of the songs on the album will be Paul Simon's "The Boy In The Bubble," which is an interesting choice. Peter 's So and Paul's Graceland were some of the first albums by so-called "western" artists that were referred to as "world music" in the '80s. They were both incredibly original albums that still hold up to this day. Coincidentally (or not!) I wrote about both albums for VH1's 100 Greatest Albums of All Time book. Anyway, Peter is collaborating on the new album with a guy named John Metcalfe, who, in an interview with the UK's Guardian, said that other "swaps" on the album would be with Radiohead, Lou Reed, Bon Iver, David Bowie and Neil Young. The album is supposed to come out in the spring of 2010.

If you're a Peter Gabriel fan and new to No Expiration, by the way, check out Big Blue Ball, a hard-to-explain album that Peter curated which was released last year. I wrote about it here.

TOMORROW ON E STREET RADIO: NO EXPIRATION

Tomorrow morning at 10 am ET, I will be hosting the "You Be The Boss" program on SIRIUSXM's E Street Radio. For those who don't know, E Street Radio is the all-Bruce Springsteen-all-the-time channel on SIRIUSXM (I work there). On "You Be The Boss" you play five songs in a row and introduce them. Without giving too much away, my set is sort of a tribute to Little Steven. So, there's one Little Steven song, as well as a Southside Johnny song. I hate when people guest DJ and play the obvious stuff. (you can get a free trial here and tune in).

Why pay tribute to Little Steven? Well, as I mentioned I work at SIRIUSXM. But before I worked there, I was a SIRIUS subscriber. Here's why: years ago, someone told me about Little Steven's FM radio show "The Underground Garage." I was in my 30's by then, and hadn't really listened to much radio other than NPR in, maybe 20 years. I never liked radio formats, even classic rock. Classic rock turned the music that I loved into a museum - no new artists, and no new music by classic artists, many of whom (like Bruce, Bob Dylan or Neil Young) were still putting out great music. Foreigner or Journey instead of The Stooges or James Brown or Prince. Too much repetition. Boring DJs. I had my own tapes (and later CDs) and radio was completely unnecessary. Then I heard Steven's show. I listened on weekends - and I'll admit, I had a friend who works with Steven, and I got some copies of his shows on CD. They were amazing. Then, in the summer of 2004, I convinced my boss at Video Hits 1 to let me cover Little Steven's Underground Garage Rock Festival at Randall's Island in the summer of 2004. The Stooges, The New York Dolls, The Pretty Things, Bo Diddley, The Romantics, The Dictators, The Electric Prunes, The Chocolate Watch Band, The Mooney Suzuki, The Creation, The Charms, The Boss Martians, The Contrast, The Shazam, The Paybacks, The Woggles and The Cocktail Slippers (who, years later, would put out one of my favorite albums of the year) all played. To be fair, The Strokes also played: it was one of the most pathetic performances I'd ever seen. I don't know if it was really so bad, but coming between The Stooges and The Dolls, they just looked so lame. I thought they were boring before, but this took them to a new level of zzzzz. Little Steven still plays them on The Underground Garage. I don't love everything he plays, but I love maybe 80% of it, and I trust his taste enough to sit through stuff that I dislike, because I know I'll probably like the next song, and plus, I actually look forward to hearing the DJs.

As you can see, I was totally sold on this Underground Garage concept. At some point, I subscribed to SIRIUS so I could access the channel 24/7. (I also liked Howard Stern, Outlaw Country, Meg Griffin's SIRIUS Disorder channel, and the idea that there were channels for blues, bluegrass, jazz, soul, heavy metal and old-school hip-hop, but it was mainly the Underground Garage that got me to part with the cash). Then, when I needed a job, I checked the "Careers" part of the website, and ended up getting a job on the website. I don't know if I would have thought of that without Little Steven's Underground Garage. So, I thought I'd take the opportunity on "You Be The Boss" to thank the man on the airwaves. Maybe I'll do another "You Be The Boss" in the future - I'd like to do a set paying tribute to Nils Lofgren as well, and one celebrating Bruce's music from the past ten years. I have a lot of themes in mind actually.