BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND PLAY "STUMP THE BAND"

I can't wait to see Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band when they come to New Jersey in a few weeks. Whenever Bruce is on tour, I follow the setlists on Backstreets (which is where I got this picture from).

This time around, it seems like a continuation of the Magic tour from last summer: they're not so much promoting the new album (they do a few new songs each night, of course) as they are celebrating their career and having fun. They've been playing lots of interesting covers: they've recently done ZZ Top's "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide," and "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the center of Little Steven's Underground Garage universe, The Ramones. Last night, they did The Clash's "London Calling." I often refer to the Bruce/Steven/Elvis Costello/Dave Grohl performance of "London Calling" from the Grammy Awards as "the best four minutes of tv, ever." (Of course, I wasn't around to see The Beatles on Sullivan).

Dave Marsh, who hosts a great live call-in show on SIRIUS XM's E Street Radio, says that this tour is a "victory lap." Well, they've earned it. Still, I'd love to hear "Surprise, Surprise," "The Last Carnival," "Good Eye" and "Kingdom Of Days" on this tour. Speaking of "Kingdom of Days," Patti Scialfa, who missed a few dates on the tour due to a horseriding accident, was back last night. Glad you're feeling better, Patti. I interviewed her years ago, and she was super-cool.

BRUCE AND PATTI

It's true, she's "tougher than the rest." Here's a picture of Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa (from Backstreets) that you won't see in New York's biggest swiftboating rag.  But as the great Chuck D said about the rag back in 1991, "Here's a letter to the New York Post. The worst piece of paper on the east coast. It makes no goddamn sense at all. America's oldest continuously published daily piece of bullshit." Well said, my man! 

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN'S "WORKIN' ON A DREAM"

This picture is from Backstreets.

Bruce Springsteen (along with Patti Scialfa) performed one last gig as Barack Obama's support act. I'm glad it worked out, last time he opened for someone (John Kerry), the results weren't as good! He debuted a new song, "Workin' On A Dream." Now, word comes - according to the cool blog Stories In High Fidelity - that his next album will come out in January, in time for Barack's inauguration. And the Super Bowl. That's pretty exciting. The mood for his Super Bowl performance will be pretty great. He's not the liberal complaining about the Republican President. He will be the friend of the just inaugurated and very popular current President.

Other Bruce stuff: his cover of Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream," which he closed his solo shows on the Devils & Dust tour, is now available on iTunes. Also, he released a free mp3 of a new Halloween song, "A Night With The Jersey Devil" (along with a well produced video, with more acting than I think he's ever done in a video) on his formerly lame official website.

But what I want to know: will we ever get to hear any of his recent Barack fundraiser concert, where he and Billy Joel played as one band? And will he actually put out a Darkness On The Edge Of Town box set, a la his Born To Run box set from a few years ago?

GREAT SONGS FROM 2007 - part 1

So, I've already written about my favorite albums of 2007, but there are a lot of songs that I love that were one-offs, or just come from albums that didn't make my list (I don't get albums for free as much as I used to, and I can't buy everything!).

Kanye West, Nas, KRS-One and Rakim: "Classic (Better Than I've Ever Been)" This song was actually comissioned by Nike to celebrate their anniversary. But to me, it's about how age ain't nothin' but a number. I don't know what new MCs are considered hot, but I doubt many of them would hold a candle to KRS or Rakim. The original version of this song, by the way, was produced by Rick Rubin, and didn't feature Rakim. But the version I like is the remix, done by the legendary DJ Premier. I love Rick, but Premier killed it. Premier is one of the great producers ever, and hip-hop heads know it, but since he doesn't throw his name into every song he works on, and he doesn't show up in videos, he doesn't really get his due. But he was a member of Gang Starr, and also produced Rakim, KRS-One, Nas and lots of other great hip-hop artists. He expanded into pop recently by working on Christina Aguilera's album, cooking up some really cool tracks for that one.

Mick Jagger: "Too Many Cooks (Spoil The Soup)" I wrote about this one last year: it's a lost track from the '70s, was produced by John Lennon, and features Jack Bruce of Cream on bass. Kind of unfair to even rate anything from 2007 against a Jagger/Lennon collab. It's a great, funky song.

Rilo Kiley: "Silver Lining" I wrote a bit about this one also: great song. I've read some writers compare them to Fleetwood Mac, due to the fact that the singer has had a relationship with someone in the band? That doesn't sound as tangled as the Mac, it's more like No Doubt. Whatever, I really like this song, and I'm also digging the rest of the album, Under The Blacklight.

Prince - "F.U.N.K." This was a one-off single he released on iTunes. One of his funkiest, most rocking jams in years. I think it was a dis to his fansites. Prince also released a pretty good album, Planet Earth, which had at least two cool songs: "Guitar" and "Chelsea Rogers." Prince also gets points for his cover of "A Case Of You" from a Joni Mitchell tribute that came out in '07.

Patti Scialfa - "Town Called Heartbreak" From her latest, Play It As It Lays, her best yet. This song is so good, Bruce Springsteen added it to his sets on this tour (which he hadn't done with any of the songs on her previous two albums).

I've got more songs to write about - from Green Day, Rush, The Dropkick Murphys, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, Wyclef Jean, Social Distortion, Ray Davies, The Hives, The Arctic Monkeys and more.

THIS WEEK'S NEW RECORDS

I kick it "old school," as you may have figured out by now. I go to the record store (yes, there is still one near me) on Tuesdays (new release day). Then, when I come home, I check out the iTunes store.

So, today I didn't buy any full length CDs, but I tried a bunch of things out on iTunes: I bought two tracks from Patti Scialfa's new album, Play It As It Lays, "Play Around" and "Run, Run, Run." Her voice is polarizing: her obvious influence is the great Ronnie Spector and some people love her voice, and some don't. I think that, at least on these songs, she reigned in her her tendency to sometimes oversing, which is good. That's what I'd do with her if I was her producer. Of course, it's understandable that she would oversing, given her dayjob (which I'll be writing about soon enough).

If you have a taste for something different, and don't mind lyrics that aren't in English, you should check out Manu Chao. I checked out his song "Rainin' in Paradize" which actually is in English. I may pick up the album instead of buying more individual tracks.

I don't think that anyone benefits from the term "neo-soul." It translates to "soul music for Starbucks" or something. But that seems to be what Jill Scott has been lumped in with. I don't care what you call it, she can sing - check out her new single, "Hate On Me."

I'm not a big fan of Ronnie James Dio - his dungeons and dragons thing doesn't really appeal to me. And to me, Black Sabbath is four guys - Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward. That said, I was glad to see Tony and Geezer get back together with Dio this year - and I was glad to see that they called themselves Heaven & Hell. I think it's cool that they can do their own thing while Ozzy doing his solo thing. They released a live album. While Dio's era in Sabbath pales compared to Ozzy's "The Mob Rules" is a great song, so I "grabbed" that.

The Dropkick Murphys combine punk rock with Irish music - they've been around for a few years, and got a big break last year when Martin Scorsese used thier song "I'm Shipping Up To Boston" in The Departed. Their new song, "The State Of Massachusetts" is rockin'.

Right now I'm really looking foward to Robert Plant's upcoming album with Alison Krauss. I'll write more about that later.