Happy New Year

So my Bruce buddy Sinead announced on Facebook that she is taking her mum to see Bruce this year.  Now as far as I know she hasn’t been chatting to Our Man or indeed Jon Landau.  I don’t think she works for Shore Fire media so how does she know there is going to be a tour?  Forgive me if I am wrong Sinead but I assume it was just a subconscious slip of the finger coupled with a feeling - a strong feeling - that there is going to be something happening in 2011.

I know that feeling because I have it too.  So much so that I could get quite excited on the basis of a hunch.

During the last couple of weeks I’ve been browsing around the Bruce stuff on the Internet so rather belatedly came across this great review on  Backstreets  (scroll down the page a little).  It’s a long article but well worth a read if you have the time.

I hadn’t realised that the set was so long.  I had assumed the four songs we saw via the web cast were the set in it’s entirety but - no.  The following songs were performed all at least twice which hopefully suggests (after some cutting and editing) we may see some more.

Set list
Racing...
Gotta Get That Feeling
Outside Looking In
One Way Street
Come On Lets Go Tonight
Save My Love
The Brokenhearted
Aint Good Enough...
The Promise
Talk To Me

Could this be a sort of rehearsal for a tour?  And what about the ‘See you soon’ which everyone seems to have taken as a sign?

When I first came to live in Yorkshire one of the colloquialisms I noticed was that everyone was going to see me later - shop assistants, work colleagues, friends - all seeing me later.  Now in my part of the world see you later means see you later that day not see you some time in the future.  You know what I’m getting at here don’t you?  Does see you soon actually mean see you soon? - I reckon it does.

Well I’ve amused myself with a bit of historical research to try and add some substance to my hunch.

The WOAD tour was a bit of an anomaly as, to all intents and purposes, it was an extension of the Magic tour.  Before that, certainly recently, a tour has started at almost the same time as an album has been released :-

Magic released 02/10/07            first gig 24/09/07

Seeger released 25/04/06           first gig 20/04/06

Devils released 26/04/05            first gig 21/04/05

Rising released 30/07/02            first gig 25/07/02

Tom Joad released 21/11/95      first gig 21/11/95

So are we waiting for another album release or is he going to tour with The Promise material?  You know, I think Bruce really believes that his newest stuff is his best.  It’s not so odd.  Most artists, when asked which is the favourite of their back catalogue, nearly always reply that they like the latest album the best.  I wonder whether Bruce will be reluctant to tour with just older stuff as understandably wants to be seen as current.

Bruce put in a brief appearance on last week’s edition of Imagine - a programme about Ray Davies.  Only about 30 seconds or so during which he was goofing around and recording the duet from Ray’s latest album.

This reminded me that I forgot to mention The Promise - The making of Darkness… was featured the other week - in the same series.  Basically an edited version of the documentary with a nice little BBC intro. Despite the fact we had already seen it this was of course still an event in our house - can’t miss our man when he’s on the BBC you know!  The World and his Wife rang, texted or emailed to tell us it was on including my 80 year old mother in law.  We saw/heard Bruce and thought of you seems to be a bit of a mantra in our family.  Still it’s good to think we are remembered from time to time and I have certainly no problem with being associated in someone’s mind with Mr Springsteen himself!

Well that's it for now.

Happy New Year  to you all.

Hope to seeing some of you - including Sinead's mum - this year at a Bruce gig … or three … or half a dozen … or !!!