Bruce Springsteen to play at SuperBowl

It is now official: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band will perform at the Super Bowl's halftime on February 1st 2009 on NBC Sports at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, FL.

The Super Bowl halftime show is annually the most-watched musical performance. More than 148 million viewers in the U.S. watched last year's show. The Super Bowl and halftime show will be broadcast worldwide in more than 230 countries and territories.

Nils Lofgren's surgery

E Street Band's guitar player extraordinaire Nils Lofgren has announced in his official website that he will have surgery done in New York next Thursday Sept.30th. to replace his hips. These are Nils' words, as published in his site:

"Due to a long, beautiful life on the road (40 years) that's included back flips with guitars, dive rolls, leaping off drum risers and trying to break stage floors with pounding legs due to the amazing energy I gratefully continue to get from you, the audience, in addition to thousands of hours playing aggressive basketball, (my favorite sport to play) on mostly cement, city courts, I have finally destroyed both of my hips and they are both bone on bone with no cartilage left. Thus , I am headed to NYC with my fabulous wife Amy to have bi-lateral hip relacement this Tuesday, Sept. 30th (both hips completely replaced). (...) God willing, it will all go well and I'll recover completely. I hope to be back home in AZ. to continue rehabbing by late October and start more guitar lessons and writing. If all goes well, I hope I can start doing my acoustic show touring by early Spring.".

The fact that he expects full recovery and be able to tour "early Spring" could indicate the rumoured E Street Band tour in early 2009 might be that, just a rumour.

Meanwhile, Nils has recently released a brand new album. Under the title "Loner - Nils Sings Neil" he has recorded 15 Neil Young-penned tunes. Nils was part of Neil's band in the 70's and participated in some of Neil's best albums, including the classic "Tonight's the Night".

The great Southside Johnny also has a brand-new cover album. He covers Tom Waits, and even has Waits participating in the album, singing a duet with Johnny. "Grapefruit Moon - The Songs of Tom Waits" includes 12 songs written by Waits and performed here by Southside with the powerful La Bamba's Big Band.

Happy 58th Birthday

Bruce Frederick Springsteen turns today 59 years old. He was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, on September 23rd 1949.

In the picture, Bruce receives a very special birthday cake from his crew, at the Sept. 21st 1978 concert in Passaic, NJ. The cake had a special "surprise" inside.

It was 30 years ago today...

...that Bruce Springsteen began a series of shows at the small Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey, during the fabulous Darkness on the Edge of Town tour.

and this is what happened:

Thunder Road (Passaic, NJ 19-9-1978)


Kitty's Back - Part 1 (Passaic, NJ 19-9-1978)


Kitty's Back - Part 2 (Passaic, NJ 19-9-1978)

Springsteen conventions this month

Bruce's 59th birthday will be celebrated with not one but two fan conventions.

The first convention is "Land of Hope and Dreams", organized by the dutch fanclub Roulette. It'll take place in Rotterdam on Sept.27th and 28th. It is a big, huge fan convention, with lots of events happening. Check their website for full info. It's well worth it!
Land of Hope and Dreams website.

For the ones who can't be in Rotterdam for the Bruce fan Convention... for the ones living far from there and willing to spend a last summer weekend on the Adriatic seaside for a special event: "Glory Days in Rimini", now in its 10th year, something which started in 1999 as a tribute to Springsteen 50th birthday, and going on until today with a full week-end dedicated to Springsteen and American music

Write in your agenda these dates: September 26th and 27th with live music played at the beautiful Rock Island at the pier, free admission, lots of friends and fans from all over Italy and a lot more.

For full info and last year's show clips and pictures: http://www.glorydaysinrimini.net/

16 Springsteen albums to be reissued in Spain with new artwork and a book

A big part of Springsteen's discography will be reissued in Spain starting September 21st thru the newspaper El Periódico. The paper will deliver a CD & book every Sunday, and each Springsteen album will feature the new vinyl-replica artwork. Each CD comes with a 36-page book, with text in Spanish, with many unreleased photos, full album and tour reviews and the song's lyrics (in english). The text has been written by Point Blank's director Salvador Trepat, who has also helped choose most of the previously unpublished pictures.

The first volume of this CD-book collection is "The Rising" and it will be given away Sept.21st with El Periodico's Sunday Edition. There'll be another 15 volumes in consecutive weeks, which will be sold for 9,95 € every Sunday. The collection includes the following albums: Born in the U.S.A., The River (2CD), Born to Run, Human Touch, Tunnel of Love, 18 Tracks, Lucky Town, Nebraska, In Concert/MTV Plugged, Live in New York City (2CD), The Ghost of Tom Joad, Greetings from Asbury Park NJ, The Wild The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, Darkness on the Edge of Town y Greatest Hits.

See El Periódico.

Springsteen writes a new song for "The Wrestler"

First it was "Streets of Philadelphia", later it was "Lift Me Up", "Dead Man Walking" and "Missing", and now it's just been revealed that Bruce has written a brand new song for Darren Aronofsky's new movie "The Wrestler". The song has the same title and closes the film while the credits roll on. The film features actor Micky Rourke and actress Marisa Tomei, and debuts on Sept. 5th at the Venice film festival.

In his blog, director Aronofsky describes Bruce's song as "a wonderful acoustic piece". Watch out for it at the Toronto International Film Festival (Sept.7th) or at the New York film Festival (Oct.12th).