For the third time in as many years, a French-language magazine has published an all-Bruce edition that sets very high marks for excellent.  Vibrations, published in Lausanne under the editorial direction of Pierre-Jean Crittin, is out with an 82-page Collector’s issue containing more than 100 photos and editorial content organized as a career-spanning chronology.  If many of the photos will be familiar to long-time fans, the over-all presentation is spectacular, as is the newsstand price of 7.90 euros.  In 2009, the French edition of Rolling Stone joined Crossroads magazine in published all-Bruce issues that are worthy companions to Vibrations, which is now in the Springsteen Special Collection thanks to Cecile Fauveau of Paris.

You thought Rolling Stone had the cover of this Wrecking Ball season?  You might want to think again.  There’s strong competition from overseas, where Hot Press (Ireland), Buscadero (Italy), the Atual supplement to the Portugese newspaper Expresso,  This Is Rock (Spain), the Sette supplement to the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera, and the essential French magazine Rock & Folk are all out with portrait quality Springsteen covers.

Congratulations to Michelle Maiatico of New Market, MD.  She is the lucky winner in The Friends’ raffle for a gorgeous black and white print of Bruce Springsteen and Clarence Clemons, taken by photographer James Shive at the Spectrum in 1978.

All of us at The Friends thank each and every one of our renewing members and all of our new members for your support.  Your membership donations helped raise the matching fund which qualifies us for a New Jersey Historical Commission grant to expand The Bruce Springsteen Special Collection.  Because of you, the application has been submitted, and we’re hoping for good news when  notifications are made in May.

Since its creation in 2001, The Bruce Springsteen Special Collection has received donations at an average rate of 1,500 a year.  Simple mathematics, therefore, seemed to predict that the 15,000th item accepted into the Collection would arrive shortly after the 10th anniversary and true to form, it did.

Item number 15,000 is a German issue of Rolling Stone published in May 2001, containing a significant review of the Live In New York City double CD.  The donation reached the Collection by special delivery of the most personal nature:  Astrid Ewen of Billerbeck, Germany, a town of approximately 12,000 people in the district of Coesfeld in North Rhine-Westphalia, Continue reading →

When Giacomo Melani, 33, a Pistoia, Italy youth basketball coach and fervent Springsteen fan, died following a car accident in 2010, friends honored his memory by compiling Brucetellers, a 240-page book containing stories, anecdotes, photos and pictures from 90 contributors, all of who shared Melani’s passion for the music of Bruce Springsteen.  With the exception of Vini (Mad Dog) Lopez’ contribution in English, the book is in Italian from a hugely impressionable list of contributors — a Who’s Who of Springsteen-centric Italian authors including Ermanno Labianca, Leonardo Colombati, and Stefano Pecoraio, many journalists, photographers, and collectors, and Rosalita fan club director Vito Gianfrate.  Organized by A.S.C.D. Silvano Fedi, an Italian cultural association, the book was published by Edizioni Nuove Esperienze in Pistoria in a limited edition of 2,000, with the entire sales proceeds supporting the Meyer Foundation, a pediatric hospital in Florence.  The print run is almost sold out.

David Burke’s Heart of Darkness, Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, is both the final Springsteen book of 2011 and the tablesetter for what’s lining up to be a publishing bonanza in 2012.  At least five major Bruce books are in the works, and if Burke’s 196-page analysis of Nebraska – perhaps the most shockingly unexpected album of the last 50 years — is any example of what’s in store, 2012 will be a readers delight.  Published in the UK by Cherry Red Books, Heart of Darkness goes far beyond the January 1982 home recording sessions that produced the 10-song album and takes a detailed look at the album’s roots and its influence on recording artists on both sides of the Atlantic.

For the longest time, most authors who produced books on Bruce Springsteen wrote biographies, for better or worse. The best included Dave Marsh’s trail blazing Born To Run (1979, Doubleday Dolphin); a bottom of sorts was reached during the Born in the U.S.A. era with the publication of market grabbing quickies with little or no original content. A trend far more seriously focused on critical analysis has taken shape over the last decade, encouraged in part by Springsteen symposiums, the teaching of Springsteen lyrics in high schools and colleges, Continue reading →

Perhaps the most obscure show played by the E Street Band took place April 18, 1973 on a high school stage in Lincroft, NJ. There’s no known setlist, published review, or bootleg tape. Some performance chronologies don’t even list the venue.

What there is is Pegasus 1973, the yearbook of Christian Brothers Academy, a Catholic high school 13 miles northeast of Freehold. Carl Beams, a founding member of The Friends of the Bruce Springsteen Special Collection, had seen Continue reading →

Just in time for the holidays, an outfit called Betascript Publishing has released a significant number of Springsteen-related paperbacks, all with very high Euro sticker prices. Titles range from Sad Eyes and Magic Tour to Working On A Dream and Ramrod. Promising as the titles may be, we offer this note to prospective buyers: all content of these titles was extracted from Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. The original source for these materials is clearly revealed on the cover of each edition. While we have no complaint over the concept of republishing online content in book form, fans may find most or all of this material freely available on Wikipedia.

The archives at Getty Images, Inc., contain over 80 million commercially available images, 200 of which now come to us in Bruce Springsteen, The Illustrated Biography from the UK, courtesy of Welcome Rain Publishers.

The subtitle here — A Unique Collection of 200 Classic, Rare & Unseen Photographs — is a spot-on description of what you’ll find between the cover of this 224-page softcover gem. Author Chris Rushby provides a running Continue reading →