Frank

Rest In Peace.

Earlier in June I read, 'These Truths, a history of the United States, by Jill Lepore. And 'Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee', by Dee Brown.

I've just finished Tom Nichols', 'The Death of Expertise'. Great book and highly recommended. Recently, I read Brian Greene's, 'Until the end of time', which is far from his best books. And Lewis Datnell's, 'Origins, how the Earth shaped Human History', which was pretty good.

I guess he refers to his mid eighties 'Sin City' campaign against apartheid in South Africa, but I'm not sure.

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In the recent past, the E Street Band has toured without Max, Danny (before his passing, I mean), Steve and Patti. Neils is important, but I don’t think his possible absence would change Bruce’s plans for next year (if he indeed has some). As somebody said before, the economy will probably play a major role in the scheduling of the next tour, regardless of venues or “shared” musicians.

Look at the bright side: a couple more days of this, and we’ll eventually know the true title of The Beatles’ so called ‘white album’.

Yes, the CD came out at the end of March 2001, the DVD in early November 2001.

As for the album artwork, things were proper made, I think (before the bonus addition that I mentioned before, I mean). The central picture was the 'Tour 1999-(2000)' (it was never called reunion tour at the time, btw) main logo. The stars might have been a clin d'oeil to the flag stripes of the 'Born in the USA' artwork, but that's all. Also, if memory, the artwork was realized in the collaboration with art printmaker Jim Sherraden. Again, the album was intended to feature the soundtrack of the HBO special (the sticker on the plastic wrap made it abundantly clear), which had no cover, of course. What is somewhat strange is the different DVD artwork (pretty poorly done, in terms of design and picture resolution), especially if one considers the aforementioned Sherraden connection. The DVD came out some nine months after the CD, so such a rushed artwork remains a mystery. My personal guess is that after 9/11 (the DVD release was announced in mid September 2001 and came out in November of the same year) Bruce&CO might have wanted something less bombastic and more sober. Or maybe they wanted to focus on the 'American Skin' controversy (which I doubt), given that the chosen front cover is basically the, "We need some quiet" photogram. But we will never know, I guess.

No, it's not a butcher's work, to answer your question. Even though it might sound like that twenty years later. As it has been said before, LINYC (the audio version) was supposed to be the soundtrack of the 90 minute HBO special (which was awarded an Emmy Award if memory serves me well). The audio version came out the year before of the LINYC DVD. I clearly remember the first official announcement of the audio version, because it caused some real fury around here and on the BTX forum (I got my one and only Mod warning in more than twenty years about that ). In the first Shorefire media press release, the double album was meant to include the HBO tracks only, without the bonus tracks (nor Born To Run, BTW). Presumably in the wake of diehard outrage (such a "double album" would have "featured" an hour of empty space, leaving out gems like 'Jungleland', 'The Promise', or 'Lost in The Flood', which at the time hadn't been released in any official live format), Bruce&CO announced the addition of some bonus tracks (from 'Lost in the Flood' to 'If I should fall behind') shortly afterwards. You can still see trace of this last minute addition in the artwork of the CD version. And this is probably the real reason of the omission of 'Born to run' from the artwork tracklist. P.S.: except for removing Bruce's introductory spoken words, "This is Land of Hope and Dream", LOHAD was not edited at all. Both the LINYC version and the nugs 7/01/2000 version clock at 9:13.

They should have sued him for not playing ‘This place is empty’ instead.

Well, what (part of the name) are they going to drop when somebody mentions that the new name is hardly politically correct these days?

Fantastic. I was just about to post it myself. Always loved this track.

(Although I wouldn’t agree on Nebraska being a “smaller” song), I think you’re absolutely right with your main point. Hitch Hikin’ (and the following The Wayfarer, as well as far as I’m concerned) is a sort ouverture to the “proper” album, which is conceived as a classical piece.

To a certain extent, the album is his “real” Nobel laureate lesson. A class in musical history and innovative songwriting. Pure genius.