August 14, 2023
If you already are or soon will be in the Philadelphia area for one or both of this week's concerts by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, try not to miss the "50 Years of Bruce Springsteen Music Celebration." It's a free exhibition of photographs, concert posters, gold/platinum-record awards, and other items of memorabilia, some of them signed, as well. Framed photos and other items also will be available for purchase. The exhibition is taking place at Coll's Custom Framing, located at 324 Fayette Street in the Philly-area suburb of Conshohocken, PA. It's open now through September 2, available to visit every day of the week except Sunday, beginning at 9:30 each morning and continuing through the day until 5:30 pm, except on Thursdays (when the exhibition won't close until 6:30 pm) and on Saturdays (when the exhibition will close at 4:30 pm.)
Many of the photos being exhibited were taken by the late, great local rock-photography legend, Phil Ceccola. Ceccola first began to photograph and befriend Bruce Springsteen in the early 1970s, as Springsteen was just beginning to develop and nurture his large, rabid, and longstanding fanbase in the Philadelphia area. Ceccola and Springsteen remained friends until Ceccola's tragic early death from brain cancer in 2003.
One of Ceccola's photos of Springsteen, caught in a thoughtful
moment backstage at the Philly area's legendary Main Point nightclub in Bryn Mawr, PA, became the cover-photo (in slightly altered form to remove all nearby tobacco-associated paraphernalia from the shot) for Bruce's 1998 career-spanning box-set of outtakes and B-sides entitled simply TRACKS.
On Saturday, August 19, the "50 Years of Bruce Springsteen Music Celebration" also will feature a special appearance by former E Street Band drummer Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez. Click here for details.
And hey, if you're busy zippin' around the Philly area catching Springsteen in concert and in vintage photos, you're gonna need to start off each day with a good, healthy breakfast. The locally-owned (and women-owned) Goodness Bowls mini-franchise has you covered, with their regular menu-item the "Bruce Springreen" bowl: a chilled/frozen base of banana, mango, green spirulina, kale, spinach, and coconut milk, topped with granola, some more banana and mango, blueberries, hemp seeds, and honey. The "Bruce Springreen" bowl is available exclusively at Goodness Bowls' two Philly-area locations: Villanova, PA (site of a pair of locally legendary 1973 Springsteen performances at Villanova University,) and down the (South Jersey) shore, where everything's alright, in Avalon, NJ.