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December 6, 2025 Yesterday's "First Friday" release from the monthly Nugs/Live Archive series is another great show from The Wrecking Ball Tour: HK Areena, Turku, FIN - May 8, 2013 . It's one of the best examples of how varied and full of surprises the shows on that tour could be, with Bruce Springsteen & the (newly expanded) E Street Band taking on nightly sign-requests and major setlist changes. Most important, they did all of that while maintaining their well-known musical excellence, consistently delivering excellent, moving, and powerful shows that continued to connect and resonate with their international, multi-generational audiences. Among Turku 2013 Night 2's highlights: the only live performance to date of "Wages of Sin," the rarely performed "I'll Work For Your Love" in a solo-acoustic version to open the night, followed by "Long Walk Home" as the evening's first full-band performance (a rare placement of that song so early in the set,) a Greetings... two-fer with "Blinded by the Light" and "Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?" back-to-back, the debut addition of a bit of Huey "Piano" Smith & The Clowns' great "Don't You Just Know It" to "Open All Night," Everett Bradley's outro percussion work adding some unique flavor to a beautiful ten-minutes-plus version of "Racing in the Street," and as if all of that weren't "good enough," one of only five public performances to date of "Ain't Good Enough for You," the fun Darkness... outtake that also would later provide the musical bedrock for the Springsteen-written Gary "U.S." Bonds hit "This Little Girl:" Click here to order/stream HK Areena, Turku, FIN - May 8, 2013 .  While there, also be sure to click the "SHOW MORE" button where it reads, "Show Notes," to read Columbia/Nugs archivist Erik Flannigan's essay on this recording, entitled " I’ve Tried So Hard, So Hard In Every Way." It's insightful and informative, despite a misleading implication that The Wrecking Ball Tour was the first Springsteen/E Street Band tour without the late, great "Phantom" Dan Federici present onstage. (That actually was The Working On A Dream Tour.) And here's hoping that the long-standing tradition of TWO new Nugs/Live Archive releases in December will continue this year. We'll just have to wait and see what the Fates will allow, as we draw closer to Christmas...

Alison Oscar of Jon Landau Management and Karen Rosenberg of Empire Events Group display a navy-blue "Spirit of '76" shirt at The Kristen Ann Carr Fund's 2025 "A Night To Remember" event last month December 1, 2025 Happy Cyber Monday, and Happy Last-Day-To-Order-Your- Exclusive-Letters-To-You-Frank-Caruso-"Spirit-of-'76"-Shirts -With-Free-Guaranteed-Delivery-In-Time-For-Christmas/Kwanzaa! With awesome art by Springsteen's Outlaw Pete collaborator Frank Caruso , and a relevant quote from Bruce himself, it's one of the coolest gifts you can give to every Springsteen fan in your life - and/or to yourself - this holiday season, with all shirt-sale profits going to one of Bruce Springsteen's longtime favorite charities, The Kristen Ann Carr Fund . The "Spirit of '76" shirt is available in two colors, "dark ash" gray (90% preshrunk cotton, 10% polyester) and navy blue (100% preshrunk cotton,) and adult sizes small through 4XL. And this the only place ANYWHERE where you can buy them. So click here to order NOW , before it's too late, for free guaranteed delivery in time for Christmas/Kwanzaa.

photo by Mark Krajnak  for The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music  - used with permission November 30, 2025 Today we're celebrating the 72nd birthday of E Street Band founding member and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer David Sancious (pictured above at last September's Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music at Monmouth University's Born to Run @50 symposium.) Christmastime has just begun, too, so how 'bout we celebrate Davey's special day by enjoying two vintage video-clips featuring Sancious, from Natalie Merchant's December 18, 1996 appearance on The Rosie O'Donnell Show 's holiday-decorated set? Merchant, who at the time also was a client of Jon Landau Management, told O'Donnell "It's been really great working with David Sancious and the rest of the 'jazz cats.'" She was appearing on the show to help promote her recording of the Goffin-King classic "One Fine Day" for the soundtrack of the George Clooney/Michelle Pfeiffer Christmastime '96 vehicle One Fine Day . Sancious produced Merchant's version of "One Fine Day" for the soundtrack. Below, you can watch Natalie Merchant, David Sancious, and the rest of the "jazz cats" deliver their unique takes of both "One Fine Day" and one of Merchant's big solo hits, "Wonder:" Happy Birthday, David Sancious, and many, many more, you versatile, mega-talented jazz/rock/classical/soul/prog/multi-genre cat! May you enjoy one fine day, today and every day.

publicity photo of Ethan Zane Browne from the Alain / Zane Facebook page November 29, 2025 This week, we at Letters To You were shocked and saddened to learn of the tragic death of Ethan Zane Browne at only 52 years of age . Ethan was the son of Jackson Browne and the late Phyllis Major. During his short life, he did some modeling, some acting, and - as one-half of the duo Alain Zane - he also made some pretty damned good R&B/soul music. In the now-hard-to-find 1980 film No Nukes , there's a sweet scene of Jackson Browne carrying five-year-old Ethan backstage to meet his father's friend, Bruce Springsteen. Onstage during his second "No Nukes" concert, on September 22, 1979, Springsteen dedicated his performance of "The Promised Land" (as seen in Thom Zimny's 2021 film The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts ) to, among others, Jackson Browne and Ethan Browne, "...that little boy," as Bruce said with a smile. On the back-cover of Jackson Browne's 1976 album The Pretender , produced by Jon Landau, there's a beautiful photo of Ethan that was taken by his father as the child ran playfully on a beach. Superimposed over the photo is a poem by Pablo Neruda, translated by Kenneth Rexroth: Brown and agile child, the sun which forms the fruit And ripens the grain and twists the seaweed Has made your happy body and your luminous eyes And given your mouth the smile of water. A black and anguished sun is entangled in the twigs Of your black mane when you hold out your arms. You play in the sun as in a tidal river And it leaves two dark pools in your eyes. Brown and agile child, nothing draws me to you, Everything pulls away from me here in the noon. You are the delirious youth of the bee, The drunkenness of the wave, the power in the wheat. My somber heart seeks you always I love your happy body, your rich, soft voice. Dusky butterfly, sweet and sure Like the wheat field, the sun, the poppy, and the water. Letters To You sends its deepest condolences to Jackson Browne, and to everyone else who knew and loved Ethan Browne.

November 26, 2025 Once again this year, Bruce Springsteen is lending his support to WhyHunger , as he has done so often in the past, and the anti-hunger organization's annual Hungerthon . Springsteen fans who support this year's Hungerthon and WhyHunger, which is now fifty years old, can score some exclusive Springsteen-themed gear. The theme of this year's Bruce-themed benefits is centered around lyrics from "Jack Of All Trades." Fans who donate $60 or more can receive the Bruce Springsteen "The World's Gonna Change" Tee : Fans who donate $100 or more can receive the Bruce Springsteen "The World's Gonna Change" Hoodie : Fans who donate $150 or more can receive the Springsteen Bundle, containing both the Bruce Springsteen "The World's Gonna Change" Tee and the Bruce Springsteen "The World's Gonna Change" Hoodie : There also are two other special Springsteen-related Hungerthon events of note this year: Charitybuzz Auction to Co-host on The Wild & The Innocent with Jim Rotolo on SiriusXM E Street Radio (bidding closes on Tuesday, December 9 @ 2:28pm EST) Hungerthon Benefit Concert at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ on Sunday, December 14, beginning at 6pm , commemorating fifty years of WhyHunger and featuring performances from Music Director Marc Ribler with members of Little Steven’s Disciples of Soul and The E Street Band, with special guests Sameer Gadhia & Eric Cannata from Young The Giant, Yola, Amy Helm, Jim Babjak and Dennis Diken of The Smithereens, Dixie Dregs, Garry Tallent, Jimmy Vivino with Mark Barden, Steve Chapin & The Original Harry Chapin Band featuring Tom Chapin & Jen Chapin, Randy C Moore, and Danny Clinch Tickets can be purchased in person at The Stone Pony's box-office (913 Ocean Avenue Asbury Park, NJ; open noon-5pm Thursday through Sunday, and during show hours) or online via Ticketmaster by clicking here . Earlier that day, beginning at 2pm, WhyHunger will also host a special two-hour Artist Summit on hunger and poverty for VIPs at the Transparent Clinch Gallery across from The Stone Pony. The summit welcomes artists and community leaders to engage in an open discussion about creative solutions to combat global hunger and the injustice at its root. Moderated by Rick Korn, participants include talent such as Sameer Gadhia of Young the Giant, Yola, Mark Barden, Amy Helm, and Jen Chapin in addition to Jenique Jones, Executive Director of WhyHunger. Click here to purchase WhyHunger's special VIP/Artist Summit tickets (which include admission to the 6pm concert at The Stone Pony.)

November 26, 2025 It is well known, as it should be, that Jimmy Cliff , whose death at 81 was announced on Monday, has had an enormous and enduring musical impact around the globe. In addition, many Bruce Springsteen fans, myself included, feel an extra debt of gratitude to Cliff for writing and recording the original version of the song "Trapped." Springsteen found a Jimmy Cliff cassette that included Cliff's version of "Trapped" (which, incidentally, was produced by Cat Stevens) while shopping in an Amsterdam airport during the 1981 European leg of the The River Tour. As that tour progressed, Springsteen & the E Street Band began performing an intense rock version of "Trapped" that strengthened the socio-political metaphors in Cliff's song even further. Hearing "Trapped" performed by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band became a major highlight of the 1981 shows and then, three years later, of the Born in the U.S.A. Tour, as well. A live recording of "Trapped" also served as Springsteen's contribution to the historic 1985 U.S.A. For Africa We Are The World LP. Just over a decade after Springsteen first performed "Trapped," he began regularly adding another great Jimmy Cliff composition to his live repertoire, again during a European tour leg. In 1993, Springsteen and his severely underrated 1992-93 touring band began performing a beautiful, moving version of Cliff's "Many Rivers to Cross." It also was on that 1993 leg that Jimmy Cliff made his first guest appearance at a Bruce Springsteen concert. (Back in 1989, Springsteen was a special guest during Jimmy Cliff's Stone Pony concert that year, performing "Trapped" together.) In Verona, Italy on April 11, 1993, Cliff performed his song "Time Will Tell" with Springsteen and his band. Oddly enough, Jimmy Cliff did not join in on that night's performance of "Many Rivers To Cross." The only other time they would appear onstage together would be almost two decades later, during the great Austin, TX show that followed Springsteen's SXSW Keynote Address earlier that day. Jimmy Cliff joined Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band for performances of three of his greatest songs: "The Harder They Come," "Time Will Tell," and "Many Rivers To Cross." Stevie Van Zandt was among the many musicians who addressed the passing of Jimmy Cliff. Writing on his social-media platform , Van Zandt noted that Cliff was "so proud" of his work on Artists United Against Apartheid's groundbreaking "Sun City" record and music-video. "He had been quite vocal about South Africa his whole life," wrote Stevie. Van Zandt also noted Cliff's 1986 recording of "You Don't Have To Cry," the song that Arthur Baker and Stevie Van Zandt wrote to sing on the soundtrack for Jonathan Demme's film Something Wild . But most Springsteen fans, and most music historians in general, are still not aware of the apparent connections between Jimmy Cliff's 1969 song "Vietnam" - which Bob Dylan once called the best protest song that he'd ever heard - and the creation of Springsteen's song "Born in the U.S.A." I first wrote about this connection for Backstreets.com back in 2014 as part of our special features on the 30th anniversary of Born in the U.S.A. You can click here and scroll down to my June 4, 2014 online article entitled "Did Jimmy Cliff Help to Inspire 'Born in the U.S.A.'?" And below you can hear the audio-montage I created to take you aurally through Jimmy Cliff's "Vietnam" to the early stages in the creation of Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." and then coming full-circle to a 1987 reggae version of Springsteen's song performed live in New Jersey by Bruce with Jah Love & The Survivors. (This audio-montage, originally posted on the Backstreets Magazine SoundCloud platform to accompany my 2014 article, also has been shared to the Letters To You SoundCloud platform .) Clearly, Jimmy Cliff has had a major and enduring impact on Bruce Springsteen's work, one that remains highly significant, even as it continues to be underrated.

black-and-white 1975 "passport photo outtake" image by Barbara Pyle, from her book Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band 1975 ; color 2025 TeachRock Facebook profile photo by Laura Merrill Images - used w/ permission November 22, 2025 Happy 75th birthday to the E Street Band's true Renaissance man: singer, songwriter, producer, guitarist, arranger, bandleader/musical-director, activist, actor, director, writer/screenwriter, satellite-radio pioneer, record-label executive, entrepreneur, and educator, who has more passions, pursuits, and projects than he has nicknames, if not headscarves ... the one and only Stevie Van Zandt. Give Linsey Davis and her team at ABC News Live twenty minutes, and they'll give you an overview of what's so great about our beloved Stevie (though if you want the FULL picture - literally - Bill Teck's brilliant 2024 HBO/Max documentary Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple remains essential, of course.) Davis' report, which dropped earlier this week, also includes an extended focus on the program that Van Zandt founded and Bruce Springsteen has called "his greatest legacy:" TeachRock . If you need a shot of hope about humanity's future - and who doesn't these days? - there's nothing better than seeing Stevie and his TeachRock team working to preserve all that's great and important about what he calls "the Renaissance period" in rock and soul for future generations. "As far as I'm concerned," Van Zandt tells Davis at one point, "[TeachRock has reached] a million students, and we got 49 million more to go... I just feel like we are able to transform at this point the education system in a way that needs to happen, or else we're going to lose a whole generation." He doesn't just sit around talkin' about it, either. There's wonderful footage of Stevie visiting New York's East Side Community High School , interacting with students and their history teacher Ben Wides, one of the first teachers to adapt the TeachRock curriculum in his classes. The report's concise history of TeachRock growing from an idea first put forward by Van Zandt more than two decades ago, to watching him now witnessing that idea of his put into action in one of the thousands of schools and classrooms where it's happening every day, is quite inspiring indeed. Click below for your twenty minutes of Van Zandt zen: Happy Birthday, Stevie, and best wishes for many more Happy Birthdays to come. Thanks for all of your continued commitment, passion, wisdom, and wit, helping to lead us out of the darkness each and every day.

L-R: Letters To You editor/publisher Shawn Poole, Jon Landau Management's Alison Oscar, and "Springsteen - Spirit of '76" artist Frank Caruso at the 2025 Kristen Ann Carr Fund "A Night to Remember" event in New York City - November 15, 2025 - photo by Greg Drew November 19, 2025 Okay, all you procrastinators out there, to quote the man himself, "You guys know what time of year it is?!" It's your last chance to pre-order one (or more) of our exclusive "Spirit of '76" shirts in time for holiday gift-giving (to your loved ones and/or yourself.) This shirt is one of the coolest gifts you can give to a Springsteen fan this holiday season, and ALL (100%) of the profits from shirt-sales will be donated to one of Bruce's longtime favorite charities, The Kristen Ann Carr Fund . Pre-order your shirts now ! (See below for specific gift-giving pre-order deadlines.) NEWLY ANNOUNCED gift-giving pre-order deadlines: Hanukkah deadline - November 21, 2025 Christmas/Kwanzaa deadline - December 1, 2025 (Orders placed after these dates are not guaranteed for holiday delivery.) ​ ATTENTION ALL KACF "A NIGHT TO REMEMBER" 2025 ATTENDEES: The postcard inside your gift-bag has a 12-character promo code printed on it for you to receive your special shirt-purchase pre-order discount. This is DIFFERENT THAN and SEPARATE FROM the QR code on your postcard. In order to have your shirt-purchase pre-order discount applied to your order, please be sure to type in your postcard's 12-character promo code at checkout. Please email editor@letterstoyou.net with any further questions or concerns, and thank you all for your continued support of The Kristen Ann Carr Fund.

November 9, 2025 "...GHOSTLY VOICES..." - On " Nebraska Outtakes," "Electric Nebraska ," and the enduring greatness of the original album by Caroline Madden As any Bruce Springsteen diehard already knows, and as more casual fans have learned more recently from the film adaptation Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere , his 1982 album Nebraska was recorded entirely in his bedroom on a rather rudimentary TEAC 144 four-track cassette recorder, then mixed on an old Gibson Echoplex and mastered on a water-damaged Panasonic boombox. What were meant at first to be just solo demos, intended for re-recording with the E Street Band in the studio, became the album in its finished form. Springsteen came to prefer his lonely, hushed vocal performances on those demo recordings, wrapped in an echo that created an otherworldly sound, one that perfectly captured the cries of the lost souls he sings about on the album, trapped in a purgatory of violence, hopelessness, and poverty. More than a few folks, including - at least these days, apparently - Bruce Springsteen himself, consider Nebraska to be his crowning achievement. Springsteen archivist Erik Flannigan writes in the new Nebraska '82: Expanded Edition box-set's essay, "Springsteen isn't alone in considering the album his finest work." While I wouldn't go that far myself, I certainly can agree that after more than forty years, Nebraska clearly remains one of Bruce Springsteen's finest efforts. It also is an album that can easily pull you under and drown you in its bleakness. For myself, I have to already be in a very dark mood to engage with these songs. The Nebraska '82... box-set further documents and, yes, celebrates how Bruce Springsteen found his way to that dark space and followed his instincts to release ten of his cassette-recorded song demos, just as they were. The long-awaited box-set offers a candid look at Springsteen's creative process—a journey that was neither strictly linear nor conventional, and one that includes, of course, the fabled "Electric Nebraska " recordings. The first two discs present the roads not taken for Nebraska , some of which are iterations of songs that would later crystallize into the heartland rock grandeur of Born in the U.S.A. In fact, the first track we hear on Disc One (" Nebraska Outtakes") is the original cassette-demo-tape version of Born in the U.S.A. 's title track (the same version that first got released back in 1998 on TRACKS .) Here on the demo you won't hear any thunderous snare (or, for that matter, any drumming at all) from Max Weinberg, or any of the full-band fireworks of the released-in-1984 hit/album version that would later contribute to widespread confusion about its supposed fist-pumping affirmation of conservatism. On the demo, Springsteen inserts high-pitched wails that make the narrator's ten years burning down the road seem like torture, moaning like a ghost of his former self. The song will continue to take shape on Disc Two's "Electric Nebraska ," evoking more of a grungy hard rocker. While these versions capture the narrator’s genuine frustration more sonically, the genius of the official 1984 release of “Born in the U.S.A.” lies in its synth-heavy uplift, which ironically undercuts its flag-waving exuberance. But for now, back to Disc One (" Nebraska Outtakes,") which is a mix of outtakes from the TEAC-cassette demo sessions that took place in early 1982 at Springsteen's New Jersey home, and a solo-acoustic session professionally recorded at The Power Station in New York City later that year... “Pink Cadillac” is one of the most captivating departures from the full-band '84 B-side (later included on TRACKS ) and live versions over the years, transforming the familiar sexy romp into a David Lynch-esque fever dream, with Springsteen-as-obsessive stalker repeating “pink Cadillac” slowly and monotonously, as if in a trance. It shares a similar nervous energy with "On the Prowl," which features skittish, sneaky stops and starts that subvert conventional song structure. It builds to a high-pitched, unnerving repetition of the word “searching,” as if he were some sort of coyote. “On the Prowl” is quite unlike most of what we typically hear from Bruce. “The Losin’ Kind” is one of the outtakes that would most naturally fit on Nebraska , though clearly it came too close for comfort to the superior “Highway Patrolman.” The song tells another Bonnie-and-Clyde-style story of outlaw lovers, with lyrics that reinforce the album’s recurring themes of winners and losers. There’s a fragile melancholy in his vocal performance as the narrator balks at his own foolishness. The gently-strummed (and downright creepy) "Child Bride" feels like another lost opportunity for Nebraska and carries a similar mournful quality, even though some of the same lyrics ended up on the sprightly “Workin’ on the Highway.” The narrator's quiet, defeatist admission, “I swore I’d come and get her / But I know I ain’t ever going back,” is just as heartbreaking of a line as Bruce Springsteen's most tragic song releases. The soft glockenspiel captures the innocence of the eponymous child bride, who doesn’t yet understand the "meanness in this world"—a phrase that resonates far more powerfully on “Nebraska.” But it is “Gun in Every Home” that demands the most attention, speaking to political divisiveness and post-COVID mistrust that have deepened isolation within our communities. We are all guarded and on edge, afraid of our neighbors despite the idyllic façade of suburbia. The tenderly sung lyrics about a father wanting to shield his young child from “a world gone crazy now... a world that’s gone all wrong” fit alongside Nebraska ’s general misanthropy. Without the polished production by Toby Scott at the Power Station, the track would have rounded out the album nicely. On to Disc Two, the long-fabled "Electric Nebraska " material, for which many fans have been clamoring over decades. Does it live up to the hype? Your mileage may vary, depending on how compelling you find hearing Bruce experimenting and trying to sculpt his sound. The album presents full-band interpretations of the six songs from his bare-bones demo tape, alongside two tracks that would take the opposite route, swelling into their more anthemic, stadium-filling form when they finally appeared on Born in the U.S.A. . What frustrates me most about Electric Nebraska  is that the instrumentals are too generic, which sounds incongruent against the exceptionally macabre words. "Nebraska" sounds like something you'd slow dance to at a wedding, if you ignore the lyrics of cold-blooded murder and electric chairs. Most of the album’s instrumentals are plodding and flat. “Mansion on the Hill,” however, caresses the listener’s ear nicely with Danny Federici’s organ and Roy Bittan’s piano, infusing touches of the wistfulness later found in the country-style Live from New York City  performance. "Open All Night," “Reason to Believe,” and “Johnny 99” have a playful, bar-band infectiousness that belies their morbid lyrics; they’re a lot of "fun" to listen to, but that’s the last impression Bruce wanted audiences to take away from any of the songs on Nebraska . Had these versions been officially released, it would have been easy for listeners to miss how closely Bruce was peering into that psychological abyss. These versions on   "Electric Nebraska " make it understandable why the songs demand to be performed in the sparse, intimate style of his bedroom recordings. One of the strangest outliers is “Downbound Train,” with its frenetic pace and breathless vocal delivery that sounds as if the train itself is going off the rails. Bruce inserts a hypnotic hum in the middle of the song, a sound of the narrator spiraling downward on the runaway train, as if teetering on the edge of collapse. Will you listen to this version more than the glossier, more brooding   one on Born in the U.S.A. ? Probably not, but like most of "Electric Nebraska ," it’s still at least interesting to hear Bruce experimenting. One of "Electric Nebraska "'s biggest problems, however, is that you don’t hear Bruce singing as his characters on these recordings. The words are just words, not raw confessions of his tormented protagonists. There’s a subtle unease in his voice; you can tell Bruce senses that these songs aren’t quite working.   Finally, on the remaining discs of this five-disc box-set, we get to hear the ten-song Nebraska album presented in the solo-acoustic form in which it was first presented back in '82: as the 2025 remaster of the original '82 album, and as audio/video of an April 2025 near -solo-acoustic full-album performance of Nebraska , where Bruce was backed by only two other musicians. (See Shawn Poole's separate report below for further details on the April 2025 performance film/audio.) Both the 2025 remastering and the 2014 Album Collection, Vol. 1 remastering of Nebraska utilized Plangent Processes and are virtually indistinguishable in terms of quality, restoration, etc. The good news, of course, is that thanks especially to the Plangent technology, Nebraska in the 21st century continues to sound as great - technically speaking - as possible. (One weird aspect of the new box-set is that in the vinyl-LP edition, on both the 2025 full-album performance LP and the 2025 remaster LP, Side 1 now ends with "Highway Patrolman" instead of "State Trooper," which now starts off Side 2, followed by "Used Cars" and the rest of what constituted Side 2 on the original 1982 LP. Presumably this was done to ensure more consistent sound quality across the two LP sides, and the actual album sequence hasn't been altered, just where the break to flip the LP occurs. Nevertheless, it's probably at least a bit jarring to some older fans who still remember Side 1 ending with "State Trooper.") The now-consistent good sound makes it all the easier for listeners old and new to appreciate even further all that the Nebraska album has to offer. The album was not only created at a turning point in Bruce's personal life, but also showcases storytelling of exceptional detail, nearly unparalleled. His lyrics, so precise and visual, operate like a movie camera—projecting images that flicker through the mind’s eye. I can see the narrator’s mom bashfully twisting her ring in “Used Cars,” or the sticky fried chicken smudges as the driver searches the map for directions in “Open All Night.” Nebraska affirms Bruce Springsteen as one of the most cinematic songwriters of our time. Very rarely do other musicians achieve this specificity of language, and this sense of narrative and character texture. Even if you are not interested in Nebraska ’s grim content, you can appreciate how vividly Bruce paints his scenes. Nebraska also exemplifies just how well Bruce Springsteen captures sociopolitical anxieties through an album's general vibe and the struggles that the characters are going through. In 1982, it was painfully clear that the Nebraska characters were bludgeoned by the oppressive economic policies of the Reagan era, and as the strangulation of the poor, working-, and "middle-" classes has intensified, Nebraska  continues to feel painfully relevant in 2025. SNAP benefits are being slashed, leaving our most vulnerable populace hungry; artificial intelligence threatens to usurp the dignity and stability of job security; and the promise of the American Dream—owning a home and raising a family—has become impossible for most young people, crushed by student loan debt and wages that fail to keep pace with inflation. The meanness in this world, which feels more acute than ever, is enough to make you want to snap like Bruce’s characters. That’s why revisiting the Nebraska  box-set now feels particularly timely. For completists who want to hear every single thing Bruce has recorded, the Nebraska  box set is certainly another dream come true, and for the rest, it may give you a deeper appreciation of how this still-essential album came to be. ----- MAJESTIC NEBRASKA  - Forget "Electric you-know-what." Springsteen, with support from Campbell, Giordano, Zimny, et al., delivers a full-album Nebraska  performance for the ages. by Shawn Poole "Electric" shmelectric. For me, a longtime fan of the Nebraska album, Thom Zimny's film Nebraska: Count Basie Theatre, Red Bank, NJ is the true highlight of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska '82: Expanded Edition  box-set. Apparently Springsteen himself was just as enthusiastic about creating the full-album performance film as I am about the film after having seen it. "When the idea for the box-set came up," he stated in the official promo-video "trailer" for the box-set , "I said that's the one thing that I need to do: [re-]record the album from start to finish and then shoot it, let Thom Zimny shoot it as a film." Unfortunately, the only way to see the film currently is by purchasing a physical (CD/LP) version of the box-set, in which a Blu-ray disc of Nebraska: Count Basie Theatre, Red Bank, NJ is included. To date, no plans to offer streaming options for the film have been announced. While the audio of the performance, delivered to an empty-house Basie Theatre last April, is easily available to stream, the best way to experience Nebraska: Count Basie Theatre, Red Bank, NJ   in all its glory is as a full audio- visual work of art... as the great filmed performance that it is. Here's hoping that eventually there will be streaming opportunities to allow more people to do so. Springsteen and Zimny first utilized the empty-house full-album - and full-band - performance approach in 2009, with the filming of a full-album performance of Darkness on the Edge of Town at Asbury Park's Paramount Theatre for the 2010 box-set The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story . A washed-out-color look, inspired by the film JCVD , was chosen for that filmed Darkness... performance. This time around, for filming the Nebraska performance, straight-up black-and-white was chosen, of course, with the only other color appearing onscreen being the blood-red in the lettering of the title and credits, mirroring the original album design. Bruce performs the album's ten songs in sequence, with David Michael Kennedy's bleak windshield-landscape 1982-album-cover photo (actually shot in 1976) projected onto the brick wall at the back of the stage. The songs' live 2025 musical arrangements are very faithful to those on the 1982 album, with Springsteen - on acoustic guitar (electric guitar on "Open All Night") and harmonica - receiving minimalist yet beautiful accompaniment by only two other musicians: Larry Campbell on acoustic/12-string acoustic guitar, electric guitar, mandolin, and tambourine, and Charlie Giordano on celeste and synthesizer. Bruce's slight modern-day lyrical/phrasing changes crop up on occasion (e.g. "Mansion On The Hill"'s modern-day "down here in the valley" replacing the 1982 recording's "down here in Linden Town,") but nonetheless this remains an essentially faithful live and complete performance of the original album. One key difference, of course, is the obvious aging of Springsteen and his voice, but in the case of this 2025 Nebraska performance, the aging actually becomes another essential attribute for most - if not all - of the performance. Performing this material complete and in-sequence for the first time in the forty-three years since Nebraska was released, Bruce at 76 now looks and sounds more than ever like "that cranky old preacher Ecclesiastes," to whom Dave Marsh aptly compared Springsteen's songwriting perspective in Marsh's essential Nebraska -focused "Reason To Believe" chapter of Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s . Each of the songs is performed straightforwardly, with no additional introductions or background explanations (a brief giggle at the end of "Open All Night" notwithstanding.) From the get-go, Thom Zimny proves yet again why he's the perfect point-person for such a project, directing and (co-)editing each sequence of the film beautifully and brilliantly, opening immediately after the blood-red "Thrill Hill presents... NEBRASKA... a film by Thom Zimny" title-cards (accompanied by the eerily ambient sound of an apparently nearby highway) with a great shot of Bruce's cowboy-boots-encased feet strolling onto the theater's stage, and part of the guitar he's carrying low also visible in the shot. Next we get some close-up and overhead shots of septuagenarian Springsteen taking his seat and positioning his guitar. He's clearly laser-focused, in command, and ready to deliver another masterful performance. From there on out, Zimny remains just as much in command, in order to best capture and convey this performance, behind the camera and in the editing room. (Incidentally, there's yet another advantage that watching the film has over just listening to the audio: you get to hear a wordless version of "Nebraska," with Springsteen humming and whistling the song's melody, over the film's closing credits.) Ironically, the film's music-only, no-talk-talk-talk-talk approach still ends up helping to offer to all who care to listen a much more complete, complex history of Nebraska than the two "histories" of Nebraska that have been getting the most attention these days. One of the worst aspects of the Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere film and the Warren Zanes book on which it was based is their near-complete omission of the political context in which Nebraska was created and heard. If all you know is Scott Cooper's and/or Warren Zanes' take on the album (especially Cooper's,) you'd think that it essentially was "about" only Bruce Springsteen's childhood and mental-health issues. It's well worth remembering, however, that when Ronald Reagan - the first Republican president to use the phrase "make America great again" while attacking and dismantling much of what truly was great about the country - tried using Springsteen's Born - in - the - U.S.A. -era popularity to help get himself re-elected in 1984, Springsteen responded onstage shortly afterwards with a song from Nebraska , "Johnny 99," introducing it as follows: “The President was mentioning my name the other day, and I kinda got to wondering what his favorite album musta been. I don’t think it was the Nebraska album. I don’t think he’s been listening to this one.” (Incidentally, that intro and song were preceded by another of Nebraska 's most political and least personal, childhood-derived songs, "Atlantic City.") Even a more overtly personal song like "Mansion On The Hill" weaves in the political right alongside the personal, given the implicit class-consciousness embedded throughout the song. The same is true of, say, "Used Cars." And hell, while I've written extensively about the personal significance of "My Father's House" and its "sequel" song, "Long Time Comin'," to both their creator and so many in his audience, myself included , I also know that the following is equally true about "My Father's House," thanks very much yet again to the insights of Dave Marsh, this time writing in his equally essential 1982 Record Magazine review of Nebraska , reprinted in 1985's Fortunate Son: The Best of Dave Marsh : "its dream of reconciliation between father and son is ultimately hollow," yet "this dream (which incorporates psychological, political and religious symbols) continues to beckon..." All of this comes into play while hearing and seeing Bruce Springsteen deliver his 2025 performance of Nebraska , letting the album continue to speak for itself in all of its complexity, and making it feel as timely and relevant as ever... unfortunately. While the 21st-century's version of "make America great again" continues to reach new lows, and so many people continue struggling every day to find some reason to believe while facing the sheer insanity of it, I'm reminded of what the great music writer Mikal Gilmore (brother of convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, who famously, and like the fictional Johnny 99, welcomed his execution) wrote of Nebraska back in '82: “A dark-toned, brooding and unsparing record... a sizable statement about American life... When Springsteen tells Charles Starkweather and Johnny 99’s tales, he neither seeks their redemption nor asks for our judgment. He tells the stories about as simply and as well as they deserve to be told—or about as unsparingly as we deserve to hear them—and he lets us feel for them what we can, or find in them what we can of ourselves.” As bleak as these ten songs are, clearly they still need to be sung - and heard - at least as much now as they ever have. Kudos to Bruce Springsteen for delivering this special performance of them, with the able assistance of Larry Campbell and Charlie Giordano. And many thanks to Thom Zimny and his team for beautifully capturing it on film for the ages. ----- "bonus track" - Of course the Nebraska '82: Expanded Edition  box-set includes "The Big Payback," the Nebraska outtake that first got released officially as a B-side decades ago, along with the original demo version of "Born in the U.S.A." that first was released officially in 1998 on TRACKS . But it doesn't include the other Nebraska "outtake" of sorts that also got released officially - several times, even, albeit unintentionally, apparently - years ago, before somebody finally corrected the error for all future releases. Several Japanese-CD editions and other rare/promo versions of Nebraska were created from a master tape containing a version of "My Father's House" identical to all other officially released versions, with the exception of a synthesizer coda lasting about thirty seconds. At some point, Springsteen must have wanted to include the coda on "My Father's House" but then later changed his mind about it. Yet inexplicably, at least one Nebraska master with the synth-coda version of "My Father's House" managed to still be floating around, which is how some editions of Nebraska ended up containing "My Father's House" with the synth-coda. Apparently Springsteen and/or his camp eventually learned of this, and there have been no further official releases of Nebraska  containing the synth-coda version of "My Father's House." Below, however, you can listen to the tail-end of that version right now:

November 13, 2025 The Kristen Ann Carr Fund (KACF)'s "A Night To Remember" 2025 will take place in New York City this coming Saturday night, and once again the charity event - co-sponsored by, among others, longtime KACF supporters Bruce Springsteen & Patti Scialfa-Springsteen - will feature a silent-auction component, with bids being placed through 10 p.m. ET on Saturday. Even if you can't attend "A Night To Remember" 2025 in person, you still can place your bid(s) online via the silent auction's official online platform, hosted by Handbid.com . Once again, there are (literally) lots of awesome items on which one can bid, and almost a third of them are Springsteen-associated musical instruments, photos, posters, memorabilia, and/or experiences. One of the coolest items up for grabs this year is an artist proof (1/4) 16" x 20" giclee print, signed by both Bruce Springsteen and artist Frank Caruso, of Caruso's "Spirit of '76" artwork , which was created by Caruso in celebration of Springsteen's 76th birthday and first unveiled to the world right here at Letters To You . As of this writing, the top bid on this item is $1,500. If you can't meet or top that bid (or even if you can,) don't forget that you still can wear this awesome artwork, in addition to hanging it on your wall, by buying one of Letters To You's exclusive "Spirit of '76" t-shirts, with 100% of all shirt-sales' profits also going to The Kristen Ann Carr Fund. Click here to buy your shirt(s,) if you haven't done so already. Or... if you're planning to attend "A Night to Remember" 2025 in person this Saturday night, you just might want to wait a bit before placing your t-shirt(s) order. Letters To You will have some personal representatives in attendance on Saturday night, as well, and we've been working with our friends at The Kristen Ann Carr Fund to give everybody else in attendance that night a sweet little extra incentive to place a t-shirt(s) order and support the Fund. Stay tuned... It's also not too late to purchase an individual ticket or sponsorship table for Saturday night's event, a journal ad, and/or raffle tickets, all sales of which will benefit KACF, too, of course. Click here to make any and all such purchases online.

November 11, 2025 Since Letters To You was launched back in 2023, each year we've featured a special Veterans Day contribution to the website from my friend Doug Bradley . Doug is a Vietnam veteran and the author of Who’ll Stop the Rain: Respect, Remembrance, and Reconciliation in Post-Vietnam America , co-author with Craig Werner of We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War , which was named best music book of 2015  by Rolling Stone , and author of DEROS Vietnam: Dispatches from the Air-Conditioned Jungle , now also available as an audiobook. Click here to read Doug's 2023 Veterans Day essay for Letters To You , and click here to read his 2024 Veterans Day essay . In 2024, he also wrote another great piece for us on the 40th anniversary of the Born in the U.S.A. album, which you can read by clicking here . Unfortunately, this year we are unable to feature a 2025 Veterans Day essay from Doug, as he continues to recover from some recent health issues, but I also know that my pal is one tough, positive dude, and we're looking forward to featuring more Doug Bradley contributions here at Letters To You as soon as possible. In the meantime, I strongly recommend to all of our readers Doug's latest book, The Tracks of My Years: A Music-Based Memoir , published just a few months ago. As I wrote after reading it and being asked to contribute some advance praise for the book, “We fans of Doug Bradley’s writing already know that, both on his own and in collaboration with Craig Werner for We Gotta Get Out of This Place , he is one of our most honest, insightful, and eloquent chroniclers of the tragic complexities behind the Vietnam War, its aftermath, its veterans’ experiences, and the equally complex role that music has played in those experiences. What most of us don’t know yet, however, is exactly how Doug became this person – his ‘origin story,’ if you will. The Tracks of My Years: A Music-Based Memoir  finally provides us with that. More important, at its heart lies a tale of someone struggling to maintain the best of his humanity in a society bent on the destruction of others, as well as itself. Thus, a book that’s filled with such vivid, moving (though also at times gallows-humor funny,) and ultimately life-affirming recollections simultaneously becomes extremely relevant to our current circumstances.” (It also doesn't hurt that my friend spent his childhood with his working-class family living in a Philly rowhouse, as did yours truly with my own family and Philly rowhouse, albeit two decades later.) So please click here to check out this excellent book , filled with references to so much great music, as well as the evocative and inspiring memories of a guy who played basketball with The Miracles (while Smokey Robinson wrote a letter in the bleachers,) shared a joint with Grace Slick, and told Dionne Warwick the heartbreaking news that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. Growing up, Doug watched his doo-wop-singing brother and World War II veteran father battle over the birth of rock-and-roll, and encountered a high-school teacher who - despite struggling with some demons of his own - gave to Doug "the courage to find myself in words, to discover and lose and recover my voice ." Doug brought the beautiful music and musicians of Stax and Motown to a small college in the West Virginia hills, and he soaked in the sounds of Creedence, Joplin, and Hendrix as an Army journalist in the “air-conditioned jungle” in Vietnam. And - equally important - he's still got some stuff to do and say, thank you very much. Doug's story and insights, like those of so many of our nation's veterans, need to be shared as widely as possible. Best wishes to all of our veterans and their loved ones for a peaceful, comforting Veterans Day 2025.

November 10, 2025 A lot has changed - some forever, and not for better - in the nearly two decades since Bruce Springsteen's 2007 album Magic and the 2007-2008 tour that followed it. But in 2025, when you're still stuck in radio nowhere and just want to hear a Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band musical performance with some strong, explicit, and sane politics behind it, while continuing your search for a world with some soul, it just doesn't get any better than Oracle Arena, Oakland, CA - October 26, 2007 , the latest release in the Nugs/Live Archive monthly "First Friday" series. After all, we're now living even more in the future-as-now that Springsteen sang of and spoke about in Oakland that evening. "This is a song called 'Livin' In The Future,'" he told his audience by way of introduction early in that show, "but it's about what's happening NOW! It's about about how along with all the things that we love about the place we live, America… along with all those things….over the past six years we´ve had to add to the American picture things like rendition and illegal wiretapping, the rolling back of our civil liberties, and no habeas corpus or right to defend yourself against charges in court. And either because of the color of your skin or your circumstances or your religion, you may think that these things don´t have a big effect on your life, but all of these things are an attack on our Constitution, which means they're an attack on our very selves and our sense of ourselves as Americans. This is a song about sleeping through things that shouldn´t have happened here... that happened here. So tonight we´re gonna do something about it! We´re gonna sing about it! We´re musicians; it´s a start. And the rest is up to us.” The show's not "all politics all the time," either, since it also includes this great full-E-Street-Band performance of "Tunnel of Love," a song rarely performed - with or without the E Street Band - since the 1988 Tunnel of Love Express Tour: But let's not fall into the trap of drawing up false and unnecessary distinctions, forcing great music to be defined strictly as either totally "personal" or totally "political." After all, in the 1987 Newsweek article reprinted in The Tunnel of Love Express Tour's program, Springsteen made it clear that there still is a strong thematic connection between a song like "Tunnel of Love" and other songs of his that are considered to be more overtly political, like "Born in the U.S.A." He told interviewer Bill Barol, "One of the things I wanted the [ Tunnel of Love ] record to be about is, we live in a society that wants us to buy illusion every day. That happens on a national scale, like Reagan telling us there are no hungry people here, just people who don't know where to go to get the food. There's that will to pretend that everything is OK. That I'm OK, and you're OK. That it's morning again in America. That happens on a personal level also. People are sold this every day: you're gonna live happily ever after. So when you do begin to feel conflict - the natural human conflict that comes with any human relationship - people have a tendency to repress it, make believe it's not there, or feel guilty and ashamed about it. I wanted the record to be against that. Against that illusion. You just can't live like that, and people shouldn't be asked to. It's a cheapening of your own real experience, things that you know inside. People deserve better. They deserve the truth. They deserve honesty. The best music, you can seek some shelter in it momentarily, but it's essentially there to provide you something to face the world with... The guy in ['Born in the U.S.A.',] he wants to destroy that myth. It's not helpful, it's not useful. It brings people down in guilt and shame if they feel they're not living up to it... And it led him, and a lot of other men and women, into hell. So he comes back from Vietnam and he wants to find something new in this country. That search, that stand, is what the guy is screaming about. He wants to find something new and useful. That goes for myths about America, and it goes for the myth about 'They lived happily ever after.' Myths don't bind us together. They keep us strangers from each other. Strangers from our communities, from our country, from our friends and our children and our wives. And ultimately from ourselves." From multiple decades burning down the road and into whatever next future we'll be livin' in, it has been and will continue to be a very long walk home. And the rest is up to us, indeed. Click here to order/stream Oracle Arena, Oakland, CA - October 26, 2007 .  And you no longer need a different link to read Columbia/Nugs archivist Erik Flannigan's essay on this recording, entitled "Certain Things Are Set In Stone." On the same page where you can order/stream Oracle Arena, Oakland, CA - October 26, 2007 ,  just click the "SHOW MORE" button where it reads, "Show Notes."