Bruce Springsteen

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December 31, 2012 | 4:41 PM | By

Ten stories from The Key that got you excited in 2012

The Menzingers (Photo by Madeleine Lesperance)

The amount of news that surfaces in a 24 hour period is astronomical anymore; multiplied by 365, that’s an onslaught of information we present you with during the calendar year. But some items always rise above the fold and prove to be something bigger. Here are the ten stories from The Key that drew your collective attention (and eyeballs) in 2012. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Artists, News, Bruce Springsteen, Chiddy Bang, Ellie Goulding, Jersey Mike, Kurt Vile, mewithoutYou, Richie Sambora, The Menzingers, The Weeknd
December 23, 2012 | 2:30 PM | By

The Key’s Year-End Mania: Chris Sikich’s top five concert photos of 2012

For The Key’s year-in-review, we asked our trusted sources – our writers and photographers, XPN’s on-air staff, fellow bloggers in the Philly scene and even a few musicians – to send us their Top Five Whatevers. Could be the traditional music route – albums, songs, concerts of the year – or it could be only loosely connected. We’ll be sharing these recaps every day through to the end of the year. Today, contributing photographer Chris Sikich recounts his five favorite concert images from the year.

The following represent my five favorite concert photos I took this year.

1.Wild Flag, Tuesday, April 3, 2012, Trocadero Theatre, Philadelphia, PA

Very little in contemporary rock is closer to perfection than bringing together Carrie Brownstein, Mary Timony, Janet Weiss, and Rebecca Cole in one space. The aural ecstasy that is a Wild Flag concert oozes forth from this shot: Brownstein’s leg-kick, Timony’s guitar crouch, Cole as keyboard-extraordinaire, and Weiss at one with drumming.

Photo by Chris Sikich

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FILED UNDER: Artists, Concert Photos + Videos, Events, Andrew Lipke, Bruce Springsteen, Scott McCaughey, The Baseball Project, Wild Flag, Year-End Mania 2012
December 5, 2012 | 4:10 PM | By

Interview: Solving rock and roll puzzles with Debbie Gold of Rediscover Jigsaw Puzzles

With so much of our life’s activities spent playing virtual games, it’s refreshing to know that gaming still exists in real time and real life. This is where XPN member and business woman Debbie Gold comes in. Gold is the founder and owner of Gold Standard Games, a company that released the highly successful Grateful Deadopoly in 2009. Following up on Deadopoly, Gold just launched Rediscover Puzzles, the first volume in a series of classic album cover jigsaw puzzles. That’s right: good old fashioned, old school jigsaw puzzles; and these are cool. The concept is simple: take both sides of an iconic album cover and turn them into high quality, double sided, 300 piece, 16″ X 16″ sized puzzles. For the first volume, Gold nailed some pretty heavy classics including David Bowie’s The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, Late For The Sky by Jackson Browne, the Grateful Dead’s Aoxomoxoa, At Folsom Prison by Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix’s Axis: Bold As Love, Bob Dylan’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Nirvana’s Nevermind and Let It Bleed by the Rolling Stones.

Gold is an uber music fan who has been in music business for many years. She produced Bob Dylan’s 1992 album Good As I Been To You and has worked closely with the Grateful Dead and Bruce Springsteen. Born in Mt. Airy, she spent her young teen years in Wyncote and went to Cheltenham High School. Two years into college, her life took a quick turn into the deep ends of rock and roll and the music business. The Key caught up with Gold via e-mail. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Artist Profiles, Artists, Interviews, Scene, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Debbie Gold, Rediscover Jigsaw Puzzles, The Grateful Dead
November 19, 2012 | 1:01 PM | By

Dylanadelphia: A trip into Philadelphia’s live music scene with the songs of Bob Dylan (playing Wells Fargo Center tonight)

Photo by Daniel Kramer

The endlessly infulential folk-rock progenitor Bob Dylan is in Philadelphia tonight, playing a concert at the Wells Fargo Center in support of his new full-length record Tempest. This afternoon, we’ll take a look at Dylan playing at one of the most storied moments in Philadelphia live music history – the Live Aid concert in 1985, where he, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones sang “Blowin’ In The Wind” to a cheering JFK Stadium. We’ll also highlight some of the artists who covered Dylan when they came to town, from Bruce Springsteen at The Main Point in 1975 to The Frames at the TLA just a couple years ago. For tickets and more information on tonight’s concert, check out XPN’s concert calendar (powered by The Swollen Fox).

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Artists, Concert Previews, Events, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, The Bailey Hounds, The Frames, The Philadelphia Buskers, The Roots, Warren Zevon, Wells Fargo Center
November 1, 2012 | 9:08 AM | By

Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, and Billy Joel headline Hurricane Sandy benefit on NBC

Bruce Springsteen, Citizen's Bank Park, Sunday, Sept, 2, 2012. Photo by Eric Ashleigh | showtographe.com

With parts of Philadelphia still without power, and much of the New Jersey coast even more ravaged in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, NBC will air Hurricane Sandy: Coming Together, a benefit telethon concert on Friday to raise funds for the hardest-hit areas. On the lineup are native New Jerseyans Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi, as well as Billy Joel, Sting and more. Billboard.biz reports “The telecast will benefit the American Red Cross and be shown on NBC and its cable stations including Bravo, CNBC, USA, MSNBC and E! Other networks are invited to join in.” Hurricane Sandy: Coming Together will be broadcast live from Rockefeller Center in New York City beginnning at 8 p.m. on Friday.

FILED UNDER: Concert Previews, News, Billy Joel, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Hurricane Sandy: Coming Together
September 4, 2012 | 7:59 AM | By

Bruce Springsteen, Citizen’s Bank Park – Second night set list

Bruce Springsteen, Citizen's Bank Park, Sunday, Sept, 2, 2012. Photo by Eric Ashleigh | showtographe.com


Bruce Springsteen wrapped up his two night stand at Citizen’s Bank Park last night. Check out our photos and review from the first night’s show here. Below is the set list from last night’s show that started with five songs from Darkness On The Edge of Town. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Artists, Events, News, Bruce Springsteen
September 3, 2012 | 1:15 PM | By

Curing the summertime blues with Bruce Springsteen at Citizens Bank Park (review, photos, setlist)

Bruce Springsteen began the first of two stops on his “Labor Day labor of love,” as he called it, with a classic cover, Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues.” This performance at Citizens Bank Park was just the cure the enthusiastic crowd was looking for at the brink of summer’s end.

There are many ways to express the pure rock ’n’ roll joy that poured forth from the New Jersey native and his E Street Band. Let’s begin with a quantification. The show featured 33 songs, 19 of which hadn’t been performed at the two shows he played at the Wells Fargo Center in March. Sunday’s show clocked in at 3 hours and 43 minutes. Before this summer, he had never played a show this long and hadn’t even come close since 1980. This ties with a Madrid outing as his second-longest show and ranks behind only a four-hour-plus affair in Helsinki.

If one can attest to quality based on these statistics alone, this show proved to be a rousing success. Of course this is only part of the Bruce Springsteen experience. Qualitatively, Sunday’s show was a smash as well.

Photo by Eric Ashleigh | showtographe.com

Bruce interacted with the crowd with his usual mastery, collecting numerous sign requests, crowd-surfing twice during “Rosalita” and bringing up more fans than normal (three rather than one) for “Dancing in the Dark,” with two even dancing with saxophonist Jake Clemons, nephew of the late, great Clarence Clemons. Stage chatter between The Boss and the rest of his musical family and the crowd struck many varying chords of entertainment. There was the humor shared between Bruce and Jake regarding the fact that Jake was not born when “Spirit in the Night” — in wildly rollicking form — had been conceived. The energy and ingenuity brought to rarely played covers of early rockers like “Good Rocking Tonight” and “You Can’t Sit Down” injected life into a crowd that may have otherwise been disinterested in what they do not know. And then there was the white-hot fire breathed into a rarely performed but oft-requested cover of Tom Waits’ “Jersey Girl” that knocked the socks off of Citizens Bank Park. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Artists, Concert Photos + Videos, Concert Reviews, Events, Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Citizens Bank Park, E Street Band