By Mark Saleski Clearly I have been spending an awful lot of time with Darkness on the Edge of Town this week. Too much time maybe? What does that mean? It’s an interesting question and, as it turns out, it doesn’t have meaning…at least not for me. Last weekend, meRead More

by Mark Saleski The Darkness on the Edge of Town tour has taken on a sort of mythic quality, mostly because there has been scant video evidence. This “bootleg” tape unearthed by Camp Springsteen confirms what fans lucky enough to have seen one of the shows have known all along:Read More

by Mark Saleski It is perhaps too easy to dismiss the work of celebrities. In the case of Bruce Springsteen, there has been much vitriol expressed over his “supposed” blue collar leanings, as if success can (no…must) wipe out your roots. If you look back at this documentary on theRead More

by Mark Saleski To call this group of songs “The Lost Sessions” is to put a slightly misleading spin on things. We all know the story, the one of the huge volume of music that Bruce wrote post-Born To Run with some songs ending up on Darkness On The EdgeRead More

This world of digital sound can be quite tricky. The original line about CDs was that they would provide “perfect sound forever.” Yeah, sure. In their haste to get product to market, the early mastering jobs produced less than stellar results. In the intervening years, we’ve learned a lot aboutRead More

by Mark Saleski Springsteen fans have been waiting years for the 30th anniversary release of Darkness On The Edge Of Town. Waiting, and waiting, and… And then the anniversary passed, with rumours and speculation fueled by smokes signals emanating from Camp Springsteen about how the set was “nearly complete.” OfRead More

Paul McCartney’s “Band on the Run” still represents the creative highpoint of his career away from the Beatles, nearly four decades later. So, to paraphrase a tune here, what’s the use in repackaging the thing again? Well, a brilliant remaster of the original tapes, which have always been a littleRead More

by Mark Saleski For many years, I was very comfortable with the statement: “I hate country music.” It was easy to say because there was so much evidence all around: Garth Brooks, Toby Keith, Faith Hill and all of that — it was really just pop music with belt buckles,Read More

By Nick DeRiso For all of her wandering, Allen Toussaint remains this touchstone for New Orleans-born vocalist Christina Gaudet. But Gaudet doesn’t let her lasting affinity for a hometown soul legend pigeonhole her wider ambitions on Solid, though it’s subtitled “Featuring new songs by Allen Toussaint.” She’s particularly adept atRead More

photo by Johan Eriksson by Mark Saleski There are so many ways we discover music: from a film soundtrack, the radio (Internet, satellite, earthbound), word of mouth, advertising. Most of these can be thought of as happy accidents. Is there such a thing as an “unhappy accident”? This is theRead More