Bruce European Tour 2006

Friday May 5 THE POINT, DUBLIN, IRELAND
Sunday May 7 M.E.N. ARENA, MANCHESTER, ENGLAND
Monday May 8 HAMMERSMITH ODEON, LONDON, ENGLAND
Wednesday May 10 BERCY ARENA, PARIS, FRANCE
Friday May 12 ASSAGO FORUM, MILAN , ITALY
Sunday May 14 ARENA, BADALONA (BARCELONA), SPAIN
Tuesday May 16 HEINEKEN MUSIC HALL, AMSTERDAM, HOLLAND
Wednesday May 17 FESTHALLE, FRANKFURT, GERMANY
Saturday May 20 SPEKTRUM, OSLO, NORWAY
Sunday May 21 HOVET, STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN

I'm all booked up for the Manchester and London shows. Can't stretch to shows outside the UK this time. I'm not looking forward to this as much as Bruce and the E Street band or Bruce solo but should still be good fun and there's nothing like being on tour.

Bruce arrives at the Spectrum

Bruce arrives at the Spectrum
Originally uploaded by 23niner.

Being such an irregular blogger (too many interests on the Internet, too little time!) I didn't get around to posting a review of the D&D Philly shows I went to in November. I also did some pre-show stalking as you can see from the photo! It was good to take my first photos of Bruce but so disappointing, especially on night 2, that Bruce didn't walk back and sign some stuff. The shows were great though - as always with the American shows I've attended, you get great set-lists (Fade Away, Drive All Night (requested by my friend, Dot), Santa Anna, Thundercrack, for examples) but a noisy crowd compared with Europe. I think Dusseldorf stays the best show I saw last year (mainly due to performance, atmosphere, quiet), but the Philly shows were close behind. Apart from the set-lists I really enjoyed the intensity of the really long Dream Baby Dream and The New Timer, both on the second night.

I'm not too excited about the new album (The Seeger Sessions) and tour coming up. I was not keen on the clips of tracks that went up on the Sony website and I will clearly miss Bruce the songwriter. I will have to see how many shows I can attend with baby on the way.... Ramrod and Open All Night should be fun with this band though!

Napster to go?

I've been trying out the paid-forNapster service here in the UK the last few weeks. Initially I found it quite incredible to be able to download so much music in great quality and listen to it when I want (I had never been much of a downloader before this site went ligit, so it was quite a novelty for me.)

I then tried out the Napster to go package as I already owned a Creative Zen Touch MP3 player. However I'm not impressed - very slow transers, transfer errors, having to reformat the Zen Touch, the Zen Touch freezing. One morning I tried Napster to transfer a podcast I had just downloaded and this did not work even though this had worked well the previous week before trying Napster to go! Also the 128Kbps quality of the tracks sounds good through my good quality PC speakers but not too good through the good quality Sony earphones I use with my Zen Touch.

In short, Napster to go looks like having to go! Napster may have to go! I can do without the monthly fee when I already get some good Internet radio tools as part of my BTYahoo! account.
Have a listen to my Yahoo Launchcast radio station which is quite a good representation of my tastes, though you may hear the odd clanger!
http://uk.music.yahoo.com/lc/?rt=0&rp1=0&rp2=1309546554

Bruce's youngest fan....

.....will be born to Kelly and me around 30th October 2006. Now I will get to appreciate all the father and child stuff from the Devils and Dust album!

We're both very excited at the unexpected prospect of becoming parents! It's the way of the world.....

It seems strange that I will be 37 when the baby arrives, excatly the same age as my dad when I was born.....

My radio station on Yahoo Launchcast

http://uk.music.yahoo.com/lc/?rt=0&rp1=0&rp2=1309546554