theartsdesk Radio Show 37 - Pete Lawrence of the Big Chill discusses the power of protest music and his new project This Is The Fire

THEARTSDESK RADIO SHOW 37 Talking to cultural activist Pete Lawrence – camp outs, singalongs and saving the world

Talking to cultural activist Pete Lawrence – camp outs, singalongs and saving the world

This edition of Peter Culshaw’s peripatetic radio show features guest Pete Lawrence. Pete is one of the good guys – a positive force in the culture, as he says "my life's work is bringing people together".

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Album: Bruce Springsteen - Tracks II: The Lost Albums

★★★★★ BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - TRACKS II: THE LOST ALBUMS Finding joy in imperfections

The Boss: Finding joy in imperfections

It’s somewhat surprising to read that The Boss wasn’t happy with Born in the USA. After all, it was – remains – his most iconic album, the LP (for that’s what it was originally) that jet-propelled Bruce Springsteen into the mainstream. A cultural phenomenon whose anthemic title track was, wilfully and otherwise, often misinterpreted and frequently misappropriated.

Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Disney+ review - the Boss grows older defiantly

★★★★ ROAD DIARY: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND, DISNEY+ Thom Zimny's film reels in 50 years of New Jersey's most famous export

Thom Zimny's film reels in 50 years of New Jersey's most famous export

Director Thom Zimny has become the audio-visual Boswell to Bruce Springsteen’s Samuel Johnson, having made documentaries about the making of Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, Springsteen On Broadway and several more. Road Diary takes as its theme Springsteen’s 2023-4 tour, and uses that as a platform for an often emotional survey of his 50 year history with the E Street Band.

Album: Bruce Springsteen - Only the Strong Survive

The Boss serves up 15 soul classics

Bruce is back! His 21st studio album (can it really be 50 years next year since Greetings from Asbury Park?) and his second covers album. It’s a musical world away from the first, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006), but like that collection it’s a deep dive into a genre totally different to his own – American soul classics from the 1960s and 1970s.

Album: John Mellencamp - Strictly A One-Eyed Jack

★★★★ JOHN MELLENCAMP - STRICTLY A ONE -EYED JACK Reckoning with death

It's not all right Jack

“I didn’t even know what I was writing about. It was just sent to me”, John Mellencamp has said of Strictly A One-Eyed Jack, his first album in five years.

Album: Bruce Springsteen - Letter to You

★★★ BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - LETTER TO YOU Nostalgia for the future

Nostalgia for the future

As he cruises into the autumn of his life, 71 year-old Bruce Springsteen, The Boss, as he's generally known, revisits territory that will sound very familiar to his fans. Perhaps that's what's needed, at this time when those core American values he's sung about with enduring passion seem threatened as never before.

Bruce Springsteen's Letter to You, Apple TV+ review - his new album is a matter of life and death

★★★★ BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN'S LETTER TO YOU, APPLE TV+  Documentary takes an emotional journey through the past with the E Street Band

Documentary takes an emotional journey through the past with the E Street Band

Towards the end of this new documentary, an account of how he recorded his new album Letter to You at his home studio in New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen delivers a eulogy to the E Street Band.

Run review – wheels on fire in Scotland

Dreams of leaving flavored by Bruce Springsteen's 'Born to Run'

Run is the story of disgruntled 36-ish Finnie (Mark Stanley), a big, dour worker in a fish processing plant in the Aberdeenshire port of Fraserburgh – writer-director Scott Graham’s hometown. Long married to his onetime high-school sweetheart Katie (Amy Manson), and the father of twentyish Kid (Anders Hayward) and adolescent Stevie (Scott Murray), Finnie wants to get the hell out – or he thinks he does.