Note: All of the posts I’ve managed to save can be found at the above repo. They are in JSON format and aren’t very readable. On the releases page you can grab an older JSON -> Markdown conversion I did.
Intro
On October 5, 2025, Ken Rosen announced that his E Street Shuffle website would be ceasing operation in early 2026. His primary reason is that he hasn’t written any essays for the site in well over a year (last one being September 2024.) For the most part, the only posts on the site have been his “This Day in Bruce History” posts, subtitled “Kingdom of Days”. The shutdown announcement confirmed that those would be the only posts getting updated until the day comes.
A timeline of sorts was given regarding the shutdown:
-
October 5 - January 6, 2026: The daily “Kingdom of Days” posts will continue. These have been updated one last time, with any new events being added, as well as new info on past events.
-
By December 31, 2025: All posts on the site will be checked, fixing any broken links, updating live stats, as well as notes if a song has been released since original publication. He does not plan to update the posts further than that.
-
January 2026: In Ken’s words: “This site essentially becomes a zombie, while I make a personal, offline archive of the site. I will also delete the entire subscriber database on this date so there’s no retention of your email address (if you are a subscriber).”
At some point after the shutdown in January, the site will vanish. Ken isn’t sure exactly when that will be, explaining that it is dependent on when the various licenses are up for renewal (hosting, domains, plugins, etc.).
In a later post on November 28. He gives several updates on the future of the site. You can read the post for more info, but two things in particular are worth mentioning:
- The site will remain online until late 2027/early 2028, longer than he originally thought.
- During the process of archiving the site, many posts will be permanently deleted
Wait, what?
Roll of the Dice, Cover Me, Meeting Across the River, and Where the Band Was
All of these articles will gradually and permanently disappear, starting in just a few days time. (Yes, even before the blog stops publishing.)
- Ken Rosen, November 28, 2025
Ken gives his reasoning for this, most of which has to do with the process of archiving/compiling the sites content into book form for preservation. Aside from “Kingdom of Days”, the site isn’t well organized, which makes the archiving process more difficult. So to help with this, posts on the site will be deleted once they’re compiled into book form and the books are printed.
As of writing this, the above has already started to occur. All of the posts relating to Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ are gone, having vanished in the last few hours while I was writing this.
The site shutting down is a shame, as it is/was a good resource. But adding this on top makes it worse. Just a shutdown would be one thing, but a shutdown at an uncertain future date while content is actively deleted from the site is another thing entirely. What good is the site without the content?
However, as mentioned there is an ongoing effort to make a permanent archive. Ken calls it the “Bookshelf Collection”.
The Bookshelf Collection
On November 5th, this endeavor was announced. The point being to compile the site’s content into physical books, which would be made available for purchase on a monthly basis starting in November. This, on the surface, is not a bad idea. It ensures that the content of the site will be preserved in some way, and won’t die with the site in 2-3 years.
However, there are a few “catches” with this.
- The books are only available for a month each, after which they will no longer be sold
- The books are quite expensive. Ken even admits as much in a recent newsletter, going so far to give that as a reason NOT to buy the books. He’s doing it for his own benefit, if others want to order as well then fine. And if not? That is also fine.
- As previously stated, with the publishing of each book, the associated site content will be deleted from the website
The first run of books has come and gone, and not only are no longer available for sale, but also the content in those books has already begun to disappear from the site. As I mentioned above, the section on Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ was deleted while I was working on writing this. Within the last few hours even. I saved a copy of the page at 12:30pm, and by 7:30pm it was gone. Other pages have also gotten the same treatment. The page on Detroit Medley (as well as the rest of those in the first Cover Me book) have met with a similar terrible fate.
While the concept of the books is a good one, the execution is questionable. Waiting for the books to no longer be available to delete the content is not a great look. And even worse, it’s not known if this content will ever come back to the site.
Going by what Ken has said, it seems the answer is just “use the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine.”
And as I wrote last month, the site will always be available for free via the Internet Archive if you really want to look up a particular date or song.
- November 5, 2025
With all that said, here are some options if you’ve enjoyed this site’s content and don’t want to lose access to it:
The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine will likely preserve previous versions of the site for a long time to come…This is the easiest way to enjoy the site’s content even after I close up shop, and it’s free. I recommend it.
- November 28, 2025
The Wayback Machine is a great site, but it doesn’t have everything. Both the Greetings page as well as all 40 songs included in the first Cover Me book are gone. So, unless you either bought the books, or had the foresight to save a copy of those pages, that content is no longer available.
What to Do?
Sites and pages disappearing like this is hardly new, it happens every day. It has happened and will continue to happen. 38% of sites available in 2013 are gone now. One doesn’t have to search long to find similar stories. Maybe you’ve even experienced this in the past, a favorite site now inaccessible. It’s happened to me far too many times to count.
But recently, I’ve been doing something about it.
After nearly all of GreasyLake was taken down in August 2024, I started archiving a number of Bruce sites. Some still live (Backstreets Mag, Candy’s Room, Lonely Corner), others not (most of GreasyLake). I’ll admit, this hasn’t been the most organized effort, and results have varied in content and quality. But it means those sites will still exist in some form, even after the site is gone.
When this shutdown was announced, I immediately started looking into creating my own archive. Even though there were (since forgotten) plans stated for an “official” offline archive. I wanted to create my own for my own sake, I didn’t foresee the whole book angle, or the content being permanently deleted with the publishing of said books.
As of writing this, I have 3 backups:
- HTTrack Backup (November 30): Offline copy of the site created using HTTrack, which is a full copy of the site which can be fully viewed and accessed offline.
- HTTrack Backup (December 2): Another backup I did with slightly different settings
- API JSON Post Dump: created by hammering the sites Wordpress API, and saving each post into its own file. This also preserves the data of each post (stuff like tags/categories, metadata, etc.) rather than just the content. This is less accessible, but allows me more flexibility in how to make the data available.
As for when/how this will be made available, that is still undecided. There are a few issues causing a hold up. The HTTrack backups are 11gb each, which is a good amount of space for most people. I might just upload these somewhere, and I’ll announce when I do. These backups are nice as they preserve the site experience, but they aren’t the easiest to use. Also they can’t be searched like the site.
The JSON Post Dump is more “complete” from a data perspective. However, the format isn’t very presentable in it’s current form. The article content is stored as HTML rather than text. Which preserves the formatting of the article, but isn’t very readable without being converted to something like Markdown. I have loose plans to create an eBook, but that is TBD.
As a last note, the total number of posts is at 2,083.
Whatever ends up becoming of this project, I’ll be sure to announce it.
Thanks for reading!