E Street Shuffle Archive

Today marks the end of Year Five of this site’s daily mission to document every song Bruce Springsteen has ever written, recorded, or performed in concert!

Five years of daily publishing feels like a marathon with no end in sight, but when I stop and consider that today also marks the end of Year Fifty of Bruce’s professional career as a major label artist, I think I can take inspiration and keep this going for a while.

Before we start Year Six, however, I want to thank you for reading, commenting, sharing your stories, telling your Bruce friends about this blog, and for just being a part of this ongoing odyssey. Whether this is your first visit or whether you’ve been with me from the beginning, I appreciate you and hope you’ll stick with me in 2023!

As always, special thanks to those of you who have written to me with corrections, additional information, absolutely amazing “I was there” stories (especially my “Where the Band Was” guest bloggers who gave me welcome writing reprieves from time to time–please drop me a line if you’d like to share your story), personal anecdotes, and alternative interpretations. That’s been my absolute favorite part of these five years, and as a result I feel like I’ve learned as much as I’ve shared.

And my profound thanks to two special people who make me sound much more polished than I otherwise would:

• Robyn Sherer reads each and every draft (except this one!) and without fail points out my run-on sentences, extraneous words, redundancies, and generally helps me sound way less long-winded than I am in person.
• Lori “Eagle Eye” Pierce, my pro bono, ex post facto copy editor, appears in my inbox within minutes of a typo showing up in one of my essays (in other words, most days). She gives me a chance to do a quick clean-up of my articles before most of you read them.

I am deeply grateful to Lori and Robyn. I owe them both more thanks than I can adequately express here.

As always, today also marks the completion of my annual refresh project–every Roll of the Dice, Cover Me, Meeting Across the River, Where the Band Was, Spare Parts and Two Faces entry is now refreshed with repaired media links and new cross-site links. (It’s a longer project every year!)

And finally, today marks the end of the year-long Kingdom of Days series–but if you enjoy those, fear not: the series restarts tomorrow, with new events from 2022, repaired and fresh media, and new information turned up during my research this past year.

A final note: I know my publishing cadence has slowed this year (I used to publish two articles each and every day), and that’s a reflection of my life getting busier and fuller.

Rather than commit to a cadence and have this site become more burden than joy, I’ve decided to just publish as I’m able to find the time, which organically seems to be working out to 2-3 articles a week in addition to the daily Kingdom of Days post. I’ll continue to spotlight original Springsteen songs, covers, or team-ups throughout the year, just a bit less frequently than in years past.

According to my tracking spreadsheet, I still have about 150 articles left to write before I bring this project to a close, so we’ve still got a long way to travel together. I hope you stick with me for the rest of the ride!

Thanks again for reading. Onward to Year Six!