Bruce Springsteen

On summer nights in the mid-1960s, while black-and-white television crackled elsewhere in his Staten Island home with news of Southern violence and Vietnam, Bobby Lasnik would stretch out in his bedroom to let the righteous soundtrack of the civil rights movement waft into his impressionable teenage soul. Tuned in to WBAI-FM, coming across the water from Manhattan, he heard baleful laments about injustice that he would carry with him for a lifetime. "Suddenly there was someone speaking a certain kind of truth to you. You'd say, 'Wow!

Last month, four of the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena's bosses decided to catch the Boss, so they used their government position to claim a luxury suite for Bruce Springsteen's sold-out stand there. The taxpayer-owned venue is in financial ruins, but the officials took their customary perks, enjoying Springsteen's blue-collar brand of rock 'n' roll from digs that included a private entry, spacious bathroom, kitchenette, lounge area and television screen. The 19 elevated seats, boxed off from the crowd, offered dead-on views of the stage for the officeholders and their guests.

Hitching The Boss to a Philadelphia institution that normally plumbs the deepest meanings of the Constitution and displays busts of the original signers might seem a stretch. But, yo, this is Philly. Bruce is the city's adopted son. (OK, so he's technically from across the Delaware in Jersey.) Yet it only seems natural that the Constitution Center would eventually honor a sort-of-local boy who made good as America's troubadour. Friday, the center opened a seven-month exhibit, "From Asbury Park to the Promised Land: The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen.

You've been to Bruce Springsteen concerts, but have you seen the outfit he wore on the cover of "Born in the U.S.A. " or the 1960 Corvette he bought after the smash success of "Born to Run"? Both are part of a Boss-centric museum exhibition in Philadelphia. You can get two tickets to the exhibition with a room at Loews Philadelphia Hotel starting at $199 a night.  The deal: The package includes combination tickets to the National Constitution Center , which means you get to see "From Asbury Park to the Promised Land: The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen" and other shows such as "The Story of We the People" and the theatrical "Freedom Rising.

Bruce Springsteen eloquently eulogized his friend of more than four decades and E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons Tuesday at a private funeral at a small church in Palm Beach, Fla. The roughly two-hour service for the 69-year-old Clemons, known as the Big Man and Springsteen's main foil onstage over their long careers, was at the Royal Poinciana Chapel on this manicured island of the rich and famous. Faint strains of music could be heard outside the small gray church. Springsteen, among those delivering eulogies, spoke of his long kinship with Clemons, according to those leaving the church.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band "Working on a Dream" Columbia **1/2 -- Bruce Springsteen is the quintessential album-era rock star. Hear me out, ye who would argue Beatles-Dylan-Marvin-Brian Wilson-Who-Pink Floyd-Stones: Those artists might have made superior individual efforts, but none has used the long-player form itself more powerfully over the arc of a career, not only to establish a world through song, but to inhabit an enduring persona.

A roundup of entertainment headlines for Monday. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are releasing a new album (the first since the saxophonist Clarence Clemons died) and will tour in 2012. ( Bruce Springsteen.net ) "Breaking Dawn -- Part 1" made a lot of money, but not as much as "New Moon. " Twihards are growing up. ( Los Angeles Times ) Taylor Swift won the American Music Award for artist of the year, but aren't we really talking about LMFAO and David Hasselhoff in his underwear?

Has New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie already seen his “Glory Days?” According to a new poll by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning firm, the man who has become a Republican rock star nationally could face some troubles at home. The poll showed that Christie's approval rating in New Jersey has sunk to 43%, a 10-point drop since the beginning of the year. The PPP poll shows that Christie has particularly lost support among independents, a bloc crucial in a state where Republicans need such swing voters to win statewide.

Hilburn's latest paean is titled "The Boss Feels Good." That's more than can be said for us poor readers. Those of us, that is, who do not regard Springsteen as our "Boss" and take off our shoes to steal into the bulrushes every time his sacred name is uttered. DAVID R. MOSS Los Angeles

In just 14 months as governor, Chris Christie has become a conservative hero in part because of the delight with which he's taken on some of his harshest critics, particularly the state teachers union. But with the barbs now coming from the Boss, New Jersey's governor may have finally met his match. In a letter to his hometown newspaper , legendary rocker and Garden State icon Bruce Springsteen laments its recent report about how the state was slashing programs that help its poorest citizens while sparing more affluent residents from the budget axe. "The article is one of the few that highlights the contradictions between a policy of large tax cuts, on the one hand, and cuts in services to those in the most dire conditions, on the other," Springsteen writes to the editors of the Asbury Park Press.

Hitching The Boss to a Philadelphia institution that normally plumbs the deepest meanings of the Constitution and displays busts of the original signers might seem a stretch. But, yo, this is Philly. Bruce is the city's adopted son. (OK, so he's technically from across the Delaware in Jersey.) Yet it only seems natural that the Constitution Center would eventually honor a sort-of-local boy who made good as America's troubadour. Friday, the center opened a seven-month exhibit, "From Asbury Park to the Promised Land: The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band ripped through a brawny version of his new protest song, "We Take Care of Our Own," Friday at the Staples Center during a Grammy Awards rehearsal. Springsteen and his band - now, sadly, moving forward without the late Clarence Clemons - played with a 14-piece string section and plenty of guitar thunder while another Grammy performer, crooner Tony Bennett, watched from the floor. In gray jeans, a dark V-neck shirt and a necklace laden with silver charms, the rock icon kicked off the number with the words "Let's make some noise," executed it with plenty of guitar windmills then jumped atop an amp for the song's finale.

A roundup of entertainment headlines for Monday. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are releasing a new album (the first since the saxophonist Clarence Clemons died) and will tour in 2012. ( Bruce Springsteen.net ) "Breaking Dawn -- Part 1" made a lot of money, but not as much as "New Moon. " Twihards are growing up. ( Los Angeles Times ) Taylor Swift won the American Music Award for artist of the year, but aren't we really talking about LMFAO and David Hasselhoff in his underwear?

Has New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie already seen his “Glory Days?” According to a new poll by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning firm, the man who has become a Republican rock star nationally could face some troubles at home. The poll showed that Christie's approval rating in New Jersey has sunk to 43%, a 10-point drop since the beginning of the year. The PPP poll shows that Christie has particularly lost support among independents, a bloc crucial in a state where Republicans need such swing voters to win statewide.

Bruce Springsteen eloquently eulogized his friend of more than four decades and E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons Tuesday at a private funeral at a small church in Palm Beach, Fla. The roughly two-hour service for the 69-year-old Clemons, known as the Big Man and Springsteen's main foil onstage over their long careers, was at the Royal Poinciana Chapel on this manicured island of the rich and famous. Faint strains of music could be heard outside the small gray church. Springsteen, among those delivering eulogies, spoke of his long kinship with Clemons, according to those leaving the church.

Saxophonist Clarence Clemons, an indispensable part of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band both for his full-throttle tenor sax work and his larger-than-life onstage persona as "the Big Man," died Saturday. He was 69. Clemons, who put his stamp on such Springsteen staples as "Born to Run," "Jungleland" and "Rosalita," died in a Palm Beach, Fla., hospital of complications from a massive stroke he suffered June 12 at his Florida home, a spokeswoman for Springsteen and the E Street Band said.

In just 14 months as governor, Chris Christie has become a conservative hero in part because of the delight with which he's taken on some of his harshest critics, particularly the state teachers union. But with the barbs now coming from the Boss, New Jersey's governor may have finally met his match. In a letter to his hometown newspaper , legendary rocker and Garden State icon Bruce Springsteen laments its recent report about how the state was slashing programs that help its poorest citizens while sparing more affluent residents from the budget axe. "The article is one of the few that highlights the contradictions between a policy of large tax cuts, on the one hand, and cuts in services to those in the most dire conditions, on the other," Springsteen writes to the editors of the Asbury Park Press.

Let the broken hearts stand as the price you gotta pay ? Bruce Springsteen, "Badlands" You'd better be some kind of genius to ask the world to admire your spiral notebooks. Bruce Springsteen, who's spent a quarter-century-plus absorbing the love of people who feel his music changed their lives, can afford to be that presumptuous. "The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story" is a boxed set disguised as a scrapbook, its packaging full of scribbled lyrics and tentative track listings and notes revealing ?