Bruce Springsteen

DANNY FEDERICI, 58 Rock musician Danny Federici, the longtime keyboard player for Bruce Springsteen whose stylish work helped define the E Street Band's sound on hits from "Hungry Heart" through "The Rising," died Thursday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He had suffered from melanoma for three years. News of his death was posted late Thursday on Mr. Springsteen's Web site. He last performed with Mr. Springsteen and the band last month.

No wonder Sen. President Mike Miller couldn't reach Sen. Jim Brochin to give him the bad news. The night before the General Assembly session began, Brochin stuffed his ears with plugs and switched his cell phone off. Not that Brochin could have heard the ringtone anyway, what with all the racket at the Hannah Montana concert. The 43-year-old Towson Democrat spent Tuesday night in a sea of shrieking tweens, among them, Brochin's 9-year-old daughter, Katherine. But don't let the chaperone duty and earplugs fool you. At the risk of alienating the classic rock vote, Brochin said that Montana is better in concert than Bruce Springsteen - at least the aging Bruce.

Washington -- Has anyone ever put more heart into live rock than Bruce Springsteen? "Is there anybody alive out there?!" The Boss yelled Sunday night before he and the famous E Street Band launched into a raucous version of "Radio Nowhere," the hit single about a rudderless and alienated society from the newest CD, Magic. In front of a sellout crowd of 20,000 at Verizon Center, Springsteen and the band delivered a wildly energetic, hard-driving performance, with nine songs off Magic (including "Gypsy Biker," "Magic" and "Livin' in the Future")

TELEVISION 1.CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CBS 2.Dancing with the Stars, Monday, ABC 3.Grey's Anatomy, ABC 4.Desperate Housewives, ABC 5.House, Fox FILMS 1.Why Did I Get Married?, Lionsgate 2.The Game Plan, Disney 3.Michael Clayton, Warner Bros. 4.We Own the Night, Sony 5.The Heartbreak Kid, Paramount SINGLES 1.Crank That (Soulja Boy), Soulja Boy Tell 'Em 2.Stronger, Kanye West 3.Gimme More, Britney Spears 4.Apologize, Timbaland featuring OneRepublic 5.The Way I Are, Timbaland featuring Keri Hilson ALBUMS 1.Magic, Bruce Springsteen 2.Still Feels Good, Rascal Flatts 3.Exile on Mainstream, Matchbox Twenty 4.souljaboytellem.

Bruce Springsteen Bruce Springsteen cut his latest album, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, live in the studio in only three days. Between some verses, you can even hear him call out the chord changes and lead the band through Pete Seeger's classic catalog. At 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Springsteen brings this folk sound infused with a brassy swing to Nissan Pavilion at Stone Ridge in Bristow, Va. Ticket prices vary. Call 410-547-SEAT or visit ticketmaster.com.

IT'S BEEN IN THE NEWS LATELY that rock stars and politicians are in the habit of letting hotels and limo services and concert people know what they want waiting for them when they arrive. Among the revelations, many of which first appeared on the Web site thesmokinggun.com, are that Bruce Springsteen wants raw oats, whey powder and nonfat soy milk in his dressing room, while Paul McCartney specifies what toilet paper he wants. Eminem wants a Ping-Pong table, Britney Spears wants Pop-Tarts, Marilyn Manson wants a litter box and President Bush wants the TV on Air Force One turned to ESPN.

I'm drivin' in my car I turn on the radio ... And there's the Boss wailing out another tune. There's Bruce in the morning, Bruce in the afternoon, Bruce in the evening. There's Bruce 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Yes, starting today, if you love his music, you can hear all Bruce Springsteen, all the time as Sirius Satellite Radio launches a commercial-free channel devoted to the music of the New Jersey rock legend and his E Street Band. Naturally, there's a marketing tie-in: The start-up of E Street Radio coincides with the 30th anniversary of the release of the band's celebrated Born to Run album, which has been remastered and reissued by Columbia Records and will be released as a box set Nov. 15. In addition to round-the-clock music from Bruce and the band, the channel will feature discussions about their albums, conversations with band members and interviews of just about everyone ever associated with the band over the past 30-plus years.

IT HAS already been another tough week in the Redskins wing of the palatial Schmuck Estate, where the demotion of quarterback Patrick Ramsey was met with a level of outrage normally reserved for lame-duck parental discipline or a sudden rise in the price of Coors Light. "If you don't crush Joe Gibbs for this, I'm never going to speak to you again," said the resident Redskins fan. I shudder to think what life might be like without the daily lectures on the superiority of Dave Matthews over Bruce Springsteen (I repeat, where did I go wrong?

There are Vietnam veterans who have never forgiven Jane Fonda for visiting with the Viet Cong and Dixie Chicks fans who stomped their CDs after lead singer Natalie Maines made an anti-Bush remark at the start of the Iraq war. But while other artists have paid a price for speaking out politically, there is at least one who has been given wider latitude: Bruce Springsteen, who over the years has taken on causes like unemployment, AIDS and, now, with his...

He's done this before. Every few years or so, Bruce Springsteen, one of rock's pre-eminent singer-songwriters, takes us to bleak places in his music, introduces us to a cast of desperate, downtrodden characters while capturing a sense of the times. He did this on the 1982 Nebraska album, a brilliant, acidic appraisal of Ronald Reagan's America. In 1995, he unleashed the particularly bitter The Ghost of Tom Joad, which chronicled those who fell through the cracks during the boom years of the Clinton administration.