Bruce Springsteen

Hush, friend. The High Church of Rock and Roll, Asbury Park branch, has resumed services. Look inside your heart and answer truthfully: Don't we need that sound, those three-chord parables about faith, now more than ever? With the release tomorrow of Springsteen's The Rising, it's time once again to drop the needle and pray. Deeply affected by the events that shattered us all in September, the iconic soul reverend is talking a language we can understand: "This too shall pass." "An eye for an eye."

From the bridge near his house in Monmouth County, N.J., Bruce Springsteen could see the twin towers of the World Trade Center on clear days. His sharpest memory now of Sept. 11 is driving across that bridge and seeing an empty sky. "I must have seen those towers a thousand times from the bridge," Springsteen says, sitting in a Manhattan recording studio about a dozen subway stops from Ground Zero. "I spent most of Sept. 11 in front of the television like everybody else ... , but it all didn't really hit home until I took a ride across the bridge and there was nothing where the towers used to be. The real world, I guess, is always more dramatic than something on television."

After nearly 30 years of performing, Bruce Springsteen makes his full-blown television debut tonight. The show, which airs at 9 on HBO, is a dream for fans of the Jersey icon: two hours in the front row as one of rock and roll's great performers wraps up a worldwide tour at New York's Madison Square Garden. All that's missing is the drunk guy from Secaucus shouting "Bruuuuuuce" in your ear. Taped in gloriously clear high-definition television, the performance makes plain why Springsteen was once proclaimed the "future of rock and roll," and why, a quarter century later, he remains so compelling.

I'VE BEEN LISTENING to a lot of educated, middle-class people defend Eminem recently, and I've noticed that they like to point out that the rapper comes from, and sings about, a demographic that doesn't see itself in the popular culture. He represents, they say, a group of young men who come from poor to working class backgrounds with no prospects of college or movement into the middle class. Violence, whether inside or outside the home, is a familiar part of their world; opportunity and respect are not. So let's not reject Eminem because he makes us feel uncomfortable or forces us to see the inner lives of these invisible people, say many of his defenders.

NEW YORK - Bruce Springsteen began a string of sold-out performances Monday night in New York City, with fans - and new-found foes - waiting to hear if the Boss sings a song deploring the killing of Amadou Diallo by four New York City police officers. The new song, "American Skin," begins with Springsteen repeating the words "41 shots," the number of times Diallo was shot in front of his apartment in the Bronx, and includes lyrics like "You can get killed just for living in your American skin."

Cubs: Mark Grace, who began the game one hit ahead of Rafael Palmeiro for the decade hits lead, finished 1-for-2 with three walks, two intentional. His eighth-inning double gave him 361 for the 1990s, tying him with the Astros' Craig Biggio for the decade lead.Marlins: Second baseman Luis Castillo was voted the team's MVP by the South Florida media. Castillo, out for the year with a dislocated shoulder, batted .302 with 50 stolen bases.Phillies: A crowd that included many Mets fans was late arriving because of a busy night in South Philadelphia.

Contrary to popular belief, you can go home again. What you can't do is expect things to be exactly as they were -- especially if it has been a dozen or more years since last you were there.Seeing Bruce Springsteen back together with the E Street Band for the first time since the late '80s was a lot like going home for many of the roughly 20,000 fans packed into Washington's MCI Center last night.They mainly played the old favorites, the songs that made Springsteen a rock and roll legend: "The River," "Jungleland," "Thunder Road" and "Born to Run."

When Bruce Springsteen and the E St. Band roll into Washington's MCI Arena on Tuesday for the first of three sold-out shows, I'm sure that fans will be expecting an electrifying evening. I'm equally sure that Springsteen and com-pany will meet those expectations, delivering the sort of energetic, uplifting, joyful performance that has made this tour the season's hottest ticket. And I'm sure everyone in attendance will feel they got their money's worth and then some.I'm just not sure how much any of that means.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- The screen door slammed Thursday night, and I was a Jersey girl again.Not the Jersey girl I once was, a four-eyed chub with the bathing-suit blues, but the one I once wished I could be, cruising down the boardwalk with my friends, a curfew just beyond the horizon, my mind spinning with top-10 lyrics and an awesome case of entitlement.That's the beauty of Bruce Springsteen. He doesn't sing for the kids who are already having a great time; he sings for the ones who lie in bed at night dreaming about what they think they're missing.