Another Country - Springsteen special

The heart-stopping, pants-dropping, house-rocking, earth-shaking, booty-quaking, Viagra-taking, love-making - Le-gen-dary E - Street - Band! Because let's face it, this celebration we're about to have is about togetherness. It's really about how one performer, Bruce Springsteen has shaped rock 'n' roll music over the last 35 years. But it's also about how he has allowed everyone to come along on the ride.

I go to a few gigs now and then - probably not as many as you do - and someone will ask how it was. It will have been good, but, I hasten to add I saw Bruce Springsteen and The E St. Band last summer and it's going to be hard for any gig to top that. It's not that the Springsteen show is better played or better lit - though it's not slack in these departments - and it's certainly not that it's got more energy or meaning or light and shade or emotion - though it has all these too. The difference is that you go in feeling one thing and you come out changed. As the man says, it's a rock 'n' roll, baptism, exorcism, barmitzvah...."we're going to do it all! " And he does.

So we can't take you to a gig but what we can do is give you a sense of why Bruce Springsteen's music is so vital and in particular, why he's made such a connection to country people. His songs have been cut by Travis Tritt, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. Trisha Yearwood, Faith Hill and Emmylou Harris have all recorded songs and Patty Griffin has a particularly female take on an iconic Bruce song.

Bruce Springsteen is in the line that brought Chuck Berry, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Robert Johnston, Merle Haggard and Jimmy Rogers and that, my friends, is a great line. We welcome you if you love Bruce or if you've only ever heard the odd track on a car radio. If you think he was only good in the seventies and eighties we'll try to bring you up to date and if you only came along when Born in The USA came out we'll try to convince you that there's a whole load of great things that went before. However as people in the music business always say, "It's all about the songs."

It's a final show for this year tonight. I'm taking a break and will leave you in the care of the wonderful Edith Bowman. I know for a fact that Edith has great things in store for you on the albums show. I'll be back over Christmas with a special show and Another Country proper will return in January.

On Sunday Morning's Show:

It's remembrance Sunday so we'll talk to Army Chaplain, Donald Prentice. We find out more about The Heart of Midlothian players who went to France in 1914 and I discover what makes Portobello a Transition Town. (I'll give you a clue: it's no longer relying on fossil fuels and is trying to explore new alternatives) We'll play music from Radiohead, Michael Marra, The Korgis....and Joni Mitchell too.