What a great morning. I took a break from my normal work day to visit Amazon.com to purchase the just-released Bruce Springsteen Magic Tour Highlights EP. It's a digital-only thing which pretty much puts me on shaky ground. Let's total up the number of times I've bought digital music: 2. Yessir, the first time was a Metallica concert. I figured I'd support the fact that the band created a site just for their live material. I won't get into the details of the extended cussing festival that that site put me though (It only worked with Internet Explorer... you can probably figure out the rest), but it was cool to have the concert.

So I found the link on Amazon to purchase the mp3 files. I could have taken the entire album for $2.99, but that would have required that I install the Amazon MP3 Downloader, which automatically puts the files into either iTunes or Windows Media Player. The problem is that I don't use either of those two pieces of software.

Ah, whatever. This is for a good cause. What's an extra dollar, eh?

So yes, despite my lack of interest in digital-only music, I just had to buy this EP for two reasons: 1. The proceeds go to the Danny Federici Melanoma Fund and 2. I want the Bruce camp to see that there are a lot of people out there with an incredible hunger for E Street live material. Listen up Corporation EStreet, there are a ton of fans out there who would purchase every single show from the Magic tour. Believe it!

Oh right, the music! Four songs that visit surprisingly varied emotional landscapes. The opening Alejandro Escovedo song "Always A Friend" is pure joy. "The Ghost of Tom Joad," with Tom Morello and his thermonuclear guitar solo, is unbelievably intense. It's also very cool to hear Bruce and the band run through the classic "Turn, Turn, Turn" with Roger McGuinn.

The absolute highlight of this release is Danny Federici's swan song, his last performance of "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" from the March 20th, Indianapolis show. It's always been a beautiful song and this time around, it's almost too much to listen to.

We'll always miss you, Danny.