Separating the sweet, juicy flesh from the stone and skin of this week’s major label releases.

It’s Monday. We feel your pain.

But as you waddle into work, weighed down by the enormous turdload you have spent the weekend saving so that you may spend an hour of the boss’s time reading a newspaper this morning, do not despair.

Because when you make it back to your desk, feeling like Octomom after she pumped out her kids, there’ll be a nice little surprise waiting for you.

Here’s your Mango!

As per the usual norm, we review some of the upcoming week’s musics, and then represent each as a thought. Naturellement.

This week, in memory of the mighty John Hughes, The Mango will be viewed through 80s-tinted spectacles, and each thought will feature a mutilated quote from one of the great man’s films.

Firstly: Play Some Pool Skip Some School Act Real Cool, Bruce Springsteen/Various Artists. The Gods are surely mocking the world’s 30-year old men this week.

First, they take away John Hughes – the man responsible for 50% of their teenage years’ most lasting memories. Just days later, as if in an attempt to even the score, they give them a tribute album to Bruce, responsible for another 7% (a copy of Born To Run, a tennis racquet, and a dream of being American).

The other 43% by the way? Masturbation.

PSPSSSARC, as the world seems unlikely to begin calling it, is a collection of covers which span a large part of The Boss’s output and which feature some wildly differing musical styles.

Laugh as British 70s revivalists The Glam Chops sing Born In The USA over a Gary Glitter drumbeat.

Cry as Butcher Boy delivers a tender version of Streets Of Philadelphia.

And consider taking an axe to your iPod as several interchangably bland people suck all emotion from their chosen songs (we’re looking at you, Orange Nichole and Thewintersleep).

So, credit to Bruce for the diversity shown in choosing the acts, but debit for not being firm enough to say no to a few of them (38 tracks is far too many when the quality is so variable).

This album is represented by the thought:

“Six bucks and my right nut says Springsteen didn’t listen to his staff when they told him some of these are just rubbish.”

Secondly: Under The Covers Volume Two, Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs. Interestingly, 74% of the 43% of memories mentioned above feature Susanna.

Which means that the ex-Bangles singer was responsible for more dirty socks in the 1980s than the combined efforts of sweat, grass and Glastonbury.

This is the second collaboration between Sweet and Hoffs (Swoffs, anybody?), and again, much of it sounds like a poor man’s Paul Westerberg with singing by… well, that lady from The Bangles.

Yes, her voice is unmistakable, and quite emotive for people of a certain age. Try listening to Everything I Own without thinking of Manic Monday.

That song is a standout, along with You’re So Vain and I’ve Seen All Good People. The whole album is fairly pleasant listening but, again, would have been much better with more aggressive editing.

This album is represented by the thought:

“Screws fall out all the time. The world – oh, and this album – is an imperfect place.”

That’s us for this week. We’re off now for a Hughes marathon: the rebellious The Breakfast Club; the hilarious Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; and the unstoppable, funny-but-sad Planes, Trains And Automobiles.

Remember, Mangons: always make sure that they’re pillows.

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Glastonbury Festival is imminent. You should know this because every single stinking update on Facebook is counting down to the non-event like some mud-clogged Doomsday Clock.

People from all over the world are bracing themselves for a weekend of squinting into pixelated screens three miles from the stage, dodging hugs from Earth Mothers and ducking lobbed cups full of dog puke.

Oh, and Status Quo are on.

Glasto is a phenomenon, no question. A rampaging, all-consuming one at that. Then again, so was swine flu. Without doubt, the Glastonbury Festival envelopes every single journalist in the country like local farmhands staring at the circus truck full of freaks rolling into town. Except this truck invariably runs on maize oil and smells of a mixture of B.O. and patchouli oil.

Not that anyone lets on.

You see, ask a reveller about the spectacle and they’ll tell you one of two things. The first is to “lighten up”, which is easier said than done when you’ve got 4,000 mongs shouting “BOLLOOOOCKS!” in waves across a field full of human shit and nine guy-ropes wrapped around your leg after a dash to the overflowing cesspools at three in the morning. The second is that Glasto “isn’t a just a festival… it’s an experience, man” So is getting a punch in the mouth. So is sitting in a bus shelter getting spat at. So is taking a leak in a swimming pool.

Having attended around a dozen of Britain’s festivals, I know exactly what ‘the experience’ entails. It revolves around bumping into pissed, pink-faced lads in Stone Roses t-shirts honking their lungs up into metal bins which have been painted by local school children and trying to avoid the onslaught of humus-weaving middle class hipster mung-munchers who favour sarongs and bindhis for the weekend in an attempt to fool themselves that they’re markedly different from the rest of the world, despite the fact that they’re dressed like every other ‘burb-dwelling poindexter, numbering 40,000 at one of the world’s most commercial events.

Even if you’re going ‘for the music’, you’re still an idiot. Glastonbury is one of the most conservative musical get-togethers on the circuit. I mean, you’re telling me that The Ting Tings, Gabrielle Cilmi, Bruce Springsteen, Kasabian, Pendulum, Paulo Nutini, Tom Jones, Lady GaGa and Black Eyed Peas are anything but mainstream shite? Reading the Glasto line-up is, for the most part, like climbing inside Gary Bushell‘s iPod.

There’s even bigger fools who will say things like “You could avoid every single band at Glastonbury and still have an amazing time” which again, is a completely inaccurate myth peddled by vapid, glass-eyed camper van drivers too dreamy to wake up and smell the £3 cup of instant coffee bought from a van pouring out acrid fumes into the Somerset sky. Glastonbury, away from the stages and tents, has lots going on, sure, but for the most part it’s the faint promise of a shower from a mobile phone company or a bloke showing you how he makes table legs with a wooden machine he’s fashioned over a decade in some futile attempt to be at one with some woolly notion in his head.

Failing that, you can encounter stall after stall of mass-produced jester hats, tacky leather wristbands and Made In An Indian Sweatshop t-shirts that say ‘Don’t Drink And Drive, Get Stoned And Fly’. Or, if you prefer, clothes made out of hemp. Which is so lame that it barely warrants a mention.

The simple matter of the fact is, that Glasto is only different from any other festival because it’s so stupidly big. The stages are so far apart that, should One Band You Like be on a different stage straight after That Other Band You Like, you can easily miss half the set as you fight your way through crowded gates, trudge through an ocean of shit and leg it as fast as you can, only to be met with an impenetrable wall of sweaty dickheads waving flags with witless slogans written on them.

Festivals are greeted with such unbridled joy because, if you face the reality of the situation you find yourself in and don’t swill booze like prohibition just got lifted, and hoover up class A drugs like a depressed prostitute, you’ll sit in a field and weep for three days straight. Glastonbury is a thoroughly miserable experience for anyone with a functioning brain or, at the very least, one working eye and one working nostril.

It’s camping… only incredibly expensive… surrounded by preening, braying dolts… soundtracked by the most average bands you ever did hear on Radio One. If you’re going, you’re probably too thick or misguided to read this article. Go away.

This was a guest blog by mighty Mof Gimmers from the equally mighty Electric Roulette. You be a square if you don’t check it, bwoy.

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Bruce Springsteen has championed many causes, from how sad AIDS is to the plight of those born in the USA.

And now Springsteen has turned his sights on Ticketmaster. Since he performed at the most-watched Super Bowl ever, Bruce Springsteen has seen a surge of demand for his concert tickets.

Trouble is, Ticketmaster has apparently been redirecting Springsteen fans to a ticket auction site rather than its regular face-value site. And now Bruce Springsteen is mad. See that Bruce Springsteen picture there? He’s twice as mad as that. We didn’t even know that such a level of madness was possible.

Give Bruce Springsteen a cause and the man will run with it. Tell him that some Vietnam veterans have been mistreated, and he’ll write a song about it. Tell him that human rights are being violated across the planet and he’ll play a concert to help stop it. Tell him that a dangerous number of people aren’t watching the recommended daily allowance of fairly crappy internet songs about Halloween and he’ll go and make one of his own to redress the balance.

And now that his Super Bowl performance has seen interest in him peak at a level that he hasn’t seen for over 20 years, Bruce Springsteen has decided that it’s time he became the old Bruce Springsteen again. The man of the people Bruce Springsteen. You know, the Bruce Springsteen that isn’t the muttering old curmudgeon Bruce Springsteen who only records bleak songs about depressing bumsex with prostitutes.

And in his new old role, Bruce Springsteen has decided to take issue with Ticketmaster, because it might be forcing fans to pay over the odds for his concert tickets when they don’t have to or something. Reuters will explain this better:

On Monday, fans trying to make face-value purchases for tickets were instead sent to TicketsNow, “even when other seats remained available at face value,” says a letter posted on BruceSpringsteen.net. “We condemn this practice… We perceive this as a pure conflict of interest. The abuse of our fans and our trust by Ticketmaster has made us as furious as it has made many of you.”

This is great news. Not only does it seem as if Bruce Springsteen fans are being charged more than they should be for liking Bruce Springsteen – let’s call it an idiot tax – but it’s also given Bruce himself some of the old fire in the belly that his most recent work has been missing.

Honestly, this kind of righteous anger against faceless corporations is precisely the sort of thing that Bruce Springsteen’s blue collar fans go nuts for. If he’s wise, Bruce Springsteen will quickly channel this fury into a new album. We know that we’d certainly like to hear songs entitled Hey Ticketmaster (Remove Your Unwanted Material From My Website) and the soon to be fan-favourite I Had To Queue Up For 20 Minutes At Tescos On Friday And That Really Isn’t On (Not For A Shop That Size).

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Nobody watches the Super Bowl for sport, so nobody knows if the Cardigans or the Teapots won yesterday.

But they do watch the Super Bowl for one thing – boobies. Across the world yesterday, hundreds of millions of people tuned into to the Super Bowl to see who’d accidentally flop a knocker out during the halftime show. Sadly, all we got was Bruce Springsteen.

Bruce Springsteen yesterday performed a Super Bowl halftime set that was as flat and lifeless as any in recent memory, and he’s received lukewarm reviews for it at best. Plus, let’s be honest, his tits are terrible.

Aside from the actual football – which couldn’t be more dreary if it took place between two different gangs of nearly-dead emphysemic pensioners – people tend to watch the Super Bowl for either the ads or the halftime show. And usually one of those will have something going for it.

Not this year, though. As far as the Superbowl commercials went, we were spared Kevin Federline and adorably violent homophobia and instead got two things that made us instinctively dry-heave – the first was Bob Dylan doing a duet with Will.i.am in an advert for Pepsi, and the second was that 3D promo for Jay Leno‘s new show where he drove around, tried to poke us in the eye with his chin and pulled a horrifyingly smug face all at the same time. Never say Jay Leno can’t multitask.

As for the music, the Super Bowl halftime show continued its dull tradition of violently eschewing sexiness and showmanship in favour of ground-out craftmanship. Bruce Springsteen was the performer last night, and in his 12-minute slot he avoided recent controversies like the Janet Jackson nipple-slip or the Prince devil penis so that he could concentrate on belting out some of his biggest hits.

Well, some of his biggest hits and a new song. A new song that sounds like it was written by a cynically-minded internet Bruce Springsteen song generator that’s on the fritz. And, because of that, the reviews of Bruce Springsteen’s Super Bowl halftime show haven’t been all that amazing. The New York Times reports:

The final discomforts were all Springsteen’s. At the end, he shouted inexplicably, “I’m going to Disneyland!” A moment earlier, a man dressed as a referee appeared on stage, threw a yellow flag and crossed his arms in front of Springsteen, the signal for delay of game. Springsteen mock fretted about the ticking clock, and Van Zandt protested, screaming, “It’s Boss time!” Except that it wasn’t, and everyone knew it.

Maybe it’s a little harsh to criticise Bruce Springsteen for his performance – a 12-minute Super Bowl halftime show didn’t really give him the chance to show off what he does best, which is a) playing concerts that go on for such incalculably long periods of time that members of the audience routinely end up developing spinal fusion, full-length beards and elderly incontinence, and b) singing songs about bumming prostitues.

But, hey, at least nobody saw any nipples – even if we do suspect that if the Super Bowl continues to book halftime acts based on their sturdy reliability, then next year we’ll be treated to a 12-minute set by an actual sack of potatos.

And, you know. At least it wasn’t Tom Petty again. That’s something to be thankful for, at least.

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Bruce Springsteen really loves Halloween – he loves it more than songs with the word ‘born’ in the title and he loves it more than muttering about AIDS.

In fact, Bruce Springsteen loves Halloween so much that he’s decided to dress up as the devil and release a brand new vaguely spooky song entitled A Night With The Jersey Devil on his website for free, just because today happens to be Halloween.

It’s a clever move. And it’s prompted other old rockers to follow – next week Rod Stewart will release a song called Bonfire Night (Of My Heart) on his website, followed by Huey Lewis posting a song called I Give Thanks To You, Baby on November 27 and then Elton John releasing Woo, It’s The International Year Of Astronomy! on January 15, just because he couldn’t wait an extra month and do one for Valentine’s Day, the impatient sod.

When Bruce Springsteen likes something, he has to go out of his way to display that love to everyone. For instance, Bruce can’t just be quietly fond of, say, the notion of shagging an old whore up the bum – he has to actually go and write a song about it. There are probably other examples of this, but the whore-bumming is the only one that springs to mind at the moment.

Oh, Halloween, too. Bumming whores and Halloween, they’re the two things that Bruce Springsteen likes enough to write songs about. But only those two things.

We don’t know why Bruce Springsteen likes Halloween so much. It’s probably because both ‘Springsteen’ and ‘Halloween’ end with ‘een’. That also explains Bruce’s other main loves – queens, spleens, teens, screens  and Charlie Sheens.

Anyway, in the Webthump earlier today, we mentioned that Bruce Springsteen wasn’t doing a big Halloween display at his house this year because of fears of overcrowding. That news was probably incredibly disappointing for anyone who a) lives quite close to Bruce Springsteen’s house, b) likes Halloween and c) thinks that standing outside the house of someone richer than them and gawping at plastic cauldrons is an acceptable way to spend an evening.

But Bruce Springsteen doesn’t want to disappoint anyone – not even if they’re as essentially worthless at the people who go and look at all the decorations on his house – and so he’s come up with a clever backup plan. Bruce Springsteen has recorded a special new Halloween song and put it up on his website for free. MTV reports:

It being Halloween and all, the Boss is … offering a new song and video called “A Night With the Jersey Devil.” On his Web site he writes, “Dear Friends and Fans, If you grew up in central or south Jersey, you grew up with the ‘Jersey Devil.’ Here’s a little musical Halloween treat. Have fun! Bruce Springsteen”.

Yeah, nice try Bruce Springsteen, but we can see right through your little plan. ‘A little musical Halloween treat’ indeed. It’s just an excuse not to give children any trick or treat candy isn’t it, you massive tightwad. Well, it’s not going to work, because we can guarantee this exact scenario will be played out at least 50 times tonight:

Kids: “Trick or treat!”

Bruce Springsteen: “What? No. Didn’t you see my website today? My treat to you is the song A Night With The Jersey Devil, which I recorded as a little musical treat.”

Kids: “Yeah, we saw that. To be honest, we thought it was a lazy and somewhat derivative blues standard that you clearly hadn’t put much thought into, accompanied by a video that does little more than reference the fact that you’ve seen the promo to Hurt by Johnny Cash at least once. With that in mind, Mr Springsteen, we’d probably prefer some Haribo.”

Bruce Springsteen: “But… but… the song. I don’t have any Haribo.”

Kids: “It’s a trick, then. Egg him, boys.”

Watch A Night With The Jersey Devil by Bruce Springsteen now.

The Super Bowl halftime show is always a big draw, not least because there’s a fleeting chance you’ll see partial boob.

And next year’s Super Bowl will be even more special than most, because if you see anyone’s accidentally-exposed barely-covered breast at all, it’ll be Bruce Springsteen‘s. Bruce Springsteen is playing the Super Bowl! Finally! Some good old-fashioned, all-American heartfelt stadium rock is coming to the Super Bowl at last!

At least that’s what the Super Bowl organisers must be hoping. There’s still every chance that Bruce Springsteen will want to play some of his newer songs at the Super Bowl, in which case 148 million Americans are in for six minutes of an old man mumbling about putting his penis up an old prostitute’s bum. Either way – woo.

Playing the Super Bowl halftime show is the most impressive way to let the world that you’ve made it. Actually, that’s a lie. Playing the Super Bowl halftime show is the most impressive way to tell the world that you made it a couple of decades ago, then took a few unfortunate career choices and lost your appeal but have since decided to put out a Greatest Hits album reminding people of your glory days.

Which, we think, sums Bruce Spingsteen up perfectly. It must do, because he’s playing next year’s Super Bowl halftime show, as E! Online reports:

New Jersey is going to the Super Bowl. The Garden State’s own Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band has been announced as the entertainment during the Super Bowl XLIII Halftime at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa. The big game will air Feb. 1 on NBC.

Bruce Springsteen playing the Super Bowl is bound to be an improvement on some of the more recent halftime acts, like the perfunctory set that Tom Petty spunked out this year, or the Tim Burton stop-motion animation that passes for a Rolling Stones live appearance these days.

That’s so long as Bruce Springsteen sticks to the plan and plays Born To Run, Born In The USA, Dancing In The Dark and nothing else. He might not, though – give him a chance and Bruce Springsteen might do the one about taking a whore up the arse and the one about how AIDS makes him sad and the second half of the match will be played out in silent introverted despondency. Which actually, we’re secretly hoping he does.

Still, Bruce Springsteen isn’t an idiot – he knows what a Super Bowl halftime show requires. A couple of the hits, a bit of a punchy song and dance and then go off and get upstaged by Kevin Federline. Any idiot could do it.

OK, any idiot except for Janet Jackson…