Tonight At Sirius

Tonight I co-moderated a panel discussion on E Street Radio on Sirius/XM about the Born In The U.S.A. album/tour/explosion/phenomenon. To say it was fun would be an understatement of epic proportion. We had a great panel: My dear friend John Franck co-moderated with me, and as panelists we had Jovan Mrvos, a former A&R man for Columbia Records who I worked with at CMJ; Lewis Largent, a former MTV VJ and a former co-worker of mine in A&R at Island Def Jam; Backstreets columnist Flynn McClean; and record store owner Stu Wexelbaum.

John has been one of my best friends for over 16 years, and Jovan and Lewis have been wonderful friends as well, people whose ideas, thoughts and opinions about music have been enormously influential in my own relationship with music. I met Flynn and Stu for the first time tonight, but they felt like kindred spirits immediately - twenty minutes into the taping, people were finishing each other sentences and completing conversation threads that others had started.

I write this because the evening was such a joy that it reminded me not only of how much I love music, but how much I revel in discussing it with people whose love for music equals my own. I'm also reminded that music has been the greatest means of friendship I've ever known, and perhaps that, as much as anything, is why my passion for it remains undimmed. There are few things more wonderful than the spark of connection between two people when you discover a shared adoration for a piece of music. It remains as much of a thrill for me pushing 40 as it did when I was 15. That's pretty miraculous.

The show will be airing Wednesday, 02/24 at 4pm ET; Thurs, 02/25 at 12am ET and 8am ET AND Wed, 03/03 at 4pm ET. If you have half as much fun listening to the show as we had making it, you're in for a treat.