• by Larry Dobrow , Featured Columnist, December 3, 2015

Today I am going to write about Bruce Springsteen, because Bruce Springsteen is my favorite musician and I love Bruce Springsteen and this is my column and I can write whatever I want and I’m a big boy and Bruce Springsteen rules and I’M THE BOSS OF ME. But also, given the events leading up to tomorrow’s release of The Ties That Bind: The River Collection, which threatens to usurp cheeseburgers and paid holidays atop my list of greatest things in the known universe, there’s a legitimate reason to write about Bruce Springsteen in this space. It appears that after many false starts, Team Springsteen has figured out how to use the Internet - and particularly video - in a manner that makes its pre-release push feel relatively contemporary and savvy.

This instills in me something akin to pride, similar to the feeling that washed over me when my parents accessed the house Wi-Fi without asking for help or calling Apple. It’s like, look at you! Over there, doing that thing! All by yourself!

Prior to the burst of activity during the last month or so, it was hard to get a handle on the Springsteen web strategy. Which is to say: There wasn’t one. In 2008, Bruce stealth-released a new song/video on Halloween. Prior to the release of The Promise: The Darkness at the Edge of Town Story, which overwhelmed my sensory organs with joy and wonder, he circulated a trailer and a few minutes of footage. In, around and after those two deliveries, Springsteen released three new albums*, a tour’s worth of “official” bootlegs, five shows from the archives, a treat or two for Record Store Day and remastered versions of most of his early recordings.

Granted, the marketing budget for several of these projects was less than the amount of change you have in your pants pockets, assuming you’re wearing pants and they are blessed with the grandeur of deep, welcoming pockets, but the point remains: There was/is this thing called the Internet and it just so happens to be a wonderful vehicle for communicating with members of your tribe.

Contrast all that came before with the online activity that leading up to tomorrow’s great bestowal of The Ties That Bind** mirth. Fullperformanceclips were parceled out generously, while 15-second clips of three songs found their way into the Springsteen Twitter feed. Spotify got early dibs on one of the songs; another debuted in the form of what the kids today, with the hair and the Instagram phones, call a “lyric video.”

But what satisfied me most as a fan is that the promotion for The Ties That Bind failed the Larry’s Mom Test. Nearly every prior project was mass-marketed in such a manner that it entered my mom’s consciousness, which prompted her to share the news with me as if it were an Amber alert. This time out, Team Springsteen notified the faithful*** - I doubt most people who venture out to the arena when Bruce comes to town with the E Street Band obsessively monitor his Twitter feed -  and basically said, “Okay, you’re up.” I interpreted this directive as a call to civic duty and duly circulated the live performance of “The River” to one or 835 of my closest semi-acquaintances.

So yeah, Bruce and Co. got this one right - and perhaps the response will prompt them to go even further next time out. My ultimate fantasy is that Bruce - or anotherperformerIdig - will integrate video into his/her/their marketing mix well in advance of a project’s rollout. Let’s say Bruce decides to keep the cameras rolling during the creation of his next new or archival release (there is plentyof precedent for this) and parcels out video in small, sporadic bits. One day we get a rough draft of a song, the next an update from the man himself and/or his collaborators, the one after that a look at some of the non-music activity involved in making a record (photo shoots, marketing klatches, whatever), etc.

I have no idea how 24/7 documentation would impact a real artist’s creative process - this column would be even less coherent, somehow, if a camera were trained on me at this very moment - but it’d certainly engage fans in a deeper way. And really: We’re long past the time for change. Right now, acts who primarily appeal to (exaggerated loud cough)-year-old fans like me hew to an outdated and ineffectual marketing plan. They make a record, do a press blitz in the usual places (the first song, whatever it is and whoever it’s by, will inevitably be described by Rolling Stone as “powerful”), maybe pop up on Saturday Night Live or one of the morning shows, then finally unveil the music… which inevitably vanishes after nine days.

Why not use video to build interest incrementally? To the hardest of the hard-core****, the process is as interesting as the final product. Works in progress can and should qualify as viable content. A fan can dream, right?

* The material on Working on a Dream and High Hopes presses the definition of “new,” I know.

** Since the song “The Ties That Bind” gets its due as the title of the new set, there will be a 64-song tournament to crown a new Most Underrated Track in the Springsteen canon. The one-seeds are “Rocky Ground” (Appel regional), “Something in the Night” (Landau regional), “Loose Ends” (Clemons regional) and “Restless Nights” (Van Zandt regional). “One Way Street” is the 12-seed most likely to crash the Sweet Sixteen.

*** With the inclusion of “Cindy” and the rockabilly “You Can Look” on the new set, the most viable candidates for the title of Best Unreleased Song in the Springsteen canon now include “Don’t Say No” (no usable vocal track?), “Sugarland” (a natural for the inevitable Born in the USA superset in 2018), “Protection” (ditto) and “Unsatisfied Heart” (ditto ditto). There ain’t all that many left.

**** I attempted to answer the unasked question “Which Springsteen songwriting era was the bestest?” here. That was written off the top of my head. I don’t say that to brag so much as to acknowledge that I have made some questionable decisions in regards to apportionment of time and intellectual resources. There are show reviews and other Springsteen-related effluvia at LD.com as well. I’m sorry.