Re-Routing The River Dept.

The problem with box sets, apart from the expense, and the duplication of material you already have, and the frustrating omission of tracks that should be there dammit, is that they're just not very playable. You want to hear an album, you pull it off the shelf, cue it up, et voilá! But what do you want to hear from a box set? The outtakes? The live stuff? The alternate versions? The remastered-if-you-say-so original album? The strangely lifeless BBC sessions? The blurry DVD of a past-their-best concert? Or, god forbid, the fascinating demos giving a rare glimpse into the creative process and preferred by connoisseurs to the over-produced studio versions much loved by the ignorant record-buying public? Most of the box sets I ever bought stayed on the shelf. Comforting to own, sure! Yup! I now have it all! The complete archival material, right there! Beautifully packaged with unopened limited edition fridge magnets and Croc buttons! Gee ... I hope somebody comes by who understands how impressive my collection is ... one day, I'll leave it to a museum ... maybe they'll name a wing after me ...

Who are we kidding? We buy box sets because they make us feel good, not because we're going to spend a lot of time opening them up and prising out the discs and deciding what bits we want to listen to before we lose interest. Case in point: Springsteen's mammoth The Ties That Bind: The River Collection, which luckily came out years after I jettisoned all my physical media. But even as convenient, at-a-glance MP3 files, I wasn't spending any quality time with the music.

So what I did was, right, what I did was, using readily-available household materials and some items found in the kitchen drawer, I curated the songs I wanted to hear more of - not the live recordings, thank you - into handy album-sized portions, and crayoned up some covers, and now I'm not intimidated by the sheer work involved in hearing these swell tunes. I put a lot of thought and judgement into sequencing the songs. Well, no, I didn't. The order of the tracks is exactly the same as presented in the box. It works well - the "new" albums all clock in at under forty minutes, and lead off with the title track. I didn't put too much thought into the covers, just like Bruce doesn't. Roulette uses a nice pic of the Asbury Park Casino (casino? roulette? oh, forget it), and Meet Me In The City shows, like, a city, duh. The Ties That Bind cynically recycles an outtake from Born To Run, or Darkness, but I don't care, and nor should you. It's not like I'm getting paid for this shit.

So there we have it. You'll find this a fun, fuss-free way to explore the great man's profligate fecundity during this incredibly rich and productive period! Or maybe you don't give a shit? It's your trip, baby!

Can't think of anything to type here.