We obsessive fans think we know it all.<\/p>\n
We scour and collect and download and trade; we immerse ourselves in a sea of unreleased outtakes and demos; we pride ourselves in our ability to trace the lineage and cross-breeding in Bruce’s catalog.<\/p>\n
And then every once in a while, Bruce completely fakes us out.<\/p>\n
Case in point: “Whitetown.”<\/p>\n
When Bruce and Co. announced\u00a0The River<\/em> anniversary box set complete with a bonus disc of unreleased outtakes, I was excited to hear finished versions of songs I was intimately familiar with in demo versions.<\/p>\n I was curious, too: the track list showed that both “Whitetown” and “Mr. Outside” would be included, and based on the bootleg demos, I considered the latter to be an offshoot of the former. Listen to the 1979 demo below–not only will you hear essentially the same melody as “Mr. Outside,” (along with another never-released outtake, “You Gotta Be Kind”), you’ll also hear him namechecked.<\/p>\n