Remember those "Dancing In The Dark" video outtakes?

If you're reading this, you probably already know what I'm talking about. Bruce is standing in a dark room, wearing suspenders over a tank top, facing the camera intently and doing the dance moves we all know and love. It's a little weird! And then...Clarence comes in out of nowhere for the sax solo, wearing all red. Bruce kind of breaks character at the end as he moves out of camera.

There were a couple of takes, all just as strange and disjointed, with Bruce grimacing towards the end, like he knew how bad it was, or at least that it wasn't good. It's funny that the one that looked like the horror movie isn't the one we ended up with, despite that one being directed by Brian DePalma.

The weird dark ones were directed by Jeff Stein, the man responsible for one of the best rock and roll documentaries of all time, The Kids Are Alright. You would think the man had forgotten everything he ever knew about rock and roll, based on his video concepts. I don't even know how he talked Bruce AND Landau into this idea.

Now, if you think you've seen these, you definitely might have. Back in the 80s, copies of these floated around intense Springsteen collectors circles, along with cassette copies of a compilation of Bruce's answering machine messages. (He used to make up little songs and that meant that when you'd go to the office of someone in the music business who, after a couple of drinks and once they knew you 1) liked Bruce a lot and 2) were cool, would pull out the old Rolodex and fire up the speakerphone. This is not something to be proud of, I am just explaining how I know as much about these as I do. I do think there's a torrent of a compilation of answering machine messages floating around.)

I am sure I am not the only person in my age bracket reading this who ran into this material at some point in the 80's. And when YouTube first came around, the DITD outtakes were there, because I'd send the links to friends, it was something discussed on the various fan forums. But as we all know things get disappeared from YouTube.

Well, the master tape of the DITD video ended up in the hands of Columbia exec Al Teller. ( If you saw Deliver Me From Nowhere, Al Teller is the guy Landau runs into in the lobby of Columbia who asks where the next record is and the guy he plays the Nebraska demo to.)

“Jon brought the video to my office and within 10 or 15 seconds, I was thinking, ‘What is this?’ I felt it was inappropriate for the song. ‘Dancing in the Dark’ was a big, full-band production, and my first question was, ‘Where’s the band?’ When it ended, I told Jon, ‘No way. We can’t use this.’ He said he and Bruce agreed. So it was back to the drawing board and that led to Brian De Palma making the video everyone knows.” 

[From an interview with Teller conducted by Peter Ames Carlin.]

What happened next? "When Teller tried to return the rejected tape, Landau told him to keep it. He took it home and placed it in a file cabinet, where it remained for more than four decades...The cassette became an almost forgotten part of Bruce's history."

But at a huge record company, things...get borrowed. They get loaned. Someone who works on something runs an extra copy.

And now Al Teller is selling his master tape of the DITD outtakes. "All seller proceeds are being donated to organizations that support music education in public primary and secondary schools."

It's important to note that all that's being sold is the physical tape, not the rights to the material contained on the tape. "Neither the seller nor the purchaser (nor any successor owner) acquires any right to reproduce, publicly display or publicly perform the video, or to license any such right to any third party. The owner of the item may play the video privately only. "

But you know who does own the rights to reproduce, publicly display and publicly perform the video? This is one of many reasons why we needed a BITUSA box set. I know they think that because of Tracks 2 such a thing is no longer necessary, but that is just lacking imagination, imho. I'm being flippant, but also not. I look at what's being done by people like Tom Petty, the Who and Neil Young with their archival material and I sigh. JUST GIVE US THE STUFF!

If you subscribe over at the other place, you may have seen my tribute to Dave Marsh, but if not, now you have.

I know things have been quiet over here, but after writing 20k words in a month about the LOHAD tour, I needed a break. But regular posting will commence anon. For now, I leave you with the information that the pro-shot Largo 1980 video has been located and folks are working on restoring it. You can see some of it below.