Say it ain’t so, Bruce!

The Boss has a new Greatest Hits package set for release just before his Super Bowl appearance next month, which is all well and good. Problem is, it’ll only be available at WalMart.

I understand the thinking, I think. Here’s my guess: People in rural areas of the country often have nowhere to shop but WalMart. Take a drive through the middle of the country sometime if you think I’m exaggerating. And these same fly-over-staters are also more likely to not have internet access or even own a computer, so they can’t download the 12 tracks from iTunes. Or presumably, don’t already own the recycled hits from their original releases or previous greatest hits compilations.

But god, Springsteen is supposed to be all about the Little Guy, and although it’s cool he’s making sure this package is available to all the Little Guys in the hinterlands, it also sucks rump that he’s throwing in with an outfit like WalMart that makes a company policy of screwing all the Little Guys they employ. Shitty wages, shitty benefits, zero-tolerance policy for unionization… all the stuff that Bruce gets up on stage every night and decries about what’s wrong with America is exemplified by the company he’s authorized as sole distributor of this latest greatest hits collection.

Whatever his thinking is, it strikes me as cynical at best. The idea that his Average-Joe fans don’t already have these tracks is laughable. I have no problem with his releasing yet another greatest hits set just before a big TV appearance to wring a few extra bucks out of the faithful – that’s just The Game. But to pretend that he’s doing his fans a necessary favor by releasing it exclusively through WalMart is bunk. It’s strictly a numbers game, and Springsteen is supposed to be better than that.

In the end, it’s not that big a deal, really. But it seems like the kind of compromise that Springsteen could afford to pass up. And because of that, it’s disappointing. Almost as disappointing as the fact that the big event he’s playing in January is the Super Bowl, not the inauguration.