Bootleg Bonanza Amid A Crackdown On Underground Cds, ‘The Lost Masters’ Series Flouts The Law With 17 Discs Of Unauthorized Music

Fans of underground and bootleg recordings try to deny it, but it’s true. After a few years of generally easy access to CDs of unreleased live and studio recordings, the crackdown is here. Stores and distributors are being raided and arrested on both coasts.

Bootlegging won’t go away completely; it never does as long as the profit margin is good. There’s something about getting unauthorized music to the public that still has a subversive, rock ‘n’ roll mentality to it that makes manufacturers stay in the game. But the days of walking into a small record store and being pleasantly surprised by music you never knew existed are gone for a while.

But what a way to go. Just as underground recordings are starting to wane, a bootlegger has put together an unprecedented 17-disc series called “The Lost Masters” that raids great chunks of Bruce Springsteen’s private vaults of unreleased songs.

Five discs of the 17 have been released. They prove two things. One, not everything that comes from Springsteen’s muse is genius (then again, he proved that with “Human Touch”). But two, when Springsteen finally does do the box set, he’s got a deep well of unreleased gems from which to draw.

Springsteen fans on the Internet have debated the ethics of the set for weeks, with rationalizations from “What if you could study Van Gogh’s early sketches?” to “Bruce doesn’t need the money anyway.”

Bottom ethical line: Someone stole this stuff. When you buy the CDs, you’re not only violating the artist’s trust but rewarding the thief.

If you can live with that, there’s a wealth of gems among the junk here - and supposedly at least a dozen more volumes of better material on the way. These are early sketches of his best-known songs (“The River,” “Glory Days,” “My Hometown”), worthy unreleased songs (“Sugarland,” “Follow That Dream,” “Protection,” “Unsatisfied Heart”) and unspoiled, unsweetened looks at some classics (the original versions of “Hungry Heart,” “Roulette,” “Stolen Car”).

There are plenty of “Nebraska”-like characters from the frustrated farmer in “Sugarland” to the running man in “Delivery Man.” They ask questions as simple as “Can you live with an unsatisfied heart?” (from “Unsatisfied Heart,” a precursor to 1987’s “Cautious Man”) and “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true?” (from “Angelyne,” an early version of “The River”). All in all, it’s more enticing than anything on the legitimate release “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”

The series is also filled with dross - unfinished ideas and aimless acoustic strumming. At $20 to $30 a disc, “The Lost Masters” is purely for the hard-core.

But even the hard-core may not be able to find these discs. This can only intensify the bootleg crackdown; Springsteen, after all, was the first major artist to go after bootleggers in the infamous “Vicky Vinyl” lawsuit in the late ‘70s.

Yet it again raises the stakes in the bootlegging game. It’s the most audacious move by the underground record industry since U2’s working tapes for “Achtung Baby” hit the streets while the band was still working on the proper album in the recording studio.

Bootleggers have forced artists to dig into their vaults and release their throwaways, from the “Basement Tapes” to the “Beatles Anthology” to the long-delayed “Pet Sounds Box.” Another bootlegger recently cataloged Van Morrison’s career with a trilogy of albums that included acoustic demos of “Wild Night,” “Caravan,” “Domino,” “Come Running” and scads of unreleased tracks - some of which are due to appear on Morrison’s own retrospective next year.

Maybe “The Lost Masters” will force the Boss’ hand as well.