So the rumors that have been circulating around town turned out to be accurate. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band will play First Niagara Center on April 13. (Tickets go on sale at 11 a. m. Saturday.)

This show, a date on the 2012 “Wrecking Ball Tour,” (a trek that will celebrate the March 6 release of Springsteen’s new album), will mark the first time “Scooter” has played Buffalo without “the Big Man” by his side. The late E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons played his final show with Springsteen right here in Buffalo in the same venue, on Nov. 22, 2009. Springsteen has chosen not to replace him. So there’s that.

Almost simultaneously with the announcement of the Buffalo show came the release of “We Take Care of Our Own,” the first single from the forthcoming “Wrecking Ball” album. Reaction to the single thus far seems to be split among those who responded instantly to its infectious blend of Phil Spector-informed density and indelible chorus hook, and those who, rather unfathomably, are suspicious that Springsteen stole the tune’s melody from someone else. (NPR’s Ann Powers even suggested similarities with an old Flock of Seagulls’ tune and Arcade Fire on her blog.)

The release of the single, concurrent with the arrival of “Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan,” a four-disc box set of Bob Dylan songs, covered by a vast spectrum of artists (a percentage of sales of which will benefit Amnesty International), raises interesting issues about Springsteen, his fans and the role of “protest” music in 2012. The synchronicity feels loaded.

For Springsteen, new music is an absolute necessity. Without it, his actions suggest, the danger of artistic atrophy is far too great. He toured once without a new record on the racks, in 1999, when the E Street Band first reunited, but he shows no inclination of ever repeating that “career overview” show concept. Doubtless, the April Buffalo show will feature tunes from “Wrecking Ball” — an album that a source quoted in the Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone and elsewhere called “the angriest album he’s ever made” — in a prominent fashion.

The question is, will his fans want to hear it? Or perhaps more accurately, will more than half of the fans who plan on catching the show want to hear the new music?

Certainly, some will. Springsteen’s last two albums — 2007’s “Magic” and 2009’s “Working On A Dream” — are among his very best, and I am looking forward to hearing the new stuff. I’m hoping “Wrecking Ball” is brimming with the pop mini-symphonies that Springsteen seems to have perfected over the past decade — songs like “Your Own Worst Enemy,” “Girls In Their Summer Clothes” and “This Life.” These songs are the full fruition of Springsteen’s Roy Orbison fixation, and they truly represent an aspect of his artistry that is so often overlooked — he is a brilliant arranger and a great singer, one who is able to build soul-stirring multitracked vocal harmonies and work them into songs that are absolutely epic.

I’m encouraged by “We Take Care of Our Own,” which boasts some interesting production flourishes, some unexpected guitar textures, and capital-R Romantic vocal layering. The lyrics aren’t too shabby either, though they are likely to be misunderstood in a fashion similar to “Born in the U. S. A.,” which was so famously (briefly) hijacked by Ronald Reagan back in the day. Will Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney attempt to grab this new song, thinking its some sort of conventional patriotic anthem? Of course, the implication of Springsteen’s lyric here is the unspoken subtext — “We don’t take care of our own, and that’s a damn disgrace.” My guess is, Gingrich and Romney aren’t gonna wanna go near that one.

An acquaintance of mine — who is also a longtime Springsteen fan — once complained bitterly to me about what he called “Springsteen’s liberal guilt complex,” which this acquaintance employed to write off “pretty much everything he’s done since ‘The River.’ ”

I submit that it’s exactly this “liberal guilt” that makes Springsteen such a powerful and passionate writer. For “liberal guilt,” read “conscience.”

In her introduction to a new translation of Albert Cossery’s brilliant novel “Proud Beggars,” Alyson Waters discusses Cossery’s twofold conception of pride thus: “Pride is important for Cossery, for whom the concept cuts two ways. The pride of the powerless is a good thing: among those born to poverty, it shows strength and dignity; among those who enjoy greater prosperity, a principled rejection of the trappings of a bourgeois life.” (Italics mine.) That, for me, is Springsteen in a nutshell. It’s the modus operandi of the writer of “protest songs,” certainly.

I have a creeping suspicion, developed over time, that many of the folks who claim to be major, big-time Springsteen fans haven’t been paying particularly close attention to what he’s been doing since, say, “Born in the U. S. A.” I believe that many of them would prefer to hear a set comprised solely of “the old stuff.” I wonder if they are simply enduring the music motivated by what my acquaintance called “Springsteen’s liberal guilt complex,” and biding their time until they hear “Jungleland.”

That’s a drag. I hope I’m wrong. Springsteen doesn’t belong in the nostalgia museum. He’s still one of the most vital artists going.•

jmiers@buffnews.comnull