Wow, it’s been a while. Sorry, internet friends. July was such a hectic month. From rehearsals for shows, to prepping for my trip back to WI by getting two extra weeks worth of work done beforehand, to driving to and from WI and getting to spend some time with my brother for the first time in almost three year; July was a hell of a month. Also had some really fun shows but man did July come with counter-punches. I blew out a tire in the middle of nowhere Indiana (it was pretty much my fault though, so…), learned how to put on a spare and got to spend a morning at a Pep Boys (thank you Pep Boys in Franklin, IN for bumping me up in the queue so I could get back on the road that afternoon). It also turns out driving 9 hours a day is not fun and not a thing that someone with ADHD, at least in my case, is good at. And one thing I’ve learned by driving the 1000+ miles to WI and the 1000+ back is that Joe Biden better get this infrastructure bill passed soon because our roads suck. And can someone please figure out a way to not have to drive right through Chicago when passing by? I can’t believe there’s not a bypass to go around that fucking mess of city. Of course, most of my hatred for Chicago comes from the Bears and the Cubs, so… I actually have a lot of fun whenever I visit.
Oh, and I got Covid for a second time during the trip. Luckily, because of the vaccine, I barely noticed and had only one day where I felt sorta blah. It mostly felt like maybe I worked out a little too hard the day before or had one too many the night before. But I knew something was up when my apartment got to 80 degrees and I didn’t feel warm; so I guess I had a minor fever too. But with my two bouts of Covid and two shots, I should be done with this until next year, I hope, maybe, please (knocks on wood)… Last year, it leveled me and I was out for 3-4 days where I could barely eat or sleep between the fever, nausea, excruciating muscle pain, etc. so it seems like the jab did its job. Stay safe people…
Anyways, I wanted to take my mind off of all that today and just talk music. Specifically, a really fun question my brother recently posed to me: what are your top albums that you consider all hits and no misses? Basically, your favorite albums start to finish. I definitely had to think for a few minutes on that one. Then, I thought some more. Then, I decided I’d jump on here and suss out my thoughts because why waste time researching and putting together a definitive list when you can just see what the first ones that come to mind are? Yeah, that sounds more like the Bradley Wik way. I’m either all in or all out. Either I spend the next week researching this or I just go for it. Nike has spent millions of dollars insisting I “just do it” so I guess I’ll take that advice today.
No research needed for the first ones on this list as they’re my 2 favorite records of all-time. I’ll probably end up writing two or three of these blog posts as I know I tend to get long winded when I’m writing about my favorite music. I’ll be listing my favorite and least favorite song from the album and I’ll be giving an explanation as to why each album is on the list. I’ll also be covering what the album means to me as a piece of art in conjunction with when it came into my life. Context has proven to mean a lot to me in regards to my love of certain music. As it is with falling in love and trying to pick out fruit, timing can be everything.
Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
Favorite song: Born to Run
Least favorite song: Meeting Across the River
Where better to start than with my favorite album of all-time? My love for this album runs deep. It was a transformational album in my life and probably the main reason I play Rock ‘n’ Roll music today. I’ve written at length about how this album was my madeleine-dipped-in-tea moment. If you’re not a fan of Proust, and most aren’t, what I mean by that is listening to Born to Run for the first time made my brain explode with all sorts of new thoughts and emotions that I had never experienced before. I couldn’t fathom what was happening. I felt overwhelmed with a newfound joy that had been stirred up inside me.
For context, I think I was 16 years old. I had likely heard the song Born to Run on the radio at some point but never really listened to Bruce until then. I had just gotten my grandma’s old turntable (one of those huge wooden ones with the speakers built in where you can close the lid and use it as a buffet table during Christmas or Thanksgiving gatherings…) and Born to Run was one of the few records I grabbed from my mom’s collection to test it out. I’ll never forget the first time I played that album. I put the album on upside down so the song Born to Run instantly came bursting out of the speakers. I had never really listened to vinyl, so not only was the music blowing me away but the sound was as well. I closed my eyes. Everything sounded so real and three dimensional and it felt like Bruce and the band were playing right there in my tiny bedroom. I probably listened to that record a dozen more times that day. The music, the stories, the production; everything was just perfect. Well, except I wasn’t immediately in love with Meeting Across the River. That one took some time to come around on. But, I’ve come to love it and can’t imagine this album without it now. You need that jazzy little story-driven vignette before launching into the epicness of Jungleland.
Born to Run was the record that made me want to be a Rock ‘n’ Roll bandleader. Up until then, I was determined to become the next Angus Young. I had no natural talent for music in any form but figured with enough work I could learn the guitar. I knew I would never be Jimi Hendrix since I had no natural talent but Angus seemed a little more achievable. You know? Just one of the greatest Rock guitarists of all-time but not the greatest. I had reasonable expectations for myself….
But when I heard Bruce, I wanted to sing. Only I had never really thought about doing that before. And that was for one simple reason: I couldn’t sing. Like, at all. And when I say I couldn’t sing, I really, really mean I couldn’t sing. So, how was I going to learn how to sing? Join the choir or hire a teacher and learn scales and shit? This is Rock ‘n’ Roll. My plan was simple: I played Bruce Springsteen records and tried to emulate him. I focused on his live albums the most. And I did this for hours and hours on end, almost every day for years. It’s no wonder that after one of my first shows with a band, someone gave us a review (which is weird to say now. Do people still do live show reviews? Are there still any local music/arts newspapers with people dedicated to live music?) where they said I was a cheap Springsteen knockoff that needed to figure out why anyone should listen to me instead of the real thing. My bandmates thought I’d be crushed. I wasn’t. I thought getting even to the level of “cheap Springsteen knockoff” was an achievement unto itself considering where I had started, which was as a guy who was all thumbs on the guitar and whose singing might be rightfully misidentified as someone being tortured, when, in fact, it was I who was torturing them with my horrendous caterwauling.
But, I’ve written so much about Springsteen over the years, I’m just gonna stop there and make this entry short and sweet. If you want to read a (very) long account of why I love this album and why I play music in general, you can find that HERE. It’s probably the best blog post I’ve written so it’s probably worth a few minutes of your time.
Blood on the Tracks - Bob Dylan
Favorite song: Idiot Wind
Least favorite song: Meet Me in the Morning
Anyone who tries to convince you that Blonde on Blonde or Freewheelin’ or Bringing It All Back Home or Highway 61 Revisited is better than this album is nuts. I’m just going to start there. Blood on the Tracks is hands down the greatest Dylan record there is. I’ll accept if you prefer another album and I’ll hear your arguments, and probably even agree with some of them. Hell, I probably put on Blonde on Blonde more than this album. Though lately, I’ve been on more of a Highway 61 kick. But every time I come back to Blood on the Tracks, I’m blown away by how amazing this album truly is. That’s why it’s #2 on my all-time list, just slightly edging out another Springsteen album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, for that spot.
I got really into Dylan in middle school and then became full on obsessed by the time I got to high school. Before Dylan, I liked music but spent more of of my free time reading rather than listening to music. Kurt Vonnegut was my first non-sports hero. I gobbled up his books at breakneck pace, eventually coming to own what I think is every book he wrote. I was fascinated by the way he told his stories and how he created his worlds. His characters, even the minor ones, were just so fucking interesting. There’s more than a few of his books that would make my top 25 books of all-time, if I ever made such a list. I didn’t think anyone had a better grasp of the English language or could manipulate it in such magical ways…until I heard Bob Dylan.
Like a lot of people, my first dalliance with Dylan was probably via Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door or Like a Rolling Stone being played on the radio. And while those songs typify Dylan to many, they didn’t quite grab me initially. I love both songs now and have actually covered both in bands over the years, but at the time they just didn’t quite pop for me. Knockin’ was an out of context song from a movie soundtrack and the grandiosity of Like a Rolling Stone didn’t really come through the 3” speaker on my little radio. But then I heard Mr. Tambourine Man. Everything changed. The simplicity of the guitar under that mountain of poetic imagery stopped me in my tracks. I had to hear more of this.
Sorry this just popped into my head and I wanted to tell you before I forgot. Here’s a funny example of the way my Asperger’s brain works sometimes. It might seem meandering but that’s how my brain works.
We didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up so I didn’t really own many CD’s until I was like 14 or 15 and I could afford to buy them myself. And I never really got into Napster and the whole illegal music thing. I would eventually download my fair share of music but it was mostly live bootlegs or like the weird European re-release of something that featured an extra song or two. So, if I wanted to hear a song on demand, I had to do the old school wait until a song was on the radio and tape it. After I had heard Mr. Tambourine Man I wanted to get that one on a tape as soon as possible. So, every day when I got home from school, I ran upstairs and flipped on my radio and waited for it to come on. I listened and listened and listened but it didn’t come on again for days, might have even been weeks. Then one day I was vacuuming the stairs and heard that opening chorus coming from the stereo in my room. But I couldn’t leave the vacuum as it would fall down the stairs so I had to shut off the vacuum run it back down the stairs and then sprint back up the stairs to hit the record button. If stair climbing was an Olympic sport I could’ve medalled that day. But, because I had to do that I missed recording that opening chorus. Now, that was probably 15 or 16 years ago at this point and that tape is long gone, but to this day when I play Mr. Tambourine Man live at shows, which I do sometimes, I sometimes forget to play that first chorus because that’s the way my brain remembers it from that stupid fucking tape. Anyways, back to Dylan.
I decided to start listening to all of his records in chronological order. It’s something I’ve done with a few bands now and it’s a really interesting way to consume a catalog. It’s like you’re taking the artistic journey along with the artist but on a super sped up timeline. I’ll start with their debut album and listen to nothing but that album for like two weeks or a month, depending on how much I like it, then move on to the next one and then the next one. Of all the artists I’ve done this with, Dylan’s artistic journey was the most fascinating, with the Beatles probably number two behind him. From those early folk standards and his own cheap knockoff imitations of them to then becoming the greatest folk singer of all-time. Then, there’s that incredible mid-60’s run up until his motorcycle accident. Then he comes back with a new voice and a country record. Then he puts out a couple of albums that are incredibly mediocre and it seems like he’s forgotten how to write a song (the one exception I’ll give to those records is they did spawn The Man in Me, which is a song I can’t imagine the Big Lebowski without. So, worth it, I guess?). Then he hides away in upstate New York and has that enormous set of bootlegs and releases some live stuff. Then almost out of nowhere this album hits. It’s almost ten years between Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks. It sure seemed like he had lost his fastball and was just going to be a good but not great songwriter the rest of his career. Sure, John Wesley Harding has some great moments, Nashville Skyline is fun and Self Portrait and New Morning…um, exist…but none are even in the same league as Blonde on Blonde and those earlier records. So, when I came upon this I was on the verge of giving up on his stuff post the 60’s. I’m so glad I didn’t. I had heard that this was a great one but after those other records I started questioning the people who kept telling me to just wait until I get to Blood on the Tracks, I’ll love it.
Blood on the Tracks redefined what I thought folk and folk-rock music could be. I didn’t know this level existed. He somehow found his old level of songwriting, with all that incredible imagery and storytelling, and added in so much more emotion and soul to it (I’m sure writing an album about your recent divorce would bring that out of you). His characters became much more human and multi-dimensional, rather than just another Ophelia ‘neath a window or an updated John the Baptist after torturing a thief. I could really feel the stories he was telling on this album; which itself is not an easy thing for a person with Asperger’s, such as myself. And the way he balanced those stripped down, emotional songs from the New York session with the more upbeat band tunes he did in Minneapolis is just perfect. I’m really big into the track sequencing of albums and this is one of the best, if not the best, out there in terms of not only getting the right songs but using the order of them to tell a story unto itself.
One of the other thing that makes this album so great is that I can’t picture most of these songs on a different album. These tunes are so unique and they can only exist on Blood on the Tracks. Sure, there’s a couple of his more standard fare in Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts and Meet Me in the Morning, but I can’t picture the others in any other packaging.
I could write an entire blog post just about this album, and I practically have, so I think I’ll end it there.
So, those are the first two. I have at least a few more in mind, so keep an eye out for those. And don’t worry, you won’t have to wait over a month for the next post…
