Money grabber song1/17/2024 I was totally smitten with Parsons’ take on Country Rock. Hearing GP forever changed my music life. What this all meant to me and my Gram Parsons discovery was that I was able to somehow find his debut solo record, GP on 8-Track, but not its posthumous follow-up, Grievous Angel. And of course, not all titles made it to this inferior forgotten format. It also sometimes took inserting a matchbook to align a tape to the head in the deck to stop the sound of one track bleeding into another. For those who have been there, I’m sure you remember how they had the nerve to introduce an unforgivable pause in a song they split between two of the four playing tracks. While 8-Tracks offered the convenience of play in both my cheap home system and my more-mighty sounding car set-up, they sucked in both their performance and availability. The worn-out family Hi-Fi station with a turntable went the way of the Salvation Army so vinyl records didn’t work for me. Likewise, his next band, The Flying Burrito Brothers was totally foreign to me.Īt this time in my life, outside of FM radio, my music listening came in the form of 8-Track tapes. I already owned The Byrds Sweetheart of the Rodeo, but I had yet to discover Gram’s influence on that record. This was 1973, and I was in process of discovering Country Rock, so Parsons’ musical pedigree had me intrigued. While this created some obvious limitations from my becoming a fan, it certainly didn’t stop me. The first time I ever heard the name Gram Parsons was when I read in Circus magazine that he had died. I think Bruce Springsteen himself ultimately realized its greatness and just how much it meant to tramps like me. One day you are sleeping in a surfboard shop and the next you are on the cover of Time and Newsweek.įor me, once I heard BTR, I knew that I would never love a record more than this, and to this day, I haven’t. But while making this record, Bruce began his relationship with Jon Landau, who not only helped produce the record, but became friend and manager, as well as the beacon to help guide him through all the madness that fame was about to bring. Ready to give up, he even went so far as to throw an early acetate pf BTR into a hotel swimming pool. He tried so hard to make the perfect song and record that achieving that goal became next to impossible. In my closet somewhere is the worn-out 8-track tape that I used to play back then.ĭespite its eventual success, the frustration of the record almost led to the end of Springsteen’s career. It’s also one of the best records of all time to listen to into the car. It even sports one of the greatest and most recognizable album covers of all time. If there’s a weak track on the record I haven’t found one. From the simple Bo Diddley beat of “She’s the One” to complex arrangements such as the mind-blowing sax solo by Clarence Clemons on “Jungleland.” Has there ever been a record more beautifully cinematic than BTR? “Thunder Road,” “Meeting Across the River,” and “Jungleland” all could have easily been embellished into screenplays. He reached me through passionate thoughtful lyrics and magnificent music played by the best band I would ever hear in my life. And while Springsteen changed over the years, it will always be that kid from the streets that I chose to identify with. Although he was older than me, it felt like we were both from the same place. From the moment I first set my eyes on that bearded kid in a leather jacket, I felt a kinship. But there was so much more to the record album that changed my life.Ī few weeks before I could buy BTR, I saw Bruce and his E Street Band live for the first time at the Bottom Line in New York City. I found the girl I loved and together we took that walk and somehow got there. Those tears reflected the joy of seeing my lifelong dreams fulfilled. Where we really want to go, and we’ll walk in the sun These lines from that song just clobbered my emotions back then and for the next 40 years made me cry every time I heard Bruce sing them live. The song’s message of faith and hope and the musical bombast of its wall of sound made me want to get into my car and drive to the Jersey Shore with my mystery girl to find life’s promise and leave all the worries of my world behind. My BTR love affair started with the tease of hearing the title track on New York City’s WNEW-FM whose radio waves crossed the Hudson into my New Jersey bedroom. While he started his ascent toward superstardom, I obsessively began to follow his every move. This record’s release in the late summer of 1975 changed my life as much as it did Springsteen’s. Driven by my participation in the “2020 Album Draft” organized by fellow blogger hanspostcard, as the draft progresses, here are the records I could not live without.
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