Born in the U.S.A. - Bruce Springsteen

When Bruce Springsteen dropped Born in the U.S.A. in 1984, I was turning 21. It was a victory of sorts against the forces of Michael Jackson's Thriller, which was somehow still managing to pull singles a couple of years after it came out. Here was Bruce, just being The Boss, and somehow his newly acquired biceps, along with a catchy song and video for "Dancing in the Dark" (I can't explain why I hear The Cars' "Moving in Stereo" in my head whenever I think of this song), propelled him and the album into the upper stratosphere, going 17 times platinum in the U.S.A. and selling over 30 million copies worldwide. That's a hell of a feat for an essentially average album with some good songs, but it wasn't something I lost my shit over when I heard his songs on the radio.

Truth is, I was never really a big fan. Sure, I kind of liked "Born to Run," but his music felt old. Yeah, I know this borders on blasphemy, but like I said, it was a very good album. I'm still moved when I hear "I'm on Fire," "Cover Me" is awesome, and I still get a kick out of "I'm Goin' Down," but when I think of the album, I don't think masterpiece; I think of it as a really decent album. But honestly, I'm still perplexed by the perfect storm of events that propelled this to the top of the class. For the life of me, I can't figure out how "Glory Days" became a hit, and no one seems to call out the guitar at the beginning for being out of tune. Heck, maybe it isn't, and the dissonance I'm hearing is just my brain trying to understand how this became a hit. Sort of the same way I can't understand how Huey Lewis managed to get airplay with "Bad Is Bad." Heck, it was right there in the title.

Anyway, here's Bruce riding the perfect wave, landing seven of the album's 12 songs in the Top 10. That's nothing short of amazing. Despite all the success and rock radio play, I didn't buy the album when it was... on fire (extra points if you sang that last bit in your head as you read it). I didn't feel compelled to get a copy so I could hear it more often. I really am a contrarian at times, I guess. Although, at one point I did have the live box set, and that was a great collection. With him still riding the wave, it was a massive hit too. The guy was known for his concerts for a reason.

Listening to this now, I am still ambivalent toward the title track. It didn't resonate back then, and it doesn't now, although nostalgia allows me to listen to it all the way through and appreciate the song for what it actually is. Somewhere in the noise and bravado and assumed jingoistic sentiment was a lament, not a celebration leading to a fist-pumping chant of "USA! USA! USA!"

Ah man, sorry - I just lost my train of thought. I'm playing the album again while I jot down my gibberish, and "Glory Days" just came on. I'm too far away to get up and lift the needle, so I'll wait it out. "Dancing in the Dark" is next, and I get to visualize a young, hot Courteney Cox wearing Phoebe Cates' red bikini... sorry, where was I? Ah, that's why I hear "Moving in Stereo." Makes sense to me now.

The album closes out with the slow, haunting, and rather dated-sounding "My Hometown." You may be wondering why I even bothered getting this if I was so "meh" about the album. Honestly, it's because it has, for the most part, stood the test of time. Bruce's unwavering, organic roots rock, which when I was a kid sounded old, now sounds timeless. It may just be that I was slow on the uptake.

For a moment in time, Bruce was the antithesis of the stereotypical rock star. Today, he's rock royalty. Who knows why things happen the way they happen, but if they were to happen to someone, Bruce always seemed like the guy you'd want them to happen to.

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock band, almost progressive at times, who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , ...

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and it was one of the albums I really wanted to get back after a basement flood wiped out my vinyl collection in the '90s (when no one really gave a shit about records, and my insurance gave me a couple hundred bucks for an appraised $10,000 collection). Way back in 1984, my (dearly departed and greatly missed) buddy Dave let me borrow his cassette copy, which included a bonus track of "Get It On (Bang A Gong)." When I eventually bought the album, I didn't know it was a bonus track, or even what a bonus track was. If that sentence was hard to read, just go back and skim it. I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'd find out later Billy was an off-and-on-again member of Nazareth and wrote some absolutely killer songs for them. At the time, though, all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the opening cut, "Baby Come Back," then proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another bef...

Garfield - Strange Streets

I'd seen this before in the bin, but kept flipping through the stacks. I'd see it a few more times, each time stopping to look at it a little more. There was something kind of cool about the cover where the stylized Celtic knot had the dotted yellow line - it was a strange street for sure. I pulled the record out of the jacket and I was struck by the centre image. There was the familiar Mercury label, the same one I'd seen a thousand times on BTO's Head On album. Well, I'd bought things based on odd associations before - like when I had to buy anything that Solid Rock Records released (this was generally a good thing) - so who knows, maybe this was a hidden gem. There weren't any real scratches or rash, just a lot of dirt and dust. It seemed to clean up okay, but we'll see how it goes. The album opens with the title track, and this wasn't straight-ahead pop or rock. It was leaning toward the progressive, but with a pop bent. Oddly enough, the vocals rem...

Old Enough to Forget

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