Skip to main content

Eddie Money - Eddie Money

Eddie Money always seemed like a guy who was just on the cusp of being a really big deal. He'd get close but he never really quite made it to the front of the line. His debut album was released in December of 1977 but the album gained traction well into 1978 with songs like "Baby Hold On" and "Two Tickets to Paradise" which were arguably two of his biggest songs.

I found this one in a bargain bin that warned me the album was sold "as is"and buyer beware. The vinyl looked fine to me ... and there were a couple of copies. I asked if I could swap covers as one of them had Eddie sporting a wonderful ball point pen moustache and the cover I ended up with had an old CFUN radio station sticker on it. I was fine with that, as CFUN had a lot of nostalgia associated with it - there was a time the two stations worth listening to in the early 70s were CKLG and CFUN and you could bounce between them on your radio and find something worth listening to.

Oddly the first album I bought of his was No Control and I bought it because I loved the slide guitar solo on "I Think I'm in Love" the rest rest of the album was okay, although "Shakin'" was a pretty awesome song. I can't really remember much about the rest. This seemed to be a pattern, even on his debut - which if I'm being honest is a really solid effort and very enjoyable, it really comes down to two extraordinarily good tunes that have stood the test of time - and those are the two aforementioned songs "Two Tickets to Paradise" the first cut from side one, and "Baby Hold On" the first cut from the second side.

I guess this is why when I think of Eddie Money I think of a guy who had some awesome songs, but I don't really think of the albums they came from. Which is unfair I know, but it is what it is. The fact I'm sitting in my basement with the album cranked actually runs counter to everything I've just written. Life is full of little contradictions. While it's playing it's very enjoyable. The production still sounds crisp and the songs are all really quite good. If I was to play this really loud with Marc Cohn in the room and I asked him if he was a fan I suspect he'd say something like "Man, I am tonight."

I've played this through a few times and each time I find myself enjoying it more that the time before - but I know that as soon as I put this back in its sleeve it's like Tommy Lee Jones used his memory eraser on me, and I'll look at the album and only remember the two big hits - I'll play it again and wonder why I don't play it more often.

My friend Gail really likes Eddie Money, and when I found this album I thought of her. At some point when she and the gang are over I'll put this one and live vicariously through her reaction. 

Mister Eddie Money passed away back in 2019 and he left behind a legacy of solid songs that would be the envy of many artists.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and 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 that had a bonus track of " Get It On (Bang A Gong)" that when I bought the album 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. However, at the time all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the first cut "Baby Come Back" and proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another and closed out the album (sans any...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meat Loaf - Bat Out of Hell

File under: TLDR Note to the reader. First sorry, second not really, but I am sorry I don't have the ability to edit. Oh happy Valentine's day.  To celebrate let's take a gander at Meat Loaf's 1977 Bat Out of Hell. Over forty three million people disagree with me but for decades I thought this album was, and continues to be, one giant disappointment. I'll be the first to admit that despite decades of baggage the overwhelming power of nostalgia managed to erode even the hardest of convictions and I found that Bat Out of Hell was one of those albums I wanted to have in my collection, but I wasn't looking all that hard. It was an album I knew more about than I actually knew about. So at this moment in time I'm still holding firm on my long held opinion. But before I get into things, it's time for some meanderambling blurbage ... I remember seeing the cover when I was a kid and thinking it was the single greatest cover I had ever seen. What wonders were to b...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ...  It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continues to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner who had been with Gary from the beg...
Post a Comment
Read more