Old Enough to Forget

Running on Empty is an album I associate with the early '80s, even though it came out in December of 1977. "Running on Empty" was the big song, and boy oh boy it had legs. Reading up on this one it was up for a couple of Grammy Awards in 1979. One for album of the year , and another for male vocal performance for "Running on Empty" which was pretty cool. As a record, Running on Empty was a bit of odd duck when it comes to live albums. Rather than the usual best of approach with crowd noise, Jackson Browne took a hard left at Albuquerque and road tested and recorded new songs. There were live songs, rehearsal songs, songs on a bus (which is really good, you can hear the bus), songs in a hotel room, and songs recorded backstage. He recorded it all over, everything recorded was part of the touring experience. Jackson Browne assembled a band featuring the best of the best. Russ Kunkel on drums, Leland Sklar on bass, Danny Kortchmar on guitar, and the incredible D...

Linda Ronstadt has been one of those wonderful discoveries over the last few years. Get Closer came out in '82 and after her brief foray into new wave that featured a few Elvis Costello songs on her previous album Mad Love she was back to being Linda Ronstadt, and all was right with the world.  Times they were a changin' and Linda was content being herself and she was enough of a presence now that she could be herself and that was enough. For me at the time, Linda Ronstadt was about as far off my radar as you could get. Other than the few songs I knew from the radio she wasn't relevant to me ... at all. It may not have just been me me either, as Get Closer would mark her first album in almost a decade that wouldn't crack the top 5. The album would go gold in the US which is still a pretty solid accomplishment, but she had reached the summit, and no one stays on top forever. Anyway you can read that kind of stuff on Wikipedia, I know I did.  It's about the music, ...

In the fall of '84 two albums dropped that were huge for me. Toto's maligned Isolation , and Don Henley's Building the Perfect Beast . Toto's album will be another day but today I'm sitting in the basement with the music on and pretending in twenty one again and discovering the album for the first time. David and Steve from Toto show up here quite a bit which I always thought was cool. I'd heard "Boys of Summer" on the radio and that song was so good, and the fact I had a Grateful Dead sticker on my car at the time only added to the fun. I always think of the album as being excellent, but honestly the two songs I really associate with the album are the aforementioned "Boys of Summer" and "Sunset Grill" ... I try not to think about "All She Wants to Do Is Dance" because I still think it's a giant musical turd. I still remember pouring over the credits while listening to the album, and "Boys of Summer" drove me...