Old Enough to Forget

When I first bought There Goes the Neighborhood I knew who Joe Walsh was, but other than a couple of songs on the radio I hadn't had the opportunity to hear any of his solo records. This was also true of the Eagles, but that's only tangentially related. The first Eagles record I'd pick up was Eagles Live in 1980 which more or less cemented my appreciation for Joe Walsh as a player. When Joe released There Goes the Neighborhood in '81 it would be my gateway into his solo career. I didn't quite know what to do with this one when I first heard it - this was a weird album. To me Joe Walsh was the rocker who wrote "In the City" for The Warriors soundtrack and was the guy who did "Rocky Mountain Way" and despite my teenage protestations that Triumph did it better - in the long run, Canada's other power trio couldn't hold a candle to the original. Of course "Life's Been Good" is pretty much the penultimate Joe Walsh song, but th...

Hold Out came after a three year hiatus, and it would set the pattern for his releases through the '80s. After the success of Running on Empty it seemed like an eternity between records but his audience was waiting patiently and Hold Out would become his lone number one album on the Billboard charts. The album didn't do as well here in Canada but it would crack the top ten stalling at number six. This was the album I came to a few years later when my friend Steve couldn't stop heaping praise on the record. At the time I was enjoying Lawyers in Love and I did like the songs I'd heard on the radio. Over the years I've had this album on vinyl, then CD and now again on vinyl. Why get it again? It was on sale ... and I'm a sucker ... and despite some pithy comments to come, I really liked this album. It's always fun going back and reading up on things that are decades old and discovering the vitriol some artists are blessed with from the various critics. Jackso...

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...