"No Control" by Eddie Money (1982)

View the Premise & Ground Rules for Revisiting Vinyl.

Filed Between: A doo-wop complication called "Moments to Remember" and The Monkees.

"When you're running with the devil, you got no one else to blame."

Key Tracks:
LPs often frontload their tracks.  "No Control" is no different.  Its first three songs are its three best: Shakin', Runnin' Away and Think I'm in Love.  Passing by the Graveyard (Song for John B.) is as good as the title promises with a great sax solo.

Obvious Filler and Swings-&-Misses:
I really want to like My Friends, My Friends because of the sentiment behind it, but it just never gets there.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Seperately:
HIGHLY Recommended (3.5/4 stars)

"No Control" sets the tone early and never really strays.  Shakin' is catchy and uptempo and irresistable.  It's a great song about driving and a great song about sex.  Shakin' makes me wanna go do it in a sports car.  And that's pretty much Eddie Money (and absolutely "No Control") in a nutshell.

I'll put Eddie Money's two guitarist up against most any hair metal act of the time.  And the vocal deliveries blend Sting, Frank Sinatra and David Lee Roth in the best possible way.  "No Control" is a great driving record.  But it's so upbeat and hooky that it's only a great doin'-it record if you're doin' it while driving.  Even Hard Life starts out as a ballad, but eventually wells into something grander without so much as a tempo change.  There's not a breather until My Friends, My Friends - track eight of eleven. 

And then it closes with another car/sex song.  "We felt passion's burning heat with the static glow of the radio."  Yeah, I definitely wanna go do it in a sports car now.  And I've got a beautiful wife and a Mustang sitting right outside...

So, is it an album?  Yes.  It's cohesive, it's consistent and it's fun.  This is the most I've enjoyed an LP (that I didn't already know) in a long time.  And that's exactly why I got back into vinyl.

Up next, some old-school country with "Your Sweet Love Lifted Me" by Ferlin Husky.