"Bookends" by Simon & Garfunkel (1968)

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Fun Fact: The America record I was supposed to listen to was so grooveworn that the needle slipped straight to the end every time I put it down.

"If your hopes should pass away, simply pretend that you can build them again."

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
REQUIRED LISTENING (4/4 stars).  Seriously, if you haven't heard every song on this record, you owe it to yourself to check them out.  I'm not even gonna link to any songs on this one.  I truly believe you should go find a copy and listen to the whole thing front to back and then listen to it again.

Let's just cut to the chase here...

So, is it an album?  Yes.  I honestly think that whenever people mention "Pet Sounds" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in the context of "an album," they should mention "Bookends" right along with them.

"Bookends" is NOT a concept album.  That phrase gets thrown around and overapplied waaaay too much in my estimation.  To me, a concept album is a linear narrative that tells a single, specific story.  Let me give an example that will probably cost me half my readership.  "The Wall" is a concept album.  It chronicles the rise and fall of an individual character.  However, [he cringes as he writes it] "Dark Side of the Moon" is NOT a concept album.  There, I've said it.  By the way, "Hotel California," and "Pet Sounds" are NOT concept albums either. 

They're all something I enjoy far more.  They're theme albums.  I love theme albums.  Theme albums are not locked into the rigid formula of a specific narrative.  Instead, they explore a few very specific ideas and roll and reinterpret those ideas in different ways on different songs.  Often, they repeat lyrics or musical phrases on several tracks to provide a thread throughout the record.  Theme albums are the most enjoyable kind of dissertation. 

My top-five, all-time favorite theme albums are:

5. "Hotel California" by The Eagles

4. "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd

3. "American Recordings" by Johnny Cash

2. "Bookends" by Simon & Garfunkel

1. "Nebraska" by Bruce Springsteen

Despite its poppy sixties sound, "Bookends" is a desperate album.  It's all about isolation and death and the unspoken angst of suburban life and the growing displacement of the American dream.  "Kathy, I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping is one of the best individual lyrics ever.  Taken in the entire context of "Bookends," it's a spike straight to the heart.

Up next, "Moods by Neil Diamond.

"Skynyrd's First and... Last" by Lynyrd Skynyrd (1978)

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Filed between: Loretta Lynn and Madonna.

Key Tracks:
Preacher's Daughter, Was I Right or Wrong, Comin' Home

Obvious Filler & Swings-and-Misses:
Wino sounds like Black Sabbath doing a parody of Lynyrd Skynyrd.  The Seasons - unless you're Genesis, don't ever let your drummer sing lead vocal.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
Recommended Listening (3/4 stars)

Lynyrd Skynyrd will never die.  At this point, they are just as much an American institution as Chevrolet, Lee Greenwood or breast implants.  However, I'm gonna call this a posthumous release.  It came on the heels of them losing their voice and their soul and was their "last" studio release before a decade-long hiatus.

And posthumous releases are tricky things for both fans and record companies.  Fans want to pay respects and mourn, but they also want to hear whatever's left in the archive - hoping to find one last secret gem, but that almost never happens.  Record companies want to cash in without blatently looking like they're cashing in or selling out.  And besides, what do you release: b-sides, half-finished studio tracks, live stuff?

Fans and MCA both got lucky with this one.  "Skynyrd's First and... Last" was actually an early studio album recorded by the band before they wisely scrapped it.  I find it odd that I'm saying it was wise to scrap a record I just called recommended listening.  But the truth is, it's nowhere near the juggernaut REQUIRED LISTENING of "Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd."  However, this version of Was I Right or Wrong gives me deeper chills than Tuesday's Gone.  On the flipside, Things Goin' On got greatly improved on "Pronounced" - not to mention Simple Man and Freebird.

Even so, as far as posthumous releases go, "Skynyrd's First and... Last" is about as close to a last secret gem as you can get, except for maybe Johnny Cash's "American VI" and that Nirvana record nobody will ever hear but Courtney Love.

So, is it an album?  Yes.  And it's pure Lynyrd Skynyrd to boot - uneven as it may be.

Up next, "Homecoming" by America.

"Donovan in Concert" by Donovan (1968)

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Fun Fact:
"Donovan in Concert" has given me a new catchphrase.  "Death to pennywhistles!"

Filed between: Doctor Hook & The Medicine Show and The Doors.

Key Tracks:
It REALLY depends on what you're in to.  For me, it was the dark, haunted stillness of Guinevere.

Obvious Filler & Swings-and-Misses:
Again, it's all a matter of opinion.  I thought it was all the overly long tracks with the whole band like Young Girl Blues and Preachin' Love.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
Average (2/4 stars)

"First, there is a mountain.  Then there isn't.  Then there is."  That sums this thing up better than I could ever hope to.  A disc jockey introduces an elderly Scotsman, whose sole purpose is to introduce a younger Scotsman.  There is thunderous applause accompanied by canned big band musical interludes - which abruptly stop as a folk song begins to play.  There are references to butterflies disguised as cats.  Yeah, I'll say it again - there are references to butterflies disguised as cats.  There's this line: "In my crystal halls a feather falls being beautiful just for you."  And there's pennywhistle EVERYWHERE.  By the end of "Donovan in Concert," the pennywhistle has actually seeped into your pores and you realize you're going to smell like pied piper manlove for the next three days.

There are literally no two songs on this thing that sound at all alike.  I am not making this up.  I will now run down the genre (in order) of every track on the album:


SIDE I:

Pure folk

Sinatra-saturated swing

Folk pop

Celtic music (if Simon & Garfunkel did Celtic music)

Singer/songwriter

The "Donovan" sound with heavy tinges of The Velvet Underground

Middle-ages troubadour music


SIDE II:

Traditional Irish folk music

Beatnik jazz

Minstrel tune (sung in an incomprehensible Robert Burns brogue)

Waltz

Children's music

Bob-Dylan-Cockney-Vaudeville (You go listen to Rules and Regulations and come up with something better - I dare you)

Psychedelic rock with an old school rock 'n roll sax solo.


So, is it an album?  No.  To it's credit, "Donovan in Concert" is all taken from a single recorded show.  However, I can't imagine being at that show without heavy doses of LSD to fill in all the mind-warping gaps that exist between each and every song.

Up next, I continue to dodge the karma police and get to listen to another of my favorite bands.  It's the bittersweet demo tape/final release by the definitive southern rock band's original line-up: "Lynyrd Skynyrd's First and... Last."

"Damn the Torpedoes" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (1979)

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Filed between: Peter, Paul & Mary and Wilson Pickett.  (Of course it is.)

Key Tracks Track Listing:
Refugee
Here Comes My Girl
Even the Losers
Shadow of a Doubt (A Complex Kid)
Century City
Don't Do Me Like That
You Tell Me
What Are You Doin' in My Life?
Louisiana Rain

Even though he still plays it live some, Louisiana Rain is absolutely a deep cut on an LP that has four of the biggest songs in the classic rock canon.  And it's beautiful.  If you've never heard this song, do me a favor - do yourself a favor - go listen to it right now.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
Duh.  REQUIRED LISTENING (4/4 stars).  Seriously, if you haven't heard every song on this record, you owe it to yourself to check them out.

If Revisiting Vinyl is my ongoing love letter to popular music, then this entry will be my long-distance marriage proposal.

Everybody loves Tom Petty.  My punk uncle - whose cassette collection included both The Dead Milkmen AND The Dead Kennedys - had "Full Moon Fever."  So, did my straight-laced, fundamentalist dad.  I have seen both of them tilt their head back and croon along to Yer So Bad.  And I have done so myself many, many times.

My friend Jonathon said once that you can listen to any Tom Petty song and think "I could've written that."  And he immediately followed it up with "but no, no you couldn't."  Petty is that perfect storm of Dylan and The Beatles that so many artists have gone insane trying to find.

Petty is unquestionably southern rock.  He's firmly new wave.  He's arena gold.  His songs are immediately sing-along-able.  He may be the most FM-radio savvy artist of all time.  And those genres aren't periods in his career; that's what he puts into every song.

"Even the losers get lucky sometimes."  That's how we all feel.  That's what we all want to believe.  And that's why we all love him - he's the underdog sports movie of the musical world.

So, is it an album?  Hell, yes.  Thank you, Mike Campbell.  Thank you, Benmont Tench.  Thank you, thank you, Thomas Earl Petty.

Up next, "Donovan in Concert" by Mahalia Jackson.  Just kidding, it's by Donovan.

"Your Sweet Love Lifted Me" by Ferlin Husky (1970)

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Filed between: Whitney Houston and Billy Idol.  (Seriously?!)

Fun Fact:
In true classic country form, there's an Acuff-Rose song on "Your Sweet Love Lifted Me."

Key Tracks:
Sweet Misery is just what you want from an old-school country crooner.  Set Me Free is about the only song that picks up a good late-sixties country vibe.  So much so that I checked to see if it was a Tom T. Hall song.  It wasn't.

Obvious Filler & Swings-and-Misses:
It could be argued that every song is a swing-and-miss.  However, This Little Girl of Mine is off the mark in a totally different way.  I love my daughter more than life itself, but I HATE maudlin daddy songs more than most anything.  (Revisiting Vinyl has sailed these seas before with Alabama's abyssmal Never Be One.)  And why do grown men always try to imitate a three year old girl?  And how do they never seem to think it sounds like a creepy-ass horror movie villain?

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
Average (2/4 stars).  That's about the most damning review anybody can give.  Roger Ebert put it best when he said that most any movie will get at least two stars if you like movies at all.

There were a lot of country songs in the late fifties and early sixties that weren't so much country as they were rock 'n roll almost-novelty songs: White Lightnin', Wolverton Mountain, Sixteen Tons, Hello Walls, Saginaw Michigan - the list goes on and on.  Ferlin Husky had his own successful entry into this arena with 1959's Gone.  Eleven years later, he revisted that realm with another such song - Waterloo on "Your Sweet Love Lifted Me."  Unfortunately, the shelf life for a genre that specific is very short.

1970 was right on the cusp of country music's return to older songs, sounds and artists.  But when it did, it rewrote them in a new, interesting way (Exhibit A: Charlie Rich).  Songs stylings from the fifties couldn't sustain the same innocent charm when sung with the experience of Vietnam and the drug years - not mention heavy doses of our old friend, the nostalgia filter.

However, folks who had been in the game as long as Ferlin Husky know how to deliver a song.  Trouble is, they can be prone to toeing the line and are often happy to just stand pat, no matter how dated their once-innovative sound becomes.  "Your Sweet Love Lifted Me" sounds good, but it also sounds - to borrow a line from Mr. Husky - gone, even by 1970's standards.

So, is it an album?  No.  It's just a collection of songs.

Up next, score!  The random number generator gods are smiling on me.  First it was Seger, then Mellencamp, and now it's Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with their breakout release, "Damn the Torpedoes."  Booyah!

"No Control" by Eddie Money (1982)

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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.

"American Fool" by John Cougar (1982)

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Filed between: Elvis Costello and The Country Gentlemen.

"Forget about Heaven, let me stay here forever."

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
REQUIRED LISTENING (4/4 stars).  Seriously, if you haven't heard every song on this record, you owe it to yourself to check them out.

Okay, I'm gonna turn into that guy again.  I'm a Mellencamp apologist.  I'll defend pretty much anything he's ever done except for that rap thing with Chuck D (Cuttin' Heads) - that was just plain crap.  After "Scarecrow," I think "American Fool" is hands down his best and most consistent effort.  I have owned this record on vinyl, cassette and CD.  In fact, I began writing about "American Fool" in my head days before I ever dropped the needle.  I have listened to this record so many times that I pretty much know it note-for-note and word-for-word without even hearing it at this point.  Like I said, that guy.

And as that guy, I can tell you that almost every Mellencamp LP follows a specific formula.  There are the two or three songs that are pure pop gems (Jack & Diane and Hurts So Good - everybody knows these songs; when I clicked on the J&D youtube link, my nine-year old daughter started hollering along with that iconic guitar and drum riff as soon as it kicked in, and has been for almost five minutes now - neh-neh-neh, pewrn!).  There are always a couple fo bombastic rockers (Thundering Hearts and Close Enough).  There's always at least one song that's full of platitudes and pop philosophy, wrapped in yummy bacon like a pill for a dog (Hand to Hold on To).  As his career progressed, these types of songs popped up more and more until now, they're pretty much the man's bread and butter.  There's that one mid-tempo song that's often about romance but is decidedly NOT a ballad (China Girl).  NOTE: This may also be one of the pop gems (i.e. Key West Intermezzo).  There's always one song that's so chock full of allusions to specific details that it was clearly written as a letter to one person, and one person only (Weakest Moments).  There's usually that one song that's kinda bawdy and usually plays out like a locker room anecdote (Can You Take It).

And then there's always one other song on every Mellencamp record.  It's the one that comes out of nowhere and suckerpunches me right in the chest.  I can never explain why it affects me the way it does - it's one of those "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" things.  And it happens on EVERY record.  It's the reason I will continue to buy every Mellencamp release, despite his seeming fascination with diminishing returns.  Here' that song is Danger List.  Man, I love Danger List.  Couldn't begin to tell you why.

By the way, releases after "American Fool" also always have one other other song.  It's the intentionally weird, out of place, sore-thumb track that doesn't fit in with anything else.

So, is it an album?  Yes.  Having a formula is not necessarily a bad thing.  And besides, "American Fool" is pretty much where that formula got developed.

Up next, "No Control" by Eddie Money.


THE JOHN COUGAR MELLENCAMP ALBUM FORMULA TEMPLATE

NOTE: Some songs may fall into multiple categories.
CAUTION: DO NOT attempt to use this template in conjunction with "Big Daddy."  It just won't work.

Pop Gems
1:
2:
3: (If Present)

Bombastic Rockers
1:
2:

Mid-Tempo Non-Ballad
1:

Deeply Personal & Referential Song
1:

Bawdy Song (If Present)
1:

Song That Is Much Better than It Has Any Right to Be
1:

Song Full of Platitutes
1:
NOTE: The frequency of these songs increase as the artist's career progresses.  There may be up to five of these on a more recent album.

Intentionally Weird, Sore-Thumb Song (Only Applicable for Albums Released AFTER 1982)
1:
NOTE: "Human Wheels" will have multiple entries in this field.