Jackson Browne - C or D?

xxp they are good songs, but I'd take the first 4 albums over them

gotta do what you can to keep your love alive

I know "These Days" has been mentioned a number of times but I really love his original

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcJDI7a_1lk

The '67 demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtZ04BxrYf0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzCD8YzDFD4

beautiful '67 demo

can't believe he came up with (most of?) it at age 16

i think browne was a better melodist than a lyricist, actually

most of his lyrics from his 'confessional' period -- the ones that sing well -- don't really add up to much IMO. they are often either needlessly vague or just break down into banalities. he did hit a few out of the park, though.

this song's pretty flawless

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6pT_BDpnog

I love the electric strummin'.

never heard the demo! nice

Somebody's Baby is anything I could want in a song, so good

it's from Fast Times at Ridgemont High OST iirc, always liked it, after getting to know Jackson from the Pretender I was happy to find out this was his song

highlight of the album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeM6pX2kCtc

um, so 'The Pretender' the song - I always thought of it as a personal song of, I dunno, existential ambivalence... but according to this 'article' "Browne is writing about a guy who could easily be described as a yuppie"

https://americansongwriter.com/2012/05/the-pretender-by-jackson-browne/

can we all agree this is bullshit or should I change my view on this song?

well, I'm glad Jackson himself is well aware of the complexity of the songs protagonist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNKT_tfWx6w

It's a beautiful and complex song.

love these two dudes in the audience as Browne starts the piano riff:

https://media.giphy.com/media/pl9Y1c82F2wWQ/giphy.gif

also, thx MFB :)

in the intro to this one he 'dedicates' it to a session player

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76uSiz6fQh0

(not a v good video apart from that, sry 4 embed)

can we all agree this is bullshit or should I change my view on this song?

it's a very complex song and you should probably change your view

with every listen

yuppies are very complex people!

He's poet laureate of yuppies, don't forget.

http://www.asburyrecords.com/public/cover/3137_1.jpg

Prescient!

Last night I watched the news from Washington, the capital
The Russians escaped while we weren't watching them, like Russians will
Now we've got all this room
We've even got the moon
And I hear the USSR will be open soon
As vacation land for lawyers in love

I was about to say!

this morning's Times:

"When Professor Jackson-Brown began teaching in the 1990s, most students respected her authority. But in recent years, that deference has waned (she blames the informality of social media). “I go out of my way now to not give them access to my first name,” she said. “On every syllabus, it states clearly: ‘Please address me as Professor Jackson-Brown.’ ”"

Late For Class

I'll never love him, but I came up with a decent list, I think.

Running on empty is still getting AirPlay somehow and it’s the sound of 70s exhaustion. I’m sitting in a bar in ‘76 and yeah, I’m just gonna give up ok

Lindley’s amazing on it tho

Something Fine is a gorgeous wistful tune from his first disc.

Working with musicians from Haiti for his new album, according to Afropop Worldwide!

I do my best.

p sure “I’m Alive” was a single, no?

Tested positive :(

mild symptoms! he did a really wonderful interview with rolling stone

Agreed. Rather charming and chipper.

FWIW:

https://t.co/evhB3Tm5aS pic.twitter.com/goLjDSvgpJ

— Jackson Browne (@SongsofJBrowne) March 25, 2020

Thankfully the symptoms are very mild. If it's been this long, he's probably close to a full recovery, but he makes an excellent point about how easily it has and will spread in group settings in close quarters, even when individuals are exercising a lot of caution like swabbing mics and avoiding physical contact like handshakes.

Re: his music, first three albums have his best songwriting. The following two albums have better singing and arguably a better sound/production. After that, the albums get really spotty, but the singles are still generally good, all the way up to "The Shape of a Heart" and Little Steven's "I Am a Patriot" (which lyrically is corny, but Browne sings it with great conviction). Still wrote the occasional gem after that, like "Sky Blue and Black."

Beginning with 'Running on Empty' (where much of the material was co-written or written by someone else), his strengths as a performer (and by extension an interpreter) really began to show while his songwriting became more inconsistent and weaker.

booming and largely accurate post. I think the super-political stuff of the 80s has sometimes aged well -- and his gift for delivering JUST the right vocal take on even a middling song ("I'm the Cat") ascended into some ascended-master level stuff

The Fuse is a killer opener on pretender. v. Springsteen.

that album as a whole is maybe a little messy, but Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate is also up there with his very best...(and saddest by far)

Before The Deluge is really something

I heard it for the first time last year on Springsteen's radio show, back when his playlists were specifically pandemic-themed, and because I first encountered it in that context, it's now permanently associated in my mind with pandemic literature. I'd love to hear it played over the credits of a film adaptation of Station Eleven.

Those opening lines - "Some of them were dreamers, and some of them were fools/ making plans and thinking of the future" - remind me of this passage from the beginning of The Plague: "Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything was still possible for them, which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views? They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free as long as there are pestilences."

omg

love that passage of the plague and now it will be permanently associated with one of my favorite jackson browne songs

I like the idea of Before the Deluge, but JB's melody, singing and arrangement are so colourless that the song vanishes.

Did I only imagine that there was a "Running on Empty" vs. "Against the Wind" TS?

I can't find the discussion despite trying various Search stratagems.

Feels like there was some unpacking of a specific thematic strain of Boomer nostalgia and vague regret, where did things go wrong, etc.

Compare: "I look around for the friends that I used to turn to to pull me through" vs. "Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends."

Or maybe was it vs. "Night Moves"?

Or perhaps I am imagining a thread that could have existed but didn't.

I really love Late for the Sky. He really works the water motif throughout the album, but not too much and it never gets academic or schematic. I really think it's the apex of his songwriting, and after an impressive development across those first three LP's, he became much spottier as a songwriter. To be fair, the next two albums were better-made - his singing grew more confident, the bands sounded muscular, and the production was more polished - but lyrically The Pretender had quite a few lapses that he wasn't prone to before, and there was a lot of outside help on Running on Empty (i.e. co-writers and covers).

Paul Nelson really sold me on those early albums. He loved Browne just as much as the New York Dolls, but he lamented that it was very difficult getting peers to see the virtues of both. Everyone he preached to typically fell on one side or the other.

Greil Marcus, Ira Robbins and I think Robert Christgau have been very vocal about their distaste for the soft, early '70s SoCal sound. Marcus associates it with Browne's label, Asylum Records ("a famous home for self-pitying narcissists"). I'm not in disagreement - I'm no fan of the Eagles or most of Ronstadt's work among many others. The most common remarks I see from Browne's detractors are reflective of that entire scene, so I can't say their observations are wrong. But the handful of records I like most - those first three LP's, Ronstadt's Heart Like a Wheel, Warren Zevon's first LP - do sound like great records to me without sounding like they came from anywhere else, and I think it ultimately comes down to the songwriting and the performances. An old Eagles record will sound antiseptic and gutless to me, but Late for the Sky never felt that way. With Browne's early records, I find myself laser focused on his voice and words, and on something like Late for the Sky I'm completely drawn in. If I have to sit through an Eagles song, it's like the opposite experience, where the words are so off-putting I'll end up focusing on something else just to make it tolerable.

"Take It Easy" is famously shared by both artists. Browne wrote most of the lyrics while Frey wrote a verse that was inspired by one of Browne's experiences - it's the one about the girl checking him out, and even though it's Browne's experience, he never made the choice to put it in, it was Frey who was inspired to do so. I think that says a lot, but a more telling moment is the line "I'm lookin' for a lover who won't blow my cover / she's SOOOO hard to find." That's the Eagles version, and every time I hear Frey singing that, I feel like rolling my eyes. Browne tweaks it to "she's just a little hard to find," and on top of that, he doesn't sound like an asshole when he sings it (i.e. he doesn't turn it into a whining, self-entitled complaint). The Eagles may have better voices, but I think Browne's a much more palatable interpreter.

That brings up the other common complaint - those early records have a plainness that puts detractors off, and I guess colorless is not a wrong way of putting it. But ordinary feels more apt to me, and not in a way that's synonymous with colorless - for me it actually winds up working in favor of the songs, making them equally complicated and universal.

I want to see this documentary:
https://paulnelsonfilm.com/trailer

He was pretty remarkable. I think he pretty much lost any future in the music business when he went to the mat for the New York Dolls, but I can't think of a better way of burning your bridges. (The "demos" he produced are still my favorite New York Dolls recordings.)