In Which Doctor Casino Listens to Classic Rock Classics for the First Time

heck of a solo

this is a much shorter thread than In Which Doctor Casino Sees Old Hollywood Classics that Fall Short of 21st Century Political Acceptability for the First Time would be.

har hardy har

*crosses self*

morbius with the sweet lovin' better than a white line

revisiting Fire Down Below: i know it's like a standard blues chord progression or whatever, but today this is reminding me SO much of Dylan's "On the Road Again." knowing the Dylan affectations sprinkled in the Never Mind the Bullets material, i wonder if there's actually a direct connection. anyway it's really pointing up my recurring disappointment with Seger, where his great band and convincing performances are always let down by pretty lame first-draft lyrics.

I always get that one mixed up with The Fire Inside, which I think has more interesting lyrics.

pretty lame first-draft lyrics.

the hell you say >:(

i mean it's not Foreigner-level, but it just never adds up to much of anything... most of the lines just name people and places and the others are like "One thing for certain it ain't never gonna stop," "And it went on yesterday and it's going on tonight" etc. he may be one of Chuck's children but it's for the licks and not the lyrics. his voice takes it a long way.

Okay, before this explodes into a rockin' barroom brawl: Fire Down Below!

Yeah, this is all right. Maybe I'm predisposed to like it based on this other quality Seger, but it's sounding really good on headphones, nice solid recording of some nice solid playing. Not so into this 'list of people' kinda songwriting, adds up to a kind of bland scenario: they're different people, but they're alike! Seems like you could get to the same point with a little more interrelationships in the story, the banker could be casting shade at the poor man before he's taken over by the fire down below. What's this about again? Strippers? Or they're not all at the same place, I guess, some are in Berkeley and some are in Queens? Somewhere there's somebody ain't treatin' somebody right... wait, what's going on? I thought the fire was going to be about sex but is it actually wrath? What these guys have in common is not treating somebody right?

Wow, that was baffling. The one! two! three! into the solo has renewed my interest though. Another kinda sudden ending - my one lasting beef with Rock & Roll Never Forgets (now that I've listened to it like seven times in the last twelve hours) is how it just wanders away from the last chorus and ends without fanfare - surely if rock and roll never forgets, it'd show the 31-year-old sweet sixteen a better time than that. In this one it just seems like they ran out of energy, time or ideas - gimme a little more solo, a little more 'fire' at least.

Second listen, hoping I can follow the story a little better. The rock-n-rolling is probably strong enough to carry it just as an instrumental, with Seger's rasping as just another instrument, so in any case this isn't killing my interest in picking up the album. So, okay, there are street lights, here come these girls... what is this all about? Are they going to see a band? Why would all these lawyers and bankers be there? I feel like I'm lost in a pronoun here, the "it" that's never gonna stop. I do like that it happens in Moline, and I guess at this point I'm pretty sure this is about prostitution, an "oldest profession" kinda things... which makes the implications of bad treatment kinda grosser. At best I'd guess it's that the johns' wives aren't "treating them right" sexually but that's not very appealing as a narrative. Yeah, blame Mrs. Lockhorn... yeesh.

Thumbs up for the band, thumbs down for the lame lyric. "Fire down below" is too strong a phrase to get wasted on a lame cliche. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it really would have done well as another paean to the eternal appeal of rock: get all these horny men and women to the Bob Seger concert and let the music stoke the fires. Last verse could wrap up how the night ends up: Steve and Sally on the pinball table / Jack and Jill are in the john, etc. With a little rewrite here and there it could also have made a good Tums commercial.

I'm not sure I know this song, but from a reading of the lyrics it seems pretty clear this is about guys picking up prostitutes (and perhaps murdering them?)

a murder mystery would work well with "even the butler, he's got something to prove"

although "Honey, how come you don't MOVE?" takes on a rather grim cast

i gotta say this channel is pretty much classic rock heaven:

http://www.youtube.com/user/MainSqueezeMusic/videos

Looking back, I feel like this thread was a real turning point in my listening habits, and embracing the fact that a lot of what I most like to listen to is well-produced mainstream pop-rock from the 60s-80s. At home, it's the mellower and/or art-pop end of things, where I can just bask in the details of the recordings and the melodies. On the road, or maybe doing chores, I'm looking for the big riffs and fist-pumping hooks. I always liked all this stuff, but it's funny to think back to when a thread like this made sense for me! Thanks again, fact checking cuz, and everyone else for playing along.

Oh, and the Deacon Blues session was definitely a huge step towards me becoming a Dan fan, when previously I only really knew a few singles and the Yacht Rock show material.

thank YOU for playing along, doctor c! you taught me, and i assume plenty of others, quite a bit about songs we thought we knew. i loved this journey (your aversion to journey with a capital J notwithstanding!).

:D :D :D

"Roundabout" was another big watershed track... I bought a bunch of Yes albums in the months after that, and it helped open me up to a lot of other proggy records, like Meddle. I was also starting to explore jazz for the first time in the same years and in general my ears these days are much more interested than they used to be in specifically drinking in what the instruments are doing and how they're playing off each other as a "live" unit, even when they may not have actually been recorded that way.

Not pegging all of that to this thread... but still, something significant did happen here, amidst all my wordy and naive efforts to get ahold of these songs!

man I am so bummed that all of Sandy's amazing pix are lost to time, can anyone repost them by chance?