At Home in Hespeler

When you make a list of great albums of the rock era, Bob Seger’s first studio album with The Silver Bullet Band, Night Moves, inevitably will get a mention. As Capital Records is releasing Night Moves in 180-gram vinyl today, it seems like a good time to evaluate that contention.

In Night Moves opening track, Rock and Roll Never Forgets Seger sings, “all of Chuck’s children are out there, playing his licks.” Seger is foreshadowing, Night Moves being, if nothing else, a Chuck Berry influenced album. The Fire Down Below, Sunspot Baby, Come to Papa, Mary Lou and Rock and Roll Never Forgets itself, all are, to one degree or another, excellent examples of “Chuck’s children playing his licks.”

But while Night Moves is a great rock and roll album, it is marked by it’s acoustic/slower songs, especially two: Night Moves and Mainstreet. Both are coming of age songs, the first about teen romance in the back of a car, the latter a few years later, a young adult crush on a lady no mother would approve of. Night Moves is Seger’s signature song, the one that gets compared, fairly, to Hotel California or Jungleland, It is the biggest hit of a career of memorable hits, while Mainstreet may be the most romantic song ever written about a stripper.

Soundwise, the 180-gram version of Night Moves is excellent. I’m not sure if it has been remastered, or they are using the famous late-90’s Punch Andrews remaster. However, the sound is excellent, with instrument separation being clear. If you’ve never really heard the organ on top of Night Moves, the funky James Brown rhythm guitar in Come to Papa, the acoustic guitar in Mainstreet, it is a treat.

If you’re re-buying all those old albums you got rid of when you bought a CD player, Night Moves in 180-gram vinyl is an album you want. If your Dad is re-buying all his old albums, kids, I guarantee you he will like this one for Father’s Day. And if your a hipster that has cleaned out the Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd section of your local record store and are wondering what you should get next, Night Moves should be next.

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Bob Seger, Rockin' and Rollin' and Never Forgettin' Bob Seger, Capital Records, Mainstreet, Night Moves, Rock and Roll Never Forgets, Sunspot Baby, UMe

A guy knows what he’s going to get when he buys a Bob Seger record: rock and roll played on a straight four beat. Add in a dash of new country guitar pickin’ and you have a Bob Seger album for the new millennium. It used to be such an album was something to look forward to with eager anticipation, as I fondly recall doing for Like a Rock in the mid-80’s. But Seger’s songwriting has diminished over the years, his ability to find a new, unique, interesting way to play an E-chord exhausted, and what’s left is a collection of familiar sounding songs.

There’s nothing wrong with Ride Out, Seger’s latest album, released this week. If you liked his last number of albums, you’ll like this one well enough. The collection of decent songs, in fact, improve on multiple listens, and the early released songs, Detroit Made, Hey Gypsy and The Devil’s Right Hand after a few weeks of listening are my favorites on the album. The same can’t be said, however, of You Take Me In, the early release balled which was boring on first listen, and boring now that’s it’s heard in the context of a full album.

Seger has a go at politics with It’s Your World, a song in which he decries the state of the world without offering solutions (it is a bit rich, the multi-millionaire singer complaining about cash is king), and if the depth of Your World amounts to the depth of Seger’s politics, it’s a good thing there’s 50-years between here to The Ballad of the Yellow Beret. His attempt at Americana, Adam and Eve, also fails pretty miserably.

Hey Gypsy, on the other hand, Seger’s tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan, is an album highlight. You’ve never heard a Texas shuffle played so squarely, so tightly on the beat, as this, but it works magnificently and will likely be a strong addition to Seger’s live set in his upcoming tour. The acoustic song, Listen, one of the bonus songs on the Deluxe Edition of Ride Out, is another highlight of the album.

There’s a number of good enough songs on Ride Out, but let’s also be clear, there’s no Hollywood Nights or Rock and Roll Never Forgets, no ballads as good as Mainstreet, no acoustic numbers of the calibre of Night Moves or Against the Wind. If your looking for Seger to find that magic touch he had from the mid-70’s to the mid-80’s you’ll be disappointed. But if your looking for Seger to meet or exceed what he has done the last couple of albums, he has.

Tracklist

Detroit Made
Hey Gypsy
The Devils Right Hand
Ride Out
Adam and Eve
California Stars
It’s Your World
All of the Roads
You Take Me In
Gates of Eden

Listen (Deluxe Edition only)*
The Fireman’s Talkin’ (Deluxe Edition only)*
Let the Rivers Run (Deluxe Edition only)*

*(Note: There is a Target only CD version with 2 extra songs)

Album release, Bob Seger, Record Release, Review Bob Seger, Detroit Made, Hey Gypsy, Hollywood Nights, Like a Rock, Mainstreet, Night Moves, Rock and Roll Never Forgets, Stevie Ray, Stevie Ray Vaughan

If you are local to the centre of the universe and missed it, one of the greats came to town this week. Because nothing is good for the soul like rock and roll, some Bob Seger from Toronto.

It’s true what they say, Rock and Roll Never Forgets:

On the same day, it was announced, are you ready for this boys, that the Lingerie Football League is coming to Toronto. As much as I hate to do it, I have to throw my support behind a new sport coming to Toronto. So Gentlemen, meet the ladies of the Lingerie Football League:

Bob Seger, Cool For Cats, Rockin' and Rollin' and Never Forgettin' Bob Seger, Lingerie Football League, Rock and Roll Never Forgets, Toronto, Turn the Page

When Led Zeppelin released a jam with piano player Ian Stewart, Boogie With Stu, they gave a writing credit to Mrs. Valens. The reason was because they had heard the Valens family had received no royalties from Ritchie Valens songs after his death. No good deed going unpunished, the estate of the late Valens sued Zeppelin for plagiarism. Considering Valens ooh my head is a rip of Little Richard’s Ooh My Soul…

Love Chuck Berry drumming on the table. And speaking of Chuck Berry, Bob Seger is hitting the road with a small tour: just another one of Chuck’s children playing his licks.

Cool For Cats, Rockin' and Rollin' and Never Forgettin', YouTube Bob Seger, Boogie With Stu, Chuck Berry, Led Zeppelin, ooh my head, Ritchie Valens, Rock and Roll Never Forgets

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

In 1980 I bought Bob Seger’s second live album, Nine Tonight, and threw it on the turntable. Everything I thought about music changed. Seger was an outsider to the band culture, complete with virtuoso guitarists, that I had believed was the best in music. I had never been a Seger fan, always thought his stuff was overly simple, three chord pop, not worthy of my attention. Nine Tonight changed that.

A week later, enthused by my reaction to Nine Tonight, I picked up his previous live album, Live Bullet. I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom in dim light listening to it when Turn The Page came on. I was dumbstruck: what was this and how had I never heard it before? When it was over I picked up the needle and listened again. And again. And again. I was sold.

To this day I consider that version of that song possibly the greatest moment in rock and roll. It is on any night a great song, but on that night in Detroit’s Cobo Hall, Bob Seger had an epiphanal moment.

For those not familiar with Live Bullet, a little history: In 1975 Seger was working the same mid-west circuit that bands like Ted Nugent, ZZ Top and REO Speedwagon were working (don‘t mock REO until you‘ve heard their live album), club to club, small hall to small hall trying to eke out a living. He had a number of albums out, none of which had been particularly successful. He was one of the top performers on the lower rungs of rock’n’roll’s hierarchy. Wichita, Akron, Fargo, Kalamazoo &tc. playing for a few thousand people a night.

Detroit was different. Detroit was home and they “got” Bob Seger like the rest of the country didn’t. So riding the bus between Tupelo, Mississippi and Gary, Indiana one night became playing three shows to 18,000 people at Cobo Hall the next. From a wanna be star to a defacto star by crossing the border between Ohio and Michigan:

Here I am, on the road again
There I am, up on the stage.
Here I go, playing star again.
There I go, turn the page.

It’s hardly surprising that Seger, and his band, took the above words and made magic out of them on one of those nights at Cobo Hall.

Live Bullet changed Seger’s life, changed the shape of his career. The album was successful enough that he began playing bigger halls everywhere, which led to his best, and most successful album, Night Moves. Everything changed, and then Bob Seger stopped changing.

Last week Bob Seger announced a small spring tour of select cities. Saginaw, Toledo, Grand Rapids and Cleveland have already been announced. Thirty years after Nine Tonight, five studio albums later, the show he will put on will mostly be Nine Tonight, with a few touches from Live Bullet. If you found yourself in a coma in 1981, and your first act after coming out of it in 2011 is go see Bob Seger, you will know most of the songs (including, to your surprise, Chuck Berry’s Cest Le Vie).

I offer the above knowledge of what you will see at a Bob Seger concert not as a warning, concerned you’ll spend hard earned money on some dinosaur who refuses to grow. I offer it as a service, to let you know that there is no surprises at a Bob Seger concert, and that it is a good thing.

“People know when something’s fake, and they know when something’s rehashed and rehearsed. They know when your telling them the same joke between songs that you told in Poughkeepsie last night. They can smell it” Jack White said in the documentary It Might Get Loud.

I have seen Bob Seger six times since 1982 and every time he has said, “I feel a bit funky tonight,” before the second song, Tryin’ To Live My Life Without You, just as he does on Nine Tonight. It doesn’t smell. When you leave a Seger concert you know you saw something tightly scripted, tightly controlled and you had a great time. The scripting, the control, the eleven piece band including three female back-up singers. It doesn’t matter. What counts at a Bob Seger concert is the music, the songs. And you will get your fill of good to great rock and roll, played with exceptional professionalism.

Know what the fifth song will be at any Bob Seger concert? Old Time Rock and Roll. Always. He warms you up a little, starting with something like Roll Me Away, followed by Seger’s pronouncement that he feels funky leading into Tryin’ To Live My Life Without You. There’s be something new, Mainstreet and then… “just take those old records off the shelf…”

That’s what a Bob Seger concert is like: taking the old records off the shelf. After Old Time R&R, he’ll lead you through a solid grounding of his best stuff: Night Moves, Hollywood Nights, Shakedown, Lock and Load, Rock and Roll Never Forgets, Betty Lou, Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man and, We’ve Got Tonight/Turn the Page.

It is not a serious event, but a revival, a reminder that we once considered rock and roll dance music, and that while sweet sixteen may be 31, 41, 51 even 61, rock and roll really never does forget.

The Freedom of Music Betty Lou, Bob Seger, Cobo Hall, Hollywood Nights, Live Bullet, Lock and Load, Night Moves, Nine Tonight, Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man, REO Speedwagon, Rock and Roll Never Forgets, Shakedown, Ted Nugent, Turn the Page, We've Got Tonight, ZZ Top