In fact, the tendency to overdo it was there from the beginning, but when it worked = magic. Bob’s voice was a Detroit-sized instrument, and he really went for it, unafraid of the grunting and the growling. I kept digging and discovered a wealth of material: “Lucifer”, “Song to Rufus”, “2 Plus 2”, “Long Song Comin’”, “Rosalie”, a killer cover of “Midnight Rider”, all of it more Animals and Stones than Springsteen, very much of a piece with Creedence, with maybe a touch more Zeppelin (they were contemporaries after all). What I heard was thrilling, muscular, high energy and incredibly cool rock n roll/soul coming out of my speakers. Curious…įortunately, these were the days of Napster and Limewire, when file-sharing was even more of a Wild West than it is today, and before long the recordings, um, presented themselves. Plus, studio versions of the songs in question (“Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” and the brilliant “Get Out of Denver”) were impossible to find! I soon found out that none of Bob’s first seven records had ever made it to CD. It was tantamount to asking to be written off as a serious person altogether (I shudder to write these words…). But if liking The Beach Boys was like knowing a secret handshake, then admitting affection for Bob Seger was like wearing jean shorts. I had only recently come to terms with the social cost of coming out as a teenage Beach Boys fan(atic) and had been semi-relieved to discover the cadre of even snobbier Beach Boys gnostics ready to (sort of) embrace a person on the other side of that decision. I remember being shocked– shocked!-to find not one but two Seger songs on a list of desert island singles compiled by one of my favorite music critics. I was once was lost before I was found, too. Suffice it to say, the music of Bob Seger makes for a fascinating study of law in relation to taste and self-image. Plus, somewhere along the line he got labeled as a Springsteen clone–which was strange, since Bob had been around long before Bruce had begun making any waves. If your identity was even remotely tied to such things as coolness, Seger was a non-starter. There were plenty of other Seger songs on the radio (“Night Moves”, “Against the Wind” and a bunch of other latter-day ballads), but the damage was done. Chevrolet hit a home run when they chose it as their decade-spanning jingle (one of the longest-running campaigns in history), but Bob lost more than a song – he pretty much lost a generation of non-truck-driving ears. In other words, 80s suburbia at its most cheesy and vacuous. A decent but heavily sanitized slice of Seger nostalgia that conjures up-immediately-images of Tom Cruise sliding around in his underwear. We knew him chiefly for two things, neither of which were particularly flattering or representative: I know this because I grew up as part of a generation for whom Bob was more of a semiotic than musical presence. In most circles, it would not be a compliment. Of course, as good as that record is, no one is mentioning the Seger-isms on display. I hear it most of all in singer Brian Fallon’s voice, which veers dangerously close to a Seger impression at times. I hear it in their widescreen anthems of discontent and in their unabashed American-ness, in their obvious belief in the power of rock n roll. People have described that band as splitting the difference between Social Distortion and Springsteen, but all I hear is Seger, glorious Seger (backed by The Replacements). SONG: Night Moves ARTIST: Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band ALBUM: Night Moves YEAR: 1976 TUNING: Standard (E A D G) TIME SIGNATURE: 4/4 TABBED: by Seanmo for BigBassTabs.One never really needs a reason to write about Bob Seger, but if you are the sort of person who requires one, take the recent Gaslight Anthem record, Handwritten, which made a lot of critics’ year-end lists, including our own.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |