The Vinyl Side Vol. 1

The purchases below add up to about $60, severely skewed by the rarity of those two sub-standard Bruce Springsteen records. Since I scrounge for used vinyl as much as I grab new releases, some quick reviews are in order.

Screaming For Vengeance ~ God, it felt good to hear Electric Eye again. I traded away this CD sometime after high school, but it never sounded as strong. This is mainstream Priest, but still hard-edged metal. Taken These Chains and You’ve Got Another Thing Coming won’t be denied.

New York ~ Lou Reed made the quintessential Big Apple record, the best since his early 1970s heyday. Romeo Had Juliette and Dirty Boulevard stand among his Velvet-y best.

The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle ~ Underrated record, if you can say that about the overpicked Springsteen catalogue.The long songs which became such concert favorites have their roots here, a more focused, mature effort than Greetings From Asbury Park but not as mainstream as Born to Run. More than any other Springsteen record, it's a snapshot, an album of the moment that fit its early E Street personnel.

Human Touch and Lucky Town – I already cursed Grimeys for having the most derided records Springsteen ever produced on nearly flawless vinyl. Human Touch is still a dog, almost unlistenable at times. It’s easily the worst album he ever attached his name to.

Whoever thought 57 Channels and Nothing On was a good idea should never be allowed within 500 feet of a studio again. It took 17 years for Springsteen to come close to that awfulness again, thanks to Queen of the Supermarket (it’s what you’d expect of someone who hasn’t bought a sack of groceries since the late 1970s).

While not a classic or a great record, I found Lucky Town surprisingly catchy, with a handful of decent songs. If Springsteen left it at Lucky Town – and plucked the one or two bearable tracks from Human Touch to round it out – the early 1990s would not be viewed as his musical nadir.

High ‘N’ Dry – Follow this link. It lack all the hits of Hysteria and Pyromania, but is every bit as compelling.

The Muppet Movie ~ Worth the $4 I paid just for Rainbow Connection and Moving Right Along. Plus, Muppets fucking rock, in case you hadn’t heard. Henson and Co. could write a song with unparalleled emotion depth and make it believable, even when delivered by a frog with ping-pong balls for eyes.

Daring Adventures and Across a Crowded Room ~ These two lost Richard Thompson records following his mid-1980 split with Linda suffer from comparisons to all-time classic Shoot Out the Lights. While Thompson's seems somewhat astray at times, the songwriting and magnificent guitar work keep him on the path.