Sunday, May 22, 2011

Born in the USA - Bruce Springsteen

Another classic 80s album has to be from the boss himself - Bruce Springsteen.   I can remember getting this lp on vinyl before I had a record player of my own and so I had to play it in the dining room (or the lounge, but I would commandeer the dining room record player as mine!), I would crank it up loud and books on the table so that I could 'pretend' to be studying I would sing at the top of my voice to some of the classic tracks off of this album.

Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA album was great because any of the tracks could have been made into a hit single............and in fact many were!

Bruce Springsteen

The artwork for the album was as iconic as the music itself - jeans and a hankie hanging out of the back pocket - how cool was that!

Hits from the album include the title track Born in the USA, along with Glory Days and Dancing in the Dark.   If you can't remember all of the songs then check out this link - Born in the USA.   One of my favorite tracks off of the album (it wasn't a single) was No Surrender and I was surprised to find out a few years ago that Springsteen was going to leave it off the album until Steven Van Zandt convinced him otherwise - the amount of time I would belt out the lyrics, 'We learned more from a 3-minute record, baby,than we ever learned in school' was huge - it was classic teenage rebellion lyrics.   Of course the song's meaning was more about picking yourself up and keeping going, but I choose to use the literal words when I was feeling like a rebel!

Did you like Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA album?   Let me know your thoughts below.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Brothers in Arms - Dire Straits

Well I'm back - the break from posting went on a little longer as Blogger was down when I'd penciled in my to do list and then it was the weekend for me and I managed an (almost) computer free one :)

I was going to post about something different, but I was listening to a compilation album in the car over the weekend and realized how many of the songs I'd had on vinyl.   I even had a great discussion with my 9 year old about music - she loves David Bowie's Let's Dance album and my hubby's got her obsessed with Yazoo so we were discussing 80s music along with a few songs from the here and now that she enjoys and it struck me that I should do a series of posts on 'Vinyls from the Past' showcasing different albums that I have owned during the 80s and ones that I wished I'd owned.

Anyways all of this waffling is my way of saying we're talking about different 80s albums and today's album is Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms.

Now this album was actually the best selling album of the 80s in the UK and it's no surprise to me as I think it was fantastic.   It was actually Dire Strait's fifth album, but it's been their best selling and actually became the first album to sell one million copies in the cd format - yes vinyl was about to start it's decline, but it hadn't happened yet.

Brothers in Arms featured classics such as Money for Nothing and Walk of Life.  In fact if you take Brothers in Arms and Sultans of Swing then I don't think you need worry about a best of album for Dire Straits, but I'm sure someone will want to disagree with that statement and you're welcome to leave your comments below.

I must confess I never owned Brothers in Arms on vinyl as my dad owned it......this was nearly enough reason for me to 'go off' Dire Straits completely, but their music was good enough to bridge the generation gap and besides dad had some pretty cool albums like Bat out of Hell by Meatloaf and Eliminator by ZZ Top so it wasn't all bad!

What I find amazing is that Dire Strait's Brothers in Arms album actually outsold Michael Jackson's Thriller during the 80s in the UK - I would never have guessed that.   I think the reason is what I mentioned above - Dire Straits managed to bridge the generation gap and people who had been teens in the 60s loved the sound  as much as the teens of the 80s.

So, did you own Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms album?   Let me know below.