Where have all the Bob Seger albums gone?

"Smokin' OP's" is probably my favorite Seger from the pre-Live Bullet/Night Moves era, although it's a bit of a toss-up with "Beautiful Loser". "Heavy Music" was great, and "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" was absolutely prototypical roller rink rock. I don't understand how anyone can sit still when "Katmandu" is on.

One of my biggest gripes with the whole "Classic Rock" format (other than Clear Channel owning waaaay too many radio stations and making them all playlist clones) is the utter predictability. If they go to commercial and say that they'll be playing Bob Seger, I brace myself for yet another "Turn the Page". Songs that are canon, songs that I love, have become nauseating due to over playing them. When a DJ here says they'll be playing Steely Dan, 80%+ it will be "Deacon Blues", because it has "they call Alabama the Crimson Tide" in it. Sigh. That's a whole rant post subject in itself. There is no such thing as a deep cut any more, let alone a DJ just playing something he likes. The playlist, which is built by consultants with printouts, is God. And it sucks balls.

As to the various music services, they pay so little money that it is ridiculous. That's a big part of why concert tickets are routinely $75-100. Artists don't make money on selling records anymore. I was reading about a recent release by a black pop singer, I don't recall who, who put twenty songs on his new record. The artist gets paid by the track, so if someone plays his new work, he gets paid for twenty tracks instead of ten or twelve on a regular CD. The money is a pittance though.

 

I wouldn't rank "Deacon Blues" in Steely Dan's top 10 songs. Nor "Turn the Page" for Seger.

 

This is great stuff, thanks for the link.

"Brave Strangers" might be my fave Seger song. Any discussion of the greatest rock singers ever has to include him. The wife and I saw him last time he was in Toronto (Jan. 2016) and he was great even if he forgot the last verse to "Turn the Page". Quite amusing to see the rest of the band look at each other as he brought the song to a close prematurely. He was at the piano and finally figured it out: "Wait a minute, did I miss the last verse?" Blamed it on a senior's moment.

And Seger and Kid Rock do a killer cover of Vince Gill's "Real Mean Bottle" on Bob's Face the Promise album.

 

I wouldn't either, although they are both solid, and "Turn the Page" was a pretty interesting and inventive take the first thousand times I heard it. That stuff makes me crazy... to take a band with many years of good solid work, dozens of good songs, and every time that band comes up you get one of the same two songs. If it's Ten Years After (which no one plays anyhow) it will be "I'd love to change the world". I worked college radio back in the day, and that frustrates the hell out of me. It's lowest common denominator rock, and I crave invention and variety.

 

To Katmandu?

 

I'm on what used to be Rhapsody. They bought the Napster name and are now using that. They have damn near everything I can think of, since both the Eagles and Led Zeppelin finally agreed to terms. There are some artists where only the music on a given record label is available, but in general there is a huge catalog. You can play single songs or albums or their list of best songs by a given artist, as well as various sorts of internet radio. I can run it over my computer speakers, or through my phone into a bluetooth speaker or my car stereo's bluetooth. You can construct playlists. You can download songs, albums, or playlists and they remain as long as you pay your bill.

I like that it's not random the way that Pandora is. You don't have to like and dislike songs and train it.

I flat love this app.

 

On Channel 27, it's always fun when a song comes around that you haven't heard in 30+ years and you really liked it back then.
In general, I usually found out that whenever I bought an album because of the hit song played on the radio, there were a couple of others on that album that I liked better than the hit.

 

Not many were bigger than Bob Seeger from about 1977-90. I'll have to check my albums. Have almost every Seeger album from Night Moves through the late 1980s. I also have an absolutely pristine edition of Springsteen's 4 or 5-record boxed set, hardly ever been played. Who knows what that is worth.

And yes, so many possibilities for classic rock stations to chose from but all we get is the same 100 songs in constant rotation. You never hear gems like "Minutes to Memories," but you'll hear "Jack and Diane" 10 times a day.

 

Growing up near the Ohio-Michigan border in the 1980s, it was tough to gauge just how popular he was outside of that area. In that region, he's gigantic. Like Springsteen gigantic. I got the feeling that everywhere else he was more known for five or six songs. I could be way off, though.

I think his earlier stuff is fantastic. Some of his later stuff is insufferable.

 

Yeah, ironically, Seger kind of lived out the storyline of "Hollywood Nights," and lost his Midwestern roots when he hit it big. He wasn't that struggling scuffling underdog anymore.

Or maybe he just went kind of mellow around age 40, as Lennon had and Springsteen also did.

"I cannot be a punk in Hamburg and Liverpool any more; I'm older now and I see the world with different eyes." -- Lennon, December 1980.

 

To me, The Distance was his last great album. Subsequent albums had a good song or two but that might be it. Like A Rock was the beginning of the end, "American Storm" sounded like a half-assed rewrite of "Even Now" and "Roll Me Away", two great songs on The Distance.