by Randy McDonald

Editor’s Note: The author is one of my oldest and closest friends. We got to be good friends as RAs in our dorm senior year and that friendship has blossomed in the decades since, our lingua franca being music. If I were to compile a Greatest Hits of people I know, Randall would definitely make Side 1.–J.W.

*****

“….This is a song about two people trying to find their way home. ….this song’s kept me good company on my search, and I hope it’s kept you good company on yours.”

Bruce Springsteen – 4/27/1988  Introduction to Acoustic “Born to Run”, Chimes of Freedom

A few months ago my 24 year-old son moved to Vermont for a new job.  A few days after making the journey— as he moved into a new apartment, new job, new life—he excitedly told me that he had found a cool local record store, and that he bought himself a turntable.  The first album he bought was a doozy: Bruce Springsteen – Live 1975-1985.  As I envied him the experience of hearing that sprawling 5-LP boxset with fresh ears— as I had for the first time in my South Bend down room on a cold November afternoon in 1986—I thought of a couple dusty boxes of albums that have moved with our family numerous times since we started our odyssey together in 1991. So, when we met him in upstate NY at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving, we brought along my collection of about 120 albums.

We started sorting the albums together, making piles and talking about the ones I thought he’d like the most.  Some were familiar to him, but many were not. For me, each flip of an album cover brought back specific memories— of my life, my friends, my family: things we did, places we went that I thought I’d forgotten.  I was also struck by surprisingly clear memories of the many varied reasons these works of art worked their way into my life— and how in the process they somehow wound up shaping that life into something different. 

My collection spans artists and genres ranging from the 50’s to the 80’s, but my album acquisition “window” was actually quite narrow— with the prime years being roughly from 1978 (late middle school) to 1985 (early college years).  Before 1979, I listened to music on the radio; starting in 1985, convenience and market forces shifted my purchases to cassettes and then just as quickly to CD. 

Quite a few of the albums in “my collection” were inherited from my sister Kelly. Four years older than me, she mainly collected 45 rpm singles of Top 40 hits – but she also had some really great albums.  The music I heard through that common wall between our bedrooms was the “gateway drug” that got me the start I needed – and has fueled years of listening, collecting and loving music ever since. 

Faced with this broad array of albums spread across the floor, my son laughed and asked me a simple question: “So – where should I start?” Initially, I was hesitant to impose my bias onto his own musical journey. At the same time, I was equally anxious for him to find the gems – and avoid some of the more “peripheral” LPs in the collection he’d find if he wandered through these boxes without a compass of some sort. Wouldn’t want him to get the wrong idea about his Dad (I’m looking at you, Grease soundtrack) So, I offered him this list – my crème de la crème, the top 20 albums from my vinyl collection.

20: Highway to Hell – AC/DC (Key Track: Highway to Hell)

19: Van Halen – Van Halen (Key Track: Runnin’ with the Devil)

Despite my sister’s tastes leaning more toward 70’s easy listening/AM radio soft-rock hits (Seals and Crofts, The Carpenters, Bee Gees, Manilow…), it turns out Kelly could ROCK.  These songs grabbed my ears and shook my head; they sounded nothing like what she usually played – and they sounded even better when you played them REALLY LOUD! I began to hear music in a whole new way, and an awkward middle school kid was introduced to a concept I now know as “Swagger”.  I didn’t have that word in my vocabulary just yet, but these bands and their music were confident, cool, tough, dangerous, mysterious, and wild. Music started to shape the way I walked, the way I talked, how I saw the world, and how I saw myself. I certainly failed miserably in my clumsy attempts to channel what these guys had – but it didn’t matter.  At least now I finally knew what I was shooting for. 

18: Briefcase Full of Blues – Blues Brothers (Key Track: Hey Bartender)

Watching, remembering and quoting the best bits from SNL was one of the most important things my friends and I did together each week. I was never really sure if the Blues Brothers were meant to be taken seriously as “music”, or if it was all just one big joke – a skit that just kept going. In the end, there was no denying the chops and groove of that ridiculously talented band (I learned over the years that it pays to read liner notes and connect the dots) and how compelling and cool John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd were fronting that group. Turns out they were for real. 

17: Beauty and the Beat – Go Gos (Key Track: How Much More)

Medium Happy has made the case for The Go Gos a number of times far better than I can, but I bought this album based solely based on their video for “Our Lips Are Sealed”.  They were good looking, fun, talented (writing their own music, playing their own instruments) and sounded like nothing else in their time. The album as a whole delivers, pure pop/rock magic; they sound like a lost 60’s girl-group rebuilt for the 80’s, and they still sound great today, 40 years later in the 20’s. 

16: The Cars – The Cars (Key Track: Good Times Roll)

Area Records was my regular “dealer”, and as far as I was concerned the coolest place on earth. A few of the guys who worked there were actual musicians in actual local bands; cool music always playing from the big system behind the counter, and the walls were covered with record promotions and posters. I browsed their racks for hours, reading and re-reading album covers – and my wishlist was always a long one. Whenever I had $7 or more in my pocket, I’d get myself to Area Records to get the next one on my list, adding to my small collection. One. Album. At. A. Time. 

So, I am sure I went to the record store that Saturday afternoon in 1978 with a decent idea of that I was going to buy. But as I flipped through the stacks, I got up the nerve to ask the guy at the cash register what was playing over the speakers.  He said “New band out of Boston called the Cars; they’re really cool”. Done. One of the best debuts ever, and the new wave was underway.

15: The Alarm – The Alarm EP (Key Track: For Freedom)

A few years later, now in high school, my browsing/flipping habit brought me to another unexpected find.  The cover photo shows four silhouettes reflected in a puddle in brown and black; even though the photo had few really clear details, they have an undeniably Euro/Punk look – like a band of soldiers fighting for some justice. Flip it over, and the five-track listing confirms this hunch: “The Stand”; “Across the Border”; “Marching On”; “Lie of the Land”; “For Freedom”. That was enough for me – Sold! They never became the next U2 or the Clash like they seemed poised to do for a time, but they were earnest, talented and had something to say.  The live club track “For Freedom” absolutely jumps with sweaty beer soaked pub intensity.

14: Especially for You – The Smithereens (Key Track: Behind the Wall of Sleep)

Another band I learned about through video; I saw the clip for “Behind The Wall of Sleep” on MTV in college, and to this day it is one of my favorite rock/pop songs.  Many years before Google made this stuff easy, it took me a really long time to understand the reference of the mysterious dream girl who “had hair like Jeannie Shrimpton back in 1965”. This debut album showcases a great New Jersey band whose pop songwriting chops and jangly Mike-Buck guitars somehow never got them the level of fame and acclaim I thought they deserved.

13: One For the Road – the Kinks (Key Track: Lola)

12: Live at Budokan – Cheap Trick  (Key Track: Clock Strikes Ten)

11: LIVE – You Get what You Play For – REO Speedwagon (Key Track: Keep Pushin’)

The live album was often the best value (songs/$) and a way to get started with a band.  You get the biggest hits (played slightly faster than in the studio); along extended intros, guitar solos and drum solos. But for me, the primary appeal to me was the vicarious thrill of hearing rock bands laying it all out there for their adoring and screaming fans – and wishing you were there to experience that magic yourself.

If you know these groups primarily by their later/lighter work and “power ballads” (“Come Dancing”, “The Flame”, “Keep on Loving You”) – which are incidentally their biggest hits, you’re missing out. These collections are incredible revelations of bands who could really rock, who built their fan bases over years of playing live and winning over their audiences one by one, night after night. I know – and I hate to say it; but I really do like their old stuff better.

10: Alive – KISS (Key Track: “Black Diamond”)

At a time when the only real musicians I’d ever seen perform music live were the reception band at my cousin Linda’s wedding, the existence of a band like KISS on the same planet as me completely captured and consumed my pre-teen imagination. The makeup, costumes, fire, explosions, drums on risers – and the loud, dark, heavy music they played. I used to stare at the grainy photo of the Detroit crowd on the back cover of the album – and the fans who look now as if they came straight from the set of Dazed and Confused.  Did they have any idea what they were about to witness together? Was there any experience as life-changing and DNA re-arranging that could compare with a KISS concert? I was certain there wasn’t, and I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to join a crowd of the faithful at a real rock concert and see for myself. 

9: I Don’t Want to Go Home – Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes (Key Track: “I Don’t Want to Go Home”)

My first real rock show in 1980 was nothing like a KISS concert. No pyro, loud guitars, explosions or flames in a huge arena. This was well-oiled bar band playing a gig for the local college at a small theater in my hometown. The costumes these guys wore were wide brimmed hats, colorful suits and skinny ties.  They looked like small-time gangsters; cool, but maybe a couple years out of date. No Ace Frehley guitar solos and power chords; the musical highlights of this R&B/Soul/Blues/Jersey Rock and Roll show were played on the trombone by a guy called “LaBamba” and harmonica solos by the lead singer – Southside Johnny. Like I said, it was nothing remotely like a KISS concert – and it turns out I had been wrong in how I thought seeing a great band live could “change my life”. I’d underestimated that notion; by a longshot.

This album joined my collection the next morning. The liner notes on the back cover described a Jersey Shore music scene that sounded far too cool to be real, populated with colorful characters whose dedication to their music and their lifestyle together made them sound more like soldiers in some righteous cause than mere musicians. “It was music as survival, and they lived it down in their souls, night after night”.  The essay was written by a guy I’d never heard of, apparently some friend of Southside Johnny – named Bruce Springsteen.    

8: Dedication – Gary US Bonds (Key Track: “This Little Girl”)

A year later, it’s 1981 – and Bruce Springsteen is my favorite rock star. (Full disclosure – he still holds that position 41 years later and counting…) I’m consuming everything I can get my hands on from Bruce Springsteen, going back to his 1973 debut up to his latest release at the time, the sprawling double album The River.

I read in Circus magazine that Bruce and fellow E Streeter Steve Van Zandt were working together on a “comeback” album for an old 60’s rock and roll guy named Gary US Bonds (at that time floundering on the oldies circuit at a whopping 42 years old!) Bruce used to play his early hit “Quarter to Three” as an encore in his live shows – which I’d seen dozens of times on HBO from the No Nukes concert film. 

Comprised of some songs left over from The River sessions and some well-selected covers, this album finds Springsteen sharing his talent, reputation and his band to help Gary US Bonds launch a second career arguably stronger than his first.  For fans of Bruce Springsteen, this was a welcome jolt of “new” Bruce music; the album leverages the classic E Street Band sound throughout. In essence it is an E Street album with a different lead singer.

7: Glass Houses – Billy Joel (Key Track: “You May Be Right”)

My sister really liked Billy Joel, and she played his records quite a bit.  But songs like “Piano Man”, “Movin’ Out”, and “Just the Way You Are” were not rock and roll to me.  Late one night I came across a video of this band in their new-wave suits with skinny ties and new guitar driven songs, with Billy Joel jumping around his piano and shadow boxing like a reborn Jerry Lee Lewis. I bought Glass Houses with birthday money, and can still recall the thrill of hearing the first track open with the sound of shattering glass and the intro riff to “You May Be Right”.  It still hits me the same way today; I’ve never gotten tired of it. The adolescent rock and roll bravado of wooing a girl with a shrugging claim that “You may be right, I may be crazy; but it just may be a lunatic you’re looking for….” Irresistible to a 14 year old trying to look/act/be cool.  

6: Road to Ruin – Ramones (Key Track: “I Just Wanna Have Something to Do”)

I was aware of the Ramones as the NYC leaders of the “Punk Rock” movement, but that was it. In 1980 I saw “Rock and Roll High School” on HBO, and then I followed their handy monthly program guide to be sure I was there to watch it again as many times possible. Not the whole movie; mostly just the scene early in the film where the Ramones roll into town in a convertible , driving up to the theater where they are playing their big show. The was before MTV made its way into my house, and this “music video” for “I Just Wanna Have Something to Do” is 3 minutes of greasy 3 chord Ramones Punk/Rock/Pop. The movie isn’t great; it’s a cartoon-like high school farce about a cartoon-like rock band – and so it’s actually pretty great.  

5: Damn the Torpedoes – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Key Track: “Refugee”)

The best album from my sister collection, and Tom Petty’s best (as least up until Wildflowers, nearly 20 years later). I read in a magazine once that the Heartbreakers were “the best band this side of E Street”, and the similarities between the two bands and the two singers/songwriters leading them are many. Medium Happy and I agree strongly on this one. Talk to anyone between 20 and 70 about music, and I doubt you’ll find anyone who will say they don’t like Tom Petty.  Now name another artist/singer/band that has the same universal and unanimous appeal…..  

4: Blow Your Face Out – J Geils Band (Key Track: “Musta Got Lost”)

The stereo in my bedroom was always tuned to WCMF 96.5/96 ROCK from Rochester NY. I came into the middle of a song where this guy was telling a crazy rhyming story about trying desperately to win back his woman…. “you gonna be playing bingo all night alone, that’s why your sitting there by your telephone – and you know that she ain’t going to CALL YOU!” It was the brilliant introduction to what WCMF deejay Brother Weeze told me was the live version of “Musta Got Lost”. 

The album is a total houseparty, and the band as masterful, funky and fun as any you can name.  This was several years before they had huge MTV hits with glossier, polished songs like “Centerfold” and “Freeze Frame”. The J Geils Band released three live albums between 1972 and 1982; taken in order they measure the band’s journey from bluesy/funky/R&B bar band to a period of selling out arenas. They are all amazing – but this double album is my favorite.  

3: Men Without Women – Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul (Key Track: “Forever”)

In September 1982, Bruce released his stark acoustic album Nebraska. For fans starving for several years for new Springsteen music, it’s fair to say this release was a bit of a shocker – and even a disappointment on its first listen. No E Street Band, no electric guitar – these desperate songs about criminals and people struggling were not going to be played at anyone’s party. For that album we’d have to wait almost two more years.

One week after Nebraska’s release, Bruce’s guitar player released his first solo album. Springsteen’s right-hand man and consigliere Steve Van Zandt (also a founding member, primary songwriter and producer of the Asbury Jukes) rechristened himself Little Steven and formed a big band with horns called the Disciples of Soul. Building on and ultimately perfecting the signature Jersey Shore sound of the Jukes, this album is rich with raw and stinging guitars, shimmering horns, and songs sung with soul, passion and commitment. 

Nebraska has gone on to be cited as one of Bruce Springsteen’s crowning achievements, and I don’t disagree.  But for this 17 year old, Men Without Women was the album spending time spinning on my turntable.

2: Making Movies – Dire Straits (Key Track: “Tunnel of Love”)

I first heard this album coming out of my friend’s car stereo one cool but sunny afternoon in early spring.  A group of us tossed lacrosse balls in our High School parking lot. We told ourselves we were trying to get a little head start on the upcoming season, but we were really just talking and laughing about things that High School friends do. I remember missed passes that bounced away, only to be stopped eventually in the piles of dirty gray snow piled under the light posts and outlining the parking lot. We’d argue over who needed to “get on their horse” and chase the ball – was that a missed catch, or a bad pass?

I recall the details of that afternoon every time I listen to this album. Is it that this collection of seven songs is just simply so expertly written, played and arranged/produced? Because it is. Or is it because this music just happened to serve as the soundtrack to one of those days in our youth that – looking back – was actually pretty much perfect, even if we didn’t know it at the time?  Of course, its both. 

1: Darkness on the Edge of Town – Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (Key Track: “The Promised Land”)

I got my first copy of my favorite album from the local public library; I taped it onto cassette and played it to death in our car stereo, on my portable AM/FM/Cassette “boombox”, and in my vintage Walkman.  This album includes some of Bruce Springsteen’s most classic songs and enduring themes of struggle, faith, resolve and determination. It’s also one of the band’s best sounding albums. If you listen to The Promised Land starting at 1:40, you get what I believe is the most perfect distillation of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s magic in a one minute musical passage.  It’s all there: tinkling piano, swelling organ, stinging guitar, roaring saxophone, concluding with a harmonica refrain into the song’s final chorus.    

This album – and the numerous live bootlegs of the ’78 tour/era – represent what I consider the peak creative output of my favorite artist and his band. The songs on Darkness inspire, challenge, and celebrate.  There’s a Darkness on the Edge of Town – but we face those challenges with resilience and defiance.  

A few weeks after getting the boxes of records to Danny, we made our first visit to his new apartment in Burlington. After a quick tour and dropping off our bags, he asked me to check out his record player. He told me he really loved the way it sounds – far different from the wireless Bluetooth speaker streaming tracks from Spotify we would typically use. 

He asked what I wanted to hear, and I deferred; “Your choice – let me know what you think sounds good.”  He grabbed a disc, dropped the needle, and a couple snaps and pops cut through the speakers. And then I heard the familiar drum riff that kicks off “Badlands.”  I turned it up a bit louder and broke into a broad smile. “You’re right,” I said. “It sounds great!”