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Hog Heaven by Elvin Bishop (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Hog Heaven
  • Artist name: Elvin Bishop
  • Year: 1978
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Capricorn Records
  • Collection: Essex
  • Distinguishing characteristics: price sticker on the back ($3.99)
  • Buy it on Amazon: $5.01

Hog Heaven by Elvin Bishop

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m not familiar with this record, but I am familiar with Elvin Bishop, who has come up three times in the past year and a half:

What I expected

Electric blues, rock.

What it was actually like

I was pretty excited for another Elvin Bishop record and honestly thought that I was going to love it. I didn’t.

It didn’t have a single song that I would genuinely consider to have been rock, and even its blues was limited to just one track, Midnight Creeper, which distinguished itself by being about, inter alia – heroin, cocaine, weed and quaaludes. If I had to guess which of those contributed the most to this record, it would be quaaludes[1].

Almost every song included a totally gratuitous horns section, filling my saxophone allotment for 2024 and 2025.

Could it get any worse than that? Oh, yes. Because it was 1978, there was an obligatory reggae song, True Love (with Maria Muldaur vocals that sounded like Blondie in a good way, though in 1978 Blondie was still in her disco phase and The Tide is High didn’t happen until two years later) that was pretty cringey, and the steel drums got explored even further on Waterfalls.

Oh Babe and Right Now is the Hour both had more of a jazzy big-band dance sound.

Southern Dreams was an extremely boring easy listening song with a terrible echo voice effect.

The record’s worst lyrics were on Arkansas, which led with: “Well, Mississippi’s on the east, Oklahoma’s on the west…” It was hopelessly dumb as a song, but I did think the guitar in it was good, and I will never forget Bishop’s uncanny ability to rhyme “Arkansas” with “Arkansas”[2].

Grade

2/5: bad, but I was able to listen to the whole thing

References

References
↑1 I’ve never tried quaaludes and I don’t think I’m missing out on anything, but I can assure you that if you’re using quaaludes to make music, then your music is going to be crap.
↑2 Just kidding – I’ll forget it as soon as I hit the Publish button.

Stranger in Town by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Stranger in Town
  • Group name: Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
  • Year: 1978
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Capitol Records
  • Collection: Essex
  • Distinguishing characteristics: hole drilled through top right corner
  • Buy it on Amazon: $19.99

Stranger in Town by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I am vaguely familiar with Bob Seger – who is definitely not the same person as Pete Seeger, who last appeared here when I reviewed The Greatest Songs of Woody Guthrie (1972) in the spring, and when I reviewed The Bitter End Years (1974) last autumn – but I can’t exactly recall how, or for what.

Like Kenny Rogers a few days ago, Seger was also on the Urban Cowboy soundtrack (1980).

The only song that I recognize by name is Old Time Rock and Roll, a classic.

What I expected

Country and country rock, I guess?

What it was actually like

Much of this record was hopelessly boring soft rock, and I did not enjoy a lot of it.

A couple of songs, however, stood out for being much faster and more electric than the others: Hollywood Nights and Feel Like a Number. I liked that part, but they still weren’t really good songs at all, and in both cases the vocals reminded me of Springsteen (not in a good way), and the lyrics kind of did, too. In the former, a bit of the guitar riff sounded a bit like Born to be Wild, though, and that was pretty good.

The Famous Final Scene stood out from the others as uncommonly boring; Brave Strangers was, like the rest, not offensively bad – until the very slow part with the saxophone.

On the subject of excessive and unnecessary saxophone in rock music, I didn’t remember it in Old Time Rock and Roll, but there it was, weirdly tarnishing what was otherwise undoubtedly a great song, the best on this record by far. This was definitely a song of my childhood, too, in the way that childhood songs are just kind of around and in the atmosphere, often seemingly detached from belonging to a time or place, which is why I never associated it with Seger.

Grade

2/5: weak, but I was able to listen to the whole thing

The Gambler by Kenny Rogers (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: The Gambler
  • Artist name: Kenny Rogers
  • Year: 1978
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: United Artists
  • Collection: Essex
  • Buy it on Amazon: $19.99

The Gambler by Kenny Rogers

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve always considered The Gambler to be a very silly song, and have long appreciated the send-up it got in The Americans[1], but don’t know much else of Kenny Rogers’ ouvre. His atrocious song on the Urban Cowboy soundtrack is not on this record.

What I expected

Country and country rock.

What it was actually like

This was pretty bad.

A bunch of the songs were just forgettable easy listening garbage: I Wish That I Could Hurt That Way Again, The King of Oak Street, She Believes in Me and Sleep Tight, Goodnight Man.

A Little More Like Me (The Crucifixion) and San Francisco Mabel Joy were more soft rock, and relatively ok.

One thing I was not expecting on this record was two disco songs, The Hoodooin’ of Miss Fannie Deberry and Morgana Jones. And I get that it was 1978, so everyone had to be experimenting with disco, but if you make one disco song and it’s hopelessly cringe, why would you then proceed to make another one?

Tennessee Bottle was the record’s most interesting and unusual song, strongly rock and country while also incorporating a noticeable funk sound. Making Music for Money was also more of a rock song, slightly Oompa Loompa, but much more upbeat and fun.

The title track The Gambler was also Oompa Loompa (far more than I remembered), but actually was a good song – just totally different from all the others. I know that Rogers wasn’t technically a one hit wonder, but that is how I’ll always think of him!

Grade

2/5: weak, but I was able to listen to the whole thing

References

References
↑1 The Deal (season two, episode five), when Philip and Elizabeth had a hostage Mossad guy and Philip teased him for being into country music.

Live and Burning by Son Seals (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Live and Burning
  • Artist name: Son Seals
  • Year: 1978
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Alligator Records
  • Collection: Friedman
  • Buy it on Amazon: $30.00

Live and Burning by Son Seals

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have never heard of Son Seals or this record.

What I expected

I don’t know what to expect!

What it was actually like

This was an outstanding electric blues record with so much wonderful guitar distortion and hard rock elements, that sounded like it was recorded live (or at least some of the songs were).

I loved listening to every song on it, especially the faster songs like Hot Sauce, which I thought was the best, though unfortunately also was the shortest. I Can’t Hold Out was also like it, and the guitar brought so much energy.

Seals'[1] voice was growly like Johnny Winter’s on Nothin’ But The Blues (1977), which came out across the record, but especially on Funky Bitch.

The most traditional blues sounding song was She’s Fine, though Call My Job was similar. The most barbecue restaurant song was The Woman I Love.

Grade

5/5: love it

References

References
↑1 Do we think that Son Seals might have been related to Jim Seals, or perhaps that he could have been the father (?) of Seal? At any rate, ask me about when I used to live near Seal and Elvis Costello and would see them in the subway from time to time.

The Best Of Creedence Clearwater Revival (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: The Best Of Creedence Clearwater Revival
  • Group name: Creedence Clearwater Revival
  • Year: 1978
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: K-Tel International
  • Collection: Selman
  • Distinguishing characteristics:
    • Scratched into side one of LP: NU 9360 Side “A”
    • Scratched into side two of LP: NU 9360 Side “B”
  • Buy it on Amazon: $13.89

The Best Of Creedence Clearwater Revival

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never listened to this CCR compilation specifically, but I’m familiar with, and a fan of, most of the songs on it.

What I expected

Iconic country- and blues-rock of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

What it was actually like

The first thing I noticed about this record was that it was produced by an outfit, K-Tel International, that sounded potentially fake. I was aware that CCR had a ton of legal disputes around the ownership of their music, so that was not a surprise. Also, “As advertised on T.V.” is a pretty weird thing to appear on the front of a record album.

The second thing I noticed was that it had a ton of songs on it. A standard LP can hold 22 minutes of music per side, so 44 minutes if each side is full, and this record had 20 songs, which allowed about two minutes and 12 seconds per song, maximum.

The third thing I noticed was that there were going to be a ton of hits (“20 SUPER HITS,” in fact), including many that I recognized.

Though CCR’s music is everywhere, I probably have not intentionally listened to it in at least 10 years, which is because I mostly listen to complete records, rather than individual songs or “best of” compilations. The musical style was extremely consistent, though more electric than I recalled, and Fogerty’s voice was more distinctively weathered than I recalled.

I don’t normally give individual ratings to each song, but chose to do it on this record because, with 20 songs, it was liable to turn into a string of “I liked that one… and that one… and that one…”

Song Rating Notes
Proud Mary 5/5 It’s rare for both an original song and its cover to be equally phenomenal, but I think it’s important for everyone to listen to Tina Turner’s version as well[1].
Bad Moon Rising 5/5 Allow me to introduce my dear friend, Lady Mondegreen.
Lodi 4/5 It’s fascinating to me that Fogerty would write a song about the last ruling dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate.
Green River 4/5
Commotion 4/5
Born On The Bayou 5/5
Midnight Special 5/5 Lead Belly
Molina 2/5 I did not recognize this song at all, and did not like its saxophone part.
Travelin’ Band 5/5
Who’ll Stop The Rain 5/5
Lookin’ Out My Back Door 5/5
Up Around The Bend 5/5
Run Through The Jungle 5/5
Long As I Can See The Light 2/5 This song was a lot slower than the rest, and also had a saxophone part that was bad.
Good Golly Miss Molly 5/5 I had never heard this version before, but I loved it, though I still consider the King Ralph version to be canonical.
Porterville 4/5
Down On The Corner 5/5
Fortunate Son 5/5
Have You Ever Seen The Rain? 5/5
Hey Tonight 3/5 This song was slightly Oompa-Loompa.

Grade

5/5: love it

References

References
↑1 And I’m trying extremely hard not to think of a certain NY Post headline.