Bob Seger - The Albums and the career, song by song thread

West of the Moon
This is the kind of song I expected to really enjoy based on the descriptions above. Maybe it needs more time to grow on me, but after giving it a couple listens I find it kind of boring. Lyrics don't really speak to me, melody is predictable and the pace is slow.

The lead guitar playing is absolutely majestic though and I really like the brief instrumental ending. Better than average on the strength of those.
Rating 6/10

 

West of the Moon: Sounds like The Eagles. Also has the same feel as "Always in My Heart" from the previous album. But it works. At least he only put reverb on the snare drum, which doesn't sound offensive this time around. This is good progress for a Seger ballad, away from big orchestration, the synth work here is pretty tasteful. Comparable to Springsteen ballads of the time like "Streets of Philadelphia" and "Secret Garden." Given the next track, it sounds like he got his album sequencing wrong and should have ended up here.

I got the used CD in the mail yesterday and immediately set about copying it to MP3 files, most of which I'll put in my Seger playlist. I can pinpoint what put me off following through with a purchase at the time: the album cover! Like a bad PowerPoint slide. Looks like something a hair metal would have been putting out in the mid-90s. I see inside great stark B&W photography of Seger and band - can't help but thinking a well-chosen photo from a session like that would have made for a much better cover. Mid-90s, I was buying CDs like crazy, given that MP3s did not yet exist for the masses, and you still had to buy whole albums if you really liked a song. It was a strange time for singles, too, vinyl just about gone at the time, cassingles way out, and often the only choice was harder to find CD singles that were like EPs and priced accordingly. So I would guess that I heard "Lock and Load," really liked it, went to Tower Records, took one look at the cover, thought "shouldn't this be in the REO Speedwagon section," couldn't locate an easy/cheap copy of "Lock and Load" and let it pass. Turns out it was my loss!

P.S. Maybe the color photo on the first greatest hits album is from the same photo session? His hair looks different in both, but similar setting and background?

 

I just don't enjoy the ballads on this album as much as I'd like to. I agree with @Rfreeman here - West of the Moon is too slow-paced for me, the lyrics seem generic, and the melody is not particularly interesting.

 

Definitely a deep cut. As Hey Vinyl Man says above, the guitar solo suits the laidback nature of "West of the Moon" but since everyone's a critic I sure wish the solo was more searing/soaring - like some of the other songs on the album. Seger's weary voice in that "low key" works pretty good for the song in spite of Springsteen's suggestion. Interesting that these two were still comparing "notes" with each other as late as '88, there must've been a real friendship or bond between these two musicians that lasted quite a long time.

 

Hands In The Air.

I've seen two time losers running everywhere
Shouting and screamin', "I was never there!"
With their hands in the air
Hands in the air

I've seen bad news messengers avoiding kings
Cheating spouses twisting their rings
With their hands in the air
Oooh, got their hands in the air
As guilty as the wind out on the sea
Affecting who we are and who we'll be

There's a desperation, a real despair
Even the good people are starting to declare
I've got my hands in the air
Ah my hands are in the air

They're surrendering, they're giving in
They'll do anything not to go through this again
They've got their hands in the air
Ooh, their hands in the air

And they're sinking in the quicksand like a stone
Broken to the marrow of the bone, oh

The dealers are dividing up their tips
The gamblers, they're all cashin' in their chips

There's a man in the middle of a parking lot
Wondering which way he should go
There's a star on the horizon
Sinking low, low

All you death wish addicts, you corrupters of truth
You killers of the spirit, you marauders of youth
Get your hands in the air
I want to see your hands in the air

If you're selling these lies, these impossible dreams
You can keep on washin' but you'll never get clean
Get your hands in the air
Let me see your hands in the air

Frost, Mitchell, Seger

We have a nice slide guitar opening us up, a moderate rock beat, and what end up being a pretty good groove.

I like this well enough. I guess from the context of the lyrics, hands in the air means guilty, and they are putting their hands in the air in surrender to the authorities.
This song rocks along nicely and has a nice lead break, but it doesn't really go anywhere. It sort of sits on one pattern, with the same riff, and on closer inspection it ends up being a bit lost in the one thing.
I like it well enough, but not a strong closer, on what, for the most part I see as a pretty good album.

 

I obviously like It's A Mystery more than most here, but I understand some of the issues folks have, and don't understand others, but that's just how it goes with music.
I much prefer this album to The Fire Inside, and I like that Bob did some exploring. I can see that some of the exploration didn't quite work, but for me most of it did.
This isn't going to get as much air time as The Distance or Nine Tonight, but I think it's a solid album and it will get played again.

Essentially Bob takes a ten year break here, to be with his family and raise his kids, which I think is a beautiful thing. Somewhere along the way he said he would do that if he had kids, and it shows a fair bit of integrity to follow it up with actually doing that.
We have a song with Martina McBride in 98, and the Greatest Hits volume II, and I believe they are the only releases between It's A Mystery and Face The Promise

 

Hands in the Air - This is the only song from this album that I recall getting much airplay. I was working the night shift at an insurance company, staffing a computer room where we sorted disks and put them in computers as requested by staff in the office...really dull stuff, but we did get to listen to the classic rock station on the radio all night. "Hands in the Air" still makes me think of that job, as I heard it quite a bit there. I didn't and still don't care for it, but it was the perfect song for that setting!

 

Hands In The Air
I like the sound and feel of this track though it sounds more like something I would expect from Joe Walsh era Eagles than from Seger. Can't saybthe lyrics really speak to me but they work for a riff driven rocker like this one. Not so much what they say as a whole but the conjuring of a series of effective images. Slide guitar is great throughout the song and in the brief solo.
Rating 8/10

 

I don't see this album as a dud or sharp drop off. It started out with a couple weak tracks and had a couple more later but it overall followed in the mode of everything he did after Nine Tonight for me in having several very strong tracks - including one I gave a 10/10 as I believe I have found on each of these albums - that make me glad I spent the time listening through the whole thing carefully with you folks. I do appreciate that his failures here at least seem to be him missing the mark while heading in his own direction after several albums where the failures seemed to come from him trying to attract younger listeners by adopting then contemporary instrumentation and production styles.

 

We're back to that "weird production" which I just want to strip right off the top of the track to make it sound more natural. Otherwise love the Joe Walsh-style guitar, and I find "Hands in the Air" more listenable generally than the first two tracks - maybe that's grudging acceptance that this is how Seger wants these songs to sound. For an album where the lyrics on several songs are purposefully simple and uncluttered, this song seems too wordy and it hinders the flow of the song for me - he even throws in one of his patented gambling references (something I never noticed before this Seger thread, as if he's trying to leave us with a bit of the old Bob). For all my grumbling about many of these songs I also think it's an improvement over "The Fire Inside" but not by much.

 

Hands in the Air: Doesn't feel like an album closer. Also hearing that similarity I noted earlier to Chris Rea in that same part of his recording career. Not bad, but not blowing my doors off either.

I liked It's a Mystery enough to buy a used CD copy now. As it's impossible to buy it any other way ... I wonder how long it will take for these to disappear and some shady European entity to start selling CD-R's "with bonus tracks" on E Bay! I figure that day may never come as I'd wager demand for this album is pretty low, and it's not part of a whole, the way all those early Seger albums you can't traditionally buy are.

Why kill this album? It will have less knowledgeable fans thinking he took a 15-year hiatus from albums instead of (roughly) 10. You could feel general interest in him waning in 1991 with The Fire Inside. Four years later, I'm sure there was a week or two after the album release when people were talking about it, but not much thereafter. A real shame as he was clearly enjoying himself, the constraints of fame and stardom loosened over the years. I'm surprised he didn't try a reggae track! But I like the looser sense of experimentation he had here, playing around with arrangements and styles he never had previously. It's a little too scattershot, and a world away from those albums that were directed at scoring big hits, but really not on that much lesser of a level. All his peers were making their bones in the 70s in the 80s and were at the top of their game. But at some point, they had to shift into a different gear and just concentrate on putting something out there that felt right to them and honored whatever bond they had created with their fans.

Taking a decade off? That's nice, and I'm sure he was glad he did it in terms of his family. But he did so little in that time period in terms of retrospective and archive collections, when he (or Andrews) had to be doing these sort of things to keep his name/brand kicking around. The perfect time to do this. I'm sure it would have been minimally invasive to his family time to help curate a few box sets, some live archive sets, deluxe reissue with bonus/demo tracks, etc. Anything to keep the ball in the air. Instead, it felt like he disappeared. Retired? I'm not sure if that word was ever kicked around. But his image became much more faded than those of Springsteen/Petty/Mellencamp and others who were still actively pursuing careers via new albums, touring, steady and strong archival releases.

This was where Andrews showed his true colors as a manager who had no clue how to handle a legacy artist, the petty bickering with iTunes and blocking tracks from being on there. I don't know his history with Spotify and other streaming services but am willing to bet it was just as contentious and slow to adapt. All because some guy who made it in the 70s doesn't quite grasp how much things have changed, and this is how you do it now. Maybe if Seger had been putting out steady four-year releases in that time period, he and Andrews would have understood the changes and adapted to them more readily. Instead, it became like pulling teeth for them to do the bare minimum. Has it affected his legacy? With us it hasn't, because for the most part, we were there at various points along the way when it really mattered and became part of our lives. But I have to wonder if he means anything to anyone who wasn't.

 

Totally agree.

One patched together follow up best of isn't really respectful of the catalog.
It seems it would have been the ideal time to have somebody collate a decent anthology. Or revisit the earlier, apparently "taboo" albums.
With the growth of home video, it seems like a decent live concert video could have been released, even if it was just a cleaned up Largo release.

A lot of opportunities missed, and as we'll get to, I never even heard of Face The Promise, or the albums after it, until I started searching the catalog.... 4? Years ago.
It seems like some kind of market presence would have helped a lot....
It seems like a big name US artist coming back after ten years of retirement (which was what I thought had happened) or semi-retirement, would have received a bit of fanfare.... but it was like he was forgotten by most, aside from the 4 or 5 frequent radio tracks.

And none of that stuff would have required much from Bob.... or even Punch. Just a sign off

 

Have to agree with this... Timing would have been perfect... Imagine A Seger 'Tracks' style box around the same era... I'd bet pretty much everyone who bought tracks or Petty's Playback box would have bought the Seger box.

 

It is at least super cool that in this YouTube era all his "OOP" material is available for all to hear with far less effort than it would have been to take my allowance to the mall to get an LP at Sam Goody's in the 70s.

The only effect keeping it OOP really has is keeping a small amount of money out of Bob & Pubch's pockets. Probably their best bet to cash in a little would be a box set collecting all that stuff in remastered versions.

 

Although probably a bit late in the game now, I hope Bob gives us some kind of set with some of those unreleased tracks at some point.... it seems a waste for them to sit rotting in the archives

 

Given that I had (nefariously) deep dived his first seven albums by that time and was really enjoying the Seger playlists I'd put together, I was waiting on Face the Promise based on hearing "Wait for Me' a few times. Just checked ... Face the Promise is unavailable for download or streaming! I think you can still legally buy the CD. We'll jump off that bridge when we get there.

 

I like Hands in the Air as an album closer. It's another of the "Angry Bob" songs that really seem the emotional center point of this album, so both lyrically and musically it makes a nice bookend with the opening Rite of Passage.

It was great to see him exploring more on It's a Mystery. I've always liked this album better than The Fire Inside and this thread shows me how much that is still true. I think this album sets the stage for the post-retirement albums, which I like better overall than this one.

I'm pretty sure there were interviews from Seger's stardom years where he said he wanted to be the first rock and roll star to retire. So that's where I got the "retirement" word for his long break after this album, even though it wasn't announced like that or anything.

I think people are underestimating how much effort even an archival release would be for a musical control freak like Seger. So although it was indeed a wasted opportunity I would be hesitant to put too much of the blame on Punch. I think Seger himself his driving lots of these choices, though that's just sheer speculation on my part.

It is crazy that so many of the later albums like It's a Mystery and Face the Promise are unavailable on streaming while Rambling Gambling Man and The Fire Inside are still there. Who knows the thinking behind that? (Assuming there was any, and it's not just intertia that some contract expired and nobody renewed it.) Yes, thank goodness for YouTube making all this available!

 

Chances Are .

Chances are you'll find me
Somewhere on the road tonight
Seems I always end up drivin' by
Ever since I've known you
It just seems you're on my way
All the rules of logic don't apply
I long to see you in the night
Be with you till morning light

I remember clearly
How you looked the night we met
I recall your laughter and your smile
I remember how you made me
Feel so at ease
I remember your grace, your style

And now you're all I long to see
You've come to mean so much to me
Chances are I'll see you
Somewhere in my dreams tonight
You'll be smilin' like the night we met
Chances are I'll hold you
And I'll offer all I have
You're the only one I can't forget
Baby you're the best I've ever met
And I'll be dreamin' of the future
And hopin' you'll be by my side
And in the morning I'll be longing
For the night
For the night

Chances are I'll see you
Somewhere in my dreams tonight
You'll be smilin' like the night we met
Chances are I'll hold you
And I'll offer all I have
You're the only one I can't forget
Baby you're the best I've ever met

Songwriters: Bob Seger
Chances Are lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

This is a Bob Penned song that he sings with Martina McBride, which appeared on the Hope Floats movie soundtrack.

I may have heard this one time before when I listened to the Greatest Hits Vol 2 cd I got .... I actually ended up giving it to my wife for her car when I got all the albums... but that's something else.
We open up somewhat like We've Got Tonight, but the song does move in a slightly different direction. It does have a very big ballad from a big movie sound.
This song charted on the US and Canadian Adult Contemporary charts at 23 and 40 respectively.

This is well written and performed, but not the kind of track I am generally going to lean towards.
We get a series of key modulations, partly due to the two singers best vocal ranges, and partly because that is a very popular emotional hook used for these kinds of songs.

I think for what it is it comes across very well, but it isn't a style of song I would seek out.

 

Chances Are
Wow this is a gorgeous romantic duet. Perfectly crafted yet comes off as totally heart felt. One of the most impressive and moving tracks we have hit in quite a while on this thread and I really can't think of anything to critique or potentially improve upon.

I am familiar with this track but never had really focused on it or realized it was Seger before.

Focusing on it now has me inspired to try to work out a guitar based arrangement to perform this in the band I lead with my singing GF Joy. Just messaged her to see if she'd be into it.

Rating 10/10

 

Chances Are - I bought the Hope Floats soundtrack just for this (the movie was just ok from what I recall), and I remember being really disappointed when it didn't become a hit. Generally I'm not big on romantic duets, but I have always liked this one. Quite possibly Seger's best love song - although there's not a whole lot of competition for that title, is there?

 

Chances Are: This didn't really register with me, although there's surely nothing wrong with it. Still, I was more than glad to rush out and buy the Greatest Hits 2 album to pull in "Understanding" and sample the new bonus tracks. 2003? This was right when I was in that "illegally obtained early album appreciation" phase!

 

Update: GF is flattered it made me think of her but in a nutshell there is no way she is gonna sing this with me. We have very different cheese thresholds. Though she loves The Rose so you can never tell.

 

That's a shame. It would probably be more poignant from a real couple.

 

I can't really get through this song this morning. I recall buying the SECOND VOLUME of greatest hits for some reason but obviously this was not the reason. I never saw Hope Floats but I remember eating in a diner that must've been featured in the movie because they had press clippings hanging in the diner.

 

This is the only one of the previously uncollected or unissued songs on Greatest Hits 2 that I don't care for too much. Like the ballads on It's a Mystery, it's OK to listen to at the time but not a song that I seek out.