Friday, February 21, 2014

Joe Walsh Barnstorm ABC/Dunhill 1972

Joe Walsh Barnstorm ABC/Dunhill 1972 CAT# DSX 50130

Man, I'm done waiting for post-James Gang Walsh albums to impress me.  They're all the same, a few moments of classic rock awesomeness followed by mellow California style radio rock.  Boring.

This one is called his masterpiece.  His lovely textured guitar work and spacey open-ended songs, blah, blah, blah.  It's boring.  It's what would happen to the Grateful Dead if they got sober.  Soft boogie rock, soft melodies, everything soft.  It's a very country tinged affair, but not in a country rock way, in the spacey California country kind of way.  It's the songs here that probably led the Eagles to pick up Walsh as a guitarist and songwriter.

Admittedly though, I'm not really being fair to the album.  Of the Barnstorm-era and proper solo Walsh stuff I've dove into, this is one of the better albums.  I just wished Walsh would rock more, like "Rocky Mountain Way."  This album is missing a a rocker all together.  The space and psychedelic experiments into country are border line brilliant.  Had I started here, I wouldn't have said all the stuff about Joe Walsh being boring.

Birdcall Morning

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