JOHN EMMS MUSIC REVIEWS

As a songwriter Bob Seger always wrote the songs you wished you had wrote.

Early on, as players we would listen to “Live Bullet’ his live album from 1976 and wanted to play that way.

The passion, the integrity.

In those days you felt you knew Bob personally. You rooted for him.

And oh, let’s not forget the Silver Bullet Band

Both Seger’s Bullet bands later on Nine Tonight 1981 and the 1976 Live Bullet band were working man’s players.

Guitarist Drew Abbot was Chuck Berry on steroids, Chris Campbell’s solid bass work or sax man Alto Reed who has moved on to playing some killer blues just plain rocked and played with soul.

Album after vinyl album still own them all, Seger just  got bigger and bigger.

In fact, his greatest hits package released way back in 1994 became album of the decade in 2010 after selling 9 million copies.

What’s different now? Well a lot more bang for your buck.

You get 26 songs, completely remastered from the original master tapes. 

Cd has  a very cool glossy booklet with memorbillia, those great  lyrics, and tracks like Turn the Page,  Mainstreet, Her Strut, Against the Wind, and Seger’s now  X-mas classic take on the Little Drummer Boy.

More importantly, besides the full on remastering is you get to hear why Mellencamp and Springsteen took Seger’s heartland rock and made it matter writing their own legacy.

A reviewer’s quote about our debut Mining The Blues Cd was along the lines of  “Emms’ songs could easily fit  into the working class Bob Seger songbook and that’s a good thing” 

It made me smile.

Solid buy for 20 bucks or so, without a doubt!

JOHN EMMS is a musician, www.theshaftmen.com radio host  http://emms.podbean.com/  and veteran music journalist.