February 28 – Friday – Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band – Stranger in Town

Just to let you know right off the bat, this is a Ram alternative. Not a contender for the top two or even three slots, but it will probably come out again for workout purposes and for sheer entertainment. This is one swell album. Bob Seger is a good story teller and a hard rocker. Another one that I didn’t know what to expect or how I was going to react when I put the record on the turntable. Not all the songs are winners, but it starts with “Hollywood Nights,” goes into “Still the Same,” deserving of its hit status, and then when “Old Time Rock & Roll” begins, you can see Tom Cruise sliding across the floor in his underwear. I’ll admit that the song is not my favorite and I didn’t find Tom Cruise attractive until I saw him in Knight and Day, which I watch whenever it is on, no lie. It’s not that I didn’t like Tom Cruise before, I did, in many things. I liked him in Born on the 4^th of July, Vanilla Sky (I seem to be the only one that liked that movie), and even though I was such a big fan of Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat, when I learned, like all other fans, that Tom Cruise would be playing the part of tall, lithe and catlike Lestat, I was outraged. That was until I saw him in A Few Good Men, and realized what a good actor he was. There was that scene in the courtroom where he’s deciding whether to go after Jack Nicholson or not, and he pauses, knowing what he has to do and the little bead of sweat going down his temple, that’s when I knew he would make a mighty fine Lestat, and I was right. And then there’s that movie he made with Jamie Foxx, Collateral, in which he is just so evil. But we won’t talk about that because apparently Jamie Foxx is dating Katie Holmes.

Well, that was quite a tangent, wasn’t it? As I was saying, “Old Time Rock & Roll” is not my favorite song, even if it is a tribute to my favorite music genre. Seger’s “Rock and Roll Never Forgets” is not only a far better song, it helped me turn 30 with ease (“sweet sixteen has turned 31”). But that’s not on this album, and neither are my other two favorite Seger songs, “Katmandu” and “Betty Lou’s Gettin’ Out Tonight” (say what you will, but I just love a good slut song). What is on this album always surprises me. You’ve got to appreciate a guy who can belt out song after song, then comes out with the amazingly lovely and oh so relatable “We’ve Got Tonite.”

You know, sometimes I know some of what I’m going to write beforehand. But I started my workout with a blank page this evening, and just went with whatever came into my head. And for some strange reason, that was Tom Cruise.

I apologize that I this is the wrong album cover, but it’s what I had. It’s the same picture on both, so I thought, close enough.