Little Steven aka “Miami” Steve Van Zandt was/is again one of the guitar players in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. He’s also Bruce’s main foil on stage these days and sings a lot of the backing vocals, which I’ve always found strange. Because as much as I love the character that is Little Steven, or “Miami” Steve, and appreciate his importance to Bruce and the E Street Band, with the best will in the world, he ain’t a very good singer! 

So I’ve always avoided these Little Steven albums, “then why, pray, do you own this one ?” I hear you ask. Well, I was in one of my biannual binges of “The Sopranos” (the greatest TV series ever made in which Steve plays Soprano family Consigliere Silvio Dante) when one of the songs in the soundtrack caught my ear. On further investigation it turned out the song was “Inside Of Me” from this very album. 

It’s a really good pastiche of a mid 60’s, Motown style Soul tune. Yeah OK, Steve really ain’t all that as a singer but I like the song, it has a Soprano’s connection and that’s all there is to it. I’m pretty sure I’ve listened to the rest of it at least once but couldn’t tell you a thing about it…the end.

Inside Of Me - https://youtu.be/vYXtaW3mhZ4?si=tjAZt9dlkXEpillY

As you will have noticed if you’ve been with us for a while there are a number of albums in this list (Lulu, Sailcat, Tom Jones…) that I own purely for the presence of one track, and this collection of greats by US/Canuck hard rockers Steppenwolf is another one of them. Now before you jump to conclusions, the track in question is NOT “Born To Be Wild”. Now as great and iconic as that song is, and I do own multiple versions of it by Slade, Ace Kefford, The Cult and others, I’ve never really felt the need to own it by it’s originators.

No the reason for this album residing in my collection is tucked away on side 2, their 1968 single “Sookie Sookie”, have a listen.

Sookie Sookie - https://youtu.be/Zuu7IKVxU7U?si=8HNWaW-n_j7Cxjy5

The older I get, the more I like the Dan. I’m not sure if that says more about me or the Dan. There was a time when the only thing I knew about them was the film clip they used to show continually on The Old Grey Whistle Test, a clip of them performing “Reeling Down The Years”, I hated it. A bunch of greasy looking, lank haired, moustachioed hippies noodling about. Yet here I now am, owning a copy of the very album that song lives on, what happened ?

The start of my conversion was hearing Donald Fagen’s solo album “The Nightfly” (see here if you missed it https://www.whiterabbitrecords.co.uk/blog/read_204163/2023-albums-thing-130-donald-fagen-the-nightfly.html) and was confirmed in the pub (all the best things happen in the pub right ?) when this albums second track, “Dirty Work”, came drifting across the bar one Sunday afternoon. What a song it is. The song that proceeds it and begins this record is one of their better known hits “Do It Again” which I had actually played at a few Open Mics as part of a trio I was briefly a part of.

“Can’t Buy A Thrill” was Steely Dan’s debut album, released in 1972. While Donald Fagen does feature as the lead vocalist on most songs (4 himself and 3 co-leads), because Fagen was concerned about his ability to sing live singer David Palmer  features on five songs (2 solo’s and 3 co-vocals with Fagen) and the quite fantastic “Midnite Cruiser” is sung by drummer Jim Hodder.

What Steely Dan did was perfect US FM Radio, “soft rock”, not something that was gonna catch my ear back in the mid 70’s, I was a Glam Rock kid back then. I needed to be a little more seasoned before I got the Dan, seems like I now am.

Dirty Work - https://youtu.be/kR5Ki6jjPaY?si=BFsbVeafkSTltbvI