I guess I’m just that kinda guy. I do a little bit of mechanics every now and then, when someone wants something fixed up right and ain’t too fussy about paying tax, or having an ex-con on the job; Hey Jeb and his lads should’ve known I weren’t no easy mark and that a wrench is plenty good for cracking skulls. But mostly these days, I just kick back at home, play some guitar if and when I have a mind to, hit a cool Miller or two and wait for Julie to get back from the nursing home she works at. She’s a real sweet honey and after she fixes us something good, well hey, a man has instincts y’know?
Friday onwards I usually end up shooting some pool with Blake and Link down at Big Cassie’s Place, out on Route 17. Gets plenty rowdy out there on a Saturday, Cassie stands us a few on the house if we make sure no drunk farmers tear it up too much, once Link and I take ’em out back they don’t tend to want to go home pretty fast and pretty darn sorry. Link calls it ‘The Surgery’ that yard, mostly coz that’s what they need after I reckon.
Best nights of all though is when they get a band in, Joe Jr & The Shift Kickers are the best, from all the way over in Moburn County, no messing. They got it all, Bad to The Bone, Can’t Get Enough, Sweet Home (but we change the lyrics on that one), they rock it up a treat and throw in a couple of slower ones for the ladies, nothing too coloured, y’know? Best of all is when they let me sing one, what can I say, last time we did Gimme Three Steps, I saw myself in the bar mirror and I felt like a million, swear could see the energy in me, the ink moving on my arms, throbbing.
When I got to the parking spot with Mary Beth that night, man you best believe she felt it , , she’s kinda a wildcat anyways but that night in the pick-up … Left goddamn scratches all over me. Julie didn’t like it but hey, a man has instincts y’know?
Anyways Mary Beth keeps nagging at me to go with her to her pa’s place over up in Nagasawcett Falls and start over; Julie keep bothering me, that looks like a better ‘n good deal – sure her son Patrick be along too, what with him being left plenty simple after the accident, but if’n her old man could fix me up to work some it could be mighty good. Love to just ride on out-of-town like that, leaving all them behind – man’s gotta roll sometimes y’know?
Which is as close as I can get to a review of Bad Company Run With The Pack with a mind as tired and bent out-of-shape by work as mine is tonight, which I’ve played three times straight tonight after owning it for over 25 years. First time I thought it was just a bit of an ersatz copy of the great Bad Company, a few good manly toughies mixed with a couple of maudlin, I quite like my woman, slowies. But it’s really grown, on me tonight, at its best it really grooves as well as struts on ‘Live For The Music’ and ‘Sweet Lil’ Sister’.
That’s your lot. My brain hurts.
298 Down.
I knew we’d met somewhere before. It was somewhere in the back woods of … [insert every place here] … that was, I mean wuz you wuznt it (no apostrophe! Nifty, eh?).
Just Gimme Three Steps …
Sounds like a cool Saturday night up there. I bought the “Run With the Pack” album thinking it was the “Straight Shooter” one. Silly mistake but I don’t regret it.
Always keep your wrench handy, y’know?
I’ve only heard the singles off Straight Shooter myself. Bad Co are everything I think of when I hear the term ‘classic rock’ – I bet it even sounded classic at the time.
For some reason, during my time at the record store, this album was incredibly hard to find on CD. I may have seen it only 2-3 times tops.
That’s a pretty cosmopolitan pack you run with. Seems like you’ve got some Texas, some Mississippi, some Kentucky, and maybe even some New Jersey and West Virginia all mixed up in there.
That’s just the way our boys are down here in Cliche Bluff, GA.
I was wondering where we were going here. Thought maybe you’d been hacked by Cormac McCarthy, or the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson.
I “can’t get enough” of “Silver, Blue, and Gold”. Don’t think it’s on this album, but still.
Just tellin’ it how it is up here on the Welsh borders!
SB&G kicks off the second side here.
Ahh, good. I honestly couldn’t remember what album it was on. Great pop ballad with some of Paul Rodger’s best work.
I think it’s funny because it’s such American music, so when you hear them chatting after a track it really jars to hear their accents.
Definitely not how you’d expect them to sound, that’s for sure.
Which part of North Wales is the story set in?
Ha! Those badlands on the Bangor/Conway border, just across from the Stereotype County limits.