34. The Traveling Wilburys--Vol. 1
#34: The Traveling Wilburys--Vol. 1 (1988)
Top-Notch Tracks: "End of the Line," "Handle with Care," "Dirty World," "Heading for the Light," "Congratulations"
Album Depth: "Not Alone Anymore," "Rattled," "Last Night," "Margarita"
Weak Link: "Tweeter and the Monkey Man"
Stand-out Lyrics: "Been beat up and battered around."--"Handle with Care"
"Don't have to be ashamed of the car I drive. I'm just glad to be here, happy to be alive."--"End of the Line"
"Oh baby, the pleasure would be all mine if you let me drive your pickup truck and park it where the sun don't shine."--"Dirty World"
"I'm so tired of being lonely. I still have some love to give."--"Handle with Care"
"If I had just one more chance to win your heart again I would do things differently, but what's the use to pretend?"--"Congratulations"
"He loves your big refrigerator."--"Dirty World"
"For reasons unexplained, she loved the Monkey Man."--"Tweeter and the Monkey Man"
"I've been robbed and ridiculed in daycare centers and night schools."--"Handle with Care"
"She done me wrong. All I got was this song."--"Last Night"
"Well, it's alright, even if you're old and gray. Well, it's alright, you still got something to say."--"End of the Line"
"He loves your quest for junk food."--"Dirty World"
"She wrote a long letter on a short piece of paper."--"Margarita"
"Been stuck in airports, terrorized. Sent to meetings, hypnotized. Overexposed, commercialized."--"Handle with Care"
"He loves your parts and service."--"Dirty World"
Album Cover: 8 out of 10. With a group like this, you've gotta include pictures of the members of the band, so that the record buyer can ooo and ahh. But, posing it as an old photograph helps it seem like less of an ego trip and more of a-bunch-of-guys-getting-together-having-fun vibe.
Comments: In the spring of 1988 a bunch of grizzled old rockers got together and wrote and sang some songs. They released an album that fall. These long-toothed veterans of the music industry had been around forever, and were each as old as dirt, right? Tom Petty was 38 years old. Jeff Lynne was 40. George Harrison was 45. Bob Dylan was 47. Roy Orbison was 52. Yes, that's right, Roy Orbison was only 52 years old when The Traveling Wilburys released Vol. 1!
Armed with this information as I approach age 55, I marvel at these kids and their youthful antics!
But seriously, when this album came out, I really liked it--but I didn't fully appreciate it. I'm not really sure why. Maybe it's because the three songs that got significant radio airplay all have very similar titles. ("End of the Line," "Handle with Care," "Heading for the Light.") Word--one or two little words--word. The three songs are great, but there is a bit of sameness there.
It wasn't until I got an elliptical machine and started working out regularly that I glommed onto "Dirty World," which is a fantastic exercise song. Plus, it's pretty darn funny, and is full of more double entendres than you can shake a proverbial stick at.
Later, when my youngest was one or two years old and would wake up in the night, I would play music videos to calm him down and get him to sleep. I'd always start with "When I Was a Boy," by Jeff Lynne's ELO, then usually follow it up with "End of the Line," then "Handle with Care." He would eventually go back to sleep, and I would enjoy some good music.
"Congratulations," is a great song to sing, whether actually or sarcastically congratulating someone. Also, it's a good template for singing any five syllables you want to fling together for any occasion, such as, "I want a donut," or "don't step on my foot," or "that guy is stinky," or, "my nose is bleeding," or "you are a butt fart," or "anything you want." (You get the idea.)
"Not Alone Anymore" is a great showcase for Roy Orbison. (Roy is also the best rattler in "Rattled.") "Last Night" is a pretty good song, too. "Margarita" is one of the weaker songs on the album, but it's almost fully redeemed by the line, "she wrote a long letter on a short piece of paper."
I listed "Tweeter and the Monkey Man" as a weak link for this album. Some people might really like the song, with all of its funny-named characters. To me, it plays out like a really bad episode of Miami Vice, and while a part of me will always be nostalgically fond of the show, looking back on it now it's a bit dated and leans too much into glorifying the illicit drug trade.
I never really learned which alias went with which performer on the album. (Nelson, Otis, Lefty, Lucky, and Charlie T. Wilbury.) I have a hard enough time keeping the actual names of people I know straight. I just know that the loss of Roy Orbison made the band at least 32% less fun, so while their wonderfully named second album, "Vol. 3," is still very good, it doesn't come close to the heights that "Vol. 1" reaches.
A lot of other acts have called themselves a super group. The Traveling Wilburys are the superest.
Up next: Sad songs say so much.
I agree that amongst supergroups, this is the superest of the grouperest. For me, Roy Orbison's singing is what made this album extra extra good. One reason his voice sounds so awesome on this record because it gets juxtaposed with Bob Dylan's singing, which is--and I hope the Gods of Rock will forgive me for saying so--mostly horrible. Yes, I do appreciate the poetry in his lyrics, as well as the quality of his musicianship. But his voice grates on my ears like the squealing of castrated pigs.
ReplyDeleteAnd maybe that's why it's the perfect voice to sing "Dirty World" and "Congratulations." You know the music is top shelf when you start liking songs with Bob Dylan singing lead on them. Also, I admit it is fun to try to sing along Bob style.
"Dirty World" does make a good workout song. But for my money, I'd say "Margarita" is a better running song. Maybe that's because the synthesizer sound at the beginning of the song reminds me of "Chariots of Fire." However, when the driving beat kicks in at around the 30-second mark, that's when the jogging pace would really pick up. Other runnable songs include "Rattled" and "End of the Line." Of course, "End of the Line" is one of those songs that gives me goosebumps when I hear it, so I'd say it's best practice to reserve it until the run is almost over and you're at the literal end of the line.
There are many other things that could be said about the Traveling Wilbury's first album, but my thoughts on it are best summed up by a quote I found on the Traveling Wilbury's website, which reads:
The circumambulatory peregrinations of these itinerant mundivagant peripatetic nomads has already disgorged one collection of popular lyrical cantata, which happily encapsulated their dithyrambic antiphonic contrapuntal threnodies as a satisfactory auricular experience for the hedonistic gratification of the hoi-polloi on a popular epigraphically inscribed gramophonic recording.
Nuff said!
Nardo