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Important Desert Island Mix-Tape Poll

When you think it over, do you ever wonder... which JB tune goes to the island?

Doctor My Eyes	2 votes
The Pretender	0 votes
Runnin on Empty	3 votes
Somebody's Baby	1 votes
The Load-Out/Stay	2 votes
In the Shape of a Heart	0 votes
Boulevard	0 votes
You Love the Thunder	1 votes
Lawyers in Love	0 votes

Johnny Dickshot Aug 14 2007 08:19 AM

A) Doctor, My Eyes B) The Pretender C) Runnin on Empty D) Somebody's Baby E) The Load Out/Stay F) In the Shape of a Heart G) Boulevard H) You Love the Thunder (try to block out the dork accompaniment) I) Lawyers in Love

Edgy DC Aug 14 2007 08:26 AM

I was thinking of doing JB also. Man that "Lawyers in Love" just gets goofier with every new movement of the song, doesn't it? Thanks for ruining "You Love the Thunder," dork.

Edgy DC Aug 14 2007 08:31 AM

I once saw previous important artist Howard Jones at CBGB's gallery and he covered Jackson's "Late for the Sky":

Edgy DC Aug 14 2007 08:36 AM

But I'm not voting for that. I love most of Runnin' on Empty, but I'm thinking of writing in "That Girl Could Sing."

Johnny Dickshot Aug 14 2007 08:43 AM

I couldn't find a "That Girl" video. Or "For a Rocker" But I kinda think of them as 3rd party candidates.

Edgy DC Aug 14 2007 08:50 AM

It may be a lost cause. Hold Out is to Running on Empty as Tusk is to Rumors as The Long Run is to Hotel California. All of them dawn-of-Reagan-era followup answers that came across as slick-but-ultimately-too hollow confident answers to the Carter-era cries from the wilderness that preceded them. They were doomed upon release. All are now probably under-regarded, but any argument that they measured up to their predecessors will fall on deaf ears to most parties. I want to pick "Runnin' on Empty," but the existential lost-ness of the theme would lead me to constant tears if I was on a desert island. Tell 'em, Bruce.

TransMonk Aug 14 2007 09:49 AM

E for me.

metirish Aug 14 2007 08:55 PM

Oh I love this....a huge vote for The Load-Out/Stay,brings back an all time great night in my youth...when I was 17/18 I went with a few of the older lads from the village to Cork to see Prince...anyway we had a blast all day in Cork City and then the concert.....driving home to Tipperary early the next morning about 4AM and I remember that song coming on the radio...really a perfect overnight song and I thought a perfect song for the drive home......love love that song.

Johnny Dickshot Aug 14 2007 09:11 PM

I went with "Runnin'" -- tremendously effective song about moving -- on the road and/or through life -- with propulsive piano and drumming. The guitars in that song also sound great -- guess that's Danny Kortchmar. The geetars also punch up "Thunder" which on another day woulda been my choice. I have to say, some of the balladeery stuff I find too mellow to be exciting and his pop songs (Doctor, Somebody's Baby, Lawyers) were Okay, not great.

Edgy DC Aug 14 2007 09:12 PM

Jackson Browne was out in Hollywood and his career was going nowhere. But, as long as you're in Tinseltown, glitter may cross your path. At a party one night, he meets David Crosby. You'd figure a nobody punk would get nowhere near David Crosby (without a pound of blow) in the early seventies, but he does, tells him he's a singer/songwriter. Crosby gives him the name of his agent. That's a nice little break, but it's still a crapshoot. JB sends the agent his press kit, but it ends up in the same wastebasket other blind submissions go. But the agent had a female secretary. When she emptied the trash, she found a headshot in it of a guy she thought was handsome, pulled the press kit, and took it home. The next day, the agent asked what she did last night, and she said, "You know that press kit you threw out yesterday? I listened to his tape, and it's good." It was a good time to get such an endorsement, because the guy was just about to get out of the agenting business and into the record label business, and Jackson Browne became his first artist. And that man was... David Geffen. And now you know... The Rest of the Story.

cooby Aug 14 2007 09:17 PM

I should vote for "running on Empty" because for some reason it makes me think of my husband (heard it in the car during a date, maybe?) but I voted for "Doctor My Eyes" because I can remember listening to that song on a little transister radio with one of those little white plastic bulby one-ear thingys in bed back in maybe 1972 when I was just starting to really listen to popular music. And that trumps necking in a car, even with the guy you marry.

metirish Aug 14 2007 09:18 PM

Cool story,great friends with Warren Zevon,helped get him signed and then produced his first two albums.

Edgy DC Aug 14 2007 09:19 PM

Johnny Dickshot wrote: I have to say, some of the balladeery stuff I find too mellow to be exciting and his pop songs (Doctor, Somebody's Baby, Lawyers) were Okay, not great. "Lawyers in Love" is fucking nuts. Career-off-the-rails nuts.

Johnny Dickshot Aug 14 2007 09:28 PM

Yeah it's stupid but as as bad as it is, I like how he gets into each into verse: Last Night I Watched the News From Washington

Edgy DC Aug 14 2007 09:47 PM

Verse one (after an intro to show how nu-waved out his new aesthetic is): He's losng track of what's going on in the world because he's plugged into his TV, addicted to soap opera drama as real life passes him by, and despite his dim awareness of it, he's resigned and indifferent, neither raging against his subjugation like a rocker should, nor happy in his alleged entertainment. He suspects that the human race --- or at least the ones from his country --- are equally tuned in/out, but the only cry he hears comes from the dramatic characters themselves. They've become a psychic mirror perhaps, begging him to stop forcing them to live his life out for him on TV. Verse Two: We are visited by aliens in silver ships, sent by God in the sort of deliverance dreamed up in the seventies by Neil Young and David Bowie. But we miss the rapture, because they land at 6:00, when we're all too plugged in to notice them, ignoring the heightened tensions of the Cold War, Jesus, and goofy midget space aliens in glitter makeup. That must be some episode of Happy Days. Ironically, it's probably the Mork episode. Refrain: No real vocal content here, but the visuals are just jaw-dropping. Verse Three: He reports on the previous evening's news from Washington. The aliens, apparently giving up on the ignorant TV-shackled Yanks, have taken "the Russians" --- in fact, the entire population of the USSR --- off in their shiny ships. As astounding as this event is, he's repoting it as something he learned the previous night. So despite the universe being turned inside out, 24 hours later he's still just watching crappy TV drama. Because --- God bless Kim Carnes --- if there was anything veteran rockers learned from the New Wave movement, it's that we're all just detached zombies anyhow. The only way the extra-terrestrial de-population of the largest state ever known on earth changes Jackson's soma-soaked world is that the property of the USSR can be now used as a setting for his TV characters, his "lawyers in love." It's Ryan's Hope-style manifest destiny, baby. And we have the moon to ourselves also. Space race won on the taxes from dollars he spent TV dinners. He's off his hinges. The sad part is that he's oft cited as guy whose career was diminished by his using his music as a vehicle to express his social concern. His career was diminished by a goofy adaptation to new wave.

DocTee Aug 14 2007 09:54 PM

I remember that briefcase drill team in some parade soon after that video: couldn't have been MACY*S Thanksgiving Day. Was it Rose Bowl?

Johnny Dickshot Aug 15 2007 09:43 AM

We need more votes to break the 1-2-2-1 tie here

Edgy DC Aug 15 2007 10:00 AM

Unable to find the promo video for "Somebody's Baby" nor the clip from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, he goes for somebody's Dana Scully tribute video. Yeek.

HahnSolo Aug 15 2007 11:24 AM

I went with Somebody's Baby. I came along a little late to the jackson Browne party. If we were going by writing credits, JB's (along with Glenn Frey) Take It Easy would win.