BOBBY BLAND: MIDNIGHT RUN (1989)
1) You've Got To Hurt Before
You Heal; 2) Lay Love Aside; 3) Kiss Me To The Music; 4) Keep It A Secret; 5)
Take Off Your Shoes; 6) Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone; 7) If I Don't Get
Involved; 8) I'm Not Ashamed To Sing The Blues; 9) Midnight Run; 10) Starting
All Over Again.
No surprises, although, fortunately, the
classic covers are back — there is no way Bobby could go wrong with his (predictable,
but wonderful all the same) interpretation of ʽAin't No Sunshineʼ, or with the
old Mel & Tim ballad ʽStarting All Over Againʼ, which makes here for a
somewhat more optimistic and uplifting conclusion than last time's ʽThere's No
Easy Way To Say Goodbyeʼ, and the funny thing is that one doesn't even have to
listen to either in order to
understand that.
Still, two oldies' covers on a late period
Bobby Bland album is too few, because the remaining songs are again provided by
his sidemen, and are not in the least memorable. Just like last time, there is exactly
one «fun» 12-bar blues (ʽTake Off Your Shoesʼ), nice while it's on; and then,
like every self-respecting old bluesman, Bobby commands himself a song that
explains why exactly he is still hanging around after so many years (ʽI'm Not
Ashamed To Sing The Bluesʼ — actually, a song like that did make sense in 1989, when the popularity of the blues was only
just beginning to recover after a decade-long snooze; that said, it's not as if
the song smells of any particular heroism or self-sacrifice).
Additionally, ʽYou've Got To Hurtʼ opens the
album on a powerful epic-ballad note; ʽLay Love Asideʼ tries to echo Bobby's
dance-oriented R&B grooves of the mid-1970s; and the title track
straightens out a reggae groove as the band does indeed search a little bit to
expand its horizons. Neither the epic thing, nor the dance thing, nor the
reggae schtick feature any outstanding musicianship or musical ideas, but at
least there seems to be a bit more emphasis on guitars and strings rather than
synthesizers, and a bit more diversity, which would altogether indicate an
upward movement of the curve. If anyone still cared, that is. Anyway, expressing
the same idea in commercial terms — better grab Midnight Run for a quarter than Blues You Can Use for a nickel.
Check "Midnight Run" (MP3) on Amazon
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