The 1981 Listening Post - Gary U.S. Bonds - Dedication

"Gary U.S. Bonds - Dedication" "#144" April 1981 Gary U.S. Bonds Dedication Genre: Springsteen 3.25 out of 5 Highlights: This Little Girl I’ve been looking forward to this ever since it showed up on the list. As a pretty big Springsteen fan I knew about this but never sought it out. See, I didn’t love Bruce in 81. I liked him. I appreciated him but it took a while for me to really dive deep. Later in college, lonely, having made some weird choices with my academics and friendships, seemingly intent on blowing both of those things up at the same time, I still have regrets for the things I said and di back then. So, I knew about this record because it was Bruce’s attempt at flexing some of his muscles to elevate an artist he liked by producing the the revival record and writing some of it and playing on all of it. That hit…”This Little Girl”…Bruce took a lot of heat for the way he talked about women in the 70s. And rightly so. They are all “little girls” or something like that. But, in 1957, this is perfect. But it’s 1981. Eh, it’s still ok. The groove is good, the chords, the entire retro-ness of it. Although maybe we need to address the content that Little Stevie brings to the party with “Daddy’s Come Home”. But I think it’s really better when Bruce does it. He slows it down a bit and that works. Bruce will interpolate “Your Love” a few times but never to better effect than he would in “My City in Ruins”. Side Two is a bunch of covers bookending a Bonds original. There are no clunkers but also nothing to demand you flip the record. This album was buoyed by a name and a single. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaEQ0U_gCyw