It's at least 6.
The first copy was dubbed for me by my broseph, Shane. He thought it important that I keep well grounded in Rock Music, and even through our generation, and us, were all about Thrash Metal. Shane was the first friend I had that had an old soul like mine.
He turned me on to Neil Young, Bob Seger, Cat Stevens, and a good portion of Classic Rock Radio before our town had a Classic Rock Radio station. One step further, there was no media outlet for the music of a generation past, but my friend was passionate about the music spun for him by his parents, who were hard core Bikers.
I like to think that I am smart, and even though that's not really up to me, I'll say that I was smart enough to understand how damn good most of this material was. One LP that I really fell for was "Live Bullet."
Personally, I believe that this LP may be the best of the Live LP craze. Way cooler than the pretty boy Peter Frampton "Comes Alive" record usually given that crown.
"Live Bullet" is different. It takes the vested listener on a journey into Rock, Blues, Funk and Soul at the hands of an underrated Rock Demi-God, Bob Seger.
Live albums were becoming very popular in the mid-70's. The idea of a Live LP was nothing new, but the popularity of a recorded live experience was reaching new heights. It was a glimpse into what was perceived as a night of amazement, and for the listener, you could almost imagine the excitement of actually being there, wether it be onstage, or in the audience.
Advances in studio magic allowed artists to fix mistakes and add crowd noise to enhance the experience. As Paul Stanley puts it "the memory of the experience, and the actual experience are completely separate things." I agree with him.
For the first time since Little Stevie Wonder hit the radio with "Fingertips" in '63, artists actually became stars based on Live tracks. Frampton, Kiss and Cheap Trick all reached new heights based on live work, and for a few years, everybody had a live Album.
Back to Bob Seger. Bob was a huge star in Detroit, and virtually unknown across the rest of the world. He had minor radio success, but was not a large enough name to play anything but large clubs outside of his home state.
According to Wiki:
The success of Seger's music at this time, however, was highly regional, with Seger still remaining quite unknown even in adjacent media markets such as Chicago. In June 1976, for example, Seger played the Pontiac Silverdome in metropolitan Detroit at a historic concert that also included Point Blank, Elvin Bishop, and Todd Rundgren. 78,000 people were in attendance and the concert lasted until nearly 1:30 a.m. The next night, Seger played for fewer than a thousand people in Chicago.[2]
This seems impossible by today's standards of entertainment and media, nationally anyway, but very much the norm at the time. Bob broke big not long after this with "Night Moves," and the world was better for it. Bob stands for Americana the same way Mellencamp and Springsteen do, at least to me he does, and "Live Bullet" is a masterpiece of American Rock.
Today, any Classic Rock station worth a shit will have two tracks from this album as staples in their playlists : Beautiful Loser / Jodie Girl, and the timeless "Turn the Page."
I love this LP enough to have purchased, liberated or stolen at least 6 copies (2 vinyl copies (one from my mothers collection, and one from a flea market) Kaza, my dubbed copy from youth, a CD and lastly from I-Tunes).
Time has justified how good this was, and in 2001 the album was certified 6x Platinum. Not bad for a little group of guys from Detroit.
I'm going to have another listen today as I work on the yard and a couple of projects.
Dreaming like young man, with the wisdom of an old man.
Nago
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