CD Odyssey Disc 928: Thin Lizzy

This album was a bit too long. Not the original record, mind you. I mean the gratuitous amount of bonus content some Soulless Record Exec thought I would want to buy.

As a result my review has a gratuitous content section to go with it – keep reading past the “best tracks” entry for said content!

Disc 928 is….Vagabonds of the Western World

Artist: Thin Lizzy

Year of Release: 1973

What’s up with the Cover? Cartoon space opera meets Mount Rockmore. 1970s, we miss you.

How I Came To Know It: I’ve been buying Thin Lizzy albums for a while, but my friend Spence (who also put me onto the band in the first place) has been quietly insistent for some time to get “Vagabonds of the Western World.” I have resisted only because the only copy that ever seems available is a giant special edition version with a ton of extra tracks at a price well north of $30.

That remains the case, but I managed to find that giant special edition used for only $16 so I bought it. I didn’t want all the extra content, but I despaired at ever finding the regular record on its own. It’s so rare now it actually cost more on Amazon.

How It Stacks Up:  I have 7 albums by Thin Lizzy. Of those albums, I put “Vagabonds…” 5^th. I still like it, but there are better.

Ratings: 3 stars

This isn’t my favourite Thin Lizzy album, but it has a few great moments. I like Thin Lizzy best in the middle of their career, and in many ways “Vagabonds…” is the beginning of that sound.

While this record is the last with original guitar player Eric Bell, in many ways it feels like the band is starting to move away from the influences of sixties psychadelia and into that groove-driven rock that so perfectly suits Phil Lynott’s smooth and powerful vocal style.

That said, this record starts off on the wrong foot, with the bar-rock sound of “Mama Nature Said”. Kudos to Thin Lizzy for singing an environmentally conscious song way back in 1973, but this song has an uninteresting boogie woogie beat, and hackneyed lyrics that come across as overwrought. Lynott’s vocals almost win the day, but the song is just not set up to make him shine.

“The Hero and the Madman” has a ridiculous over-the-top story told in ultra-corny style. On later records this affectation works (such as three years later on the song “Emerald” from “Jailbreak”) but here it is just an unnecessary nerd-fest, and not in a good way. This song is followed by a very bluesy appropriately titled “Slow Blues” which is OK, but also didn’t inspire me.

By this point I was feeling let down by Phil and the boys, but luckily they won me back and then some with “The Rocker.” “The Rocker” is one of rock and roll’s great anthems. It is balls-to-the-wall bombast; a song that both shows and tells why rock stars get all the girls. It’s because they are just that cool, and Lynotte is the coolest of ‘em all.

Another standout is “Little Girl in Bloom” a song about teen pregnancy where Thin Lizzy replaces all of the usual shame of that story with compassion and good advice. “Go tell your dad and see how it goes” this song urges, and somehow manages to be ultra groovy doing so. The tune is soft and relaxed and feels more like a lullaby than a tragedy.

Then, just to add the edge back in, the next track, “Gonna Creep Up On You” which is sexuality at its most sinister and predatory. The juxtaposition of the gentle and kind-hearted “Little Girl In Bloom” with this nasty but brilliant bit of back-alley groove is awesome.

The album ends in a tasteful eight tracks, and while the final song, “A Song For While I’m Away” meanders a bit too aimlessly, it isn’t enough to wreck a record that has a lot of great moments, and shows all the promise of what Thin Lizzy is growing into on the albums to come.

Best tracks: The Rocker, Vagabonds of the Western World, Little Girl in Bloom, Gonna Creep Up On You

Gratuitous “bonus content” review:

There is more bonus content on Disc One than there are original tracks. It is all a bit exhausting, but let’s say something about the anyway, shall we?

First of all, Soulless Record Execs, if you are going to add ‘bonus tracks’ to the same disc as the record, try to limit yourself to two or three. The original “Vagabonds..”  is only eight tracks, but the bonus material adds another 10 songs.

They aren’t terrible (except maybe “Randolph’s Tango” which appears twice and doesn’t much resemble a tango either time). What they are is excessive.

The best of them is the fun-lovin’ and snappy “Cruising in the Lizzymobile” which is just as much fun as you’d expect from the title. Also the bonus tracks gave me a sweet radio edit of the band’s famous cover of “Whiskey In the Jar.” So I am slightly mollified, even if I think all this stuff belonged on a separate CD.

Best tracks (gratuitous bonus content edition): Here I Go Again, Cruising in the Lizzymobile, Little Darling, Whiskey in the Jar

Eve more gratuitous “second full CD of content” review:

Nope. I refused to listen to Disc Two, which is a bunch (13) of BBC live recordings I never wanted in the first place. I’m sure they’re great, but they belong on a live album not here. Besides, you have to draw a line in the sand at some point and say, “just give me the damned record.” ‘But Logan!’ you will opine, ‘what of the vaunted Odyssey rule #3?’ There is always the exception that proves the rule, my friends. This is it. If we don’t start saying no to bloated re-issues then the Soulless Record Execs will never stop reissuing them.