Favorites Playlist: No2--Bad Company
Saturday morning the Bad Company song Early in the Morning from the album Desolation Albums came on my mix. Whenever I hear this song, I instantly fall into a trance and start playing it on repeat. After I got my fix, I started playing all of Bad Company's albums through their 6th, Rough Diamonds. Even though I know their catalog pretty well, I always seem to underestimate how much the music will move me and how solid all of the early albums sound.
Desolation Angels came out in March 1979--right at the end of 8th grade for me. Of course, I'd heard Bad Company all over AM and FM radio before 8th grade, but I still hadn't added one of their albums to my growing collection. After being mesmerized by Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy on the radio, I splurged, got the album, and nearly wore it out.
A couple of months later, I'd collected a haul of cash, checks, and savings bonds at my 8th-grade graduation party. Back then it was pretty common to give savings bonds as graduation presents to encourage young grads to save the bonds for whatever important future expenses were headed our way. There were no family black sheep encouraging me to live it up and blow it on a moment, or to make it rain, or anything else too crazy, which kept me at least a little grounded with my expectations. I don't think that any of my savings bonds from either 8th grade or high school graduations survived more than a few months after I got them. I'd always eat the penalties for cashing them before maturity, and usually felt guilty doing it, but I survived the experience and guilt.
I took about $200 of my future to the record store to splurge on music. Until today, the idea of spending that $200 on albums seemed purely full of joy. Then Google told me that $200 in 1979 is about $748 today. If I found out that my kids spent nearly $800 on Robux or something similar, I'd be flipping out. My bad money habits apparently didn't start recently!
Among the probably 30-40 albums that my fortune allowed me to buy were Bad Company's Straight Shooter, Running with the Pack, and Burnin' Sky--the three albums that preceded Desolation Angels.
Just a few years later, around junior year of high school, Rough Diamonds came out in 1982. It was OK, but a huge letdown after 5 amazing albums. When Paul Rodgers left the band after that, the new Bad Company wasn't the same band and just didn't do much for me. I never got into the band again, even when they were doing that mid to late 80s hair and old rock stuff pretty successfully.
As with my first playlist, Journey, I predicted that I'd find 30 Bad Company songs that would make the list. But I ended up with 46 I whittled down to an even 40. The first 3 albums made it in their entirety. As with the last playlist, I felt like in chronological order by album and then by tracklist within albums is the way to go. I've only listened to the playlist on random and it works well that way for me.
If you're interested in any real Bad Company history Wikipedia has you covered.
Enjoy the music and let me know what you think!
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