There are records you listen to casually, records you dance to, records you enjoy a few times and then forget.
Then there are records worthy of long-term study and scrutiny and analysis. For me, that’s Boats Against the Current. It became an instant favorite starting with the first time I listened to it all the way through (that would have been the day it was released back in August 1977, when I was just a kid of 17). I could sense the honesty and emotion in the album, and it moved me to dissect every song.
I really did wear out one LP copy of Boats Against the Current (I bought another, naturally). I also bought an 8-track for playing in the car (somewhere around here, I still have an unopened “extra” copy of Boats on 8-track). And, of course, I made several cassette copies of it. And that was just back in the late 1970s.
A few years later, I found myself editing a magazine called Digital Audio (retitled CD Review in 1988). I spent more than eight years in that job, and I loved it for a lot of reasons. For one thing, it gave me the chance to plug Boats, Eric, and Raspberries to our readership whenever I could find a reason, whether it was a feature story on new Eric music (the Geffen album and Dirty Dancing), or a “Wanted on CD” feature, or a review of a Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2 in E Minor compact disc. Heck, I found a way to work Boats Against the Current into my first editor’s note in Vol. 1, No. 1 of Digital Audio (September 1984).
Another reason I loved that job: the daily shipments of new CDs that came in. I got exposed to all kinds of music, from Miles Davis to Mozart, and from (ugh) Yanni to (double-ugh) 2 Live Crew. But I always seemed to come back to my own “basics,” and that included Boats.
Most of all, I loved traveling in music circles. I’d find myself on business trips comparing “desert island disc” lists with new acquaintances and old friends alike. Finding out which albums people hold dear, after all, is a great way to get to know ’em better.
Every time I’d draw up my “desert island disc” list (usually inked on the back of a business card), I’d put Boats right at the top. The Beatles’ Revolver and Abbey Road were always on my list, as were the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and Raspberries’ Best. I also included my favorite Springsteen CD (for me, Tunnel of Love), along with Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. The other spots alternated between several other favorites, but Boats Against the Current was a constant at the top. And within my circle of contacts, it always prompted the question, “Why?”
Well, I’d say, I love sad, emotive music. Even though Boats has its ray of sunshine (“She Did It”) and a bit of rock’n’roll (“Take It or Leave It”) and determination (“I Think I Found Myself”), the aura is overwhelmingly gloomy, dismal, and depressing. I love it!
Yep, there’s a lot of pain on this record: a lot of frustration and confusion and “incompleteness.” When an artist can capture those emotions so powerfully, you just soak it in --- particularly if you were only 17 the first time you heard it. It likely helped you get through hard times, and made you feel a little bit better about your own struggles. Thirty years after it came out, Boats Against the Current can still do just that.
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2 comments:
You could easily include "Love is all that matters" as that ray of sunshine as well...
"You saved me, you gave me something that was real."
BMP
I was having a personally emotional set of situations in my own life that seemed to chronologically have coincided with the evolution of Boats and one thing that happened as a result was that my first hearing of the album did not take place until I happened upon it in a wandering to a Greenwich Village record store called Titus Oaks. If not for the activity of looking through that store's arrangements of record albums, I would not have found the record at all (same holds true with the Geffen LP at another era).
It was November of 1977, instead of August 1977, then, for me to hear it. My expectations of Eric's music was much different. The solo album prior was the most earfully colorful piece of ensembled bits that I have heard, full of the same pathos but with the most up-beat presentations of them. The Raspberries before this came with a hint but not a clue of what Boats would contain. So when I heard Boats Against The Current for the first time, in several levels I had to make my adjustments. Yes, this music is Eric Carmen. The same Eric Carmen that wrote "Let's Pretend" and "Tonight", but indeed too, "I Can Remember", "On The Beach", and "Starting Over". But Boats was definitely much different. My first wondering was, "What energy was lost, and what philosophy was found?"
Now Eric has given the answer. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gatsby. Of course. Myself once I was reading a book of poems by Yaets, and found my next several selections to be in similar style as those, and generally if one connects to an artist on a particular level, some of that is going to rub off. F. Scott Fitzgerald had a way about expressing the most elemental of concepts in the most obvious terms that otherwise eluded other mortals in attempting the same. Eric describes his finding his inner voice through these works, and one could say that these were the elemental chords in Eric that were present in all that had come before.
So, if someone is going to look at common threads between songs, I would look for Boats in all of Eric's works, simply for the fact that this album is the true representation of the kinds of feelings that Eric wanted to explore in his writings.
I was able to relate to a great deal of what lyrics I found in Boats and felt an appreciation of it on a deep level.
For those who ever find themselves wandering on a sea of emptiness, this is an album to comiserate with.
There are many favorite lines, and many lines that make me think.
Best,
SSLittleD
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