My Top 20 albums from 1978 No 6

Artist: Steve Forbert
Album: Alive on Arrival
Release Date: 1978
Label: Nemperor
Time: 37:31
Styles: Contemporary Folk, Singer/Songwriter
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TRACKS
1 Goin' Down to Laurel 5:00
2 Steve Forbert's Midsummer Night's Toast 2:48
3 Thinkin' 3:27
4 What Kinda Guy? 2:35
5 It Isn't Gonna Be That Way 4:56
6 Big City Cat 2:51
7 Grand Central Station, March 18, 1977 4:14
8 Tonight I Feel So Far Away from Home 3:13
9 Settle Down 3:47
10 You Cannot Win If You Do Not Play 4:32
All Tracks by Forbert
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CREDITS
Steve Burgh - Guitar, Producer
Steve Forbert - Guitar, Harmonica, Composer, Vocals
Dennis Good - Trombone
Robbie Kondor - Organ, Piano, Keyboards
Barry Lazarowitz - Drums, Tambourine
Hugh McDonald - Bass, Guitar, Guitar (Electric)
David Sanborn - Saxophone, Sax (Alto)
Harvey Shapiro - Pedal Steel, Guitar (Steel)
Brian Torff - Guitar (Acoustic), Bass
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REVIEW
by Mike DeGagne
Steve Forbert's youthful features and boyish voice certainly become misleading once his lyrics are heard. His folk-rock styled songs are usually centered around life's ups and downs and the problems of adulthood, portraying him as an artist who's just trying to get by. Alive on Arrival is an album full of earnest tunes about loneliness, self-worth, aspirations, and disappointments. Forbert's wispy, innocent sounding voice floats gently (and cuts roughly) over his acoustic guitar to homespun ditties with a down-to-earth feel. This album represents Forbert's music perfectly, and even though his latter albums sound less subtle, it is Alive on Arrival that so aptly personifies him. "Going Down to Laurel" has his voice aching about the dirtiness of the city and the beauty of his true love, and "Steve Forbert's Midsummer Night's Toast" is an interesting musical jaunt through the bittersweet world of growing up. Forbert really comes to life on "What Kinda Guy?," humorously explaining what a simplified, easygoing chap he is. The kick-back aura of Alive on Arrival puts the emphasis on the down and out Forbert while feelings of sentiment and adolescence slowly emerge with each passing song. This album makes for a great late-night listen.

Alive on Arrival kicks off with the gorgeous “Goin’ Down to Laurel”, a shimmering piece featuring bright acoustic guitar, lovely piano, loping bass and a melancholy steel guitar chiming just below the music’s surface. Most importantly though, there’s his voice, irrepressibly young, playful and earnest. Forbert’s lyrics, at once knowing and naive, are perfectly fitted to that voice, mirroring the charm of its peculiar grain: “Well, I’m goin’ down to Laurel / It’s a dirty, stinking town, yeah / But me, I know exactly what / I’m going to find.” Simple stuff, to be sure, but it perfectly captures that critical moment when one’s personal confidence and optimism (the singer knows exactly what he’s going to find) come up against the hard, often antagonistic, facts of the outside world (i.e., the dirty, stinking town of the song’s title).

Alive on Arrival is bursting with such gems. “Steve Forbert’s Midsummer Night’s Toast” is a stripped back counterpart to the lead cut, boasting wonderful lines about “roads of burning tar and hot cement” and “money in my hand and where it went”. “What Kinda Guy?” is driving rockabilly, an excellent formal choice that plays to the strengths of Forbert’s voice, which is given naturally to the genre’s hallmark mannerisms.
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