Premium Only Content

My Top 20 albums for 1979 No 1
Bop Till You Drop Ry Cooder
Genre:Rock
Style:Blues Rock, Rock & Roll
Year:1979
Tracklist
1 Little Sister 3:49
2 Go Home, Girl 5:10
3 The Very Thing That Makes Your Rich 5:32
4 I Think It's Going To Work Out Fine 4:43
5 Down In Hollywood 4:14
6 Look At Granny Run Run 3:09
7 Trouble You Can't Fool Me 4:55
8 Don't You Mess Me Up A Good Thing 4:08
9 I Can't Win 4:16
The first Ry Cooder cassette (that’s right, cassette) I ever owned was Bop Till You Drop and I didn’t care for it for a long time. A cassette back then meant mobility. You put it in a Walkman and you could move around the world with music. That was big and Sony was king. To walk along a beach with music in your ears was revolutionary at the time. Now we sit in our own worlds of music all the time. It’s no big thing anymore.
What to Carry?
Bop Till You Drop was one of those early mobile-media bits of my life but I had purchased it unheard and I didn't like it when I first listened to it. I valued money enough to try to make it work though, to give it a darn good chance in hopes I would grow to like it. It didn’t work for me for the longest time. Imagine walking around with something the size of your iPod for every album you want to carry. Two or three cassettes were the limit. This 1979 cassette was often left behind and when I did take it I couldn’t listen to it for very long, fast forwarding often. And then one day it struck me: this is okay...it’s okay.
Bop Till You Drop is okay in 2013 too. There are tunes on this album that should make Ry Cooder’s Greatest Hits album of 2017, but more will be forgotten than remembered. The strangest thing about listening to this album now-after a long absence-is that I can’t be objective about it at all. I really like it, but it’s difficult to tell a friend “You’ve really gotta’ hear this 1979 album by Ry Cooder.” I’m scared they’ll ask why and I’ll have to reply “because it’s a pretty good album and I grew to like it.” Not stellar reasons for recommending an album. There are some good reasons to recommend it though.
Any Album With Jim Keltner is a Good Album
There are great tunes on this album, all covers except for “Down in Hollywood”-which he performed with Chaka Khan. There are also some other excellent artists helping out, including Jim Keltner, Tim Drummond, Reverend Patrick Henderson, Milt Holland, Bobby King, and David Lindley, to name a few. I think Chaka khan is singing on A Good Thing not Down In Hollywood
Ya’ Gotta Hear It for History’s Sake, Though
But there is an overriding reason to listen to this album, regardless of the tunes and the musicians and my half-hearted backing. It’s the one. It’s the first pop album to be recorded digitally by a major label. And there’s great irony there too, as many of the tunes were old even in 1979! They shone, though, on the 3M Digital Audio Mastering System, a 32-track recording system. (Another album that benefited from this 1978 technology was Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly, reviewed on this site.)
It's an interesting part of recording history and another one of those albums that has been available on just about everything so far: vinyl, 8track, cassette, CD, and digital. Most importantly, if you give it a good chance, it really grows on you. It's not as good as his most recent work, Delta Time, though.
-
8:28
JohnVicarysMusicPassions
3 months agoMy Top 20 albums of 1980 No 12
272 -
LIVE
Eternal_Spartan
6 hours agoLive at 11am Central!! | Clari Obscur Expedition 33 - Possibly the Best Game of My Life?!?
110 watching -
13:05
Cowboy Kent Rollins
1 day ago $11.91 earnedHomemade Cowboy Corn Dogs | Easy Corndog Recipe
49.6K24 -
LIVE
GritsGG
5 hours ago#1 Warzone Win Grind! 🔥
171 watching -
8:24
Talk Nerdy Sports - The Ultimate Sports Betting Podcast
5 hours ago4/26/25 - Saturday Annihilation: Vasil’s 8 Sharp Picks and 2 PrizePicks Built for Blood 💥📈
52.9K2 -
LIVE
GamingWithHemp
5 hours agoElder Scrolls Oblivion Remastered Episode #2 Ultra high settings
103 watching -
2:11:49
Rotella Games
23 hours agoSaturday Morning Family Friendly Fortnite
38.6K7 -
2:13:45
I_Came_With_Fire_Podcast
14 hours agoRESTRUCTURING THE WORLD- CIVICS CLASS WITH DAN HOLLAWAY
39.6K19 -
DVR
Bannons War Room
2 months agoWarRoom Live
14.2M3.58K -
LIVE
Total Horse Channel
1 day agoYELLOWSTONE SLIDE I | SATURDAY
113 watching