Jackson Browne:

Jackson Browne (a.k.a Saturate Before Using): (1972)

Late For The Sky:(1974)

While I have almost every Jackson Browne album in the house in some form or another, these are the only two I have on vinyl, well, I have two copies of Jackson Browne on vinyl, so these three. Anyway, these are my two favorites. When I first got in to songwriting, my Dad asked if I'd ever listened to Jackson Browne, and when I said, no not really, he dug out his copy of Jackson's first record. Instantly I mistook, like so many others before me, the title of the record to be, Saturate Before Using. (It would be a few years before I corrected my mistake.) In it I heard lyrics that spoke to the searching feeling I had in my own teenage self, and painted a different songwriting path than I had known from Bob Dylan records. When I got a copy of Late For The Sky, I was floored. It was a masterpiece. Lyrically richer, more world weary, and cinematic than his first two records. Not to mention a cover that contained as much mystery as you could ask for, especially when you hear the car door slam at the end of The Late Show. That moment blurred the lines between the music, and the cover in such a beautiful way. Late for the Sky remains in my all time Top Ten album list.