Down & Dirty

This 1979 Columbia release is Bobby Bare in his element: live, rowdy, and dangerous. This is good-time outlaw country. Bare's band — which is uncredited — rocks and rolls, swings and strolls through 13 tracks (and none of them include "Detroit City," thank God) from a rejuvenated Bare. The humor is in large supply; the poignancy is spilling out of all corners. But it's the tune selection that makes this is such a killer record. The hysterical good-time country of "Numbers" and the sincerity and richness in Bare's voice on "Some Days Are Diamonds (Some Days Are Stone)" (and yeah, forget John Denver's version) are two sides of a multi-dimensional performer. Kris Kristofferson's "Good for Nothin' Blues" and Shel Silverstein and Mac Davis' "Pour Me Another Tequila, Sheila" take the good times to absurd extremes, as does Silverstein's "Quaaludes Again." But on the other hand, there's Townes Van Zandt's devastatingly beautiful "Tecumseh Valley" and the morality tale of "Blind Willie Harper" before the rock & roll country swing anthem "Goin' Back to Texas." The set closes with "I Can't Watch the Movie Anymore," a busted-up love song, full of imagery that underlines the hollowness and emptiness of the song's protagonists — and this is the way it all ends! Thus, Down & Dirty reveals the complexity of Bare, one of the greatest performers in the music's history, and also one of the most misunderstood. This is certainly an album that belongs on compact disc.