You Can Tune a Piano, But You Can't Tuna Fish

“Roll with the Changes” features one of the most scorching guitar tracks in all of rock ’n’ roll. Filled with tortured notes and beautiful droning harmonics, Gary Richrath’s six-string performance soars and kicks, giving the song true rock ’n’ roll chutzpah. Much of the album is like that: Richrath rocked the ballads that singer Kevin Cronin wrote, while Cronin sweetened the rockers that Richrath penned (though “Runnin’ Blind” careens as if Cronin is hanging on for dear life). Cronin’s songs got the girls and Richrath’s got the boys. That was a golden combination: this 1978 album was their first to enter the American Top 40, and it sold more than 2 million copies. “Time for Me to Fly” launched the band into the mainstream rock pantheon. Yet there’s plenty of great stuff here that never made the radio. There’s a Richrath instrumental (“The Unidentified Flying Tuna Trot”) that’s as close to arena-rock boogie-woogie as you’ll likely ever get, and the finale, “Say You Love Me or Say Goodnight,” plays like standoff between Cronin and Richrath, a piano-guitar duel to the end.