Code of the Road

This release illuminates Nils Lofgren's life as a cult solo artist, long before the masses learned to recognize him as the other headband-clad guitarist in Bruce Springsteen's powerhouse E Street Band. Billed as BBC One tapes from London's famed Hammersmith Odeon, a good portion of this 17-track affair seems markedly clinical. (A little bit of information about the recording circumstances might have been useful, too, for the uninitiated; a color tour photo collage doesn't cut it.) The band is undeniably tight, the sound is crisp, and the playing is well-executed, yet the respective presences of brother Tom Lofgren and former Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels drummer Johnny "Bee" Badanjek do little to lift an initially bland atmosphere. Still, the show gets hotter as the disc progresses, with the greatest dust kicked up on trademark Lofgren anthems like "The Sun Hasn't Set (On This Boy Yet)," "I Came to Dance," and "Keith Don't Go," an unabashed salute to the embattled Rolling Stone's legal mishaps. It's not hard to see why Lofgren remained such an acquired taste before Springsteen scooped him up. Nobody in today's jaded postmodern era would write songs like "Cry Tough," when they could just email its stiff-upper-lip messages to each other instead. This release might be a decent starting point for non-believers, but longtime fans should probably stick with their well-worn copies of "Night After Night," instead. ~ Ralph Heibutzki|