Raven [Australia]
2008
Bare / Sleeper Wherever I Fall
About This Album
Raven's third Bobby Bare disc of the 2000s is a two-fer, not an expansion, presenting his two 1978 albums Bare and Sleeper Wherever I Fall on one disc, adding two bonus tracks from 1983's Drinkin' from the Bottle, Singin' from the Heart at its close. As it happens, Raven has already put out some of the songs from these two albums as bonus tracks on Down & Dirty...Plus and Drunk & Crazy...Plus, but it's a blessing to have the full albums finally hit CD for the first time. Both Bare and Sleeper Wherever I Fall are cut from the same outlaw cloth -- they're earthy, funny records that take their own sweet time -- but they have some significant differences, primarily noted in the presence and absence of Shel Silverstein songs. Bare, Bobby's first album in his eight-album run for Columbia in the late '70s and early '80s is, like his last few for RCA, built primarily on Silverstein tunes. Eight of its ten songs are from Silverstein's pen and the two aren't -- the Dr. Strangelove-ian black humor of "Finger on the Button" and the character sketch "The Gambler," later popularized by Kenny Rogers -- feel like they could have been written by Shel.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9,10,12,13,14,15,16,17 and 18)

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