Quality Shouldn't Be Its Own Reward

Album: David Baerwald, Bedtime Stories, 1990



Acquired: Bought at the late, lamented Record Exchange in Blacksburg, VA


Best Track: "Colette"


Lasting Memory: Having my down-the-hall neighbors Courtney and Andrea regularly borrow my tapes because I "had the best record collection" they ever saw. Courtney particularly liked this David Baerwald album; Andrea was more of a fan of Billy Bragg, especially his Communist Party fund-raising EP The Internationale (which will be profiled erelong). Andrea and Courtney obviously needed to meet more audiophiles. I sure do miss living above Super X, though.

I missed Super X so much that I just spent the last thirty minutes trying to find any mention of it on the Web. I'm not even sure if the apartments above the drug store and shopping center still exist. That would be a shame. The interior commons with balconies on the inside of the building were ubercool. At least I still have Bedtime Stories.

You should have this album, too. if you have any love in your ears for the solo works of Don Henley and Glenn Frey. Bedtime Stories is every bit as a superlative entry in the pop-oriented singer-songwriter genre as are Henley's Building the Perfect Beast and Frey's The Allnighter. Only problem was, Baerwald never enjoyed anywhere near the commercial success of the once and future members of the Eagles.

Those are the breaks. Not every artist who deserves to have huge record sales gets them. Quality should never have to be it's own reward, but it all too often is. To range outside music for the sake of an apt analogy, for the one execrable but somehow wildly popular Jeff Foxworthy there are dozens of smart, hilarious, and likeable comedians like Brett Leake.

While the cream does rise to the top, it is also true that most people who got milk delivered to their homes skimmed more than a fair amount of the cream off and tossed it in the alley for the animals.

Still, the songs on Bedtime Stories are such perfect examples of folk- and country-inflected adult pop--what is now inexplicably labeled by adult alternative by radio programmers and record executives--that I couldn't help but wonder why they haven't yet been huge hits for other artists. I did remember that Baerwald had a minor hit in 1984 or 1985 with his on-and-off again songwriting partner David Ricketts. "Welcome to the Boomtown" by David & David is still great to hear. But could that be all Baerwald got for a lasting mark on pop music?

No. I discovered while hunting down links for this profile that Baerwald has writing credits for most of the songs on Sheryl Crowe's monster major label debut Tuesday Night Music Club. Baerwald contributed "All I Wanna Do" and "Leaving Las Vegas," in particular. So while he may never be as famous as he deserves to be in his own right, he has had made a huge contribution to popular culture and (I hope) got paid.

*NEW FEATURE*

Listen to "Colete" here (Someone will have to let me know if this works because I disabled all the sound on my computer a while back, and I can't figure out how to turn the audio back on)

Up Next: Beat Farmers, The Pursuit of Happiness, 1987


Word Count to Date: 4,010