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While it's a distant memory now that he's making mediocre albums and using his US website to sell $50 T-shirts for gigs in Helsinki, there was a time when Bruce Springsteen had a hungry heart: Hungry to be perceived as a consequential artist. Focused on telling stories and making vivid albums. Alive with conflict and memorable characters. Back in those days, the early 1970s, he broke any number of rules and barriers. In the case of The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, that meant defeating the dreaded sophomore slump.

Jerome Sabbagh: Heart
Sabbagh, tenor saxophone; Joe Martin, bass; Al Foster, drums
Analog Tone Factory ATF 001 (LP). 2024. Jerome Sabbagh, Pete Rende, prods.; James Farber, Pete Rende, Aki Nishimura, Ben Miller, Bernie Grundman, engs.
Performance ****
Sonics *****

It's rare for an artist to win Recording of the Month honors for consecutive albums released within a few months of each other, and frankly, I don't feel great about it. But I cannot pass over Heart, the latest album from Jerome Sabbagh, which he recorded in a distinguished trio with Joe Martin on bass and the legendary Al Foster on drums.

In the August issue's As We See It, Tom Fine and I encouraged readers to hold on to their physical media—those black and silver discs—even if they're stashed away in a closet or attic, replaced by hi-rez streaming. An important reason we gave is that with physical media (in contrast to streaming), you know exactly what you're listening to—or at least you can know, with a little work.

Also if you want to, you can do a lot of work, since there is much to know and to learn, especially about vinyl records (and shellacs), and learning about them—about the labels and those arcane codes in the runout groove area—is a big part of the music-collecting hobby. Serious record collectors are likely to have several pressings of favorite albums and to know the provenance of each one. With streaming, you're limited to whichever version they end up with, and usually they don't bother to tell you which version it is. An example is Rock for Light by Bad Brains, which is considered by Robert Baird in this month's Aural Robert.

Playing an astonishingly original mix of reggae and thrashy punk rock, Bad Brains released their self-titled, cassette-only 1982 debut on ROIR records. Punk rock is notorious for eschewing well-recorded music in favor of lo-fi murk, and that original tape fit the pattern. But the next year, the turbulent foursome—guitarist Dr. Know, bassist Darryl Jenifer, drummer Earl Hudson, and vocalist H.R.—went into Synchro Sound in Boston with Ric Ocasek of The Cars and tracked Rock for Light, a huge step up in the quality of Bad Brains' recorded sound.