Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Album of the Day #153: TRAVELING WILBURYS, VOL. 3

Artist: The Traveling Wilburys

Title: Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 3
Label: Warner
Year: 1990
Songs: She's My Baby/Inside Out/If You Belonged To Me/Devil's Been Busy/7 Deadly Sins/Poor House/Where Were You Last Night?/Cool Dry Place/New Blue Moon/You Took My Breath Away/Wilbury Twist
Written by: The Traveling Wilburys
Produced by: Clayton and Spike Wilbury
Thoughts: Although not as great as the first, Vol. 3 still has much of the charm and humor that was built into its' predecessor. There's still a bunch of really cool songs, but there aren't any Dylan epics like "Tweeter and the Monkey Man" and classic George songs like "Heading For The Light". The singles are nowhere near as strong as "Handle With Care" and "End Of The Line" and "Inside Out" is clearly the better of the two. "She's My Baby" is more of a pedestrian rock song, but "Inside Out" has some hilarious lyrics in it.
Orbison is sorely missed, but Petty tries contributes a lot more than he did before, with fun tracks like "Cool Dry Place" and "Poor House". Another note is that, like the last one, Bob's sings are better than the ones that landed on his standard album of the same year. His contributions on Vol. 1 greatly eclipsed anything on Down In The Groove and his songs here are better than some of the stuff on Under The Red Sky. (Imagine the Wilburys doing "Handy Dandy"...that would have been funny.)
It is kind of amazing how little Harrison and Lynne do on this record. They do contribute vocals, but there is no stand-out song by either of them. I think that's probably what's missing more than Orbison (who did only write "Not Alone Any More" for Vol. 1). This album certainly could have been helped by at least one Harrison track. Still, it's a good listening experience and how can you go wrong with that line-up?

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