Digging Up Bones
Thin Lizzy
Renegade
(September 2, 1981 – Warner Bros.)

“Widely considered their worst…”

Why would anyone begin a review, even a retro-view, with those words? Is the fix in? Is the jig up? I’m guessing, yep. Cat’s gotta hit his three paragraphs and move on to the next “widely considered” victim. (Sorry, I read a review from an “archive site” while prepping my own.)

In fairness to the above-mentioned, this record was not well liked when it came out. My guess is that people missed those trademark, harmony guitars. People were afraid of the cheeze-a-sizers (that today, having heard them so much, seem almost inaudible on this record.) In their confusion they bailed on a solid, hard rock set. David Fricke (Rolling Stone Magazine) at the time accused singer/bassist Phil Lynott of phoning it in. Apparently, Fricke was only aware of “Jail Break” era Thin Lizzy. There is absolutely NOTHING on Renegade that sounds as if Lynott or anyone else involved was disengaged. To the contrary.

The boyzz were trying to map out a new direction for a new decade, so, as one might expect, they didn’t simply continue with “Johnny The Fox Meets The Boys Are Back In Town.” If you dig The Lizz, and have thus far steered clear of this one based on scurrilous reviews “phoned in” by thoughtless media hookers, then I urge you to reconsider and pony up!

Worth The Price Of Admission:

A time traveler bares witness to all manner of human devastation, from the San Francisco earthquake, to World War II, to his father’s deathbed in (the all too obviously titled) “Angel of Death.”

Jazz pianist Fats Waller disses Sigmund Freud in the surprisingly pleasant and (you guessed it) jazzy departure, “Fats.”

Lynott plugs vapid Los Angeles with a big ol’ Johnny Cash middle finger when “Lady Chance…won’t dance” in “Hollywood (Down On Your Luck).”

Marty Robbins’ classic “El Paso” gets a nod and an update in “Mexican Blood.”

There’s more, but ain’t that enough? Enough to avoid the overly harsh and half-baked opinions that differ from mine?

Anyway, if you’re familiar with “The Lizz,” and open to a little hard rock, and interested in finding cool stuff in unexpected places, then throw this album on (in the repeat mode) while you piddle around your horrid excuse for an apartment (Kidding, I'm kidding!). And I’m betting that a little something rubs off. So don’t be embarrassed if you find yourself teasing out hidden goodies from a record “widely considered their worst.”

Fats Waller

Marty Robbins

JH