JACKSON BROWNE: Running On Empty: CD NEW

Also available with JACKSON BROWNE (SATURATE BEFORE USING) on 1 cassette.Personnel: Jackson Browne (vocals, guitar); Danny Kortchmar (guitar); David Lindley (lap steel guitar, fiddle); Craid Doerge (keyboards); Leland Sklar (bass); Russ Kunkel (drums); Doug Haywood, Rosemary Butler (background vocals).Recorded live in 1977.An audacious concept album about life on the road, this is a mix of in concert performances and informal sessions taped in various hotel rooms (see "Shaky Town, " although it's hard to believe that Browne, by then a major star, was actually staying at a Holiday Inn). It's very '70s--the overall aura of cocaine-fueled decadence is almost palpable--but it works far better than you'd expect, and the songs are consistently memorable, even if Browne didn't write them all.High points include a stunning half hotel/half concert version of Danny O'Keefe's "The Road, " still the best song ever written about the life of a travelling musician, and the closing medley of the roadie anthem "The Load-Out" an

On 1976's The Pretender, Jackson Browne confessed to enough distractions from his craft and disenchantment with the world around him to make a candid and contemporary rock album that set an optimistic stage for what was lying on-deck. And though Running On Empty would become Browne's quarter-century meal ticket, it was no favorite to the hard cores who found commercial contrivance in its "rock-star-on-the-road" concept. Yet nearly three decades after its release, the remastered and repackaged live album sounds as innovative and unsullied as ever (complete with a DVD that includes audio of two previously unreleased songs from the era). Recorded on stage, on motel room furniture, and aboard the tour bus, the songs served as Browne's diary of a mad musician, including womanizing in Danny O'Keefe's "The Road, " drugs in the Rev. Gary Davis' sermonette "Cocaine" and the enduring anthem of roadies and crowd adoration (and a Top 10 hit), "The Load-Out." Though Browne's commercial appeal would never again rise to this level, his legacy in his generation of popular music was sewn, and the record that put him there is still running on endurance. --Scott Holter

Personnel: Jackson Browne (vocals, guitar, piano); Jeff Scott Young (vocals, piano, Fender Rhodes piano); Jeff Young, Alethea Mills, Chavonne Morris (vocals); Mark Goldenberg (electric guitar); Kevin McCormick (bass guitar); Mauricio-Fritz Lewak (drums).Audio Mixer: Elliot Scheiner.Recording information: Groovemasters, Santa Monica, CA.Photographer: Frank Ockenfels.The front cover of Jackson Browne's TIME THE CONQUEROR features the eternally boyish-looking singer-songwriter sporting a grizzled, graying beard that puts the album title into its personal context. But musically speaking, TIME THE CONQUEROR finds Browne back in his musical comfort zone, delivering exactly the sort of Southern California singer-songwriter pop that made his name back in the 1970s. Recorded with his longtime touring band, the 10 songs have the unfussy, laid-back sound of vintage Browne albums like HOLD OUT and THE PRETENDER, while the lyrics mix political commentary and personal ruminations in Browne's trademark style. This is almost