Ah! Fond memories from the latest random CD pick! Four, the breakthrough album by the New Jersey jam band, is a representative disc for the sound of this great group of musicians. It was not their first album, but their fourth (hence the album's title, I suppose), released in 1994 .
My copy still has evidence of being a used disc I picked up in a CD store somewhere (remember when stores sold CDs?). I probably got it for the first track, Run-Around, a song that got lots of radio play (it is one of a handful of songs that define the 1990s for me) and remains a major hit for the band. Front man John Popper is amazing. He has the kind of voice that is almost impossible to imitate and he can do things on a harmonica that many guitar players can't pull off.
They are a blues band of sorts, and the "traveler" part of the band's name comes from the demon Gozer the Traveler, from the movie Ghostbusters. During an early jam session, and black cat happened to wander by, and it was decided that a funky black cat should be the groups insignia.
Other notable tracks from this album include Hook, The Mountains Win Again (that I seem to recall wound up in a beer commercial), Price to Pay, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (not the one you're thinking of. Same title, different tune). And for some reason, my memory links Blues Traveler with the 1996 movie Kingpin. After some checking into the soundtrack, they do indeed appear on the credits with one of their first major hits, But Anyway. Interesting how the mind makes relationships.
One of the funniest memories I have in relation to the music of Blues Traveler involves one of my friends at a talent show. He recited the lyrics to Run-Around in the style of a dramatic poem reading. Funny stuff.
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