Album of the Day

Harbor Lights, by Bruce Hornsby (1993): In the spring of 1993, I was just finishing up my freshman year of college. In a time honored college tradition, I took two finals one morning and them promptly headed to the bookstore to sell my now useless textbooks and free up a few bucks. Bucks in hand, I headed to Morgantown's famous Discount Den and picked up a couple new CDs, including this one. I went back to the dorm, where my room mate was sleeping through a migraine. Undaunted, I whipped out a pair of headphones and sat down in front of the stereo to check out Bruce's latest. As I started to paw through the liner notes, noticing the heavy hitters involved (Jimmy Haslip, Branford Marsalis, Pat Metheny, Jerry Garcia, etc.), the first solo piano notes of the title track drifted through my head. "This is different," I thought. By the time the band kicked in, my jaw was quite literally on the floor. I was a fan of Bruce's days with the Range, but this stuff (which, it turns out, was closer to his live performance), seamlessly blending pop and jazz with Bruce's trademark lyrics was just great. And it still is.