Thin Lizzy "Jailbreak" [1976]

Somehow under the impression that Foghat was having all the fun, 70s Irish rockers Thin Lizzy set out to get themselves onto American FM radio during hard rock's crisis point ultimately failed by Aerosmith, Bad Company, a completely wasted Led Zeppelin, disco sell-out Stones and these overly macho opportunistic wankers. Imagining himself some sort of Springsteenian storyteller, singer/bassist Phil Lynott lets everyone down with choice lyrics like "Oh Poor Romeo / Sitting out on his owneeo." Didn't matter that even properly executed, "Jailbreak" would be a vacuous pile of shit; this was the era of "Hotel California," after all -- Thin Lizzy didn't kill rock music themselves, they just fed off its corpse like any other manner of low-life vermin. That said, even at their most lyrically pretentious, neither Don Henley nor Springsteen himself were so reactionarily crotch-grabby as Lynott consistently is here. Made worse by the constant doubled guitar solos that enhance musical freedom the way the Manhattan Transfer enhanced "Birdland," somehow nothing seems to be able to thwart the continued force of "The Boys Are Back in Town," even this many decades later. You'd think that at least if Thin Lizzy was going to commit to male chauvinism they'd have sense to rock up their filler and not recede into the Doobie Brothers on 'ludes. But that's 70s rock all over: one major disappointment after another.