Drawn from previous posts, this is not part of my current book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1).
An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!
JOAN ARMATRADING: Eating The Bear
Written by Joan Armatrading
Produced by Steve Lillywhite
From the album Walk Under Ladders, A & M Records, 1981
Some days the bear will eat you. Some days you eat the bear. All due respect to the incredible Ms. Joan Armatrading, but there are days when I believe this even-handed ratio to be overly optimistic regarding our collective and individual odds of surviving wholesale consumption by ravenous ursines. I don't think the Ranger's gonna like this, Yogi.
"Eating The Bear" was (I think) the first Joan Armatrading track I knew, a cut from her 1981 album Walk Under Ladders. It's not the best-known track on that record; both "I'm Lucky" and "When I Get It Right" wound up on her Greatest Hits collection, while "Eating The Bear" remained native to the original album only. I was exposed to all three of those tracks in the same time frame, so I can't say for sure which one I heard first. But, whichever one was first to cross into my sovereign airspace, "Eating The Bear" was the one that had impact. Its impact came via the radio. Of course.
In 1981, I was a recent college graduate (State University College at Brockport Class of 1980), living in an apartment with my girlfriend (who was still completing her undergrad studies at Brockport), working at McDonald's, drinking beer, listening to my music. Brockport is a small village on the Erie Canal. It's located in Western New York, about 19 miles west of Rochester, and the city of Buffalo sprawls another 64 miles or so farther away. We could usually get radio stations from Buffalo and even from Toronto. Buffalo had a generic album-rock station called 97 Rock, a bland AOR outlet that usually wasn't of much interest to me. Sunday nights were the exception. That's when this cookie-cutter rock station transformed itself temporarily into something greater: A weekly showcase called 97 Power Rock.
97 Power Rock claimed a more adventurous format, programming new wave rock and other fare that was presumably edgier than the station's prerequisite diet of Loverboy and Journey. 97 Power Rock played the likes of The Teardrop Explodes, U2, Psychedelic Furs, Viva Beat, Joy Division, Spandau Ballet, the Vibrators, Mission of Burma, old school rock by Andy Fairweather Low, even reggae by Dillinger. It was sufficiently eclectic and vibrant to secure my loyalty.
Joan Armatrading's music was part of that. Walk Under Ladders had a little bit of a post-punk vibe, partially attributable to Steve Lillywhite's production plus Thomas Dolby's synthesizer work on the album. That perceived level of cool opened 97 Power Rock's playlist for entry, and Armatrading's own songs, singing, playing, and pure presence did the rest. Man, this sounded fantastic on the radio. It didn't quite move me to buy the album--I was still a few years away from grasping Armatrading's brilliance--but it got my attention. I heard the songs, and a radio ad for the album, all of which prompted me to scrawl Walk Under Ladders in my spiral notebook, on the long, long list of LPs I wanted to buy once I'd accumulated enough burger-flippin' cash to buy all of the albums I wanted.
"Eating The Bear" was the Armatrading track for me. In 1981, I'd never heard the phrase Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you, so I had no idea whatsoever of the song's subject matter, no proper understanding of its stubborn fatalism, its determined swig from a half-empty glass that we'll refill if we survive, and smash in the face of any critter that says we won't. I just thought it sounded great, and it still sounds great.
For years, Armatrading's Greatest Hits was her sole representation in my music collection, and "Me Myself I" is discussed in my book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). "Eating The Bear" subsequently popped into my head again, and I snagged a CD of Walk Under Ladders, a wonderful album that I wish had made the transition from my notebook list to my record shelf forty-odd years ago.
Better late than never. Sometimes it takes a while, but radio gets the job done eventually. Bear necessities. Mind your manners there, Yogi. I ain't a-gonna be in no pic-a-nic basket. I'll keep you off my menu if you keep me off yours.
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