After releasing his stellar live album Nine Tonight, Bob Seger came back with the best album of his career, The Distance. The album is full of vivid tales of the common man. "Even Now" is a soaring rocker while "Makin' Thunderbirds" is a pulsating, Detroit flavored shaker that Bonnie Raitt provides backup vocals for. On Against The Wind, Mr. Seger played a number of song with a country flavor. He goes one step further on Rodney Crowell's "Shame On The Moon". The song has a hypnotic piano and great harmonies and moved up to number two on the charts which at the time was his highest charting single. "Love's The Last To Know" is good ballad while "House Behind A House" shakes along. "Roll Me Away" is classic Seger with tales of freedom and a powerful chorus. "Comin' Home" is a tale of redemption while the closer "Little Victories" is a great portrait of the little moments in everyday life where one triumph's over life's obstacles.

I recently listened to this album for the first time in five years or more and was really impressed with strength of the album. Seven of the nine songs are the type that are not skipped to reach another more favorite song.

The album also features perhaps Seger's best song of his career, "Roll Me Away", and the top notch "Shame On The Moon". The rest of the material is solid rock music that make Seger the best at what he does.

America was deep in economic recession when this record came out in 1982. The "Global Economy" was just beginning to emerge, taking jobs away from Detroit's auto workers. While Springsteen's Nebraska is usually listed as the work which best addressed the country's doubts at the time, I believe that Bob Seger came closer to getting it right: People WERE sad and scared, but they were also highly pissed off!

"Making Thunderbirds," "Boomtown Blues" and even "Little Victories" perfectly capture their righteous anger, but "Roll Me Away" is the classic here: A song obstensibly about escaping a dead-end town on a Harley and never looking back, it might just as well be talking about the abandonment of the American work ethic - and its accompanying values - by our people. But, in the end, the singer realizes that to abandon his home is also abandoning what he stands for. And so he starts back home, to "get it right."

The Distance is NOT a Night Moves, or Stranger In Town, but the addition of Roy Bittan (of Springsteen's E Street band) opens up the arrangements of the songs in ways not possible before. And the writing here has a true sense of wistfullness to it, as if Seger realized that the world he grew up in was leaving town for good...

Bob Seger may be the last great rock 'n roller for us old heads (read: his contemporaries). The Distance has some of his best work. It has some of the greatest hard driving rock ever to blast through the speakers. If played in a moving car, "Even Now" is guaranteed to increase your speed by at least ten MPH (actually, I once talked a state trooper out of a ticket by telling him it was the fault of the Bob Seger coming through the tape player!). "Roll Me Away" is the greatest song to accompany a motorcycle ride since "Born to be Wild". This album rates less than five stars, though, because as great as "Even Now", "Roll Me Away" and the classic "Shame on the Moon" are, the rest of the songs are adequate by comparison. Certainly worth the money, though, by any standards.

This album is fine! Bob Seger rocks! On songs like "Shame On the Moon", are some of the best music i have heard in so long! Bob Seger seems to always been a great American rock God! Totally underrated! If you don't have this album-do pick it up! You won't be dissappointed.