The Second Decade of Rock and Roll, 1981-1991 (1991)



  1. Don't Let Him Go
  2. Tough Guys
  3. Take it on the Run
  4. Keep the Fire Burnin'
  5. Roll with the Changes
  6. I Do'Wanna Know
  7. Can't Fight This Feeling
  8. Live Every Moment
  9. That Ain't Love
  10.One Too Many Girlfriends
  11.Variety Tonight
  12.Back on the Road Again
  13.Keep on Loving You '89
  14.Love is a Rock
  15.All Heaven Broke Loose
  16.L.I.A.R.
  17.Live it Up


 

The title alone seems to promise something ambitious, if not definitive. And, to a degree, it delivers — albeit in a roundabout sort of way. A decade earlier, the band had released A Decade of Rock and Roll, a sprawling double album that traced their long and winding road up to the brink of success — before the fame, before the power ballads, before they’d really sold much of anything. It was, by nature, more historical than celebratory.

But this time around, the landscape had changed. The band had exploded in popularity post-Hi Infidelity, the lineup had splintered not long after, and the label—ever opportunistic—decided it was high time for another “retrospective.” Trouble is, the band only had one new studio album to speak of since their last hits package, and that one hadn’t exactly set the world on fire. So how do you justify a new collection?

The answer: you don’t. You pivot. Instead of a straightforward anthology, The Second Decade of Rock and Roll ends up being half a live album, half a studio compilation — a sort of audio scrapbook with little rhyme or reason, but some charming moments all the same.

The live tracks fare best. Though no one would mistake them for Live: You Get What You Play For, they do manage to tap into some of that raw concert energy that kept the band going even when the charts had stopped caring. The crowd seems into it, and for the most part, the band still sounds sharp. That is, until someone decides to get clever and redo Keep On Lovin’ You as a reggae number — a move so inexplicable and cringe-inducing that it could be taught in marketing classes as a textbook case of “what not to do.”

The studio cuts are, in large part, culled from the previous two REO records — both of which most people missed the first time around. And there’s a reason for that. There’s no real spark here, no standout anthem to carry things forward. The band sounds fine, but no more than that. It’s not so much that the material is bad, it’s just that we’ve heard this before, done better.

The biggest issue, though, is that the record never really figures out what it wants to be. It starts off live, veers into studio polish, then flips back again — and by the end, the continuity is in tatters. It feels less like an album and more like a marketing experiment.





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