Dave Loggins “Personal Belongings”

This is one of those records I picked up purely for the cover—knowing nothing about Dave Loggins. This is his first album, 1972. There’s a full cover color photo with the title strung across it like a big smile. The photo is of (I’m assuming) Dave Loggins, a bearded white man with a turtleneck and a denim jacket, sitting there with his hands folded, partially enveloped by fog, or smoke (smoke machine?) and then, just behind his right shoulder is a blond woman—and because of the smoke, she looks like a disembodied head. It’s kind of frightening—and they both have similar, unreadable expressions that I’d be likely to interpret as disdain for the photographer. Ha! But it’s a great cover—people come away with some lame album covers—which is baffling to me. All you really need to do is take a sharp snapshot of the artist in question doing something like frying eggs—blow it up to full album size—and you’ve got a classic cover! Or an odd portrait with smoke and unnerving perspective and expressions works, too. But instead, so many artists will do something like use like only six square inches, in the middle, for a stock photo of a flying seagull or something. It’s confounding. But anyway, this one is excellent.

So, right in the first song, the progression of the chords, it’s almost like a dream of something you know—you can almost hear it coming—like the ghost of a familiar song—until you’re expecting it, any minute: “Even though we ain’t got money, I’m so in love with you honey…” But it never comes, because it’s not that song! I mean, it’s not exactly like “Danny’s Song,” but just enough to be disorienting. Kenny Loggins wrote that song about his brother—was Dave another brother? No Dave and Kenny are second cousins. I’m never sure exactly what that means, twice removed, all that, but the crucial thing is they’re related—all Logginses! They’ve got songs in their blood. Also, this song has enough of a Christian slant that you have to wonder if Dave Loggins, in his solo career, considered the professional name “Loggins and Messiah.”

The next song is a perfectly nice, folk, pop song called “Pieces of April”—a very good one. All of these songs are written by Dave Loggins, so he’s not hiding behind anything. Crystal clear, and you can understand the lyrics. Unfortunately, sometimes: “A box of candy for to see you smile.” Love songs—and occasionally some curious lyrics. The crucial last line in “Claudia” goes, “Our love will always grow, but what would a tree ever be if it didn’t have branches.” Which could be somewhat problematic, metaphorically… depending… not sure how to take that. I should have guessed there’d be a folk element—Vanguard label, folk instruments, songs called “Sister Mary Ryan” and “A Sailor’s Misfortune”—which is also a fine song, maybe my favorite on the record.

5.30.25