STEVE EARLE & THE DUKES : EXIT 0

1. Nowhere Road
2. Sweet Little '66
3. No. 29
4. Angry Young Man
5. San Antonio Girl
6. The Rain Came Down
7. I Ain't Ever Satisfied
8. The Week Of Living Dangerously
9. I Love You Too Much
10. It's All Up To You

Label : MCA

Length : 38:33

Release Date : May 18, 1987

Review (AllMusic) : Steve Earle once told a reporter that after listening to the final mix of 1987's Exit 0, he and his band hopped on their tour bus and played yet another gig that night, which is what they'd been doing during most of their time off from recording sessions. Exit 0 was recorded with Earle's road band, the Dukes, instead of the usual team of Nashville session pros, and as a consequence it boasts a leaner, tougher sound than his debut, Guitar Town, though the slightly slick cookie-cutter production by Tony Brown, Emory Gordy, Jr., and Richard Bennett saps a bit of the music's power. The album features a few great songs, including "I Ain't Ever Satisfied" (which could practically be Earle's theme song), "The Week of Living Dangerously," "The Rain Came Down," and "Sweet Little '66," but there's a faint hint of sophomore slump to Exit 0 - "No. 29" is far too sentimental for its own good, the Doug Sahm homage "San Antonio Girl" isn't nearly as good as the songs that clearly inspired it, and "Angry Young Man" feels like filler, something in short supply on most Steve Earle albums. Exit 0 is just uneven enough to qualify as a genuine disappointment, though that's within the context of Earle's body of work; this is still livelier stuff than nearly anyone in Nashville was cranking out at the time (short of Dwight Yoakam) and the high points confirm the guy who wrote "Guitar Town" had more fine tunes where that came from.

Review (Wikipedia) : Exit 0 is the second studio album from American singer-songwriter Steve Earle (credited to Steve Earle & The Dukes), released in 1987. Earle was nominated for a 1988 Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance, Male, for the album. The album was recorded digitally, using the Mitsubishi X-800 at Nashville's Emerald Studios. All of the album's ten tracks were written or co-written by Earle. Earle and his band played live shows regularly during breaks in recording. Exit 0 is stylistically very similar to its predecessor, Guitar Town, and was Earle's final pure-country album before incorporating hard rock with country on his next releases. It is today described by Allmusic as "livelier stuff than nearly anyone in Nashville was cranking out at the time".