A three-album play, with my commentary beneath each album’s song list.

Black Sabbath – Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
1. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
2. A National Acrobat
3. Fluff
4. Sabbra Cadabra
5. Killing Yourself To Live
6. Who Are You
7. Looking For Today
8. Spiral Architect

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, crazy good album as are all in this album set, in my opinion but of course it’s my set. The Sabs’ record often reminds me of my Grade 10 English class in high school. It was a segment where the teacher asked us to present poetry that had been impactful, perhaps to that point, on our lives. If memory serves, I chose Rudyard Kipling’s “If” which, a few years earlier, I had been chosen to deliver to an elementary school assembly.

The outlier in Grade 10 English, though, came from a classmate of mine who brought in Sabbath Bloody Sabbath with the lyrics to every song on Black Sabbath’s 1973 record. There were some raised eyebrows from teacher and class members but I admired his gumption in terms of pushing the envelope and maybe breaking whatever rules may have existed. His presentation was convincing and in the end it turned me on to the album, full of great tracks starting with the killer title track, and I’m a forever fan of the band.

Van Halen – Fair Warning
1. Mean Street
2. Dirty Movies
3. Sinner’s Swing!
4. Hear About It Later
5. Unchained
6. Push Comes To Shove
7. So This Is Love?
8. Sunday Afternoon In The Park
9. One Foot Out The Door

In all respects and reviews, Fair Warning is acknowledged as being Van Halen’s darkest album. And that’s why it’s so good albeit not as commercially successful but just canvas listeners on various online platforms and the consensus as to quality is universally positive.

No hit singles to speak of, really, although Unchained is well known but even it, perhaps surprisingly, barely dented the charts. The key forever to me has been the deep dark opener, Mean Street, one of my alltime favorite VH songs which contains the lyric “fair warning’ from which the album is named. Who knows why they didn’t release it as a single or put it on any compilations. And, amid the heavy rock is the cool bluesy boozy Push Comes To Shove with David Lee Roth’s cooly expressed “anything left in that bottle?’ talk/sing line amid an apparent conversation among friends partying the night away to which I can well relate from my errant youth.

Rainbow – Rising
1. Tarot Woman
2. Run With The Wolf
3. Starstruck
4. Do You Close Your Eyes
5. Stargazer
6. A Light In The Black

Widely acknowledged as one of the best and most influential hard rock albums of all time, Rainbow’s Rising. It was the second release by the former Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore’s band formed in 1975 and featuring the one and only vocals of the late great Ronnie James Dio. Dio came to Blackmore’s attention when Dio’s band Elf opened for Deep Purple on early 1970s tours. By 1975, Blackmore had left Deep Purple and formed Rainbow with elements of Dio’s previous band Elf but by the time of Rising, outside of Dio, former Elf members were gone in favour of aces like drummer Cozy Powell.

My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. Led Zeppelin, Moby Dick/Bonzo’s Montreux
2. Genesis, Conversations With 2 Stools (from Live Over Europe 2007)
3. Mick Jagger, War Baby
4. The Steve Miller Band, Kow Kow Calqulator
5. Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, Rock That Boogie
6. Moon Martin, Hot Nite In Dallas
7. Link Wray, Studio Blues
8. Steve Earle, Continental Trailways Blues
9. Dave Edmunds, Singin’ The Blues
10. Elmore James, Look On Yonder Wall
11. Maria Muldaur, It’s A Blessing
12. Harry Chapin, Dance Band On The Titanic
13. Arlo Guthrie, Alice’s Restaurant Massacree
14. Ian Dury, Clevor Trever
15. David Baerwald, A Secret Silken World
16. Bob Dylan, What Was It You Wanted
17. Murray Head, One Night In Bangkok
18. Dishwalla, Charlie Brown’s Parents
19. Mountain, The Great Train Robbery

My track-by-track tales:

1. Led Zeppelin, Moby Dick/Bonzo’s Montreux . . . A couple of drum showcases to start the set, the first a combination track featuring the late John Bonham put together by Zep guitarist/producer Jimmy Page for the band’s 1990 box set, simply titled Led Zeppelin. “Previously unreleased in this form” as the liner notes on the box set state, as Page merged Moby Dick, which also featured his guitar riff, from Led Zeppelin II in 1969, with Bonzo’s Montreux which was recorded in 1976 but not officially released until the 1982 compilation Coda which consisted of previously unreleased and/or live tracks.

2. Genesis, Conversations With 2 Stools (from Live Over Europe) . . . In which Phil Collins goes back behind the kit to musically converse with longtime Genesis touring drummer Chester Thompson in a six-minute duel. This version is from the band’s 2007 Turn It On Again tour that saw the return of Collins to the Genesis fold after he had left in 1996 to fully concentrate on his solo career. He was replaced by singer Ray Wilson for the ill-fated 1997 studio album Calling All Stations. The ‘conversation’ is something Collins and Thompson started doing beginning with Genesis’ 1977 tour, although Collins – who took over lead vocals in the mid-1970s after Peter Gabriel left the band – continued to do the drumming on studio albums and some live songs over the years.

The Ray Wilson period of Genesis I don’t think is as bad as many critics would suggest. I think the album – which I intend to play again on the show sometime – has good songs and it made No. 2 in the UK charts and was successful in Europe. It’s just that the fan base, particularly in North America where a planned tour was cancelled due to poor ticket sales, wasn’t apparently accepting of anyone replacing what had by then become the iconic Collins. That’s interesting given how Collins was easily accepted as the replacement for the thought-to-be irreplaceable Peter Gabriel in the mid-1970s. Interviews with band members about the Wilson period are available on YouTube and some of the opinion, including from Wilson himself, is that, had the Wilson-Tony Banks-Mike Rutherford lineup done a second album, starting from scratch as a unit (Wilson came in with Calling All Stations already mostly written by Banks and Rutherford) things might have turned out differently, perhaps a more successful third version of the band. Who knows, it didn’t happen. Collins himself suggests in one of the interviews that it was easier for him to take over and the band adjust to the departure of Gabriel, given that the group had been around for less than a decade at that point, than it was for Wilson, who came in after Collins had fronted and written with the band for 30 years.

As for Chester Thompson, he was also in Phil Collins’ solo touring band but the two had a falling out during a 2010 tour; apparently Collins was dissatisified with Thompson’s playing. And that’s the last association Thompson – a veteran who lists on his resume time with Frank Zappa and Weather Report – had with any Genesis member. He was replaced by Collins’ son Nic Collins on the band’s final tour, the 2021 trek The Last Domino? Tour. Thompson was originally hurt by the split with Collins but apparently things have been smoothed out to the point where he was supportive of Collins’ son joining the touring band. Nic Collins had travelled with the group on the 2007 tour and Thompson said it was evident he had great potential.

“I was pretty upset. But I’m over it now,” Thompson is quoted in a Wikipedia entry about his relationship with Phil Collins. “I wish him nothing but the best.”

And as for Nic Collins, now age 23: “We knew at five or six years old that this kid was going to be a monster. I think it’s fantastic that he got to play with his dad,” Thompson said.
But Nic couldn’t play directly with his father on shared drum stool conversation, alas. Phil, due to various health issues including spinal injuries, at last report can no longer play the drums and he sat in a chair at the front of the stage, doing lead vocals, on the most recent Genesis tour.

3. Mick Jagger, War Baby . . . Primitive Cool, Jagger’s second solo album, released in 1987, gets trashed and I’d trash it, too, if all I’d ever heard from it was the first single, Let’s Work. It’s actually in retrospect not a bad dance type track as Jagger, as he usually does when doing solo albums and kudos to him for that, tries to separate himself from the Rolling Stones sound and in this case is helped along by the production gloss of Dave Stewart of Eurythmics fame. But there’s the ridiculous video of fit Mick doing aerobics and running and such and lecturing people to get off their butts and to work, etc. and I remember thinking, WTF, Mick? Yet another case where sometimes an artist, or the record company, picks the wrong single and/or video. And then the whole album is judged by it because not all listeners dig deeper.

There’s much better songs on Primitive Cool than Let’s Work. Like Party Doll, the type of hurtin’ country ballad Jagger does so well and I’ve played on the show before and this one, War Baby. It came to mind because I’m currently reading a biography of Who bassist John Entwistle and the first line of the first chapter talks about how Entwistle, born in 1944 was, like Jagger (born 1943) a ‘war baby’ raised amid the rubble wrought by Nazi bombing of the UK. And Jagger speaks to that in an anti-war song too easily overlooked by random, quick assessments of the album. I will always think Jagger’s next solo album, the 1993 record Wandering Spirit, is easily his best solo effort in large measure because it’s the solo album of his that sounds most like The Rolling Stones. But Primitive Cool, for those who haven’t dug in, is worthy of deeper investigation; you arguably need to approach it from the point of view that it’s a Jagger album, not a Stones’ record. Jeff Beck is lead guitarist on the album.

4. The Steve Miller Band, Kow Kow Calqulator . . . From the 1969 album Brave New World and it would be a new world of bluesy and psychedelic rock for any fans of Miller who only know him for his many 1970s hits like Take The Money And Run, Fly Like An Eagle, The Joker, etc. that make up the bulk of one of the best-selling compilations ever, Greatest Hits 1974-78. There was a Steve Miller Band before all of that, with albums released starting in 1968. A different sort of band. Boz Scaggs of later fame via solo hit singles like Lido Shuffle and Lowdown was in the group, although Boz left before Brave New World, having played on the first two Miller band albums. Miller continued on in the same vein until achieving commercial success starting with The Joker in 1973 and then the back-to-back full of hits albums Fly Like An Eagle and Book Of Dreams in 1976 and ’77.

5. Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, Rock That Boogie . . . I never would have thought so but I must have some rockabilly, or rockabilly boogie, in my soul because I seem to play a fair bit of it. Maybe it goes back to me getting blitzed on Purple Jesus with friends going into a bluegrass festival while in college during the summer of 1980. We weren’t at all into bluegrass, although I’ve come to like it over the years but back then we just went for the party. We realized we’d forgotten or not bothered to get any mix – no purple, just Jesus! – so we just drank the straight booze, passing a bottle of grain alcohol between us, essentially three drunks walking down the street into the festival, little of which, predictably, we saw or heard but again, we weren’t really there for the music. We survived the occasion, such as it was. I crashed out early in a tent we were sharing with other friends we met up with, dirt was the floor such that when I returned home the next day, in relatively fine fettle but white sweat shirt caked with mud, my older and one of my younger brothers asked “what the eff happened to you?”

6. Moon Martin, Hot Nite In Dallas . . . Pulsating production, this straight ahead rock and roller from the guy who gave us two hits, his own Rolene and Bad Case Of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor) covered by Robert Palmer on his Secrets album. The songs were released within a month of each other in the summer months of 1979.

7. Link Wray, Studio Blues . . . I just felt like hearing more instrumental guitar wank from the father of feedback/doctor of distortion, so here we are. With some horns, to boot.

8. Steve Earle, Continental Trailways Blues . . . According to the liner notes on Essential Steve Earle, a 1993 retrospective, this slow burn country rockabilly-ish tune appeared during the 1987 Steve Martin-John Candy movie Planes Trains and Automobiles which I’ve never seen in full, caught bits and pieces while channel surfing whenever it shows up on TV so I’ve gotten the gist of the picture, all well and good. This tune was also released on a 1988 country compilation titled Country And Eastern. Earle, a buddy of mine once said, could sing the phone book (if any still exist but you get the gist) and he’d listen. I agree.

9. Dave Edmunds, Singin’ The Blues . . . Twangin’ is a great album title for Edmunds’ 1981 release in terms of suiting what’s within. I remember initially being disappointed by the album, having come to Edmunds largely via his previous hit record Repeat When Necessary, issued in 1979 and featuring songs like Crawling From The Wreckage by Graham Parker and Girls Talk via Elvis Costello. So I was expecting more instantly immersive songs. Twangin’ ? No real hits, great music. Sometimes, as Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones has said, you have to let things marinate, then you ‘get’ it.

10. Elmore James, Look On Yonder Wall . . . This one’s from 1961. Listening to the great underproduced (or more likely perfectly produced) blues including the vocals and spare yet effective instrumentation, it’s no wonder so many rock artists were inspired by this sort of thing.

11. Maria Muldaur, It’s A Blessing . . . Bonnie Raitt is a backing vocalist on this deep acoustic blues track from Muldaur’s 2001 album Richland Woman Blues. Muldaur is best known for her 1970s hit Midnight At The Oasis but much of her material is bluesy brilliance.

12. Harry Chapin, Dance Band On The Titanic . . . Uptempo tune on yet another of Chapin’s typically great story songs, in this case about that ‘unsinkable’ ship and also a commentary on how diversions can be created to distract from real problems.

Nothing to do with the music but often when I think of the Titanic – and like many I’m endlessly fascinated by the story, the what ifs, etc. – as a sports fan and retired sportswriter I also think of a hockey player, Morris Titanic. He was a hotshot junior scorer drafted in the first round, 12th overall, by the Buffalo Sabres in 1973 but never scored a goal nor earned an assist in the National Hockey League. He had a clean sheet of 0-0-0, not even any penalty minutes, in 19 games over two seasons. I remember various newspaper headlines when he was sent down to the minor leagues:

“Titanic goes down” How could they resist?

Titanic wound up having a six-season minor league career before going into coaching. Others in his draft class fared better in the NHL, among them Hockey Hall of Famers Denis Potvin, Lanny McDonald and Bob Gainey.

13. Arlo Guthrie, Alice’s Restaurant Massacree . . . I first heard this in my high school gym, mid-1970s, a talent show where a classmate of mine played it. He seemed to get mixed reviews despite his excellent performance, perhaps because the song is long, nearly 19 minutes but it’s worthwhile of course, lyrically and musically.

14. Ian Dury, Clevor Trever . . . Yes, it’s spelled that way. Clevor Trever, not the Clever Trevor you might expect. Creativity, you know. A funky groove tune from the New Boots and Panties!! album released in 1977. I got to it in 1978 via a first-year college friend who introduced me to it via the single Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll which was on the North American album but not, at the time given industry practice, on UK releases.

15. David Baerwald, A Secret Silken World . . . Spooky track, harrowing lyrics, it opens with “I took a ride with a sadist on a Saturday night’ and devolves from there. It’s from one half of the perhaps cult figure Davids, Baerwald and Ricketts, who in 1986 under the banner David + David released one of my favorite albums, Boomtown, which I’ve often delved into. Baerwald now does music scores for film and TV with occasional music releases including this one from the 1992 album Triage, while Ricketts has done session work and production.

16. Bob Dylan, What Was It You Wanted . . . “Who are you, anyway’ great line in the context of a full song of brilliant lines, maybe about him, maybe us, maybe someone in particular. One never truly knows with Dylan, which is his lyrical magic. This is from his 1989 album Oh Mercy.

17. Murray Head, One Night In Bangkok . . . Murray Head, as Judas, was a prominent performer on the Jesus Christ Superstar, soundtrack, the 1970 version that is, to me, the best soundtrack of that production. Also starring with Head were Ian Gillan of Deep Purple as Jesus and Yvonne Elliman as Mary Magdalene. Head is in a different musical milieu on this compelling rap/disco/spoken word highlight of the mid-1980s musical Chess, which revolves around a Cold War-era tournament of the best game ever invented.

18. Dishwalla, Charlie Brown’s Parents . . . Heavy riffing from a band that is still around and they rock but turned out to be, perhaps unfairly, a one-hit wonder group – the terrific 1990s hit single Counting Blue Cars that they never managed to follow up to any extent.

19. Mountain, The Great Train Robbery . . . Another story song to finish the set, this one about the famous 1963 robbery in England. It’s from Mountain’s 1971 album Nantucket Sleighride.

Lots of guitar pyrotechnics, often lengthy but always compelling, from various virtuosos and assorted raunch and rollers. My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. AC/DC, Bad Boy Boogie (live, from If You Want Blood You’ve Got It)
2. Ted Nugent, Hibernation (Amboy Dukes track on Nugent’s Double Live Gonzo! album)
3. The Amboy Dukes, Migration
4. Chicago, Free Form Guitar
5. Jimi Hendrix, The Star-Spangled Banner (live at Woodstock)
6. The Rolling Stones, Fingerprint File (from Love You Live)
7. Queen, The Prophet’s Song
8. Jeff Beck, My Tiled White Floor
9. Ian Hunter, Wild East
10. Vanilla Fudge, Street Walking Woman
11. Gov’t Mule, I Asked For Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)
12. Deep Purple, Mistreated (live, from Made In Europe)
13. The Who, My Generation (extended version of the hit single, interpolating various Tommy and other tracks, from Live At Leeds)
14. Johnny Winter, It’s All Over Now (from Captured Live!)

My track-by-track tales:

1. AC/DC, Bad Boy Boogie (live, from If You Want Blood You’ve Got It) . . . Three minutes longer, and the better for it, than the four minutes and change studio version which is terrific, too, originally released on the 1977 studio album Let There Be Rock. AC/DC came to mind to play because the band this past week announced a North American tour for 2025 in support of the 2020 album Power Up.

It seems like a long time between an album coming out and a tour promoting it as a followup but the album was released during the pandemic lockdowns and beyond that, AC/DC has been touring in support of the record in Europe and elsewhere. The band is finally coming back to North America with the first show of the tour scheduled for Minneapolis, Minnesota on April 10, 2025 with the lone Canadian date, so far anyway, scheduled for Vancouver, April 22.

I’ve seen AC/DC live twice, but I won’t be going to, say, close to me locations the band is hitting like Detroit or Cleveland, although I’m sure it will be a great show. Probably. I’m to the point where my big concert days are likely if not certainly done. I’ve missed some, but in general seen all the classic bands/artists I want to see, like AC/DC, the Stones, etc., multiple times and I suppose part of it for me is that, as I and they age, I don’t want to risk seeing them in a bad performance that can happen due to advancing years. I saw AC/DC on their own tour in support of the Ballbreaker album in Toronto in 1996, fantastic show, and then again at the Toronto Rocks SARS show in 2003 in support of The Rolling Stones on a bill that also featured Rush and The Guess Who among many others. I saw the Stones for the millionth time (actually about 20 counting multiple concerts on a given tour; I saw every tour from 1978 on) in 2013, amazing show, and I thought, that’s it for me: I don’t want to risk seeing them not deliver live – as they yet continue to deliver to this day based on reports and fan feedback. But I’m satisfied with the shows I’ve experienced with my alltime favorite band.

I’d never want it to get to where it did with another favorite, Jethro Tull where I’d seen the band numerous times yet when I saw them in 2007 it was clear Ian Anderson’s voice was shot and the show, while competent, made too many allowances via long instrumental incursions and arrangements into well-known tracks that weren’t so much creative as it seemed obvious they were covering for Anderson’s vocal challenges. It was disappointing and sad and many Tull fans have remarked on the decline of his singing over the years yet he’s still out there, albeit with now from what I’ve read a backing vocalist. So that was it for me and Tull. I get it, people age, things change, challenges arise, I don’t begrudge them for continuing, it’s what artists do, but in any case I have all the music to continually enjoy . . . best wishes to AC/DC I’m sure they will continue to rock.

2. Ted Nugent, Hibernation (live, Amboy Dukes track on Nugent’s Double Live Gonzo! album) . . . A lenghty (16 compelling minutes) instrumental from Nugent’s days with The Amboy Dukes which he released as a by then solo artist in a live version on 1978’s Double Live Gonzo! album. Nugent’s address to the audience introducing the song is worth the price of admission alone: “This guitar was born in the motor city, Detroit, murder capital, such a healthy place for all the boys and girls the murder capital of the world (editor’s note: hey, that rhymes) . . . This guitar I been told was one time out on safari, this guitar right here is guaranteed to blow the balls off a charging rhino at 60 paces. . . . You see, this guitar definitely refuses to play sweet shit.”

Good for Detroit that, at my last look, had dropped to No. 12 in the US in terms of murders but back then, Nugent was pretty much bang on. And then he rocked the house. Some despise him for his politics, I’m of the ‘I don’t give a shit I can separate things, I just enjoy much of his music’ persuasion and that applies for me to any artist, when they’re actually playing their music.

3. The Amboy Dukes, Migration . . . Another instrumental, a driving at times spooky title cut to the band’s 1969 album, Nugent out front on propulsive lead guitar.

4. Chicago, Free Form Guitar . . . Utterly out of character cut, this is, for anyone thinking of Chicago as the syrupy ballad band via tracks like If You Leave Me Now (albit a good song) that presaged the group’s subsequent somewhat record company pressured but nevertheless move to in my mind overproduced ballad and power-ballad success of schlock during the 1980s and beyond.

But before that, sublime success certainly creatively and the only Chicago I listen to. Free Form Guitar is a 1969 recording that is the kind of performance where, during a concert – whether it be an extended (and boring to some, sometimes me included although I generally appreciate them) drum or guitar solo – some in the stands go for a bathroom break or a beverage and such experimental avant-garde excursions are usually confined to the live experience. But, not in this case. This almost seven-minute solo slab of the great Chicago guitarist Terry Kath was a studio cut on the band’s debut album, Chicago Transit Authority. But that’s how it was, back then, on radio and album; you’d hear such things and it was a good thing but I’m biased, I grew up back then. In any case, Kath’s perhaps not to all taste’s track apparently inspired what comes next, from a guy, Hendrix, who was on record as suggesting that Kath was better than he was. Who can say? Music isn’t or shouldn’t be a competition, there are so many greats bringing so much to their art, through the decades, we all have our favorites, best to just enjoy what they bring, in my book.

5. Jimi Hendrix, The Star-Spangled Banner (live at Woodstock) . . . By now, from my sports follower’s view of ongoing events, there’s been many guitarists playing the US national anthem. But Hendrix’s performance at Woodstock remains arguably the most well-known. Epic and influential.

6. The Rolling Stones, Fingerprint File (from Love You Live) . . . Raunchy live version (as are all versions of the songs on Love You Live) of this track from 1974’s It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll album, released on the Stones’ 1977 live album. I recall the record – aside from the bluesy El Mocambo side – getting trashed by some media critics yet fans, clearly evidenced now in online comments but back then in general conversation, loved it. As do I.

7. Queen, The Prophet’s Song . . . A lengthy, progish track from the 1975 album A Night At The Opera which featured the hit Bohemian Rhapsody but was, other than that single, an album of great depth as Queen, successful to that point, ascended to a higher level.

8. Jeff Beck, My Tiled White Floor . . . One of two studio tracks on the 2015 live album Jeff Beck Live + . Electronic, hypnotic rock propelled along by the drumming and lead vocals of Veronica Bellino, a noted California session player by way of New York.

9. Ian Hunter, Wild East . . . A lesser known, perhaps, but by no means less quality offering than the rest of Hunter’s 1979 album You’re Never Alone With A Schizophrenic which featured at well known songs like Cleveland Rocks, Just Another Night, When The Daylight comes, I could go on because the whole album is a quality front-to-back listen. I remember linguists suggesting the album title should have been You’re Never Alone As A Schizophrenic which I can see makes sense but whatever.

10. Vanilla Fudge, Street Walking Woman . . . Hard rock psychedelic offering from the band that was, well, hard rock/psychedelic. From the 1969 album Rock & Roll. Drummer Carmine Appice and bassist Tim Bogert went on to form the band Cactus while, later, Appice played in Rod Stewart’s post-Faces bands and both were members of the short-lived group (Jeff) Beck, Bogert Appice.

11. Gov’t Mule, I Asked For Water (She Gave Me Gasoline) . . . Lengthy treatment in the typical harder-rocking manner Gov’t Mule tends to give its blues covers, in this case of the Howlin’ Wolf tune. From the 2021 album Heavy Load Blues.

12. Deep Purple, Mistreated (live, from Made In Europe) . . . Made In Japan tends to get most of the accolades and deservedly so but among the now countless Deep Purple live albums via various formations of the group, Made In Europe, released in 1976, was to my teenage mind equally great and remains so to this day. It was from the so-called Mk. III version of the band: David Coverdale (vocals with a particularly impassioned performance here) and Glenn Hughes (bass/vocals) having replaced singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover for the albums Burn and Stormbringer, from which Made In Europe was drawn.

13. The Who, My Generation (extended version of the hit single, interpolating various Tommy and other tracks, from Live At Leeds) . . . A hit, yes, and this is a deep cuts show for the most part but the depth is in the extension of the original three-minute single into an epic 15-minute excursion.

14. Johnny Winter, It’s All Over Now (from Captured Live!) . . . And we’re outta here, another show over, on Winter’s typically smokin’ version of a tune, in this case the Bobby and Shirley Womack-penned song famously covered by The Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart, among others.

My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. Elton John, Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
2. Black Sabbath, When Death Calls
3. Megadeth, Killing Is My Business . . . And Business Is Good!
4. Judas Priest, Beyond The Realms Of Death
5. Blood, Sweat & Tears, Lucretia MacEvil (full album version)
6. Bruce Hornsby, Spider Fingers (live)
7. The Spencer Davis Group, Waltz For Lumumba (instrumental)
8. The Rolling Stones, Moon Is Up
9. Led Zeppelin, Down By The Seaside
10. Robin Trower, Day Of The Eagle
11. Nirvana, Radio Friendly Unit Shifter
12. Joe Jackson, A Slow Song
13. Cry Of Love, Too Cold In The Winter
14. J. Geils Band, Monkey Island
15. The Beatles, What’s The New Mary Jane
16. Slade, Keep On Rocking (live)

My track-by-track tales:

1. Elton John, Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding . . . I was discussing great double albums by great bands when I played Led Zeppelin’s In The Light from Physical Graffiti on Saturday’s show. Elton John’s 1973 double vinyl Goodbye Yellow Brick Road of course is one of those classics along with, as previously mentioned, The Beatles’ White Album, Exile On Main St. by The Rolling Stones, London Calling by The Clash, Bruce Springsteen’s The River, many others. I’ve been meaning to get back to Elton John for a few weeks, so here we go with this epic Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album opener.

2. Black Sabbath, When Death Calls . . . Sticking with the death theme, not that I’m in a morbid mood at all, it just played out that way. I suppose I should have started with When Death Calls, then a funeral song as whoever is put to rest, but the Sabs’ when Death Calls is more a doomy slower piece and I generally like to start with more of a rocker, although Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding does take a bit before it speeds up but when it does . . . In any case, this is another – I played The Shining from 1987’s Eternal Idol a few weeks ago – from the I think underappreciated Tony Martin on lead vocals period of Black Sabbath. It’s from the 1989 album Headless Cross. Brian May of Queen is a guitar guest on When Death Calls, playing the first solo.

3. Megadeth, Killing Is My Business . . . And Business Is Good! . . . Early thrash/speed metal, title cut to the band’s 1985 debut album.

4. Judas Priest, Beyond The Realms Of Death . . . Half ballad, half metallic rocker, back and forth over seven minutes on this slab of guitar soloing from the 1978 album Stained Class.

5. Blood, Sweat & Tears, Lucretia MacEvil (full album version) . . . “Ooh Lucy you just so damn bad. . . ” Love that lyric and David Clayton-Thomas’s vocal delivery. Among my favorite BS & T tunes, this is the full version, three ticks short of six minutes, twice the length of the single extracted from Blood, Sweat & Tears 3, the group’s 1970 album. And it’s better than the truncated single, allowing for full flowering of the instrumental and vocal interplay of, along with Chicago, one of the early 1970s best bands in the jazz-rock genre.

6. Bruce Hornsby, Spider Fingers (live) . . . I watched the 1955 sci-fi monster movie Tarantula the other day as I pared down some accumulated backlog of recordings, perhaps accounting for me playing a song with ‘spider’ in the title. It’s a funky fingers foray by piano man Bruce Hornsby on this live version of a jazzy tune originally on his 1995 studio album Hot House. Hornsby is still likely best known to the masses for his 1980s hits The Way It Is and The Valley Road, both great songs, but he’s much more, a talent who counts among his exploits having been a longtime touring member of the latter-day Grateful Dead, among other projects and his own solo work.

7. The Spencer Davis Group, Waltz For Lumumba (instrumental) . . . I played the band Family last week which got me thinking of Ric Grech who was a member, which got me thinking of Blind Faith of which Grech was also a member, which got me thinking of Steve Winwood of Traffic fame who was also in Blind Faith along with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker. But before that, Winwood was lead singer in The Spencer Davis Group although he doesn’t sing on this instrumental which, given what later followed, could be seen as a precursor to the jam band type material later versions of Traffic embraced.

8. The Rolling Stones, Moon Is Up . . . Charlie Watts on ‘mystery drum’, according to the Voodoo Lounge album liner notes. The drum was an overturned metal garbage can with Watts being recorded while isolated in a stairwell, hammering the can with brushes.

9. Led Zeppelin, Down By The Seaside . . . I played In The Light last Saturday after someone mentioned Down By The Seaside, also from the 1975 Zep albun Physical Graffiti, to me earlier that week. In The Light fit Saturday’s space rock theme and at the time I wrote that I’d play Seaside again soon, perhaps as early as Monday, so here we are. A bluesy acoustic ballad that a third of the way through turns, at points, into a rocker. Overall the song is apparently an homage by Robert Plant to Neil Young’s work around the time of Young’s After The Goldrush album, released in 1970.

10. Robin Trower, Day Of The Eagle . . . Opening track riff rocker to arguably Trower’s finest hour, the 1974 album Bridge Of Sighs featuring the other members of his prime period 1970s power trio of drummer Reg Isidore and bassist/soulful singer James Dewar. Geoff Emerick, longtime engineer at Apple Studios who worked on many Beatles albums as well as Paul McCartney’s Band On The Run, London Town, Tug Of War and Flaming Pie, was sound engineer on Bridge Of Sighs.

11. Nirvana, Radio Friendly Unit Shifter . . . Bleak, nihilistic stuff belying the tongue in cheek song title from the 1993 album In Utero after Nirvana seemingly came out of nowhere to achieve superstardom, propelled by the hit single Smells Like Teen Spirit but many other great songs, and shifting millions of units of their breakthrough 1991 album Nevermind.

12. Joe Jackson, A Slow Song . . . Great long song, seven minutes, slow for the most part but up tempo in spots, from JJ’s 1982 album Night And Day. He is, as often mentioned, one of my favorite artists, been following him since his punk/new wave beginnings with the debut Look Sharp! album in 1979 and he’s never disappointed me through his often daring travels through myriad genres including jazz, jump blues and classical. And in response to his lyric “And I get tired of DJs, why is it always what he plays, I’m gonna push right through, I’m gonna tell him to, tell him to play us, play us a slow song . . . ” Done, Joe.

13. Cry Of Love, Too Cold In The Winter . . . If you didn’t know better, you’d think this was Free or Bad Company but it’s Cry Of Love, a North Carolina band that formed in 1989 and lasted until 1997, releasing two studio albums. And they’re not ripoffs of those aformentioned Paul Rodgers on lead vocals-fronted great bands, more a tribute to them embracing the influences but coming up with Cry Of Love’s own distinctive sound. I remain perplexed as to why they weren’t bigger, particularly via this song from the excellent 1993 debut Brother which I think is the album’s best cut. It was co-written by the group’s guitarist, Audley Freed, who later spent some time in The Black Crowes. The song title fits with the cold weather we’ve had in southern Ontario the last few days after a great run of balmy weather deep into the fall.

14. J. Geils Band, Monkey Island . . . Extended, spooky in spots nine-minute title track to the group’s 1977 album. No hit singles to speak of although I suppose I Do is relatively well known. The album did not chart high, everything about it seemed different from previous J. Geils releases including the black and white cover art of some band members in apparent silhouette not to mention the one-time cover billing of the group as just ‘Geils’, no ‘J’. To me, though, it’s akin to, say, The Kinks’ Muswell Hillbillies, yet another brilliant album that seemed to escape many people or achieve commercial success but is worth investigating.

15. The Beatles, What’s The New Mary Jane . . . Weird and wonderful, depending on one’s mood it’s either crap or creative. A reject from The White Album, I suppose the boys said ‘John (Lennon) we’re giving you Revolution 9 you can’t have this, too, on the album.” According to The Beatles Anthology 3 CD release, of the official Beatles it’s just Lennon and George Harrison on this track along with Yoko Ono and Beatles road manager/personal assistant Mal Evans. Lennon is on vocals and piano, Harrison on guitar and Yoko and Evans on various sound effects.

16. Slade, Keep On Rocking (live) . . . Love the (perhaps, probably drunken?) intro to this one: “this is a, this is a rock and roll, it sounds good (I think that’s what he says it’s relatively unintelligible) heah’s one . . . ” And then they kick in and indeed rock. I’m not even really a Slade fan, a guilty pleasure I guess, I have a compilation just because, plus the live album, Slade Alive! from which this track comes, a CD that, in a purge, I tried to trade in for $$ but no used store wanted it which may tell you something. Anyway . . . that’s not meant as a slag on the UK glam/hard rock group because I’m glad I still own it; Alive! is a good, energetic album which opens with a cover of Hear Me Calling by one of my favorite bands, Ten Years After, and is further evidenced by this track. Slade Alive! came out in 1972, before Slade’s hits like 1973’s Cum On Feel The Noize, a song American band Quiet Riot 10 years later took to the top 10 in North America. Slade’s version was No. 1 in the UK but didn’t chart in North America.

A space rock show, occurred to me for whatever reason when I woke up in the middle of the night around 3 am Wednesday. Some songs started filling my head so I got up and scribbled them down. In the end here we are with lots of extended pieces like the near 20-minute but never boring live version of Space Truckin’ from Deep Purple’s Made In Japan, some bands that are categorized as space rock, like Hawkwind which earns two cuts, and other tunes with either spacey lyrics or song titles that fit the theme. My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. Flash And The Pan, Welcome To The Universe
2. The Guess Who, Truckin’ Off Across The Sky (from Live At The Paramount)
3. Deep Purple, Space Truckin’ (live, from Made In Japan)
4. Hawkwind, Sputnik Stan
5. Pink Floyd, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun (live, from Ummagumma)
6. Led Zeppelin, In The Light
7. King Crimson, Moonchild
8. Hawkwind, Space Is Deep
8. The Rolling Stones, 2000 Light Years From Home
9. Rush, Cyngnus X-1
10. Yes, Close To The Edge

My track-by-track tales:

1. Flash And The Pan, Welcome To The Universe . . . From the Aussie band’s second album, Lights In The Night. An interesting band, particularly due to the seeming incongruity of a new wave group like Flash And The Pan being comprised of people who produced albums by hard rock band AC/DC, particularly during the Bon Scott on lead vocals period. That would be Harry Vanda and George Young, both members of the 1960s Australian band The Easybeats, George being the older brother of AC/DC guitarists Angus and Malcolm Young. Just another example of how the arts know no boundaries.

2. The Guess Who, Truckin’ Off Across The Sky (live) . . . A long jam about trips into the universe of one’s nind, never released on any studio album, from the band’s 1972 album Live At The Paramount. Verbal pyrotechnics by lead singer Burton Cummings supported by the equally transportive instrumental excursions of guitarists Kurt Winter and Don McDougall, drummer Gary Peterson and bassist Jim Kale.

3. Deep Purple, Space Truckin’ (live) . . . Nearly 20 minutes of instrumental and vocal interplay from one of the classic live albums, Made In Japan. I was initially going to play the 4:31 studio cut from Machine Head but listened to them both and thought, let’s go long.

4. Hawkwind, Sputnik Stan . . . Hawkwind, known as a ‘space rock’ band, has so many tracks that could be applied to a themed show such as this. This hard-driving for the most part cut is from the 1995 album Alien 4.

5. Pink Floyd, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun (live) . . . I played a few tracks from the studio disc of Ummagumma in my ‘weird shit’ show of Saturday, November 16/24 and within my comments I mentioned the live portion of Ummagumma and that I might play the entire Ummagumma album at some point. Not yet, but as mentioned previously the live part of that studio-live album is killer stuff, and here’s another of Floyd’s versions of a song that initially appeared on the 1968 studio album A Saucerful Of Secrets.

6. Led Zeppelin, In The Light . . . Every great band/artist seems to have a great double (at the time, on vinyl) studio album. The Beatles’ White Album officially just titled The Beatles. Exile On Main St. by The Rolling Stones, Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, The Clash’s London Calling, many others. Led Zeppelin’s 1975 album Physical Graffiti easily fits the category and it’s the album from which I drew this track. So, we’re coming from Floyd’s setting controls for the heart of the sun to being in the light of the sun, or something like that, by titles, anyway. In The Light came to mind because someone had in conversation during the week mentioned Zep’s Down By The Seaside, one of my favorite of their songs. It’s from Physical Graffiti so it got me thinking of the album. As for Down By The Seaside, I’ve played it before and will again, perhaps as soon as Monday’s show.

7. King Crimson, Moonchild . . . King Crimson did many amazing records and songs, genre-bending and otherwise but if forced to choose, I will always go back to the 1969 debut album In The Court Of The Crimson King. It’s brilliant, this song one example.

8. Hawkwind, Space Is Deep . . . Endless, actually, to our knowledge; the universe is, so far, ever-expanding. This is from Hawkwind’s cleverly titled 1972 album Doremi Fasol Latido.

8. The Rolling Stones, 2000 Light Years From Home . . . Well-known track for Stones fans, the B-side to the She’s A Rainbow single from the controversial 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request where the Stones were accused of lamely copying The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album. I love both bands but the only thing I’d say the Stones may have copied is their variation, tongue in cheek as always, on the album cover. The music within is entirely different, evidenced by this and many other tracks. Satanic Majesties has its weak moments but The Beatles, with much obvious respect, never did anything like this or many of the terrific tunes on Satanic Majesties, like Citadel or The Lantern. Nor did the Stones do anything like many of the things on Pepper. So what? Different bands, sounds, approaches, you can like them both without endlessly, ridiculously, comparing. The Stones did this cosmic rocker to great effect, light show and otherwise, when they resurrected it for the 1989 Steel Wheels tour I saw in Toronto.

9. Rush, Cyngnus X-1 . . . I’ve probably played this too often when I play Rush but it fits the sci-fi/space rock theme of the show and it’s one of my favorite Rush tracks. It’s from 1977’s A Farewell To Kings, which I was attracted to by the hit single Closer To The Heart but upon buying it back then I was hooked on the band, album by album, although A Farewell To Kings remains my favorite Rush record.

10. Yes, Close To The Edge . . . So, via song titles at least, we’ve come from entering and being welcomed to the universe to flying around it via various means to now, perhaps, via this epic title track to Yes’s 1972 album, being close to the edge . . . maybe falling off it.

My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. Family, Good News Bad News (live)
2. Chicago, Movin’ In
3. Peter Gabriel, That Voice Again
4. Genesis, Me And Virgil
5. The Guess Who, Those Show Biz Shoes
6. Aerosmith, Hoodoo/Voodoo Medicine Man
7. The Rolling Stones, Keep Up Blues
8. Paul McCartney, Run Devil Run
9. George Harrison, Sue Me, Sue You Blues
10. Trapeze, Jury
11. The Doobie Brothers, I Cheat The Hangman
12. Billy Cobham, Stratus
13. Blackmore’s Night, Storm
14. Queen, Long Away
15. Foghat, Take It Or Leave It
16. Peter Green, Cryin’ Won’t Bring You Back
17. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Keep On Chooglin’ (live)

My track-by-track tales:

1. Family, Good News Bad News (live) . . . High energy progressive rock from the English band, a good example of the quiet-to-loud dynamic that can work so well, and Family could and often did flit from folk rock to near metal. Back and forth we go between light verses and all-out instrumental assault choruses bolstered by the electrifying vocals of Roger Chapman. Chapman’s singing style is said to be drawn from his attempts at emulating Little Richard and Ray Charles, who he particularly idolized, although with Chapman’s more whiskey-and-cigarettes raspy vibe.

Good News Bad News is a live track from Family’s half-live, half studio 1970 album Anyway. Family, formed in 1966, was never a hugely successful commercial act, at least not outside the UK where the band’s albums were usually in the top 30 on the charts, but they did rub shoulders and tour with more commercially successful contemporaries like Jethro Tull, Ten Years After and Emerson, Lake and Palmer and well-known, or relatively well-known names in popular music did pass through Family. I first heard of the band when my older brother brought home the lone studio album by supergroup Blind Faith, which was comprised of former Cream members Eric Clapton (guitar/vocals) and Ginger Baker (drums/percussion), Steve Winwood (lead vocals/keyboards/guitar) of Traffic fame and . . . Family’s Ric Grech, likely the least known of the quartet, on bass and violin. Multi-instrumentalist and singer John Wetton, whose resume included stints in King Crimson, Uriah Heep, Roxy Music and Asia, among others, was a Family member in the band’s early days as was guitarist/bassist Jim Cregan. Cregan was a regular member of Rod Stewart’s band from the 1977 album Footloose & Fancy Free through 1995 and earned co-writing credits on various songs including the hit singles Passion and Forever Young. Keyboardist/singer Tony Ashton, who collaborated with Deep Purple members on several outside projects including the excellent 1977 album Malice In Wonderland – not to be confused with the 1980 Nazareth album by the same name – by Paice Ashton Lord with Purple drummer Ian Paice and keyboardist Jon Lord, was also, early on, a branch of the Family tree.

2. Chicago, Movin’ In . . . All a matter of personal taste, of course, but early Chicago is the best Chicago, particularly for me the first three albums although there’s great progressive jazz-rock throughout most of the first nine studio albums released before the death of guitarist Terry Kath, who sings Movin’ In. It’s the opening track on the second Chicago album, released in January, 1970. The record is now commonly referred to as Chicago II although when it came out it was just “Chicago”, the band having shortened their name from The Chicago Transit Authority, also the title of their debut album, after a threatened lawsuit by the actual mass transit operator.

3. Peter Gabriel, That Voice Again . . . Propulsive percussion from ace session player Manu Katche on this, er, catchy tune from Gabriel’s 1986 blockbuster album So. The record featured hits like worldwide smash Sledgehammer, Big Time, In Your Eyes, Red Rain and Don’t Give Up (with Kate Bush). That Voice Again was issued as a promotional single before the album came out and made No. 14 on the US Billboard charts. The So album was drummer/percussionist Katche’s first collaboration with Gabriel, with whom he’s since worked to the present day while also maintaining a solo career as well as numerous albums with Sting starting around the same time as his association with Gabriel.

4. Genesis, Me And Virgil . . . One of five studio songs on the international edition of Three Sides Live, the original vinyl album released in 1982 as a document of the tour in support of the 1981 studio album Abacab. Two of the songs (Evidence Of Autumn and Open Door) were B-sides from the previous album, 1980’s Duke, while Me And Virgil, You Might Recall and Paperlate, originally pegged for Abacab, didn’t make the final cut and wound up on the EP 3 X 3, released in the UK, where Three Sides Live was an entirely live album.

Paperlate, featuring the Earth, Wind & Fire horn section, became a hit single. Me And Virgil is a poppy folk type song with some aggresssive progressive elements, but the writer, Phil Collins, doesn’t like it, according to Wikipedia calling it a ‘dog’ and suggesting it was a failed attempt by Genesis to do a song similar to The Band’s work. I like it, but it’s interesting, and natural in creative work, how artists can look askance at their own material. Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones, for instance, is on record as saying about Get Off Of My Cloud that he “never dug it as a record”, (?!) thinking it was poorly produced and a rushed attempt to follow up the previous single (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.

As mentioned, Three Sides Live was an entirely live album in the UK, reflecting the sometimes different markets, and marketing, of music. Because EPs never became as commercially viable elsewhere as in the UK, the record company, and the band, decided to put the aforementioned studio cuts from the 3 X 3 EP and the Duke sessions on one side of the international release of the live album. One For The Vine (from Wind And Wuthering), The Fountain Of Salmacis (Nursery Cryme) and the pairing of It from The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and Watcher Of The Skies from Foxtrot rounded out the UK live album. “Songs like One For The Vine had never been very popular in America and we felt it wasn’t right to put them on the US album,” keyboardist Tony Banks is quoted as saying in the 1995 book The Complete Guide To The Music Of Genesis. “We could also call the British LP Three Sides Live because there were three of us!” (in the band; guitarist/bassist Mike Rutherford rounding out what by then was a trio). Subsequent reissues of Three Sides Live feature the original UK all live track list, with the studio songs – aside from Me And Virgil, which Collins apparently vetoed – appearing on later archival Genesis box sets. I still own the original 1982 international release of Three Sides Live which I bought primarily because I liked Paperlate and to that point, unless you had the UK EP, it was hard to find Paperlate although it’s since appeared on various Genesis compilations.

5. The Guess Who, Those Show Biz Shoes . . . A fun jam from the 1973 album Artificial Paradise. Burton Cummings in full cry with his singing and spoken word vocals of the stream of consciousness lyrics, not to mention his keyboard playing, myriad tempo changes throughout the song, twin guitar attack from Kurt Winter and Don McDougall . . . satisfying stuff.

6. Aerosmith, Hoodoo/Voodoo Medicine Man . . . Aerosmith enjoyed a commercial rebirth with the 1987 album Permanent Vacation by transitioning to outside songwriters like Desmond Child and Jim Vallance to complement the band’s own writers. A good album, I like it, but arguably much of the raunch from 1970s classic albums like Rocks and Toys In The Attic had been smoothed over, maybe too much for aficionados of the ‘old’ Aerosmith. However, the next album, 1989’s Pump, turned the clock back a touch, particularly on tracks like the haunting Hoodoo/Voodoo Medicine Man.

7. The Rolling Stones, Keep Up Blues . . . The backing instrumental track for this bloozy cut was done by the band, including then-bassist Bill Wyman, during the Some Girls album sessions in 1978. Mick Jagger added new lyrics, vocals and a nice harmonica line for the double disc 2011 reissue of Some Girls that featured previously unreleased material from the original sessions.

8. Paul McCartney, Run Devil Run . . . Rip-roaring old time rock ‘n’ roll from McCartney. It’s the title cut to his 1999 release that features classics like All Shook Up, made famous by Elvis Presley, and Chuck Berry’s Brown Eyed Handsome Man, along with McCartney originals like Run Devil Run. “I saw this herbal medicine shop in Atlanta selling Run Devil Run products,” McCartney says in the album’s song-by-song liner notes. “I thought, that is a great rock ‘n’ roll title. So I did a story, Chuck Berry style.” The shop itself is the album cover. Run Devil Run features David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame on guitar and drummer Ian Paice of Deep Purple. Gilmour plays on all of the album’s 15 tracks, with Paice on board for 13 of the 15 songs.

9. George Harrison, Sue Me, Sue You Blues . . . Terrific tune, musically and lyrically, in which Harrison opines on the various lawsuits that swirled around The Beatles at the time of the band’s breakup, and for some time beyond. It’s from the 1973 album Living In The Material World. Harrison tackled legal issues again three albums later, on the 1976 album 33 1/3 with This Song, a satirical commentary on the copyright infringement suit against him over his 1970 worldwide hit single My Sweet Lord.

10. Trapeze, Jury . . . Like Family’s Good News Bad News which I opened the show with, another example, and I suppose it’s fairly common, of the fast and slow, light and heavy dynamic in this eight-minute piece from the 1970 album Medusa. It’s a solid record, arguably Trapeze’s best, produced by John Lodge of The Moody Blues and issued, along with three other Trapeze albums, on the Moodies’ Threshold label.

11. The Doobie Brothers, I Cheat The Hangman . . . A spooky, ethereal track written by founding and forever Doobie Brothers member Patrick Simmons, from the 1975 album Stampede. It was former Steely Dan ace guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter’s first as a fulltime member of The Doobie Brothers, although he had contributed, as a session player, to previous albums. I Cheat The Hangman features Maria Muldaur of Midnight At The Oasis fame on backing vocals and was inspired by the famous short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, written by American writer and Civil War veteran Ambrose Bierce.

12. Billy Cobham, Stratus . . . Jazz-rock fusion from drummer Cobham’s first solo album, Spectrum, released in 1973. The album featured Cobham’s former Mahavishnu Orchestra bandmate Jan Hammer on keyboards and synthesizer along with guitarist Tommy Bolin and resulted in Bolin eventually joining Deep Purple. Purple was in a pinch in 1975, with guitarist Ritchie Blackmore having departed to form Rainbow, when then-Purple singer David Coverdale convinced his bandmates that Bolin warranted an audition based on his playing on Spectrum. Bolin got the Purple job, resulting in the 1975 album Come Taste The Band. As for Stratus, it’s a remarkable 10-minute piece of ensemble playing by Cobham, Hammer, Bolin and bassist Lee Sklar, a session player of great renown within the music industry. Still active at age 77, Sklar has appeared on more than 2,000 albums in a wide variety of genres but most notably recording and/or touring with James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Carole King and Phil Collins as well as contributing to numerous film and TV soundtracks and theme songs. Web searches reveal his remarkable resume.

13. Blackmore’s Night, Storm . . . Having come from a hard rock background with Deep Purple and Rainbow, Ritchie Blackmore raised some eyebrows in 1997 when he formed the folk rock/medieval music band Blackmore’s Night together with his then girlfriend now wife Candice Night, who handles lead vocals. The band started off playing mostly acoustic material but, as on Storm from the third album, 2001’s Fires At Midnight, has increasingly incorporated more electric guitar. The material reminds me of some Jethro Tull – Tull’s Ian Anderson contributed flute to one track, Play Minstrel Play on the first Blackmore’s Night album Shadow Of The Moon – and Fairport Convention. It’s terrific stuff.

14. Queen, Long Away . . . Beautiful if melancholic song written and sung by guitarist Brian May, one of my favorites from the 1976 album A Day At The Races and one for which May has said he’d like to be remembered.

15. Foghat, Take It Or Leave It . . . Smooth, mid-tempo tune from the Fool For The City album, released in 1975 and known for the title track and the big hit single Slow Ride.

16. Peter Green, Cryin’ Won’t Bring You Back . . . Typically beautiful guitar playing and emotive singing on this bluesy ballad from the Fleetwood Mac founder’s 1980 album Little Dreamer. The song, along with many during this period of Peter Green’s career when he was re-emerging professionally while dealing with mental health issues and drug abuse, was written by his older brother Mike, a guitarist and singer in his own right who gave a pre-teen Peter his first lessons on guitar. It’s standard fare lyrically, lamenting lost love but also an appropriate title, given Peter Green left us in 2020. But we’ll always have the amazing music he left behind – solo, with Fleetwood Mac and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

17. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Keep On Chooglin’ (live) . . . As we choogle on out of here at show’s end, riding the southern fried groove of an extended track that first appeared in studio form on the 1969 album Bayou Country. This version, recorded in Oakland, California in January of 1970, appeared on The Concert live album, released in 1980, long after CCR packed up. The Concert was originally mistakenly released under the title The Royal Albert Hall Concert, until it was discovered the tapes came from the Oakland show, not a gig at the London, England venue. The actual Royal Albert Hall show was released in 2022 as a companion album to the documentary film, and an excellent one it is, Travelin’ Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall. The film is on Netflix and many of the song performances are on YouTube.