So Old It's New

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, Dec. 6, 2021 – on air 8-10 pm ET

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  1. Joe Jackson, Alchemy . . . From J.J.’s most recent album, 2019’s Fool. He opened (and closed, with a short reprise) his shows supporting the album with this track, a perhaps now typical late career jazzy excursion from one of my favorite artists. Jackson just announced another tour, starting in March, 2022.
  1. Deep Purple, Caught In The Act (Going Down/Green Onions/Hot ‘Lanta/Dazed and Confused/Gimme Some Lovin’) . . . From the new Turning To Crime covers album, short excerpts from each song to form a seven-minute medley during which the band, as on the entire album, is clearly having lots of fun. Purple has played Green Onions on various tours since Steve Morse joined on guitar, replacing Ritchie Blackmore, in the mid-1990s so no surprise it’s included in the medley. As I mentioned last week about covers albums, I prefer new original material by bands I like, like Purple, but – as with the Stones’ Blue and Lonesome covers album – it’s clear the boys had great fun putting it together and there are some interesting takes on the various tunes, in Purple’s case, like Bob Dylan’s Watching The River Flow, Love’s 7 and 7 Is and Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac’s Oh Well. Also interesting, given the pandemic, IS how they recorded it as detailed in the album liner notes – mostly from each band members’ home studios aside from singer Ian Gillan who went into an an outside studio.
  1. Ohio Players, Jive Turkey . . . I just wanted to look at sexy Ohio Players album covers, in this case Skin Tight. No, seriously, I love funk, and the Players, and this came up during a station computer search of stuff I’d previously downloaded, hadn’t played the Players in a while, so here we are.
  1. Gov’t Mule, She Said She Said . . . I love it when the Mule does cover tunes in fact I pulled this off a CD I burned for myself long ago that features the Allmans offshoot doing covers of various classic rock tunes over the years. This one, from The Beatles of course, begins a mini-set of covers from the Revolver album, concluding with The Beatles themselves.

     

  2. Phil Collins, Tomorrow Never Knows . . . From Collins’ debut album, Face Value, in 1981 after which he started concurrent careers while becoming arguably as big, or bigger, solo as was Genesis.
  1. The Beatles, I’m Only Sleeping . . . Always liked this one, from Revolver, to conclude our little mini-set of Beatles’ tunes. Sgt. Pepper gets most of the hype but Revolver and Rubber Soul, when the boys – perhaps taking Dylan’s little dig at Lennon that ‘your songs don’t say anything’ seriously – really went to another level creatively, are easily as good.
  1. John Lennon, Bring On The Lucie (Freda People) . . . “All right boys, this is it, over the hill.” Lennon’s first line is worth the price of the album. Good song, too, from the Mind Games album, 1973.
  1. Groundhogs, Strange Town . . . I love the ascending, hypnotic riff to this tune by these Brit blues-rock boys, from 1970’sThank Christ For The Bomb album.
  1. BTO, Madison Avenue . . . An almost progressive tune, for this band at least, from the first post Randy Bachman album, Street Action, 1978. I remember having it on vinyl, almost out of curiousity at the time, and some years ago got it as a two-fer paired with the 1979 followup Rock ‘n’ Roll Nights. And you pretty much knew Randy had left simply by the album cover, of a woman, on the street, perhaps a hooker, which I doubt the strait-laced Bachman would ever have allowed. The band replaced Bachman with former April Wine member Jim Clench, who took over on bass while bassist C.F. (Fred) Turner moved to rhythm guitar alongside lead guitarist Blair Thornton and drummer Rob Bachman. And Turner handled most of the lead vocals, which suited me because I always liked the BTO songs he sung best and outside of, off top of my head, Takin’ Care of Business and You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet, maybe Looking Out For No. 1, Randy Bachman’s vocals (Rock Is My Life, This Is My Song, anyone, yecch) are pretty much embarrassing in my view.
  1. Robin Trower, A Tale Untold . . . Trower was amazing during his heyday (he’s still going) in the 1970s, especially with the late great James Dewar on bass/lead vocals. This typical tour de force is from the For Earth Below album, which featured the typically cool Trower album covers of the period.
  1. Social Distortion, I Was Wrong . . . My favorite Social Distortion tune and the one that got me into the band, late, 1996 via the White Light, White Heat, White Trash album (cool cover) which by that point was their fifth studio platter but hell, when before this more commercial single was released did anyone ever hear Social Distortion on mainstream radio? Or ever again? They also did a nice cover of Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire, too, but I decided to go with this song, this time. Ring Of Fire maybe another week.
  1. Ozzy Osbourne, Diary Of A Madman . . . Almost prog metal, this title cut from Ozzy’s 1981 album. Iron Maiden, at the time just one album into their career, was probably listening, learning and being influenced.
  1. KK’s Priest, Hellfire Thunderbolt . .. Founding member/guitarist K.K. Downing left Judas Priest under acrimonious circumstances in 2011. In the meantime, he wrote a book about the band, and this kick butt metallic rocker is from his first post-Priest album, out just recently this year, featuring former Priest singer Ripper Owens on lead vocals. Owens, of course, famously was found by Priest in a Preist covers band when the group was searching for a replacement for Rob Halford, who left Priest for a few years to go solo during the mid-1990s. Owens did two studio albums with Priest, which I liked, before returning to relative obscurity (until now) once Halford returned for a reunion tour in 2004 (which I saw, good show) and subsequent studio work.
  1. Judas Priest, Blood Red Skies . . . And here’s Priest before all of the drama, a kinetic extended piece from the Ram It Down album, 1988.
  1. Marianne Faithfull, What’s The Hurry . . . Was listening to Faithfull’s terrific Broken English album, for first time in a long time in its entirety, in the gym the other day, had somewhat forgotten this propulsive track from that record.
  1. The Rolling Stones, Salt Of The Earth . . . Keith Richards croaks out the opening line in one of his early forays into singing on Stones’ tunes, then in comes Mick Jagger on this closer to 1968’s Beggars Banquet which marked the beginning of a whole new phase of brilliance from the band.
  1. The Tragically Hip, Born In The Water . . . I wanted to play a Hip song today. Road Apples album is always a good source.
  1. Headstones, Where Does It Go? . . . See the Hip reference above. Love these guys, Headstones, maybe more than I like the Hip, actually. Darker, dirtier, harder, rougher. . . maybe, to employ a cliché, akin to a Beatles-Stones thing although there, too, I love both bands.
  1. Tom Waits, Jockey Full Of Bourbon . . . I don’t even drink bourbon. Nor does Waits, anymore, apparently, having kicked booze. But drinking songs are great, aren’t they?
  1. Rare Earth, Long Time Leavin’ . . . Had my parents not sent we kids off to day camp, a ‘thing’ back in the early 1970s, perhaps still is, who knows how or if I would have gotten into Rare Earth. But, I did, because one of the camp counselors kept playing the shit out of Rare Earth’s live album. So, here we are. Speaking of day camp, mentioning it brought to mind an old Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown and Linus are celebrating the last day of school only to have Lucy immediately herd them onto a bus headed for summer camp, to which Linus asks, “whatever happened to going home?”
  1. U2, Last Night On Earth . . . OK, so I do a ‘deep cuts’ show with allowances (my rules) to play the occasional single, which this is, one of six, (SIX) U2 released out of 12 tracks on their 1997 album Pop.
  1. The Doors, When The Music’s Over . . . And off we go, for another week, via this epic Doors’ track from their second album, Strange Days. Akin, somewhat, to The End from the first studio album by the band. Great tunes, both.
Redeye Podcast, Shows

Redeye Podcast

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So Old It's New

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, Nov. 29, 2021 – on air 8-10 pm ET

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  1. Ian Hunter, Noises . . . Let’s make some noise, starting with this experimental-type track from Hunter’s 1981 new wavish-album, Short Back ‘n’ Sides. And it presages, later in the set, some late 1970s-early 1980s my college days new wave, including one by The Clash, whose Mick Jones co-produced the Hunter album while Clash drummer Topper Headon played on a few tracks.
  1. Led Zeppelin, Night Flight . . . Always have liked the intro to this one from Physical Graffiti. The whole song, too, from a great album. Every major band seems to have a great what were then double vinyl studio albums. Zep has this one, Beatles’ White Album, Stones’ Exile On Main St., The Clash London Calling, just to name a few.
  1. The Rolling Stones, Let It Loose . . . Speaking of Exile…Two weeks ago I played the great Torn and Frayed from the album, settling on it from among a group of personal choices that week that included Let It Loose and Loving Cup. So you can probably expect Loving Cup next week, or soon.
  1. Molly Hatchet, Bounty Hunter . . . One of those tunes, and a great up tempo track it is, that I had previously loaded and came up in our station computer when I was looking for the Ian Hunter song, Noises, that started tonight’s show.
  1. Deep Purple, Fools . . . Played this one long long time ago, from the Fireball album,which prompted a show follower to comment that I play a fair bit of Deep Purple. True. I love Deep Purple, every version of the band. Which reminds me, I have to pick up their new covers album, just out. It’s called Turning To Crime and features a diverse set of tracks including Love’s 7 and 7 is, Little Feat’s Dixie Chicken, Bob Dylan’s Watching The River Flow and Fleetwood Mac’s Oh Well, among others. When I heard they were doing a new album, then heard it was covers, I was a bit disappointed as I prefer original material but I’ve heard it online and it’s good, but I still like getting physical copies of albums by bands I like.
  1. Warren Zevon, Genius . . . I first heard this typically great Zevon track on a latter-day compilation titled Genius: The Best of Warren Zevon, which prompted me to fill in some blanks I had in his catalog and get the song’s parent album, My Ride’s Here. Both the compilation and the studio album were released in 2002. And Zevon came to mind via yet another recent fun Twitter discussion with fellow music aficionados.

     

  2. Bruce Cockburn, All’s Quiet On The Inner City Front . . . And so, master singer-songwriter Zevon propels us into a mini-set by notable Canadian singer-songwriters, starting with this one from Cockburn’s 1981 Inner City Front album.
  1. Gordon Lightfoot, Hangdog Hotel Room . . . I played Songs The Minstrel Sang in a recent show, which prompted me to dig back into Lightfoot’s 1978 Endless Wire album, from which this track also comes. I like the guitar work but at the risk of erring, am loath to credit any one of the three session players, plus Lightfoot, who play the instrument on the album.
  1. Murray McLauchlan, Harder To Get Along . . . Speaking of some nice guitar work, here’s a fine one with a nice sort of descending rhythm motif, from McLauchlan’s 1976 On The Boulevard album. Typically good lyrics, too.
  1. The Guess Who, Got To Find Another Way . . . A nice ballad from the American Woman sessions that didn’t originally make the cut but was later included in various remastered re-releases of the album.
  1. Steve Winwood, Spanish Dancer . . . Difficult to pick a favorite tune from Winwood’s smash 1979 album Arc Of A Diver, it’s so good front to back but this song has always been right up there for me.
  1. Roxy Music, Angel Eyes . . . There are at least three versions of this tune. The one I’m playing, and prefer, is the more rock-oriented album cut from 1979’s Manifesto. A re-recorded, shorter and more disco-type version was later released as a single along with an extended near seven-minute dance remix.

     

  2. Elvis Costello, The Bridge I Burned . . . I pretty much gave up on Costello after his early, angry young man phase though I recognize he’s a great artist. Yet, unlike say, where I’ve followed his contemporary Joe Jackson’s various muses over the years, I really didn’t ride with Elvis much beyond about 1986. Then I recently found the perfect thing for me, a compilation, Extreme Honey, I had not to that point even heard of but found cheap in a used CD store. It came out in 1997 so is obviously already way out of date but for me it’s great because it collects tracks from albums like Spike and Mighty Like A Rose and beyond that, that I tried but gave up on. Yet by distilling it all down, it’s more palatable, for me, anyway. This song wasn’t on any of those albums, though. Costello wrote it, new, for the compilation after initially recording Prince’s song Pop Life only to have Prince deny Costello the right to release it. So, Elvis wrote and performed The Bridge I Burned in an arrangement he had envisioned for the Prince tune.
  1. Linda Ronstadt, Girls Talk . . . Speaking of Costello, Dave Edmunds made great hay with this Elvis-penned tune on his 1979 album Repeat When Necessary. Ronstadt did it a year later on her new-wavish Mad Love album. And so it launches us into a little new-wave themed set. Costello himself released Girls Talk as a B-side to his drastically rearranged 1980 single I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down, originally popularized by Sam and Dave in a soul ballad version, 1967. And all of this research got me listening to a bunch of Sam and Dave tunes.
  1. Martha and The Muffins/M + M, Several Styles Of Blonde Girls Dancing . . . From 1983’s Danseparc album, the start of a brief period when, due to a spat between then-current and former band members, the Muffins briefly went by M + M, but the new moniker never really took hold and both names, as a compromise, appeared on the album cover, after which the band soon reverted to going by Marth and The Muffins.

     

  2. Ian Dury, Wake Up And Make Love With Me . . . I got into Dury, this tune and the album New Boots and Panties!! a year after its September 1977 release. One of those horizon-expanding college things where a classmate was driving us both to a party and threw a cassette of the album into the player. And so began my foray into Dury and all kinds of similar stuff that was breaking big at the time.
  1. Teenage Head, Somethin’ Else . . . Kick butt, and what else is Teenage Head but kick butt, version of the Eddie Cochran tune, from 1980’s Frantic City album, and a great album it is.
  1. Graham Parker and The Rumour, Howlin’ Wind . . . Title cut from Parker’s 1976 debut album, produced by Nick Lowe at the beginning of that period that would soon lead to Parker, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson and Lowe himself breaking big as leaders of a new wave of artists.
  1. Talking Heads, Cities . . . Propulsive track from Fear Of Music, one of those albums one buys for a hit single (Life During Wartime) and then wind up liking the whole thing. Cities was actually the third single released from the album (the second was I Zimbra) but I don’t remember ever hearing Cities on radio, my memory perhaps dulled by time.
  1. Flash and The Pan, War Games . . . I’ve always played Flash and The Pan’s first two albums, the self-titled debut and Lights In The Night the most. They’re arguably the group’s most popular to this day but the more I’ve listened to Headlines, 1982’s third release, over the years the more I think it’s as good. And this short epic, if short can be construed as epic, is among many of Headlines’ fine tunes.
  1. The Clash, Police On My Back . . . From the sprawling (3 vinyl records upon release) 1980 album Sandinista! Written by Eddy Grant (well known for his 1983 smash hit Electric Avenue), it was originally done by his band The Equals, during the 1960s. Yet another example of what the Stones’ Keith Richards has said about the best thing musicians can do, pass it on. So you’re a college student immersed in The Clash at the time and then you dig into some of their source material for a cover tune and discover The Equals. And while you might not become a huge fan, you’re at least aware of them and might become one.
  1. The Police, Shadows In The Rain . . . I’ve always liked this hypnotic track from 1980’s Zenyatta Mondatta. Sting sped and jazzed it up in a rearranged version on his 1985 debut solo album, The Dream Of The Blue Turtles, which I had, and while his solo version is good, I much prefer the Police take on the tune.
  1. Jethro Tull, Baker St. Muse . . . And back we go, and run out the show, with more let’s say traditional fare, for me in terms of bands like Tull, the Stones etc. who I grew up on and will forever listen to. This is a true epic, 16 minutes and change, from the Minstrel In The Gallery album. But, like say The Allman Brothers Band albeit in a different context and genre, Tull can do epic tracks like this yet in such a way that it’s never boring and doesn’t seem like it’s 16 minutes long. A story song, in Ian Anderson’s words “a series of little observations on the pavements of Baker Street (London, where he was living at the time) and its surrounding area – the people you meet, the things you see.”
rabble radio, Shows

rabble radio

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RABBLE RADIO | rabble.ca (red text, a white podcast icon, a white audio waveform)rabble radio is a weekly podcast and radio program that tunes in on the issues and actions that matter to you.

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So Old It's New

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, Nov. 22, 2021 – on air 8-10 pm ET

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  1. Black Sabbath, Turn Up The Night . . . Kick butt Ronnie James Dio era Black Sabbath to start us off, from the Mob Rules album, 1981. I remember that album especially from working on a construction crew winter of 1981-82 in northern Alberta, minus-50 (really, OK was just one day it got that low but was usually at best minus-30; had to go in to the lunch trailer for regular breaks to avoid frostbite). Anyway, one of my colleagues, another Ontario transplant then, raved about the album at a time I wasn’t much into Sabbath, any version of the band. That soon changed.
  1. The Rolling Stones, Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing In The Shadow? . . . Long ago now hit single, 1966, and I don’t play singles much but hey the show is called So Old It’s New and this is so old it’s new and when’s the last time you heard it on the radio or, for that matter, the last time the Stones played it live (Mick Jagger did on a solo tour years ago)? Quite possibly if my memory serves, first Rolling Stones track I ever really remember, via the Ed Sullivan Show and my older sister’s Flowers compilation. “Some good dances’ I remember her labeling her copy. In later years, she would presage Billy Idol’s Dancing With Myself by dancing to Zep’s Misty Mountain Hop and other Zep IV tracks in my older brother’s basement stereo room but that’s a whole other time and place. Anyway, after initially growing up on The Beatles, this was akin to metal, which hadn’t even been ‘invented’ yet, at the time, for me anyway and upon hearing it, I wanted to hear more from the Stones.
  1. Ted Nugent, Stranglehold . . . One of those tunes I got into via working in a bar during college when we had a DJ to play tunes between band sets. Often better than the bar bands themselves. The often-stoned, laid-back DJ we had, perhaps ironically seemed to have this rotating bunch of hard rock albums he drew from. Nugent’s Double Live Gonzo was one of them, along with Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell, Judas Priest’s British Steel and AC/DC’s Back In Black and Highway To Hell, among others. This, though, is the studio version of Stranglehold. Takes me back to those fun days and times of misspent youth.
  1. AC/DC, War Machine . . . AC/DC has a reputation as being a hard rock band, which they are, and metal, which to me they are not. In fact to me they’ve always been essentially a harder, heavier version of The Rolling Stones, same basic lineup – singer, two guitarists, bass and drummer and the Stones are big fans, especially Keith Richards, and have toured with them. Anyway, what to me separates AC/DC from your so-called average hard rock band is their groove, funk, even. As Richards has so wisely said, the ‘roll’ to go with the rock. Sounds crazy maybe I know but stay with me; to the uninitiated and I can see it, all AC/DC songs sound the same but…they’re not. Many of them have a sort of funk edgy groove, like this one from a recent effort, 2008’s excellent Black Ice album.
  1. Judas Priest, Victim Of Changes . . . Who can even describe this one other than to listen to it and think of it in one’s own way. The initial riff, Rob Halford’s voice in various forms including his typical banshee wail, the changing tempos of the song itself; just an epic composition and performance.
  1. Moby Grape, Changes . . . Deliberate song choice to change the pace of the show here, from the hard rock/metal first five tracks to a perhaps more traditional, for me, bluesy rock and so on approach for the rest of the set. Up tempo tune from a San Francisco band that never quite achieved the widespread admiration or commercial success of their contemporaries like the Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane, but were arguably as good.
  1. Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, Lost In The Ozone . . . Digging through my disorganized CDs that I keep lazily not organizing and up comes the Commander’s greatest hits album, from which I pulled this manic country rock music.
  1. Bonnie Raitt, Green Lights . . . Big oversight not playing Bonnie in long long time. Now rectified with this one from her earlier days. Saw her late 1980s, Toronto, during her hits commercial period, great show. Blues/R & B greats Ruth and Charles Brown guested, played a couple songs each, and were terrific. Wonderful concert.
  1. John Mayall, Ain’t No Brakeman . . . Later period Mayall, just nearly 30 years ago now, ha, from his 1995 Spinning Coin album. I saw him first in late 1980s in Toronto with former Stone and Bluesbreaker Mick Taylor opening, then joining Mayall’s band for a few songs, and then Mayall at a recent Kitchener Blues Festival, both great shows.
  1. Atomic Rooster, Broken Wings . . . And here’s progressive/hard rock band Rooster with their take on a favorite Mayall track of mine I’ve played before on the show. Mayall’s version, on his 1967 almost entirely solo The Blues Alone album, was spare, beautiful and so is the Rooster’s beautiful but they add their progressive and hard rock touches for the type of cover I always like, a re-interpretation that honors the original.
  1. Vanilla Fudge, Season Of The Witch . . . Here’s the second in a three-song little prog set, Vanilla Fudge’s spooky extended rendition of the Donovan song. The Fudge was so good at covers, including Beatles tracks like Ticket To Ride and Eleanor Rigby.
  1. FM, One O’Clock Tomorrow . . . From Black Noise, apparently inspired by an interview about space travel with Timothy Leary on The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder, which during its 1970s heyday came on at 1 am. I default to raunch and roll but gradually over the years came to prog, and in many ways the FM album may have stimulated that, er, progression in my listening habits.
  1. Lee Harvey Osmond, Lucifer’s Blues . . . Coincidental that today, Nov. 22, is the anniversary of the JFK assassination in me playing a Lee Harvey Osmond tune, because I’ve been thinking of and trying to get one in over the last few weeks since as show followers know I am a huge fan of everything Tom Wilson is involved in. Just a brilliant artist, Canadian or otherwise and of course he emerged with Junkhouse before going solo and with Blackie and The Rodeo Kings and Lee Harvey Osmond. Great bluesy track.
  1. The Byrds, He Was A Friend Of Mine . . . Now this one I did intend to play today, in memory of JFK. It’s an old folk tune, some lyrics rewritten by Jim aka Roger McGuinn in the wake of the assassination.
  1. Melissa Etheridge, Like The Way I Do . . . The beauty of this show, increasingly I find as time passes and it’s wonderful, is the feedback received, via in-person conversations and on social media which often triggers my brain to new tunes or artists I may have neglected or forgotten. Like Etheridge, whose music I came to, like many, via her first hit single, Bring Me Some Water in the 1980s. This tune, Like The Way I Do, was also a hit, but when’s last time you heard it, so it fits my ‘so old it’s new’ motif, to me anyway. I decided to play it,or at least something by Etheridge, after a friend of mine reported on his latest flea market cheapie CD run wherein he wound up getting some Melissa albums. I’ve long had her first two, and an excellent compilation which features Tom Petty’s Refugee and Another Piece of My Heart made famous by Janis Joplin, which are now back in my up front memory banks for future possible plays.
  1. Guns N’ Roses, 14 Years . . . I played some Izzy Stradlin solo stuff a while back. Here he is on lead vocals with backing by Axl Rose on a track I like from the Gunners’ Use Your Illusion II album, which came out on the same day as Illusion I in 1991. Remember that brief trend, which Bruce Springsteen followed a year later with his Lucky Town and Human Touch albums? I remember people lining up at record/CD stores to buy the Guns N’ Roses albums. Remember those days, we of a certain vintage? People lining up for albums, concert tickets, etc. Kind of a cool thing, actually, in some ways at least, or maybe it’s memory making things seem better or cooler. I remember getting tickets for the first Rolling Stones show I ever saw, 1978 in Buffalo. I lived in Oakville, Ontario at the time but had to go to the next city over, Burlington, to a mall with a ticket outlet, line up . . . People camped overnight, some came up with some ‘list’ they figured would assure them a place in line (it didn’t). I always remember a police officer at the door as people started getting rowdy, assuring them they were ‘in’ to get tickets. “Calm down! You’ll get tickets!” Then I recall a guy way up in the line, getting his and waving them triumphantly to the still-waiting crowd. You don’t get that sort of experience these days, such as it was, ordering online. Anyway, I did manage to get tickets to a great show.
  1. Canned Heat, Get Off My Back . . . Vocals by Alan Wilson on this, from the final incarnation of the original band. Love the fading in and out of the guitar breaks, just a cool bluesy rock song that goes through many tempo changes in five minutes yet remains a coherent whole.
  1. Steely Dan, Haitian Divorce . . . inspired by yet another Twitter conversation about great bands.
  1. Peter Green, Just For You . . . From the late great original Fleetwood Mac leader’s In The Skies album, beautiful blues rock.
  1. Little Feat, Dixie Chicken (live) . . . Twice the length of the studio version and featuring the Tower of Power horns, this great version features a terrific piano solo by Bill Payne, then horns, then a guitar duel between Lowell George and Paul Barrere to close things out. From one of the great live albums, Waiting For Columbus.
  1. George Harrison, Simply Shady . . . I was digging through my Harrison stuff and realized I had not mined the Dark Horse album in ages, if at all, for listening pleasure or the show itself. I remember a period in my life when I was major into Harrison’s solo work, as it came out, and I still always am but hadn’t listened to this album in a while. I think this very confessional tune as he examined himself at that particular time in his life, 1974, is arguably the best on a good album journalism critics found wanting, yet it’s quite good in my estimation. He took criticism over his perhaps ragged vocals on the album and particularly this track but apparently he had been suffering from laryngitis and in any event, I think the vocals actually add feeling to the song.
  1. The Tragically Hip, Fiddler’s Green . . . Beautiful track from one of the Hip’s best albums, Road Apples. It wasn’t a hit, not a single. Yet so revered among Hip fans that it made it onto the Yer Favourites compilation, partly selected by fan vote, and justifiably so.
  1. Kansas, Lonely Street . . . I got talking about Kansas on Twitter with some music acquaintances the other day and their Song For America album and its title cut came up. And it’s great, Song For America, and I like Kansas’s prog music, and they’re a prog band but more widely known in the mainstream for what really are somewhat uncharacteristic hits like Carry On Wayward Son and Dust In The Wind. At any rate, they can obviously do it all, which is why I wound up choosing this perhaps atypical bluesy rocking cut from that same Song For America album.
  1. J.J. Cale, Carry On . . . And we carry on to next week via J.J.’s typically brilliant shuffle. I have all his stuff and the guy to me was amazing; how he essentially mined the same groove song after song, album after album, yet never sounded repetitive.
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The Gems Of Life Show

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81 82 83 84, Shows

81 82 83 84 Episode 012: There’s Always the Sun

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How many times have you been told
If you don’t ask, you don’t get?
How many lads have taken your money?
Your Mother said you shouldn’t bet
Who has the fun? Is it always a man with a gun?
Someone must have told you, if you work too hard, you can sweat?

There’s always the sun
There’s always the sun
Always, always, always the sun

 

Pretty sunset timelapse from Aruba a few years back. Only 82 seconds. Worth a watch!

 

PSA - Public Service Announcements

A Home for the Holidays – A Facebook Auction Fundraiser for the Roblero-Morales family

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Help find a home for the Roblero-Morales family this holiday season!

A Home for the Holidays – Auction

Home For The Holidays | Facebook Aution 15 November 2021 to 1 December 2021 | A fundraiser for the Roblero-Morales family to be able to afford rent in Waterloo due to the deportation of their husband/father, Daniel (postcard of a house above a picture of the family)
Facebook Auction from 15 November to 1 December 2021

Sandra Morales and her six children have been living with her brother-in-law’s family in Waterloo for over two years now, after her husband and the family’s main provider Daniel Roblero was deported by Canada to Guatemala. Sandra has since been trying to rebuild their life in Kitchener-Waterloo, ON, working full-time and caring for their children alone. After months of being threatened with deportation, Sandra and her kids recently received permanent status, but they are still waiting for the papers and it could be a long time before they are reunited with Daniel.

In the meantime, they are ready to move into a space of their own. The housing crisis has made finding a home extremely difficult, especially for families in their situation, so we hope this fundraiser can help alleviate some of the financial burden and lighten the load on Sandra.

All funds raised from this auction will go directly to the Roblero-Morales family, who will put the money towards rent over the next year.

Items to donate to the auction could include homemade crafts, art, services or skills, baking, gift cards, and so much more! Reach out if you have any questions about your item.

This auction is organized by KW community members who have known Sandra and her family for the last few years and are supporting their search for housing.

Learn more about their story in these news articles

On Radio Waterloo:

23 February 2020: Families Belong Together: A community Fundraiser

17 February 2020: Vegetarian Potluck Dinner in Support of the Roblero-Morales Family

November 2019: AW@L Radio – 2019-12-27 – Stacey Gomez – Supporting the Roblero Morales family

Other articles:

November 2019: Guatemalan family faces tough choice as deportation looms in the new year (CTV News)

December 2019: Community members deliver holiday card to Waterloo MP calling for permanent status for Roblero Morales family (Grand River Media Collective)

April 2020: Kitchener family facing deportation (The Record)

So Old It's New

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, Nov. 15, 2021 – on air 8-10 pm ET

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  1. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Fanfare For The Common Man (single edit) . . . So much of my life has revolved around my love for The Rolling Stones. So while I likely knew Aaron Copeland’s 1942 composition by osmosis, I first cottoned to it via its use as the intro music on the Stones’ 1975-76 Tour of the Americas/Europe, and the Love You Live album commemorating the tour. They were still using it when I saw them for the first time, in 1978 in Buffalo, N.Y. ELP did a 10-minute version on their 1977 Works Vol. 1 album.
  1. Hawkwind, Sonic Attack . . . Crazy nutty fun spoken word stuff from the boys, reflecting my nutty mood as I put together tonight’s show, at least the early tracks. “Do not panic!” etc.
  1. Frank Zappa, The Central Scrutinizer . . . Here comes the narrator of Zappa’s epic 1979 concept album, Joe’s Garage.
  1. Frank Zappa, Joe’s Garage . . . His mama was screamin’ “Turn it down! No. We won’t. This song still never fails to crack me up.
  1. Saga, The Security Of Illusion . . . Nice progressive rock type ballad from the Canadian band, from my hometown of Oakville, Ont. Arguably more popular in Europe than North America, they were also huge in . . . Puerto Rico.
  1. King Crimson, 21st Century Schizoid Man . . . From the brilliant 1969 debut album, In The Court Of The Crimson King and something of an anomaly on the record, easily its hardest-rocking cut.
  1. Queen, Brighton Rock . . . Queen kicking butt in 1974 on the Sheer Heart Attack album. The sort of back-and-forth guitar riff, at least in the early part of the song, makes me think that’s how it feel be to be careening along in a bobsled run at the Olympics.
  1. Alan Parsons Project, (The System Of) Dr. Tarr And Professor Fether . . . Cool track from Tales Of Mystery And Imagination, the Edgar Allan Poe-themed debut album by the Project, in 1976. The personnel on this particular project ran the gamut from Arthur Brown of The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown fame to movie maven Orson Welles, doing narration on the 1987 remix of the record.
  1. Electric Light Orchestra, Dreaming Of 4000 . . . I feel like I’ve played this too recently, although I couldn’t find exactly when in my searches. Whatever, I like the killer riff on the song, from the 1973 album On The Third Day.
  1. Genesis, Another Record . . . So we go from a lot of progressive rock-oriented stuff to a song by a prog band that by the time of this release, on 1981’s Abacab album, had almost abandoned the genre. I like the Abacab album and all phases of Genesis, one of those bands I traveled with, so to speak, and they never completely lost me . . . aside from Illegal Alien or the title cut from Invisible Touch which I can see are nicely constructed songs but, yechh.
  1. Todd Rundgren, Hello It’s Me . . . Not super into Rundgren, although I do like his hits, like this one. So, even though it’s a deep cuts show, how often do you hear Rundgren on the radio, especially nowadays?
  1. Robert Palmer, Can We Still Be Friends? . . . And here’s Robert Palmer doing a Rundgren tune, a by-the-book version I’m more familiar with but only because I heard the Palmer version first, via his Secrets album.
  1. Gordon Lightfoot, Songs The Minstrel Sang . . . One of those tracks I threw into our station system some time back and forgot all about until I was searching something else for tonight’s show and saw it. Nice tune and wah wah guitar on this one from the Canadian icon.
  1. The Plastic Ono Band, Yer Blues (live, from Live Peace In Toronto 1969) . . . I thought of being silly and playing some shrieks from Yoko Ono ‘singing’ from her bag on stage, from this concert album but then thought, why waste good minutes in a two-hour show? Nice work on the John Lennon-penned Beatles cut from Lennon, Eric Clapton, bassist Klaus Voormann and drummer Alan White. As you can see in the video, taken from the concert film, Yoko is holding a lyric sheet while she wails along with John. Why she needed it, who knows; I guess to time her shriek spots. I love how she’s credited on the album under personnel: ‘wind, presence, backing (notice it doesn’t say vocals), art.” I don’t mind Yoko, really.
  1. Pete Townshend, Cat’s In The Cupboard . . . Another one I feel like I may have played too recently, or was that I Am An Animal, from Townshend’s terrific Empty Glass album, 1980. No matter. Imagine you were in The Who at the time, coming off the great 1978 Who Are You album, Keith Moon is gone and Pete’s going solo with this, instead of using at least some of the great Empty Glass songs for a Who album instead of what was left for the decent, but weaker, Face Dances Who album that came out in 1981. No wonder they broke up shortly after, for a while at least.
  1. The Rolling Stones, Torn And Frayed . . . One of my favorite cuts from Exile On Main St., just a great groove. Most bands would kill to have something like this as a single.
  1. Ry Cooder, Down In Hollywood . . . Indeed a ‘boppy’ tune from Cooder’s 1979 album Bop Till You Drop album which, aside from this song, was a covers album of early R & B and rock and roll classics. Bop Till You Drop is also significant in that it was, apparently, the first all-digitally recorded major label album in popular music.
  1. Flash And The Pan, California . . . This came up due to the searching for the Cooder track, so stuff to do with California came up in the system. A good thing, because I can never get enough Flash And The Pan.
  1. Buddy Holly, Learning The Game . . . I played Blind Faith’s version of Holly’s Well All Right last week, prompting a discussion with a friend about early rock and rollers and how great they were and in some cases still are. So I thought I’d go with a Holly tune, which in this instance I pulled off a compilation of rock and roll tracks that inspired the Stones. Keith Richards did this one live in Texas (naturally, since Holly was born there) in 2005 during his usual two-song set within a Stones’ concert in Austin.
  1. Jerry Lee Lewis, Me and Bobby McGee . . . Very cool arrangement, by The Killer, of the Kris Kristofferson classic made immortal by Janis Joplin. Lewis’s version came out in 1971 and to me is how covers ought to be done – reinterpret them as to make them almost an entirely new song. Good examples of that are Hendrix’s take on Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower and Devo’s version of the Stones’ Satisfaction.
  1. Bruce Cockburn, How I Spent My Fall Vacation . . . I’ve played so many tunes on the show over time, obviously, that I keep thinking I’m repeating myself. Probably for the most part not, although I have often dug into Cockburn’s magnificent 1980 album Humans. Not a bad track on it. Here’s yet another good one from that platter.
  1. Elton John, Tell Me When The Whistle Blows . . . One of my favorite Elton John songs, period, hit or deep cut. This one’s from the Captain Fantastic album in 1975, coming to the end of a run when everything EJ did was, indeed, fantastic.
  1. Rod Stewart, The Killing Of Georgie (Part I and II) . . . From Stewart’s hit album Tonight’s The Night, 1976. Space does not permit but . . . It’s worth reading up on the song, about a gay friend of the Faces who was killed, and the coda’s resemblance to the Beatles’ Don’t Let Me Down, starting at about the five-minute mark, and John Lennon (‘the lawyers didn’t notice’) and Stewart’s reaction to it. I had never actually thought about the similarity until fairly recently, all these years later.
  1. Savoy Brown, Leavin’ Again . . . It was cool that a Twitter acquaintance I’ve developed over shared love of music mentioned he’d gotten into some Savoy Brown via various discussions, so I thought I’d play some…again. Love the band, including this long bluesy jam.
  1. Steve Earle, Goodbye’s All We Got Left To Say . . . Another from Twitter discussions about various great artists. And that’s indeed all that’s left to say, for this week.
So Old It's New

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, Nov 8, 2021 – on air 8-10 pm ET

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  1. The Moody Blues, Veteran Cosmic Rocker . . . Not sure how much or if I’m cosmic, but definitely, by now, having grown up with what’s now classified as classic rock, a veteran rocker. This one’s from arguably my favorite Moodies album because, aside from hits compilations, it’s the studio album I know track-for-track, having grown up with it in 1981 when it was high on the charts. 
  2. Joe Jackson, Man In The Street . . . Playing this for a good friend, who recently found the Big World album, from 1986, cheap at a flea market and is enjoying it. Great album by a great artist, show followers will know JJ is one of my favorites; no matter the various directions he’s taken in his eclectic career, he’s never lost me yet. I saw the Big World tour at Kingswood Music Theatre at Canada’s Wonderland and this was the closing track in a 26-song set, extended from its 5-minute studio length as Jackson seemed transported into another realm by the music.
  1. Boston, Hitch A Ride . . . I remember when the first, self-titled Boston album came out, a bit of a backlash later ensued as critics started accusing the band, led by MIT-trained engineer Tom Scholz, of using computers and synthesizers to achieve their sound. So on the second album, Don’t Look Back,the band made a point of noting that no computers or synthesizers were used. Nobody gives a damn about that, these days, the use of computers, samples, etc being widely accepted though not everyone is fond of such developments. Anyway, hard to pick a deep cut on Boston’s debut album because just about all of it has been played, and played, and played, on classic rock radio since 1976 when it was released. So, this is the song I decided on. Might be the first time – or certainly first time in eons – I’ve played Boston on the show. To be honest their music hasn’t aged all that well to me, sort of a guilty pleasure by now but loads still love ’em and I don’t begrudge that.
  1. Joe Cocker, Many Rivers To Cross . . . Nice interpretation of the Jimmy Cliff tune on Cocker’s reggae-tinged Sheffield Steel album in 1982 that featured the noted rhythm section of drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare.
  1. The Band, Across The Great Divide (live) . . . From the great live album, Rock of Ages.
  1. John Mayall, Nature’s Disappearing . . . I remember my older brother, who I often cite here because he was such a huge musical influence on me, bringing home Mayall’s USA Union album. “No drummer!’ my brother said. This was during the period Mayall indeed used no drummer, although if you didn’t know that, listening to the album, you probably wouldn’t have noticed. Anyway, it was Mayall (guitar, vocals, harmonica and piano) guitarist Harvey Mandel of Canned Heat and Stones’ Black and Blue album sessions fame, Larry Taylor on bass and Don “Sugarcane” Harris on violin. Good stuff. And an early environmental initiative statement, to boot.
  1. Gov’t Mule, Monkey Hill . . . Another one from one of my favorite Mule albums, the Tri-Star Sessions. It’s a set of more raw recordings, the actual original demos for much of what became the Allman Brothers offshoot’s self-titled debut album, in 1995.
  1. Buddy Guy, Tramp . . . Buddy’s take on the Lowell Fulson-Jimmy McCracklin tune, first recorded by Fulson in 1967. This version of the soulful blues track is from Guy’s excellent 2001 album, Sweet Tea.
  1. Deep Purple, Lazy . . . Great albums become so well-known that those of us who grew up with them can play them, mentally, in our sleep hence maybe don’t play them so much anymore. Then you do – which of late I’ve been doing – and you’re reminded just why they’re so great, every track a gem. Like Purple’s Machine Head, of course, which I listened to in the gym the other day. Lazy is just another example of Purple at their best with that amazing blend of all instruments and vocals.
  1. David Baerwald, Hello Mary . . . Nice relationship, or former relationship, song. It’s from Baerwald’s debut solo album Bedtime Stories, released in 1990 after David + David (with David Ricketts) broke up after their fine debut album, Boomtown, in 1986. Ricketts, who co-wrote a couple tunes on Bedtime Stories, but not this one, went into mostly production work while Baerwald has released sporadic solo work while writing musical scores for film and TV. Both Davids played on and co-wrote many of the songs on Sheryl Crow’s debut solo album, Tuesday Night Music Club, in 1993.
  1. The Rolling Stones, Wish I’d Never Met You . . . Another bluesy cut from the Stones’ B-side collection, this one was the flip of the Terrifying single, from the Steel Wheels album, in 1989. It later appeared on the live album Flashpoint + Collectibles disc in 1991 and in 2005 on the Rarities 1971-2003 collection.
  1. Keith Richards, Heartstopper . . . Nice boogie type tune from his 2015 solo release, Crosseyed Heart.
  1. Marianne Faithfull, For Beauty’s Sake . . . And we conclude the little Stones, Inc. interlude with this one from 1981’s Dangerous Acquaintances, which continued a hot streak that began with the previous ‘comeback’ album, Broken English, in 1979. It wasn’t as successful, critically, as Broken English (which would be difficult to top) and Faithfull herself described the recording process as an arduous affair, but it’s got lots of good stuff on it, for my money.
  1. Blind Faith, Well All Right . . . Blind Faith’s take on the Buddy Holly classic. Another from the older-brother-as-huge influence file, which also happened to get me more into Buddy Holly beyond some of his perhaps more obvious hits.
  1. David Bowie, Blackstar . . . Terrific, extended title cut from Bowie’s final album, released in 2016. He died two days after its release. The song reached as high as No. 61 on some charts, remarkable for a 10-minute track but the song is akin to, in my view, the title cut to his Station To Station album. Someone in the comments field on YouTube had a nice description, suggesting Blackstar is like, and Bowie knew he was dying, a sort of retrospective look at the myriad styles he tried and embraced throughout his career.
  1. Pink Floyd, A Pillow Of Winds . . . From Meddle, one of those great albums some of us get into from a band after embracing a later work, in this case the next one, the monster The Dark Side Of The Moon. Then, you go back. Or, forward in a way because, older brother influence reference again, I first became aware of Pink Floyd when he brought home Ummagumma, which I found weird at first but have grown to embrace and play on the show and will again. The coolest thing about Ummagumma, at first glance, is the cover as each band member trades positions and if you know the cover you know what I mean.
  1. Pat Travers Band, Born Under A Bad Sign . . . Off we go into a bit of a blues phase in the show, via Canadian artist Travers’ take (great guitar work) on the blues classic. Saw him at the Kitchener Blues Festival some years back now, good show.
  1. Arc Angels, Sent By Angels . . . Out of the ashes of the late great Stevie Ray Vaughan’s band Double Trouble came Arc Angels with their terrific (and lone) 1992 self-titled album. Featured were two members of SRV’s band, drummer Chris Layton and bassist Tommy Shannon, plus guitarist/singers Doyle Bramhall II (later in Roger Waters’ touring band) and Charlie Sexton. Arc Angels lasted just the one album in terms of recorded work, apparently due to some drug issues within the band which led to various other issues.
  1. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Texas Flood . . . And here’s SRV himself…Terrific artist. Like the next guy I’m playing, another Texan who at the time brought blues and let’s say more commercial blues rock back to prominence.
  1. Johnny Winter, Lone Wolf . . . Kick butt song to end our Texas trio of tunes, from his 2004 I’m A Bluesman album. I finally saw Winter, in his later days but he was still delivering, even sitting down, when he appeared at the 2011 Kitchener blues festival. That one had one of the fest’s best-ever lineups, which is saying a lot but we had Gregg Allman, John Mayall and the Winter brothers, although Johnny and Edgar did separate sets on different days.
  1. April Wine, Mama Laye . . . Always liked this Latin/calypso type track from the Forever For Now album in 1977.
  1. Alannah Myles, Our World Our Times . . . Myles had huge success, largely via the monster Black Velvet single, with her debut self-titled album in 1989. But I think her follow-up, Rockinghorse, is as good and this hypnotic, pulsating track is evidence of that.
  1. Chicago, Free Form Guitar . . . I was debating whether to play this 6-minutes plus of guitar wank from the late great Terry Kath, from the debut Chicago album, Chicago Transit Authority but then thought, WTF, this show does what FM radio used to do but no longer seems to, at least not commercial rock radio. You used to hear let’s call it acid rock like this. Some think it’s creative, some think it’s self-indulgent crap, all I think would agree Terry Kath was a great guitarist. So, here you go.
CKMS Community Connections, Shows

CKMS Community Connections for 8 November 2021: Live from Lana’s Lounge with Alison King and John McLelland

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Tune in Monday, November 8 at 11:00 AM for the CKMS 102.7 FM Radio Waterloo Community Connections – Caught in the Act – Live At Lana’s with Alison King and John McLelland. Steve Todd hosts.


Download Community Connections – Alison King and John McLelland, 57.6 MB, 1h00m01s, episode 88.

Lana's Lounge | Caught In The Act! | Live from Lana's Lounge | Replay of Alison King and John McLelland's live performance at Lana's Lounge | Monday November 8, 2021 11:00am (Lana's Lounge logo in top left, pictures of Alison King and John McLelland in the middle, CKMS Community Connections logo and show times in the bottm right)
Lana's Lounge | Caught In The Act! | Live from Lana's Lounge | Replay of Alison King and John McLelland's live performance at Lana's Lounge | Monday November 8, 2021 11:00am

CKMS Community Connections Hour One airs on CKMS-FM 102.7 on Monday from 11:00am to Noon, and Hour Two airs on Saturday from 1:00pm to 2:00pm.

Got music, spoken word, or other interesting stuff? Let us know at office@radiowaterloo.ca or leave a comment on our “About” page.

CKMS logo with wavies coming out the sidesSubscribe to the CKMS Community Connections podcast!

CKMS | 102.7 FM | Radio Waterloo | Community ConnectionsSee all CKMS Community Connections shows!

Show notes and podcast interview content is Copyright © 2021 by the participants, and released under a CC BYCreative Commons Attribution Only license. Copy, re-use, and derivative works are allowed with attribution to Radio Waterloo and a link to this page. Music selections are copyright by the respective rights holders.

So Old It's New

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, Nov. 1, 2021 – on air 8-10 pm ET

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  1. AC/DC, Let There Be Rock . . . Scorcher from the early, Bon Scott days, perfect for the hard rocking start to tonight’s set.
  1. Led Zeppelin, We’re Gonna Groove . . . Kick butt rocker from 1969/70 first appeared officially on the 1982 compilation of outtakes album, Coda. 
  2. Uriah Heep, Gypsy . . . Not a huge Heep fan but when I listen to ’em, I like what I hear but confess to knowing mostly just the early stuff, like this. The Heep did make a great contribution to music journalism criticism, though. When the band first appeared, Rolling Stone magazine critic Melissa Mills began her review: “If this group makes it I’ll have to commit suicide. From the first note you know you don’t want to hear any more.” Funny but on other hand pretty insensitive comment, first off, about a serious issue and no word on what Melissa did, since Heep did make it big.  And Rolling Stone has rarely been kind to heavier music.
  1. R.E.M., Crush With Eyeliner . . . Speaking of which, I like R.E.M. especially when they lean towards the heavy side, like on this one from the Monster album, released in 1994.
  1. Ted Nugent, Baby Please Don’t Go (live) . . . Smokin’, breathless version from Double Live Gonzo! of the Big Joe Williams tune, done by many, including an absolutely scorching studio version by AC/DC I must return to soon. 
  2. Heart, Bebe Le Strange . . . This title cut from Heart’s 1980 album was an unsuccessful single, only made it to No. 109, but I like it. Maybe not ‘hooky’ enough to be a big hit but it kicks butt, in my opinion, in a propulsive way. And Ann Wilson could, as the saying goes, sing the phone book (are there still phone books?) and I’d listen. What a voice.
  1. The Yardbirds, Evil Hearted You . . . To me, there seemed to be a period – and maybe it was evolving and improving recording techniques – where 60s pop started becoming rock, and this is another song from 1965 (like the Stones’ Satisfaction and much of The Beatles’ Rubber Soul album) that suggests that. Great Jeff Beck guitar playing and love the vocals by Keith Relf on a song penned by Graham Gouldman, who wrote the previous Yardbirds hits For Your Love and Heart Full Of Soul and went on to become a member of 10cc. 
  2. Cream, Swlabr . . . The B-side to Sunshine Of Your Love from 1967’s smash album Disraeli Gears, and a well-known tune in its own right after appearing on several Cream compilations. The letters of the song title are an abbreviation for She Walks (or Was, depending on the source) Like A Bearded Rainbow.
  1. U2, Trip Through Your Wires . . . Always liked this one from the monster hit album The Joshua Tree. The album had 11 songs, five of which (not this one) were released as singles and they all could have been, the album is that strong.
  1. ZZ Top, 2000 Blues . . . Typically great bluesy cut, what ZZ Top to me has always done best, from the 1990 album Recycler. It was in large measure a continuation of the big hits synthesizer sound of the previous two albums that yielded hits like Legs and made ZZ Top music video stars. But Recycler was recorded in two different sets of sessions and by the second go-round, when this track was recorded, the band was in a different place, recording material like this blues cut. As a result, Billy Gibbons has said the band considers the album their Tres Hombres/Eliminator album.
  1. David Wilcox, Cheap Beer Joint . . . Makes you want to either be sitting in that cheap beer joint or lying on the floor, headphones on, drink beside you, thinking of being in that cheap beer joint.
  1. Murray McLauchlan, Out Past The Timberline . . . I played this terrific paean to Canada as recently as my Canada Day show this year but was inspired to play it again as I was in the car the other day and switched over to sound.fm and heard it. Another DJ was using a song I’d uploaded, one of thousands although I’m still waiting for my royalty residuals for filling the station library, ha ha. Just kidding around, management, happy to contribute my collection.
  1. Rush, Natural Science . . . Typically great Rush instrumental passages in this extended outing from 1980’s Permanent Waves album. Another fairly recent repeat but I thought of this one due to a Twitter discussion the other day about great Rush tunes, and this one was mentioned by several people. So many to choose from, obviously.
  1. Bruce Springsteen, Johnny 99 . . . From the spare, dark, mostly acoustic and purely solo, Springsteen alone with his guitar and various other instruments album Nebraska, released in 1982. Early Dylan-like, but uniquely Springsteen, and excellent.
  1. The Rolling Stones, Fancy Man Blues . . . Great original blues by the boys, originally released as the B-side to the Steel Wheels album single Mixed Emotions, although to me this is clearly the better tune. But a blues single likely wouldn’t wash (although the Stones had a No. 1 in the UK in the early days with Little Red Rooster). The song was also the lead cut on After the Hurricane, a George Martin of Beatles fame-produced album to benefit victims of Hurricane Hugo in 1989. The song is also on the Collectibles portion of the expanded release of the live album Flashpoint and on the Rarities 1971-2003 compilation, if anyone’s still buying physical product.
  1. Don Henley, Workin’ It . . . Typically caustic Henley lyrics on this one from the Inside Job album in 2000. It wasn’t a single although I do remember some airplay. In any event, it’s my favorite from that album.
  1. Eddie Money, Baby Hold On . . . Mine is a deep cuts show but occasionally I’ll throw in a hit single or at least one that hasn’t been heard in a long time, or didn’t do so well. This one did, one of Money’s two big hits, the other being Two Tickets To Paradise. It came to mind as I got in the car the other day, older car, no satellite radio and other such accouterments, and needed some music to listen to. So I pulled out a CD of material I had burned ages ago, and this was on it. Great tune.
  1. Robin Trower, It’s Only Money . . . Just thought I’d play it since it came up via key words while I was looking up the Eddie Money tune. I feel as if I’ve played this too recently, so risking a repeat but not according to my searches. In any event, so what, I can never get enough of Trower’s blues rock, particularly the 70s halycon days with the late great James Dewar on bass and vocals.
  1. Warren Zevon, Lawyers, Guns and Money . . . Another that came up thanks to the word ‘money’. Great stuff from the Excitable Boy album which, via Werewolves of London, broke Zevon big. “I went home with the waitress, the way I always do…How was I to know she was with the Russians too.” … “send lawyers guns and money, the shit has hit the fan.” I could listen to Zevon all day.
  1. The Kinks, Misfits . . . Title cut from the 1978 album, just before the Kinks’ commercial resurgence with the next album, Low Budget. This was a B-side. A B-side. Most bands would kill to have this as an A-side. The only single that charted from this album was A Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy, great tune I’ve played before, which only made No. 30 or so. But of course, chart success isn’t necessarily indicative of quality.
  1. Jeff Beck, Ice Cream Cakes . . . The version of the Jeff Beck Group fronted by Rod Stewart with Ron Wood on bass, the group that released the Truth album in 1968, tends to get the most accolades. But the later version, with Bobby Tench (vocals), Max Middleton (keyboards), Clive Chaman (bass) and drummer to the stars Cozy Powell was no slouch, as proven by this progressive/rock/bluesy track.
  1. Dickey Betts & Great Southern, Back On The Road Again . . . As described by an AllMusic reviewer of Betts’s 1978 album Atlanta’s Burning Down: “Allman Brothers guitarist Dickey Betts moves back into the deep-fried Southern boogie that the Brothers are (in)famous for and serves it up with just a smidgen of country and comes out with another winner.” Agreed.
  1. The Beatles, Abbey Road Medley (You Never Give Me Your Money/Sun King/Mean Mr. Mustard/Polythene Pam/She Came In Through The Bathroom Window/Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End/Her Majesty) . . . Played this to end the show long ago, figured I’d do it again after listening to it while in the gym. This is the original version, with Her Majesty, then a hidden track not listed (and I still have an original copy) on the album cover. A recent expanded re-release of Abbey Road puts Her Majesty where it originally was, in the middle of the medley, between Mustard and Pam, but Paul McCartney didn’t think it worked back then and I tend to agree, having listened to the re-released version. It’s still good, but . . . That said, it’s likely because we’ve become so used to the original released sequence that any adjustments seem out of place.
Democracy In Perspective, Shows

Democracy In Perspective Hosted by Leonard Ro on CKMS 102.7FM

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show logoDemocracy In Perspective has in-depth interviews with famous guests including ex- Canadian Prime Ministers, ex- US Presidents and more…

Democracy In Perspective is hosted by Leonard Ro and airs on Friday from 1:00pm to 2:00pm on CKMS 102.7FM

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Leonard Ro first started programming on CKWR 98.7FM now CKWR 98.5FM in 1995 and then at CSCR 90.5FM in Toronto, Ontario. Democracy in Perspective on CKMS 102.7FM is the first show in the Tri-City that allows the general public to voice their opinion on political and socio-economic issues. Leonard Ro gives the listeners the platform to voice their opinions on the air by calling 1-800-765-0877 and leave a 20-30 second message. 

  • Call 1-800-765-0877
  • Call 1-800-765-0877
  • Call 1-800-765-0877

CKMS Community Connections, Shows

CKMS Community Connections for 1 November 2021: The Riffs at Lana’s Lounge

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Tune in Monday, 1 November 2021 at 11:00 AM on CKMS 102.7 FM Radio Waterloo for Community Connections, and “Caught in the Act – Live From Lana’s Lounge“, a one-hour spotlight on the Riffs (Yvonne Way & Rob Gies). Steve Todd hosts.


Download: CKMS Community Connections for 1 November 2021, episode 087 (55 MB, 1h00m01s)

Lana's Lounge | Caught in the Act | Live from Lana's Lounge | Replay of The Riff's live performance at Lana's Lounge | Monday, 1 November 2021 11:00am | CKMS Community Connections (poster with images of a keyboard, Yvonne Way and Rob Gies, and the wordmark logo for CKMS Community Connections)
Lana's Lounge | Caught in the Act | Live from Lana's Lounge | Replay of The Riff's live performance at Lana's Lounge | Monday, 1 November 2021 11:00am | CKMS Community Connections

CKMS Community Connections Hour One airs on CKMS-FM 102.7 on Monday from 11:00am to Noon, and Hour Two airs on Saturday from 1:00pm to 2:00pm.

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Show notes and podcast interview content is Copyright © 2021 by the participants, and released under a CC BYCreative Commons Attribution Only license. Copy, re-use, and derivative works are allowed with attribution to Radio Waterloo and a link to this page. Music selections are copyright by the respective rights holders.

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