Three classic albums: Who’s Next along with Pearl, Janis Joplin’s posthumously released last recorded statement, and Led Zeppelin’s fourth album. All came out in the amazing year for popular music that was 1971. More thoughts on 1971 below the show’s track list.

So Old It’s New show archive

Facebook page

The Who – Who’s Next

1. Baba O’Riley
2. Bargain
3. Love Ain’t For Keeping
4. My Wife
5. The Song Is Over
6. Getting In Tune
7. Going Mobile
8. Behind Blue Eyes
9. Won’t Get Fooled Again

Janis Joplin – Pearl

1. Move Over
2. Cry Baby
3. A Woman Left Lonely
4. Half Moon
5. Buried Alive In The Blues
6. My Baby
7. Me And Bobby McGee
8. Mercedes Benz
9. Trust Me
10. Get It While You Can

Led Zeppelin (aka IV, Untitled, Zoso, Four Symbols, The Runes)

1. Black Dog
2. Rock And Roll
3. The Battle Of Evermore
4. Stairway To Heaven
5. Misty Mountain Hop
6. Four Sticks
7. Going To California
8. When The Levee Breaks

I went with the three albums I’m playing in part because, to be honest, they’re the ones that best fit my two-hour slot in a three-album play but of course all three are worthy of appearance, among many contenders from that year. And at some point I’ll perhaps do a show filled with songs from 1971, or any other year. It’s the sort of project I started once, beginning in 1964, but only got a couple years into before, well, not continuing. Definitely an idea worth revisiting.

As for 1971 albums there’s almost too many to list but among the other notable records released that year: The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, Jethro Tull’s Aqualung, Carole King’s Tapestry, John Lennon’s Imagine, Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells A Story along with him fronting Faces’ A Nod Is As Good As A Wink . . . To A Blind Horse and before that, Faces’ Long Player in a busy year for Rod; The Doors’ L.A. Woman (which I played recently), Joni Mitchell’s Blue (played last Saturday), Fragile by Yes, Pink Floyd’s Meddle, which I played in full a year ago, Elton John’s Madman Across The Water, The Kinks’ Muswell Hillbillies, Traffic’s The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On . . . and I could go on, and on. So many great years for music, obviously, but an argument can be made that 1971 was among the best. A recent book, Never a Dull Moment: 1971 The Year That Rock Exploded, makes that point and is the basis of a documentary series 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything, available on Apple TV+.

So Old It’s New archive

Facebook page

A St. Patrick’s Day set featuring Irish bands/artists and/or songs about Ireland. My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. The Boomtown Rats, Up All Night
2. Taste, On The Boards
3. Rory Gallagher, Walk On Hot Coals (from Check Shirt Wizard Live In ’77)
4. Van Morrison, Cyprus Avenue
5. Gary Moore & Phil Lynott, Out In The Fields
6. U2, Bullet The Blue Sky
7. Paul McCartney/Wings, Give Ireland Back To The Irish
8. John Lennon, The Luck Of The Irish
9. The Chieftains with The Rolling Stones, The Rocky Road To Dublin
10. Rory Gallagher, Too Much Alcohol (live, Irish Tour ’74)
11. Van Morrison, It’s All In The Game/You Know What They’re Writing About (from Live At The Grand Opera House Belfast)
12. Rory Gallagher, A Million Miles Away (from Check Shirt Wizard Live In ’77)
13. The Chieftains with Mick Jagger, The Long Black Veil
14. Van Morrison, Rave On John Donne/Rave On Part Two (from Live At The Grand Opera House Belfast)
15. Rory Gallagher, Bad Penny
16. Van Morrison, And The Healing Has Begun
17. U2, Exit

My track-by-track tales:

1. The Boomtown Rats, Up All Night . . . While I was still – to paraphrase the lyrics to the song All The Young Dudes – for the most part at home with my Beatles and my Stones, there was a period during my college days and for a brief time after when I was sampling most of the punk and new wave stuff coming to North America from across the Atlantic. Not too many of those bands seemed to have staying power, though, or at least were more singles sellers than full album artists, which is fine. So my ride with the Rats was shortlived – three albums or, I should probably say, three songs – I Don’t Like Mondays from 1979’s The Fine Art Of Surfacing, Banana Republic from Mondo Bongo in 1981 and Up All Night, a catchy tune/ode to insomnia from V Deep in 1982. “Up all night ooh za za ooh staying up all night.” V Deep, by the way, is pronounced ‘five’ Deep as in the Roman numeral V, representing the group’s fifth album and the fact they had gone from a six- to five-piece band. Their commercial performance was falling, however, and soon enough frontman/chief songwriter Bob Geldof was making a bigger name for himself as an activist and organizer of benefit concerts like Live Aid and Live 8. The band broke up in 1986, two years after their to that point last studio album, 1984’s In the Long Grass. They reformed in 2013 for live gigs and released a studio album, Citizens Of Boomtown, in 2020.

2. Taste, On The Boards . . . Beautiful jazz-blues title track to Taste’s second album, with bandleader Rory Gallagher adding saxophone passages to the piece. On The Boards was Taste’s final studio album, coming out in 1970 although two live albums, Live Taste and Live At The Isle Of Wight, both recorded at 1970 concerts, were released in 1971 after the band broke up with Gallagher going solo. Live At The Isle Of Wight was reissued in expanded form in 2015 and retitled What’s Going On – Live At The Isle Of Wight.

3. Rory Gallagher, Walk On Hot Coals (from Check Shirt Wizard Live In ’77) . . . Speaking of Gallagher’s solo career . . . Live fireworks from the late great guitarist on this blistering version of a track originally on his 1973 studio album Blueprint. It’s one of two songs I’ve selected for the show from the 2020 archival release Check Shirt Wizard, put together from four concerts in early 1977.

4. Van Morrison, Cyprus Avenue . . . Slowing the pace down with this evocative jazz/folk rock piece from Van The Man’s 1968 masterpiece Astral Weeks. It’s one of those critically-acclaimed records that can admittedly take some time to appreciate but once immersed in its grooves, once you ‘get it’, you’re forever in its embrace. The song is a wistful reflection on Morrison’s adolescence including, depending upon interpretation, apparent frustration regarding an unattainable love interest that he can only observe but not reach, one living outside his own economic station. Morrison described Cyprus Avenue as “a street in Belfast, a place where there’s a lot of wealth. It wasn’t far from where I was brought up and it was a very different scene. To me it was a very mystical place. It was a whole avenue lined with trees and I found it a place where I could think.”

5. Gary Moore & Phil Lynott, Out In The Fields . . . Piercing guitar playing from Moore on this rocker, an anti-war anthem about ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, issued as a single in 1985 in a singing and playing collaboration with Lynott, Thin Lizzy’s frontman and Moore’s one-time bandmate in that group. The track also appeared on Moore’s 1985 hard rock/metal studio album Run For Cover which features Deep Purple family tree members Glenn Hughes (bass, vocals) and Don Airey (keyboards) among other of Moore’s musical friends.

6. U2, Bullet The Blue Sky . . . Nothing to do with Ireland, but it is from an Irish band and happens to be among my favorite U2 songs. From the 1987 blockbuster album The Joshua Tree, it’s a musically and lyrically powerful, politically-charged track inspired by U.S. involvement in Central America though its themes apply anywhere. U2 of course often wrote about their home country and in particular ‘The Troubles’ in the band’s hit single from 1983’s War album, Sunday Bloody Sunday.

7. Paul McCartney/Wings, Give Ireland Back To The Irish . . . Speaking of Bloody Sunday . . . an uncharacteristically overtly political song by McCartney, released as Wings’ first single in February 1972 in response to Bloody Sunday, an incident during ‘The Troubles’ when British soldiers shot and killed 13 civilians, injuring others, during a protest march in Derry, Northern Ireland. The song was banned from broadcast in the UK by the BBC and others, and McCartney was condemned by British media for his seemingly pro-IRA stance. The single, a mid-tempo rocker which topped the Irish charts, still made No. 16 in the UK and the top 40 elsewhere. It later appeared on CD reissues of Wild Life, the 1971 debut album by McCartney’s Wings band.

8. John Lennon, The Luck Of The Irish . . . A few months after the McCartney single, out came his old Beatles’ bandmate Lennon (with wife Yoko Ono) and his similar take on ‘The Troubles’ on this folk/waltz piece from the 1972 album Some Time In New York City, released in June. By that time, the former songwriting partners had resolved to stop taking shots at each other through song and, apparently, albeit briefly, separately took aim at the UK. The Luck Of The Irish was written in late 1971 and had already been performed live before its studio release. It was one of two such Irish situation-themed diatribes on Some Time In New York City, the other being the pulsating rocker Sunday Bloody Sunday, a title U2 later used for their musically and lyrically unrelated hit single.

9. The Chieftains with The Rolling Stones, The Rocky Road To Dublin . . . A mischievous momentary lick of the riff from (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction spices up this treatment of a fast-paced Irish folk tune done by world-renowned Dubliners The Chieftains teamed with the obviously delightfully engaged Rolling Stones. The track is from the 1995 release The Long Black Veil. The album, credited to The Chieftains, featured an all-star aggregation of artists including Van Morrison, Sting, Sinead O’Connor, Mark Knopfler, Ry Cooder, Tom Jones, Colin James, Marianne Faithfull and Mick Jagger – who I’ll get to in a bit, singing the title cut. Morrison also worked with The Chieftains on Irish Heartbeat, a 1983 album of mostly traditional tunes.

10. Rory Gallagher, Too Much Alcohol (from Irish Tour ’74) . . . More live magic from Mr. Gallagher on this extended blues workout, a cover of a tune written by American bluesman J.B. Hutto.

11. Van Morrison, It’s All In The Game/You Know What They’re Writing About (from Live At The Grand Opera House Belfast) . . . Morrison combines the standard It’s All In The Game with an original piece in a meditative, emotional performance during a March, 1983 show released on his 1984 live album. The two songs first appeared back to back as the closing tracks on Morrison’s 1979 studio album Into The Music.

12. Rory Gallagher, A Million Miles Away (from Check Shirt Wizard Live In ’77) . . . Originally on the 1973 studio album Tattoo, beautiful mid-tempo blues rock propelled by Gallagher’s graceful guitar and lyrical imagery.

This hotel bar is full of people,
The piano man is really laying it down,
The old bartender is as high as a steeple,
So why tonight should I wear a frown? . . .

This hotel bar has lost all its people,
The piano man has caught the last bus home,
The old bartender just collapsed in the corner,
Why I’m still here, I just don’t know, I don’t know.

13. The Chieftains with Mick Jagger, The Long Black Veil . . . Spooky treatment, particularly the instrumental opening followed by Jagger’s haunting vocals on a traditional tune covered by countless artists, notably Johnny Cash and The Band. Colin James plays guitar and mandolin with Darryl Jones, bassist on most Stones’ studio albums and all tours since the departure of Bill Wyman in 1993, also contributing.

14. Van Morrison, Rave On John Donne/Rave On Part Two (from Live At The Grand Opera House Belfast) . . . A tribute to poets and visionaries in one of Morrison’s spiritual and mystical pieces. He name-checks John Donne and other literary figures (William Butler Yeats, Walt Whitman among others) in a typically passionate vocal and instrumental performance blending blues, jazz, and Irish folk influences. And as of this show, off into a Van The Man phase I go. Again.

15. Rory Gallagher, Bad Penny . . . Or a Rory Gallagher phase, or one with any of these excellent artists. I always say that the best song/artist/album is the one you are listening to right now, in the moment, if you like it. That said, if I had to pick just one Gallagher tune, pretty sure it would be Bad Penny, a gritty blues-rocker from his 1979 album Top Priority. Great riff, searing solo, biting lyrics. I never tire of it, as soon as it ends, off I often go with it again.

16. Van Morrison, And The Healing Has Begun . . . Soulful song from 1979’s Into The Music, a terrific tune featuring the best of all instruments on his albums, Morrison’s voice.

“And we’ll walk down the avenue again, and we’ll sing all the songs from way back when, yeah, and we’ll walk down the avenue again and the healing has begun. . . . I want you to put on your pretty summer dress. You can wear your Easter bonnet and all the rest and I wanna make love to you yes, yes, yes.”

It occurred to me while prepping the show, just popped into my head after all these years and only he would know for sure, but the tapestry of threads that is a life had me wondering whether Morrison in 1979 was, at least figuratively, referring to that girl back on Cyprus Avenue from the Astral Weeks album in 1968?

17. U2, Exit . . . Dark, intense, atmospheric track from The Joshua Tree that ebbs and flows, slowly building to a climax then receding only to speed up again before the final fade.

So Old It’s New archive

Facebook page

A folk rock-oriented set from Canadian-born artists Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Bruce Cockburn. I’m playing Young’s 1978 album Comes A Time, Mitchell’s Blue from 1971 and Cockburn’s Humans, released in 1980.

My individual album thoughts appear under each record’s song list.

Neil Young – Comes A Time

1. Goin’ Back
2. Comes A Time
3. Look Out For My Love
4. Lotta Love
5. Peace Of Mind
6. Human Highway
7. Already One
8. Field Of Opportunity
9. Motorcycle Mama
10. Four Strong Winds

An album that balances folk and country influences and is also a showcase for Nicolette Larson, Young’s harmony vocals accomplice throughout most of the album including a great performance on the lone rocker on the record, the duet Motorcycle Mama. Interestingly, Larson didn’t sing on Young’s Lotta Love, which later became one of her solo hits.

Joni Mitchell – Blue

1. All I Want
2. My Old Man
3. Little Green
4. Carey
5. Blue
6. California
7. This Flight Tonight
8. River
9. A Case Of You
10. The Last Time I Saw Richard

Likely Mitchell’s most acclaimed album, a great fusion of folk, jazz and storytelling, said by some to be arguably the most confessional singer-songwriter album ever made as she laid bare her soul during and after relationships with Graham Nash and James Taylor, among others. Hard rock band Nazareth transformed This Flight Tonight into a hit single in 1973 to the point that Mitchell, who liked their version (and, no doubt, the royalty cheques), took to introducing it in her own concerts as “a Nazareth song.”

Bruce Cockburn – Humans

1. Grim Travellers
2. Rumours Of Glory
3. More Not More
4. You Get Bigger As You Go
5. What About The Bond
6. How I Spent My Fall Vacation
7. Guerilla Betrayed
8. Tokyo
9. Fascist Architecture
10. The Rose Above The Sky

In late 2022, the American website allmusic.com did an article on Cockburn headlined ‘Canada’s Forgotten Singer-Songwriter”. Outside of Canada, at least. He’s legendary here and rightly so but in fairness, the article was positive about his work; it was merely discussing his US success, or relative lack thereof, as compared to that of Joni Mitchell and Neil Young.

Years before that article, I experienced that sentiment firsthand. I was living in Peace River, northern Alberta, went out west 1981-83 for my first journalism job and wound up sharing a house with several people including a woman from Washington state who was getting into Cockburn and one day approached me, marvelling at how good he was but surprised at his relative anonymity in the United States. That’s not unique to Cockburn; many artists are popular in some countries but not in others, for various reasons including the distribution and/or marketing of their albums, or have particularly passionate fan bases in one country, like Cheap Trick in Japan. In any case, she’d never heard Cockburn, or of him, nor had any of her American circle of friends, until her entry point since moving north, the Humans album. By then, I was a big fan, having gotten into Cockburn myself not much earlier, during my second-last year of college back in Ontario via his previous album, the 1979 release Dancing In The Dragon’s Jaws and its hit single Wondering Where The Lions Are.

A great artist throughout his discography with by now many perhaps universally or at least relatively well-known tunes like The Trouble With Normal, Lovers In A Dangerous Time, If I Had A Rocket Launcher and Call It Democracy , among others. But Humans, which featured the hit single Tokyo (at least in Canada) remains probably his favorite of mine, a superbly consistent release.

So Old It’s New archive

Facebook page

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

1. The Rolling Stones, Look What The Cat Dragged In
2. The Monkees, Take A Giant Step
3. The Beatles, Tomorrow Never Knows
4. John Lennon, Meat City
5. Paul McCartney/Wings, Rockestra Theme
6. Paul McCartney/Wings, Old Siam, Sir
7. The Who, The Good’s Gone
8. Jethro Tull, Drink From The Same Well
9. Frank Zappa, Cosmik Debris
10. The Stooges, Dirt
11. Three Dog Night, Play Something Sweet (Brickyard Blues)
12. Joe Cocker, Blue Medley (I’ll Drown In My Own Tears/When Something Is Wrong With My Baby/I’ve Been Loving You Too Long) live, from Mad Dogs & Englishmen)
13. The Guess Who, Love And A Yellow Rose
14. Them, The Story of Them Parts 1 and 2
15. Detroit (featuring Mitch Ryder), Rock ‘N Roll
16. Peter Gabriel, The Family And The Fishing Net (from Peter Gabriel/Plays Live)
17. R.E.M., Living Well Is the Best Revenge
18. Queen, It’s Late

My track-by-track tales:

1. The Rolling Stones, Look What The Cat Dragged In . . . Garage riff rocker featuring some particularly fine soloing from guitarist Ron Wood, from 2005’s A Bigger Bang album. The song is described as ‘an absolute rocket’ in the album-by-album, track-by-track book The Rolling Stones: All The Songs. The riff bears a resemblance and is perhaps an homage to the 1987 INXS hit Need You Tonight although taken at a much faster tempo by the Stones.

2. The Monkees, Take A Giant Step . . . Terrific proto-psychedelic track from the self-titled 1966 debut album, written by the powerhouse songwriting team and onetime partners in love Carole King and Gerry Goffin. The pitter-patter percussion hook at various points just ‘makes’ the song for me. It was the B-side to the single Last Train To Clarksville and was later covered by bluesman/genre bending artist Taj Mahal in a rearranged version that was the title track to his 1969 double album Giant Step/De Ole Folks At Home, comprised of electric (Giant Step) and acoustic (De Ole Folks At Home) albums.

3. The Beatles, Tomorrow Never Knows . . . Speaking of taking a giant step outside your mind, to quote the Monkees’ lyric . . . A mesmerizing, drug-influenced masterpiece from the 1966 album Revolver, a great leap forward in studio sophistication for The Beatles, beyond even the advances they’d made on the previous record, 1965’s Rubber Soul. The entire period is nicely summed up in the 1994 book The Complete Guide To The Music Of The Beatles as a time when John Lennon and Paul McCartney, still at the time the band’s prime songwriters, began “creating mind movies, extending webs of noise that were based around tape loops and ‘found sounds’.”

4. John Lennon, Meat City . . . Jagged, distortion-fueled funky boogie rocker that was the compellingly chaotic B-side to the single Mind Games, the title cut to that 1973 album.

5. Paul McCartney/Wings, Rockestra Theme . . . From the last album by Wings, Back To The Egg, released in 1979 before McCartney returned to releasing material solely under his own name. I distinctly recall the hype around not so much the album as this track due to it featuring a who’s who of rock stars of the day who formed the ‘rockestra’. Among the biggest names: David Gilmour (Pink Floyd), Pete Townshend (The Who), John Paul Jones and John Bonham of Led Zeppelin and Ronnie Lane and Kenney Jones of Faces fame. Jones by then was a member of The Who, having replaced Keith Moon, who had been scheduled to appear on the song but died a month before the recording sessions. Released as a single in France, the guitar-driven track won the 1980 Grammy Award for best rock instrumental performance.

6. Paul McCartney/Wings, Old Siam, Sir . . . Always loved this tune, also from Back To The Egg. A gritty rocker with a relatively slow tempo that just sort of marches along, to great effect. It was the B-side to Rockestra Theme in France, an A-side in the UK where it made No. 35 on the charts and a B-side to the US/North American single Arrow Through Me.

7. The Who, The Good’s Gone . . . From the band’s 1965 debut album, My Generation, a dark, droning song about a relationship breakup, apparently inspired by The Kinks’ song See My Friends that came out earlier the same year. Roger Daltrey’s vocals, sung in a deeper register than usual, fuels the brooding atmosphere.

8. Jethro Tull, Drink From The Same Well . . . Near 17-minute epic from the new Jethro Tull album, Curious Ruminant, released last Friday, March 7. After a listen or two, I’d describe the album as a placid overall performance and that’s meant in a positive way. It rocks in spots but overall is a very much flute-driven, meditative release. That’s particularly true of this song, an instrumental until halfway through. It was finally polished from a demo which, Tull leader Ian Anderson advises in his liner notes, had been lying around unfinished for several years.

9. Frank Zappa, Cosmik Debris . . . Funky, jazz-bluesy strut featuring Zappa’s typically great guitar and biting talk-singing delivery, from the 1974 album Apostrophe (‘)

10. The Stooges, Dirt . . . Primal, slow-burning blues, masterfully, menacingly ‘dirty’ indeed, from 1970’s Fun House album.

11. Three Dog Night, Play Something Sweet (Brickyard Blues) . . . Soulful number, written by Allen Toussaint, which naturally lends the song its New Orleans rhythm to go with Three Dog Night’s rock renderings. From the 1974 album Hard Labor whose cover art depicting the birth of a vinyl record was controversial. It was then re-released with a band-aid covering the birth but the original album art has since been restored on subsequent physical releases.

12. Joe Cocker, Blue Medley (I’ll Drown In My Own Tears/When Something Is Wrong With My Baby/I’ve Been Loving You Too Long) live, from Mad Dogs & Englishmen) . . . A typical vocal tour de force from Cocker backed by his traveling road show of singers/musicians that included Leon Russell, Rita Coolidge, session drummer supreme Jim Keltner, saxophone specialist Bobby Keys of Rolling Stones touring and session fame and various members of Delaney & Bonnie and Friends and Eric Clapton’s Derek and The Dominos.

13. The Guess Who, Love And A Yellow Rose . . . A great deep cut from the 1969 album Wheatfield Soul. I’d wager that if you played this atypical psychedelic raga-rock in spots piece for someone who’s only ever heard the band’s hits, they’d never guess – unless they recognized Burton Cumming’s voice but even then – that it was The Guess Who. And that’s a cool thing, the essence of an album track.

14. Them, The Story of Them Parts 1 and 2 . . . Early, bluesy brilliance from Them featuring the incomparable vocals of Van The Man Morrison, all of that and hypnotic harmonica playing, too.

15. Detroit (featuring Mitch Ryder), Rock ‘N Roll . . From the one and only album Ryder, of Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels fame, released under the band name Detroit. It came out in 1971 and Lou Reed liked this cover of his Velvet Underground song so much he was quoted as saying the Detroit version was how the song was supposed to sound. Reed then recruited Detroit guitarist Steve Hunter for his own band, with Hunter appearing on the 1973 Reed studio album Berlin and subsequent live albums Rock ‘n Roll Animal and Lou Reed Live.

16. Peter Gabriel, The Family And The Fishing Net (from Peter Gabriel/Plays Live) . . . A typically percussive soundscape of a song about wedding rituals that is even more pronounced in the live environment. It was originally released on Gabriel’s fourth solo album, released in 1982 and featuring the hit single Shock The Monkey. Each of Gabriel’s first four albums were titled simply ‘Peter Gabriel’ although, to Gabriel’s chagrin, a sticker with the word ‘Security’ was slapped on the album wrapping in North America, which is what it became known as for many.

17. R.E.M., Living Well Is the Best Revenge . . . Fiery, fast-paced rocker that, appropriately enough, kicks off Accelerate, the band’s 2008 studio album of largely up-tempo tunes.

18. Queen, It’s Late . . . A terrific track written by guitarist Brian May in the form of a three-scene play alternating between power balladry and hard rock, from 1977’s News Of The World, the album that gave us the ubiquitous We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions.