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

1. Queen, Mustapha
2. Queen, Let Me Entertain You
3. Trapeze, Black Cloud
4. AC/DC, Skies On Fire
5. 10cc, The Second Sitting For The Last Supper
6. Roxy Music, Mother Of Pearl
7. Nazareth, Donna – Get Off That Crack
8. The Rolling Stones, All The Rage (Goats Head Soup outtake issued on expanded album re-release in 2020)
9. Thin Lizzy, Suicide
10. Aerosmith, Get The Lead Out
11. Wolfmother, The Simple Life
12. Chuck Berry, Too Much Monkey Business (live, Toronto Rock ‘N’ Roll Revival 1969)
13. Jerry Lee Lewis, How’s My Ex Treating You (live)
14. Jeff Beck, Head For Backstage Pass
15. Steppenwolf, Tighten Up Your Wig
16. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Flat Broke Love
17. McKenna Mendelson Mainline, Bad Women Are Killing Me (1968 alternate version to Bad Women, released on 1969’s Stink album)
18. Stevie Wonder, We Can Work It Out (Beatles cover)
19. Dr. John, I Walk On Guilded Splinters
20. Peter Tosh, Till Your Well Runs Dry

My track-by-track tales:

1. Queen, Mustapha . . . Opening cut on 1978’s Jazz album where, as soon as the needle hit the vinyl grooves many people, myself included, were “WTF”? Then you grow to really like it and are thankful you maybe got introduced to such music via this Arabic rocker, lyrics in English and Arabic, that, arguably, only Freddie Mercury among rock singers could likely pull off. It’s one that reflected his background, born in Zanzibar to Parsi-Indian parents. Today, nobody would bat an eye at this progressive/art/hard rocker and it would also go under the ‘world music’ file. Terrific stuff.

2. Queen, Let Me Entertain You . . . And now for some let’s say more typical Queen from that same Jazz album, and yes, they could entertain. I saw the Jazz tour at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens, a smoking hot show, one might have termed it, er, Killer Queen, to quote the title of one of their songs, which they did play that night I saw them, and on the tour. The tour was documented on the 1979 release Live Killers, recorded on the European leg of the journey.

3. Trapeze, Black Cloud . . . From the band that brought singer/bassist Glenn Hughes, later of Deep Purple, to prominence. Solid hard rock from the terrific Medusa album, released in 1970 on The Moody Blues’ Threshold Records and produced by Moody Blues bassist John Lodge.

4. AC/DC, Skies On Fire . . . Latter-day typically dependable AC/DC, from 2008’s Black Ice album and when I say latter day, geez, that’s already 16 years ago. Anyway. When I say ‘typically dependable” and I’ve said it in different ways before, but AC/DC’s magic is that they’ve done essentially the same thing for many decades now yet there’s enough little twists and turns throughout the repertoire that it never gets old. If you actually listen. To me, at least, or those who like the band but I can appreciate those who think it’s just the same old stuff. To repeat (pun intended) the band’s in on the joke, to quote guitarist Angus Young from some years ago: “I’m sick to death of people saying we’ve made 11 albums that sound exactly the same. In fact, we’ve made 12 albums that sound exactly the same.” He later, when teased on a UK TV show that the band had made the same album “14 times over”, updated it to: “No, we haven’t – we’ve made it 15 times over.” As of their most recent album, 2020’s Power Up, they’re now at 18 times over. 🙂 And for me, at least, difficult to believe that’s it’s already been four years since their last release of original, new material. At some point, inevitably, due to age it will stop but I look forward to whatever they might be doing next.

5. 10cc, The Second Sitting For The Last Supper . . . From 1974’s The Original Soundtrack album which, as far as I know and have researched, isn’t the soundtrack to anything but the album itself, so presumably an attempt at being clever in terms of title. It’s the album that gave us 10cc’s biggest hit, I’m Not In Love but this largely soft rock or progressive pop band could also rock, as the galloping guitar riffing on this one suggests. The brief opening salvo and then the occasional returns to it during the four-minutes plus track could, and I know it sounds crazy maybe but, almost be Iron Maiden, and those boys, who formed their band in 1975, who knows, might have been listening.

6. Roxy Music, Mother Of Pearl . . . Early, more progressive Roxy although some journalism critics were already suggesting they were going more mainstream but I don’t see it on this track, biting guitar and “treatments’ as per the album liner notes, from Phil Manzanera and Bryan Ferry’s distinctive vocals expressing the lyrics about a love story, of sorts, on this one from 1973’s Stranded album. Like most early Roxy albums, it features a woman in a state of undress on the cover, in this case Playboy model Marilyn Cole, who was a Playmate of the Month in 1972 and became Playmate of the Year for 1973, which is how she got noticed by Ferry. Now in her 70s, according to her Wikipedia entry she now works as a journalist covering, among other things, professional boxing. Not to go on about her, I really know nothing about her but in researching for my track tales, I found her story as interesting perhaps as the album but everyone has a perhaps compelling story of some sort. Here are her thoughts, apparently expressed in a 2007 interview, on appearing on the album cover.

“It was at a tiny studio, somewhere off the Edgware Road in London. I’d never even heard of Roxy Music. I very soon understood that I was in safe hands, among some very talented people. There was a red dress hanging up, and I thought, ‘Ooh, good, I’m going to get to wear a really nice dress’… whereupon, as I’m having my make-up done, Antony (photographer Price) comes in and starts ripping the dress – a hole there, a slash there. I was thinking, ‘Oh no.’ They stuck me on this big log and explained I was supposed to be stranded in a jungle, and then they started spraying me; they sprayed my hair gold, and there was a whole mist coming over me and the dress was getting wet in all the right places.”

Oh, another thing. For the second through fifth Roxy albums – For Your Pleasure, Stranded, Country Life and Siren – each one announced, somewhere on the cover or in the liner notes, that it was “the (second, third, fourth, fifth) Roxy Music album”. Just in case, one supposes, people got distracted by the album covers and couldn’t keep track. All this said, I do really like Roxy Music’s music. It certainly wasn’t a case for me of having near-explicit album covers to draw you in only to find there’s little of value in the package. The contents are great, as is Bryan Ferry’s solo stuff. Quality, experimental, often sensual and seductive, compelling stuff for the most part.

7. Nazareth, Donna – Get Off That Crack . . . Some nice riffing on this one from guitarist Manny Charlton in the founding Nazareth member’s final foray with the band, 1989’s Snakes ‘N’ Ladders. He left for other projects in 1990 and died in 2022 at age 80. It was a maybe weird period for Nazareth, far removed from their early 1970s hit-making heyday and, apart from lots of their music that I like, leaves me with a soft spot for this band of survivors through thick and commercial thins over the years. At this point, late 1980s, Nazareth’s commercial fortunes were in such a poor state that the album was only at first released in Europe and Japan and not even on their home turf of Scotland/the UK. More recent Nazareth – yes they’re still around, having released two albums since the death of original singer Dan McCafferty in 2022, Carl Sentance now on lead vocals with McCafferty’s blessing once he retired from the band in 2013 due to health issues – has returned to more consistent, straight ahead hard rock even when McCafferty was still around. But during the 1980s they seemed on a flavor of the moment kick, trying every which genre, with varying degrees of success while losing their way at times, as detailed in the re-release liner notes to Snakes ‘N’ Ladders. But, not on this one, “a sordid tale of a drug casualty’ as described in those liner notes. A good, rocking tune.

8. The Rolling Stones, All The Rage (Goats Head Soup outtake issued on expanded album re-release in 2020) . . . Chugging rocker from the sessions that produced the Stones’ 1973 studio album, featuring the distinctive riffing/rhythm/lead guitar interplay between Keith Richards and Mick Taylor that was a feature of the Stones’ sound of the time.

9. Thin Lizzy, Suicide . . . A multi-faceted tune from 1975’s Fighting album featuring galloping guitar (and again I’ll mention, as some on YouTube have, that the formative members of Iron Maiden must have been listening), a pounding, compelling beat and, well, what more do you want from a rock and roll song?

10. Aerosmith, Get The Lead Out . . . I played Aerosmith (The Farm, from 1997) last week and that tune harkened back to 1970s Aerosmith which prompted me to start playing Live Bootleg in the car back and forth to the gym so I figured I’d actually go back to the 1970s on the show for this tune from perhaps my favorite Aero album, Rocks, from 1976. Lots of people, due to the Steven Tyler-Joe Perry singer/guitarist duo as doubles for Mick Jagger/Keith Richards often compare Aerosmith to the Stones and it’s an obvious comparison but in many ways, as some have pointed out, Aerosmith’s music actually might owe more of a debt to Led Zeppelin so one wonders if this tune was actually…Get The Led Out? Great track, regardless.

11. Wolfmother, The Simple Life . . . Speaking of Led Zeppelin, I remember when the first Wolfmother album, still their most successful commercially and in terms of airplay, came out in 2005 and I embraced it, my then teenaged older son saying, “Dad, it’s Zep”, suggesting how derivative it was to which I replied something on the order of, “yeah, so?” And pointed out how derivative Oasis, one of his favorite bands and I like them a lot too, is.

Anyway, Wolfmother – essentially leader Andrew Stockdale and whoever’s playing in the band with him at a given time – continues on its happily riff rock way, having released a new studio album as recently as 2021. They’ve become ‘classic rock’ in that sense that while the market embraces new sounds and genres, which is all well, good and as it should be, Wolfmother continues to farm its own furrow and some of us still follow them, as on this typically fine riff rocker from the band’s 2016 album Victorious.

12. Chuck Berry, Too Much Monkey Business (live, Toronto Rock ‘N’ Roll Revival 1969) . . . Well-known Berry tune I was actually surprised to find didn’t chart on the main music charts although it got to No. 4 on the R & B charts after release in 1956. So, it fits as a deep cut which is the essence of my show although I’ve always mentioned the caveat of me playing occasional singles, usually by relatively obscure bands, including those that didn’t necessarily chart. In any event, this version of Too Much Monkey Business comes from the 1969 festival well known for the appearance of John Lennon but the entirety of Berry’s performance was released on CD in 2020 although videos of the various performances by Berry and others like Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard have long been available on YouTube.

13. Jerry Lee Lewis, How’s My Ex Treating You (live) . . . Speaking of Jerry Lee, here he is, but not in Toronto in 1969 but earlier, in 1966 in Fort Worth, Texas on a live album called By Request: More Of The Greatest Live Show On Earth, ‘slowin’ it down’ as he says in his intro to the countryish tune. If you’re interested in Jerry Lee and/or the album, it’s available on a fantastic 4-pack of albums available online from the UK label BGO (Beat Goes On) Records that features: The Golden Hits Of Jerry Lee Lewis/Live At The Star-Club Hamburg/The Greatest Live Show On Earth/By Request: More Of The Greatest Live Show On Earth. I’ve played material from the outstanding and raucous Hamburg show before, will again, it’s amazing and arguably one of the best (if perhaps relatively unknown) live albums out there, by anyone.

14. Jeff Beck, Head For Backstage Pass . . . Funky excursion from 1976’s Wired album.

15. Steppenwolf, Tighten Up Your Wig . . . Boogie blues rock tune from The Second, the appropriately-titled second ‘Wolf album in 1968. It’s indebted to Junior Wells’ Messin’ With The Kid which Steppenwolf acknowledges in the lyrics:

“Just before we go, I’d like to mention Junior Wells
We stole his thing from him, and he from someone else
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he plays the blues like few before
May he play forevermore.”

16. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Flat Broke Love . . . A personal favorite BTO deep cut, hypnotic, nice bass line by, on this tune, lead singer C.F. (Fred) Turner, the best BTO singer in my view.

17. McKenna Mendelson Mainline, Bad Women Are Killing Me (1968 alternate version to Bad Women, released on 1969’s Stink album) . . . It seems as if anyone into music in Canada knows MMM’s Stink album. Great blues/blues rock. But there was something before, 1968 tapes that didn’t get released (on CD not until 1996 which I somehow found in a used store at some point and glad for it) for a long time after the initial vinyl release. It was released as an album called McKenna Mendelson Blues and this track is among the songs, an alternate, with dirtier, fuzzier guitar than Bad Women from Stink. Both versions are great, but I’ve played the Stink version before so thought I’d go with the “Blues’ album version this time.

18. Stevie Wonder, We Can Work It Out (Beatles cover) . . . From 1970’s Signed, Sealed & Delivered album which yielded the title cut hit but this funky treatment of The Beatles’ tune did well on the charts, too, and rightly so.

19. Dr. John, I Walk On Guilded Splinters . . . Seven plus minutes of intoxicating voodoo from the doctor.

20. Peter Tosh, Till Your Well Runs Dry . . . Someone on YouTube suggested this is the first country/reggae tune and I’d never thought of it that way until I read that comment, but there’s merit in that assessment. It’s from Tosh’s 1976 debut solo album, Legalize It, after he left Bob Marley’s Wailers.