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

1. The Beatles, Birthday
2. Vanilla Fudge, Ticket To Ride
3. Spooky Tooth, I Am The Walrus
4. Rod Stewart, Get Back
5. Deep Purple, Hey Joe
6. Garland Jeffreys, 96 Tears
7. Television, Marquee Moon
8. T Bone Burnett, Humans From Earth
9. Steely Dan, Aja
10. Van Morrison, A Sense Of Wonder
11. Led Zeppelin, Black Country Woman
12. The Rolling Stones, Brand New Car
13. Nazareth, Back To The Trenches
14. The Kinks, To The Bone
15. The Black Crowes, Stare It Cold
16. ZZ Top, Sure Got Cold After The Rain Fell
17. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Gloomy
18. Ian Hunter, Standin’ In My Light
19. The Byrds, Lover Of The Bayou (studio version)
20. Jeff Beck, Blues De Luxe
21. Tommy Bolin, Post Toastee

My track-by-track tales:

1. The Beatles, Birthday . . . It’s my youngest of two son’s birthday Saturday. He’s 32. This is for you, Scott.

2. Vanilla Fudge, Ticket To Ride . . . Somehow or other, playing a Beatles’ track got me thinking of other bands covering Beatles material (and that could and now that it occurs to me likely will be a future show) so here’s the first of a few, then into some more cover tunes and then on with original material from the rest of the artists in the set. Vanilla Fudge puts their psychedelic stamp on this one.

3. Spooky Tooth, I Am The Walrus . . . As does Spooky Tooth, a la Vanilla Fudge psychedelic approach on this Beatles tune and both bands employ what to me is the best/most effective approach to covering well-known songs: make it different, at least attempt to make it your own.

4. Rod Stewart, Get Back . . . Stewart has always been a good interpreter of other people’s music and this is a quite fine to me, raunchy in spots cover of The Beatles tune, generally along the same path The Beatles took but different enough with enough of Stewart’s stamp on it. It appeared on the soundtrack of a movie bomb All This and World War II which lasted two weeks in threatres in 1976 before being mercifully pulled out of circulation. I don’t claim to know much about the movie but lots of interesting reading about it is available online including this analysis headlined: ‘All This and World War II’: The Beatles Movie Nobody Asked For, Nobody Saw and Nobody Remembers.’ (but now I want to find it and watch it 🙂 )

All This and World War II

In short, it’s a movie incorporating scenes, mostly newsreel footage, and you can view the trailer in the link above, of World War II juxtaposed to Beatles music, in this case Beatles music as covered by other artists. On the surface, a bizarre concept, but the man behind the movie explains his rationale in the above link. Major artists participated, including Stewart, Elton John, Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music fame, The Bee Gees, Peter Gabriel doing Strawberry Fields Forever in apparently his first solo performance once he left Genesis and before his first solo album was released, Tina Turner, Status Quo . . . But the failure of the movie is maybe, and I can only guess, why Stewart, in his otherwise in depth and informative personal song-by-song liner notes to his Storyteller anthology, said of Get Back only “What’s this doin’ ‘ere?’ Well, I for one am glad he included it on the anthology, it’s a good cover, to me akin to his cover of the Stones’ Street Fighting Man, similar to the original but with enough of Rod’s personal stamp to make it effective.

5. Deep Purple, Hey Joe . . . Not a Beatles cover, but it’s along the lines of the psychedelic Vanilla Fudge and Spooky Tooth Beatles covers earlier in the set, Hey Joe as done by the original version of Deep Purple. That version of the group featured Rod Evans on lead vocals and Nick Simper on bass before they were replaced by Ian Gillan (vocals) and Roger Glover (bass) for the fourth album, In Rock, which charted Purple’s course into the hard rock arena. To that point, Purple had been fairly successful, Hush was a hit single for the first version of the band but they were dipping in and out of various styles and seemingly not totally finding themselves. Yet that first version of the band left lots of great music behind including this epic treatment of the song Jimi Hendrix didn’t write but made famous and I leave listeners to research the myriad tales about who exactly wrote the song. The Purple version is mind blowing, if underappreciated or even recognized, given, especially, the interplay between Purple keyboardist Jon Lord and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, including some fine Spanish guitar interludes, many songs in one, essentially.

6. Garland Jeffreys, 96 Tears . . . Last one in my mini covers set within the overall set. And I reserve the right to go contrary to what I’ve previously said about how making a cover version different is the way to go. Sometimes, you can do the song the same way, but differently enough – I’d put Van Halen’s cover of The Kinks’ You Really Got Me in that category – to still make a song your own while paying respectful homage to the original. And that’s what Garland Jeffreys does on his 1981 version of the ? and the Mysterians 1966 No. 1 hit. I think it’s Jeffreys’ aggressive vocal style that does it for me. I remember when this came out on his Escape Artist album, it of course reminded me of the Mysterians hit, prompted me to buy the Jeffreys album, and I discovered a new artist whose work I like.

7. Television, Marquee Moon . . . Infectious, irresistible riff on this title cut to Television’s most acclaimed album, the 1977 debut that didn’t do much on the charts but has long been cited as a major influence on the development of what became known as alternative rock. I like the song. But I didn’t, at first. I remember buying the album because it’s so acclaimed. Somehow I missed it in the late 1970s which is weird because I was major into the ‘new wave’ stuff that was coming out then but I also totally missed The Stranglers while listening to Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson and Graham Parker and I’ve gone back since and I still don’t ‘get’ The Stranglers but anyway one of those time and place things, I suppose, that I missed in their case. Back to Television: so I bought the album at some point, was unimpressed. Took it back, traded it in at a used store. Then, years later, I was in a used store and a song was playing on the store’s sound system and I’m digging it and I hear the words marquee moon in the lyric and I’m like, “I’ve been too hasty, I must have this!” So, I now long since have it. I still haven’t really grasped the rest of the record but for the title cut alone, it’s well worth it.

8. T Bone Burnett, Humans From Earth . . . His production credits are too long to list – Elvis Costello, Elton John, John Mellencamp to name just a few, myriad soundtracks – but Burnett also does his own music, and this cool soundscape groove is from his 1992 solo release The Criminal Under My Own Hat.

9. Steely Dan, Aja . . . Amazing title cut from the band’s 1977 album. Peg and Josie were the well-known and well-deserved hits but Aja incorporates all that Steely Dan was, could be, and where they were heading in an intoxicating brew of jazz rock and however else one might describe it. Sax solo by the great Wayne Shorter, who deferred at first but then agreed to play on the record and of course adds so much.

10. Van Morrison, A Sense Of Wonder . . . Title cut to Van The Man’s 1984 album, a beautiful, spiritual track released as a single but didn’t chart. Veteran artists seem to get to that point; they continue releasing great music, and Van still is but already 40 years ago he had fallen out of commercial favor at least as far as the charts went, but so what? You miss loads of great music if all you pay attention to is top hits, or charts, if they even exist anymore.

11. Led Zeppelin, Black Country Woman . . . Noted for Robert Plant’s ‘nah, leave it” meaning leave in the sound of an airplane flying overhead at the start of the song as Zep is recording outside at Stargroves, an estate in the English countryside owned at the time by Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones. And a great tune it is, from a great album, Physical Graffiti.

12. The Rolling Stones, Brand New Car . . . And here are the Stones, with a cool wah wah guitar groove tune complete with obvious but still fun double entendre lyrics i.e. car equals woman, from 1994’s Voodoo Lounge album. Some critics panned the song but what is a journalism critic, really, one could argue, but a listener with access to a keyboard and a wide platform? It’s a good song, nice groove, nice playing.

13. Nazareth, Back To The Trenches . . . Nazareth had a great run of hard rocking hit making during most of the 1970s then seemed to sort of lose themselves as they attempted or seemed to attempt to diversify their sound into the 1980s and they lost some fans, as a result, after let’s say the Malice In Wonderland album in 1980 with its hit Holiday but even that album was getting perhaps too slick for some fans’ tastes. Yet even amid the creative let’s call it searching, every now and then the band would reach back to its roots and Back To The Trenches, a hard-driving, pulsating complete with biting political lyrics tune from 1982’s 2XS album, fits that bill and could easily have fit on albums like Razamanaz, Loud ‘n’ Proud and Hair Of The Dog. And Nazareth is still around, original lead singer Dan McCafferty retired due to health reasons and later sadly died, but the band has continued with McCafferty-approved singer Carl Sentance, and has fully – even when McCafferty was still around until 2014’s Rock ‘n Roll Telephone album – returned to kick butt rock and roll as evidenced by the two very decent recent albums, Tattooed On My Brain (2018) and Surviving The Law (2022). By this point, to me, longtime bands carrying on with likely not all the original members, where once I might have said, ah, pack it in, now and obviously likely a product of my own aging, I admire them for their perseverence. I mean, it’s what they do. Why stop?

14. The Kinks, To The Bone . . . Fabulous title cut to what turned out to be the last Kinks album, although rumors persist about a possible reunion but as a major Kinks fan, I actually hope not. It’s been too long, 30 years, let it be. What’s the point, at this point? Both Davies brothers, Ray and Dave, continue to sporadically release solo music, not to me up to their Kinks’ standards but I think it’s all fine, their collective legacy is assured. And why not go out with as brilliant a cut as this title track to what otherwise was a live largely unplugged album (that was a big thing, back then, 1994) played in front of a small audience in the band’s Konk Studios. The album featured most of any Kinks hit you could name, it’s a terrific record, well played, and it ends on this high note of a great studio track. A good one to go out on.

15. The Black Crowes, Stare It Cold . . . Stones-ish without apology – the Crowes often cite the Stones as an obvious influence along with Faces and so on – deep cut from the blockbuster debut Crowes’ album, Shake Your Moneymaker in 1990 featuring hits like Jealous Again, the Otis Redding cover Hard To Handle and Twice As Hard.

16. ZZ Top, Sure Got Cold After The Rain Fell . . . Pure, cool, deep blues from early ZZ Top, from the second album, Rio Grande Mud, released in 1972. I thought of this one due to a forecast of rain, where I live, over the next few days.

17. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Gloomy . . . A multi-faceted track, great guitar sounds and yet more obvious proof that hits compilations are a good way, but not the only way, to appreciate a great band but of course they often serve as a fine introduction and some people are satisfied with the comp, others are prompted to dig deeper. CCR is renowned as a great singles band and deservedly so but there is so much depth to their catalog, as this track from their debut album from 1968 proves.

18. Ian Hunter, Standin’ In My Light . . . It’s been on my list of potential plays and I’ve been trying to get this song in for the last several weeks since returning, as of March 4, from my 9-month hiatus but somehow or other I haven’t made the space or time for it. So, finally, here it is. From Hunter’s great 1979 album You’re Never Alone With A Schizophrenic.

19. The Byrds, Lover Of The Bayou (studio version) . . . I say ‘studio version’ in parentheses because in most cases, including compilations, one will find Lover Of The Bayou in its live three minutes and change version as originally appeared on the half live, half studio album Untitled, in 1970. And the live version as a result has likely become the most well known but while I like both, I tend to prefer the studio version perhaps because it’s almost two minutes longer, hence I’m able to enjoy that infectious riff for longer. The studio version, recorded in 1970 as the band was working on the album, didn’t see physical release, to my knowledge and research, until the 2000 expanded re-release of the original album.

20. Jeff Beck, Blues De Luxe . . . From the Truth album, the 1968 album that set the template for so much that came after (Led Zeppelin, for instance). It featured of course Jeff Beck on guitar, Rod Stewart on lead vocals, Ronnie Wood on bass and Micky Waller on drums but session player to the stars Nicky Hopkins arguably steals the show on piano, on this track.

21. Tommy Bolin, Post Toastee . . . In some ways, the brilliant guitarist Bolin was forever the ‘replacement’ guitarist and even though he brought immense talent and songwriting ability to the bands he joined, like the James Gang (replacing Joe Walsh) and Deep Purple (replacing Ritchie Blackmore) that’s how he was often perceived despite his prodigious talent. He was an amazing artist, with demons, drug addiction, that eventually did him in far too soon but what a legacy. Not only with the aforementioned bands but with jazz drummer Billy Cobham on his Spectrum album (Bolin’s gateway into Deep Purple after David Coverdale heard his playing on the record) and Bolin’s earlier band Zephyr. Bolin wound up doing just two solo studio albums, Teaser and Private Eyes from which I pulled this track and I just had to play it (again, I’ve played it before and don’t like repeating but . . . inevitable . . . ) because while looking it up, in one post on YouTube I saw a comment from a former exotic dancer who said that she always played Post Toastee as part of her act, and always got her best tips when she danced to the song. I can visualize it, dancing to the song’s groove. So, 🙂 here you go. I’ll never think of the song in the same way again.

1. Pink Floyd, Eclipse
2. Eric Burdon & War, Sun/Moon
3. Genesis, Watcher Of The Skies
4. Triumph, Blinding Light Show/Moonchild
5. Deep Purple, Shield
6. The Monkees, Daily Nightly
7. Fleetwood Mac, Hypnotized
8. David Lee Roth, Ladies Night In Buffalo?
9. The Rolling Stones, Dance, (Pt. 1) (from Live At The Wiltern)
10. Rory Gallagher, Keep A Knockin’ (Little Richard cover, from All Around Man, Live in London)
11. Pete Townshend, Gonna Get Ya
12. AC/DC, Nick Of Time
13. George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Killer’s Bluze
14. Rare Earth, What’d I Say (Ray Charles cover), from Rare Earth In Concert
15. Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, Don’t Pull Me Over
16. Slim Harpo, Shake Your Hips
17. Sea Level, Nothing Matters But The Fever
18. Eagles, Long Road Out Of Eden

My track-by-track tales, including Buddy Guy’s Feels Like Rain, Concrete Blonde’s Walking In London and Commander Cody’s Lost In The Ozone, which were on my initial list but had to drop for time reasons. Such is live radio. 🙂 Song clips for those songs, and the entire set, are available on my Facebook page, Bald Boy.

1. Pink Floyd, Eclipse . . . I don’t typically like doing the obvious, but what the heck. So we begin, with the first few songs tied, in title at least, to today’s celestial event.

2. Eric Burdon & War, Sun/Moon . . . Ten minute slow-burning funk/psychedelic piece from the second and final album, The Black Man’s Burdon, 1970, by the collaboration between Burdon, of Animals fame, and War.

3. Genesis, Watcher Of The Skies . . . The opening cut on Foxtrot, released in September of 1972. Second time in a few days I’ve mined that album; I played Get ‘Em Out By Friday for last Saturday’s show.

4. Triumph, Blinding Light Show/Moonchild . . . Near nine-minute epic from the Canadian band’s self-titled 1976 debut album, re-released on CD in 1995 with a new title, In The Beginning, and new cover art.

5. Deep Purple, Shield . . . From the first version of Deep Purple, a more psychedelic phase of the band with Rod Evans on lead vocals and Nick Simper on bass before things changed to the harder rock direction with the switch to Ian Gillan as lead singer and Roger Glover on bass for what became the most celebrated version of Purple, the so-called Mark II version of Gillan, Glover, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, keyboardist Jon Lord and drummer Ian Paice. Mark II had many great moments and albums, of course, and likely remain to many the default position for Deep Purple but there are many quality moments in the myriad other versions of the band, and Shield is one of them.

6. The Monkees, Daily Nightly . . . The eclipse turns day into night, at least briefly, prompting my selection of this Monkees song, a spooky offering written by Mike Nesmith. It appeared on the group’s fourth album, PIsces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Ltd. Apparently, the first rock recording to feature a Moog synthesizer.

7. Fleetwood Mac, Hypnotized . . . Another from the perhaps underappreciated Bob Welch on guitar period of Fleetwood Mac, in the middle between the early Peter Green foundational blues band days and the later Stevie Nicks-Lindsey Buckingham commercial monster sales phase. This one’s from the 1973 album Mystery To Me.

8. David Lee Roth, Ladies Night In Buffalo? . . . From Eat ‘Em and Smile, the first full solo album by Roth after the breakup of the original version of Van Halen, which became the so-called Van Hagar with Sammy Hagar taking over on lead vocals. After a strong start with this album, Roth quickly went downhill commercially. This nice groove tune wasn’t even a single, Yankee Rose from the album was. Easily my favorite Roth solo song, though, and apparently he thought well of it, enough to put it on a later compilation album.

9. The Rolling Stones, Dance (Pt. 1) (from Live At The Wiltern) . . . Extended, even funkier version of the opening track to 1980’s Emotional Rescue album. There is a part 2 to the song, called If I Was A Dancer (Dance Pt. 2) which appeared on the 1981 compilation album Sucking In The Seventies. I’ve played it before on the show, coupling it with part 2 and will get back to it at some point. As for this version of part 1, it’s from the recently released live album of a Los Angeles theatre show, from the 2002-03 Licks world tour. The Stones were touring after releasing their 40th anniversary career (to that point) spanning 40 Licks compilation, which seems and is ages ago now that they are beyond 60 years in the business. It was a tour where the Stones played stadiums, usually focusing on the greatest hits, arenas, going a bit deeper into the catalog and, in some cities, small theatres where they dug even deeper into their album cuts. I saw the stadium and arena shows in Toronto. They didn’t do a theatre show in Toronto as an official part of the tour although they did do a warmup gig at the Palais Royale dance hall. I have it on a bootleg DVD and CD and it’s great, particularly for fans of Stones’ deep cuts as it featured rarely if ever played live songs like Torn and Frayed, Hot Stuff and Heart of Stone, plus some live rehearsal footage.

10. Rory Gallagher, Keep A Knockin’ (from All Around Man, Live in London) . . . Quite the rave-up on short, sweet, two-minutes 15 seconds that’s all you need Little Richard cover from another recent live release, taken from a 1990 show, from the archives of the late great Irish guitarist/songwriter/bandleader. A fellow by the name of Geraint Watkins – who has played with the likes of Paul McCartney, Van Morrison, Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds and Status Quo – does a nice impression of Jerry Lee Lewis on piano on the track, and throughout the album. Or, perhaps I should just say, Geraint Watkins is a great piano/keyboard player, although the boogie woogie on this track reminded me of Jerry Lee.

11. Pete Townshend, Gonna Get Ya . . . From 1980’s Empty Glass, likely if not certainly Townshend’s best solo album, in fact some music critics termed it a Who album that never was. Who singer Roger Daltrey said he felt let down by Townshend, believing many of the songs would have worked as Who songs.

12. AC/DC, Nick Of Time . . . Inspiration comes from anywhere. I was at the grocery store the other day and just as the cashier was finishing ringing in my purchases and about to put down the ‘another cashier will be pleased (I always wonder about that, are they really pleased?) to serve you’ thing, another customer comes up behind me and says, ‘whew, just in the nick of time.” So here you go, this track, complete with some perhaps uncharacteristic, at least for AC/DC, tempo changes, from 1988’s Blow Up Your Video album.

13. George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Killer’s Bluze . . . I just realized this now, as I type this, but playing AC/DC and then Thorogood is maybe interesting happenstance given that both artists have made careers of essentially doing the same thing over and over, yet in such a way that it’s never boring (to me, anyway) and always actually inventive in various ways. All of which of course is a talent in itself; otherwise they wouldn’t have careers. Plus, I like how ‘bluze’ is spelled on this hard, heavy, slow burner. It’s from Thorogood’s 1993 album Haircut.

14. Rare Earth, What’d I Say (Ray Charles cover), from Rare Earth In Concert . . . A reinvention of the Ray Charles tune, from the album an old friend of mine calls ‘the backpack album’ because, well, a backpack is on the cover.

15. Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, Don’t Pull Me Over . . . Speaking of friends . . . buddy of mine was talking about Petty’s Mojo album the other day. So I threw darts and one landed on this reggae-ish tune featuring some fine wah wah guitar from Mike Campbell, from that 2010 album.

16. Slim Harpo, Shake Your Hips . . . The great thing about music is how you grow up liking a band, then you dig into their influences and who they like and whole new avenues open up. So, I give you this hypnotic track the Stones covered to great effect on 1972’s Exile On Main St. album.

17. Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, Lost In The Ozone . . . Country/rockabilly title cut to the band’s 1971 album. The album also featured perhaps Commander Cody’s best-known to mainstream audiences song, the cover of American singer-songwriter Charlie Ryan’s Hot Rod Lincoln, first released in 1955.

18. Sea Level, Nothing Matters But The Fever . . . Probably my favorite from Sea Level, a funky, blues-based offshoot project of various Allman Brothers Band members between 1976 and 1981 led by the Allmans’ then-piano player Chuck Leavell, hence the group’s name, a pun on C. Leavell. Leavell, whose discography is extensive both as a bandleader and session player, is perhaps best known these days as a longtime touring player with The Rolling Stones. He’s also played on every Stones studio album, except 1997’s Bridges To Babylon and 2023’s Hackney Diamonds, since 1983’s Undercover.

19. Concrete Blonde, Walking In London . . . Title cut from the Los Angeles band’s 1992 album, fueled as always by lead singer Johnette Napolitano’s powerful vocals. Concrete Blonde, defunct now, is best known for the 1990 album Bloodletting and its hit single Joey.

20. Buddy Guy, Feels Like Rain . . . I played John Hiatt’s Perfectly Good Guitar recently and got to talking about how so many artists have covered his tunes including Bonnie Raitt with the hit Thing Called Love and George Thorogood with The Usual. Here’s another example, the title song from Guy’s 1993 album. It was on Hiatt’s 1988 album Slow Turning. Hiatt wasn’t involved with the Guy album, but lots of other music luminaries were including Bonnie Raitt, who played slide guitar and sang on Feels Like Rain, Paul Rodgers, John Mayall, pianist Ian McLagan of Faces and session fame, and Little Feat drummer Richie Hayward and pianist Bill Payne.

21. Eagles, Long Road Out Of Eden . . . Ten-minute title track from the band’s 2007 album which was their first full studio effort since The Long Run in 1979. Few people likely expected a new album at that time, and the band, while continuing to tour even after the death of founder member Glenn Frey in 2016, hasn’t released a new studio album since and almost certainly won’t, Don Henley said at the time of Long Road Out Of Eden’s release, thoughts echoed a few years later by band members Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit.

So Old It’s new prog rock set for Saturday. My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. Pink Floyd, Welcome To The Machine
2. Genesis, Get ‘Em Out By Friday
3. King Crimson, Fallen Angel
4. Yes, Starship Trooper
5. Rush, Cygnus X-1
6. Can, Mother Sky
7. Hawkwind, Space Is Deep
8. The Moody Blues, Veteran Cosmic Rocker
9. Saga, Careful Where You Step
10. Jethro Tull, Black Satin Dancer
11. Soft Machine, Hope For Happiness
12. Supertramp, Another Man’s Woman
13. Kansas, The Pinnacle
14. Electric Light Orchestra, Dreaming Of 4000
15. Gentle Giant, Schooldays
16. Camel, A Song Within A Song
17. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, The Endless Enigma Part One/Fugue/The Endless Enigma Part Two

My track-by-track tales:

1. Pink Floyd, Welcome To The Machine . . . From the Wish You Were Here album, 1975. Spooky, dark, machine-like indeed. Lyrics as relevant today – probably even more so – than they were then. I’ve been in a bit of a Floyd phase, put together a suite of their mostly instrumental songs for my show last Saturday – The Great Gig In The Sky/Marooned/On The Run/Cluster One/Terminal Frost/Signs Of Life – and plan to open Monday’s show with a song to do, at least somewhat, with something happening in the sky that day. You’ll see, if you can’t figure it out already but I’m sure most Pink Floyd fans have.

2. Genesis, Get ‘Em Out By Friday . . . A song about what’s now called rent-eviction. From 1972’s Foxtrot album, perhaps best known for the 23-minute epic Supper’s Ready.

3. King Crimson, Fallen Angel . . . A multi-layered track, but then most Crimson songs are, from the 1974 album Red. Brooding, then soft, then hard and heavy, including the drumming of Bill Bruford on the first of two straight songs, with two different bands, featuring Bruford, which also allows me to sneak in a little tale about Geddy Lee reacting to an uninformed interviewer in a documentary I saw some years back on Rush. But let’s wait until I get to the Rush song.

4. Yes, Starship Trooper . . . Bruford again, preceding the time he spent in King Crimson, this time with Yes-mates Jon Anderson (vocals), Chris Squire (bass), Steve Howe (guitars) and at the time of this recording, before Rick Wakeman joined the band for Fragile, Tony Kay (organ/Moog synthesizer). Bruford was with Yes for the band’s first five albums – Yes, Time and a Word, The Yes Album from which I pulled this amazing piece of music, Fragile and Close To The Edge, later returning for Union, in terms of studio work, in 1991. Starship Trooper is, as one reviewer termed it, an astonishing composition/production in three distinct parts featuring myriad tempo changes – Life Seeker, Disillusion and Wurm – displaying all the band could throw at you from its instrumental and vocal arsenal. The essence of prog, in short.

5. Rush, Cygnus X-1 . . . Love this one, especially the spooky start, but all of it, from A Farewell To Kings, 1977, the first Rush album I bought with my own money, age 18. I had known their short, straight-ahead singles like In The Mood from their debut album and Fly By Night and bought A Farewell To Kings for another such song, Closer To The Heart and in doing so was introduced to Rush’s progressive rock side via extended pieces like Cygnus X-1 and Xanadu. It’s likely still my favorite Rush album, and not simply for nostalgic reasons. As for the Bill Bruford-Geddy Lee tale I promised: Rush often cited Yes as an influence and if memory serves, I think it was on the excellent documentary Beyond The Lighted Stage, might have been another one, Lee is interviewed backstage by an obviously less than prepared journalist and Lee mentions Yes and Bill Bruford but it’s clear the interviewer doesn’t have a clue about either Yes or Bruford and while Lee is too polite and too nice a guy to say anything, as he patiently proceeds telling his tale, the look of irritation on his face is priceless.

6. Can, Mother Sky . . . Propulsive track from the Krautrock band, originally on their 1970 release of songs they did for films, called Soundtracks. It’s 14-plus minutes long there but while I like that version, I decided to play the edited down, more concise offering that appeared on the 1994 compilation Anthology that got me into the band. I’d always known of them but decided to take the plunge via that compilation, was hooked and very quickly acquired the entire studio catalog.

7. Hawkwind, Space Is Deep . . . Another of those songs in this set that perhaps presages things I’m doing for my upcoming Monday show, to do with space and the sky and such, obviously influenced by a celestial event that is happening on April 8 and I’ll have a few more songs in that vein, title-wise anyway, on Monday. This is from Motorhead founder (after he left Hawkwind) Lemmy’s first studio foray with space rockers Hawkwind, the cleverly – or eye rolling, depending on one’s point of view – titled Doremi Fasol Latido album, released in late 1972.

8. The Moody Blues, Veteran Cosmic Rocker . . . From 1981’s Long Distance Voyager album, likely my favorite full piece of work by the band, probably because music is so often one of those time and place things in terms of what was going on in your life, what the music of the day was, etc. And for me, it was a fun spring and summer, immediately post-college graduation, spent in the San Francisco area of California where my dad had taken a new job. Long Distance Voyager was all over the radio, along with Kim Carnes’ Bette Davis Eyes and Burnin’ For You from Blue Oyster Cult’s Fire Of Unknown Origin album. I wound up buying Long Distance Voyager and Fire Of Unknown Origin, and just enjoying the Carnes song, great tune, great voice, which of course now I can call up any time I wish to hear it.

9. Saga, Careful Where You Step . . . Not a huge Saga fan, even if they are from my hometown of Oakville, Ontario, but I do like their early stuff and this is from the 1980 album Silent Knight, which featured the song Don’t Be Late and got me into the band for a time, following them through such hits or at least well-known tracks like On The Loose, Wind Him Up, The Flyer and Scratching The Surface. In one of those interesting things that happen in music where bands can be huge in a certain place beyond their appeal anywhere else (see Cheap Trick and Japan, just one example; what broke Cheap Trick big was the live at Budokan album), Saga is/was huge in Germany.

10. Jethro Tull, Black Satin Dancer . . . From the Minstrel In The Gallery album, 1975. It’s a record that, over time, and I’m a huge Tull fan, has cemented itself as one of my alltime favorites in the extensive catalog. Obviously, one could say this about so many Tull tracks but we’re talking deeper cuts here and this song is the essence of Tull, encapsulating what the band has been about: tempo changes, flute, acoustic, hard rock, guitar solos, stop, start, back and forth, including sometimes interesting vocals or, rather, mouthing effects. Just listen and you’ll know what I mean. Ridiculously good.

11. Soft Machine, Hope For Happiness . . . From the debut album, 1968, simply titled The Soft Machine, from back before myriad lineup changes to the point where no original members remained, and changes in direction to where Soft Machine eventually – and rather quickly, by the fourth album in 1971 – became an instrumentals-only jazz/jazz fusion/jazz rock band. Quirky, always interesting, ever-changing, worth checking out.

12. Supertramp, Another Man’s Woman . . . Another band I credit my dear departed older brother by eight years for introducing me to when he brought back their first album of any real consequence, Crime Of The Century, in 1974. This is from the followup, 1975’s Crisis, What Crisis? At the time, the band members weren’t happy with the album as they felt it was rushed due to record company pressure to strike while the iron was hot so to speak and issue a followup to Crime Of The Century. Yet Roger Hodgson later termed it his favorite Supertramp record. I like it, can’t really decide between for me the band’s best works – Crime Of The Century, Crisis and Even In The Quietest Moments with a nod to the first post-Hodgson album, 1985’s Brother Where You Bound. No Breakfast In America? No, not really, for me. I saw the tour in Toronto and it was fantastic but as for the album? It’s OK. Lots of hits but way overplayed and far too commercial and pandering to the US audience for me. I mean the songs are infectious ear candy, but no real depth, certainly not as compared to previous records. It worked, commercially, finally broke them in the USA, but it didn’t last long.

13. Kansas, The Pinnacle . . . There are fans of music who may only know Kansas by their two big commercial hits – Carry On Wayward Son and Dust In The Wind – and that’s all well and good. But, unless they bought the actual albums on which those songs appeared – like Leftoverture with the extended piece Magnum Opus or Point Of Know Return with Hopelessly Human and Closet Chronicles – they might not think of Kansas as a progressive rock band producer of multifaceted epics like this. From the Masque album, 1975, which preceded the aforementioned Leftoverture and Point Of Know Return in 1976 and 1977, respectively. For a moment in time, Kansas popped into the commercial rock singles consciousness but like the tide, receded pretty much permanently – and good for it – into the full-blown progressive rock ocean represented by songs like this one.

14. Electric Light Orchestra, Dreaming Of 4000 . . . That heavy guitar riff kicks in at the 12-second mark and you’re thinking hard rock/metal but no, that’s not what prog is about, of course. Suddenly we’ve slowed down, then speeded up, then later on that hard rock guitar riff returns. Etc. Early ELO, from 1973’s On The Third Day. The commercial hits from the album, and great ones they were, were Showdown and Ma-Ma-Ma Belle but that’s why you do full albums, you draw ’em in with the singles so you can expose ’em to killer stuff like Dreaming Of 4000, to be maybe used, sometime down the road, by a DJ doing a deep cuts show.

15. Gentle Giant, Schooldays . . . Such amazing sounds on this one from the British prog, er, giants. You just sort of let yourself be embraced by the sounds, the vocals, all of it. From the 1972 album Three Friends, a concept piece about three childhood friends and their subsequent lives.

16. Camel, A Song Within A Song . . . As the title suggests, truly a song, or songs, within a song. At risk of repeating myself, like so many progressive rock songs, the tempo changes are the appeal, at a given moment things can move in a different direction within the same overall piece, which is the obvious attraction for avid consumers of this form of music. From the English band’s 1976 release Moonmadness. Perhaps a subtle nod on my part, again, to something involving the moon that will happen on Monday, April 8.

17. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, The Endless Enigma Part One/Fugue/The Endless Enigma Part Two . . . The three-part suite that opens ELP’s third album, Trilogy. As I told a friend, my default position on music I mostly listen to is Rolling Stones-ish raunch and roll but I do have a lot of prog and when I listen to it, or play it for the show, it reinforces in me the thought that, while critics of it often suggest it is or can be boring, pretentious stuff, it’s actually brilliant stuff. And it rocks, a lot of the time. Thanks for listening.

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

1. Elvis Costello, Welcome To The Working Week
2. Chicago, Sing A Mean Tune Kid
3. The Clash, The Guns Of Brixton
4. The J. Geils Band, Chimes (live, from Blow Your Face Out)
5. Frank Sinatra, Bad, Bad Leroy Brown
6. Bob Dylan, Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You
7. Robert Palmer, What Do You Care
8. Johnny Cash, (There’ll Be) Peace In The Valley (live, from Johnny Cash at San Quentin)
9. Black Sabbath, Country Girl
10. Emmylou Harris, Two More Bottles Of Wine
11. Mick Jagger, Party Doll
12. Junkhouse, Drink
13. Foreigner, Love Has Taken Its Toll
14. Tim Curry, No Love On The Street
15. Bruce Cockburn, The Rose Above The Sky
16. Molly Hatchet, Fall Of The Peacemakers
17. Patti Smith Group, Space Monkey
18. Grateful Dead, New Speedway Boogie
19. UFO, Rock Bottom
20. Savoy Brown, Leavin’ Again

My track-by-track tales:

1. Elvis Costello, Welcome To The Working Week . . . The only thing wrong with this opening rocker to Costello’s first studio album, My Aim Is True, is that it’s too short. But at one minute, 22 seconds, that’s what makes it so effective; leaves you wanting more. It was the B-side to the Alison single which, remarkably, though it’s come to be one of Costello’s best-known songs, didn’t chart, even on his home turf of the UK. Linda Ronstadt’s beautiful cover version of Alison – how could it not be beautiful, given Ronstadt’s amazing voice now sadly silenced due to a form of Parkinson’s – however, did make No. 30 in the US and No. 66 in the UK. Costello apparently was derisive towards Ronstadt’s version, but was quoted as saying “I didn’t mind spending the money that she earned me (in royalties).”

2. Chicago, Sing A Mean Tune Kid . . . Thank you to my older brother and sister for joining the Columbia Record Club for a time in 1970 and ’71, which helped introduce me to bands who were on that label at the time – Santana, Blood Sweat & Tears and the early, and best, inventive, jazz rock fusion version of Chicago. All of the Terry Kath-era albums are very good, lots of great songs and singles throughout but as whole pieces of creativity, the first three albums, to me, are sublime. This extended track, part song, part band jam, part Kath guitar showcase, is the lead cut on Chicago III, from 1971.

3. The Clash, The Guns Of Brixton . . . Speaking of mean tunes, from London Calling, one of my favorite Clash songs. It was written and sung by bass player Paul Simonon in something of a departure for the band, most of whose material was written and sung by Joe Strummer or Mick Jones. London Calling, a more mainstream offering than previous Clash material, was the album, released in 1979, that broke them big and for a time, into the early 1980s, for me they may truly have lived up to their billing as ‘the only band that matters” and were a group that rivalled my all-time favorites The Rolling Stones as a go-to listen.

“When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun?”

The opening verse is compelling and does what good art does, it prompts you to research and learn about that which prompted the song, which described the tensions that existed in Brixton and led to the 1981 riot but more so, the tune is inspired by the 1972 movie The Harder They Come, starring Jamaican reggae artist Jimmy Cliff.

4. The J. Geils Band, Chimes (live, from Blow Your Face Out) . . . I love the J. Geils Band, especially their pre-overtly commercial stuff like the Freeze Frame album, and especially live. And how can you not love – or want to investigate – an album called Blow Your Face Out ? Which they always did, live. Even on slower material like this or, for another example, their cover of John Lee Hooker’s Serves You Right To Suffer on Geils’ first live album, Full House. Chimes was originally a five-minute track on their 1973 studio release Ladies Invited, and a good version that is, but something magic happened when J. Geils Band went live in concert, evidenced by the 9-minute version on Blow Your Face Out.

5. Frank Sinatra, Bad, Bad Leroy Brown . . . Yeah, I know. Frank Sinatra? Talk about out of left field, perhaps, but I like and embrace all kinds of music, a good song is a good song is a good song, besides which yeah, I sometimes do go out on a limb and there’s some method to this apparent madness. Blame a buddy of mine, or me and him, together. I was talking to him about how I do like throwing the occasional curveball, I’ve done it forever on the show with perhaps jarring genre changes from one song to another, so I said something like I may even play Frank Sinatra sometime, as I continue becoming my dear departed dad, in my own aging time, I think. So be it. So, here you go, with Sinatra’s cover of the Jim Croce hit. It’s not going to replace Croce’s original for me, but not a bad job, Ol’ Blue Eyes. It appeared on Sinatra’s 1974 comeback from a brief retirement (1971-73) album, Some Nice Things I’ve Missed. And we miss Jim Croce (RIP), taken from us at the height of his popularity in a plane crash while on tour in 1973, age 30.

6. Bob Dylan, Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You . . . A single that wasn’t a big hit, made No. 50 and you don’t arguably hear it very much compared to other Dylan tunes, but a jaunty sort of jingle that is one of my favorites of his but of course, being a big Dylan fan, there are countless favorites. It’s from his country rock album, Nashville Skyline, released in 1969 and featuring Johnny Cash, although not on this song, among the musicians. Speaking of Johnny Cash, wait . . .

7. Robert Palmer, What Do You Care . . . Palmer, who sadly died of a heart attack in 2003, age 54, became massively commercially successful with mid- to late 1980s hits like Addicted To Love, Simply Irresistible, I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On, good songs all, and his work with members of Duran Duran as the band The Power Station including hit singles Some Like It Hot and the T. Rex cover (Get It On) Bang A Gong. But I prefer his earlier stuff, songs like Sneakin’ Sally Through The Alley and then the two front to back solid albums that made me a fan during my college days, Secrets and Clues, the latter of which I mined for What Do You Care.

8. Johnny Cash, (There’ll Be) Peace In The Valley (live, from Johnny Cash at San Quentin) . . . The wait is over, from the earlier Dylan tune. Here’s Cash, from an album my dad owned and played incessantly and I’m glad he did, Johnny Cash at San Quentin, with a stirring rendition of this spiritual tune.

9. Black Sabbath, Country Girl . . . Speaking of perhaps jarring genre changes, here’s the Ronnie James Dio version of Black Sabbath, from the Mob Rules album. Not only is it a great, melodic tune as so much hard rock actually is, but it serves to set up . . . a country girl.

10. Emmylou Harris, Two More Bottles Of Wine . . . And here she is, country girl Emmylou with a Delbert McClinton-penned tune she took to No. 1 on the country charts in 1978. But you don’t play hits, Bald Boy, it’s a deep cuts show. Or supposed to be. True. But it’s my show, my rules, and as often stated I do play the occasional single that didn’t do well, or a single released by an obscure band that typically doesn’t do well . . . or a country tune my mostly rock audience may not have heard. And, hey, she collaborated with Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame on the excellent 2006 album All The Roadrunning from which I’ve played songs in the past so, she’s more than worthy, a great artist. And I appreciate her sentiments, or those of McClinton’s lyrics, good to have booze in reserve, especially on long weekends like Easter, when so many things are closed.

11. Mick Jagger, Party Doll . . . From his second solo album, Primitive Cool, released in 1987. This, to me, is the type of country-ish ballad Jagger does best as evidenced by similar tunes Evening Gown and Hang On To Me Tonight on his 1993 and arguably best solo release Wandering Spirit.

12. Junkhouse, Drink . . . I’ve stated it many times, I like anything Tom Wilson is involved in whether it be as leader of Junkhouse where he first came to prominence, soon branching out to solo work and his involvement with Blackie and The Rodeo Kings and as main person in Lee Harvey Osmond. Wilson kicked booze, sober to this day as far as I know but he wrote about it a lot during his drinking days; this from the 1995 Junkhouse album Birthday Boy.

13. Foreigner, Love Has Taken Its Toll . . . Foreigner is one of those bands where, usually, a compilation of hits will suffice and we all likely know Foreigner’s hits well. But sometimes, you have to own or at least know about an album to get a great deep cut, like this one from the Double Vision album. I bought the album on release in 1978 for the title cut single as well as another single, Hot Blooded, only to discover what might be my favorite Foreigner song.

14. Tim Curry, No Love On The Street . . . From the multi-talented Curry, perhaps best known as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture show movie, which I got into in a big way in college. Curry was also the hilarious butler in the movie Clue. So, anyway, when I was browsing the old Sam The Record Man main store in Toronto back then, and they were playing Curry’s just-released 1979 album Fearless, it was an impulse buy I’ve never regretted because it caused me to discover his full discography selected songs of which, including this one and Sloe Gin, have been covered by American blues rocker Joe Bonamassa. But, sorry Joe, love your playing but you don’t have the vocal chops to match Curry’s passion. I’ve played Curry’s Sloe Gin before and will do so again. A great talent, Curry, sadly reduced since a 2012 stroke but still performing.

15. Bruce Cockburn, The Rose Above The Sky . . . Beautiful stuff from his 1980 album Humans. In a 1981 interview about the album, Cockburn touched on what had been a difficult time for him, including a separation from his wife which influenced several songs on the album, like What About The Bond, but cited The Rose Above The Sky as “about moving from downness into something that opens up, although what that something is is not really spelled out.”

16. Molly Hatchet, Fall Of The Peacemakers . . . Every so-called southern rock band seems to have a classic epic track. For Lynyrd Skynyrd, it’s of course Freebird. The Outlaws have Green Grass and High Tides and for Molly Hatchet, it’s this one.

17. Patti Smith Group, Space Monkey . . . From Easter, the 1978 album I got into via a bar band in the pub I worked in during college days playing Easter’s hit single, Because The Night, co-written by Bruce Springsteen.

18. Grateful Dead, New Speedway Boogie . . . A bluesy shuffle from Workingman’s Dead, from 1970.

19. UFO, Rock Bottom . . . Guitar showcase for Michael Schenker on his first outing with UFO, the 1974 album Phenomenom, which could be a reference to his guitar playing.

20. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Superstition (Stevie Wonder cover, from Live Alive) . . . Funky, bluesy, still will always prefer the original classic but SRV puts his own cool stamp on it.

21. The Who, How Many Friends . . . One of my favorite songs from one of my favorite Who albums, The Who By Numbers. It was somewhat dismissed by music critics because it’s not Tommy, Who’s Next or Quadrophenia but cut for cut I think it’s great, probably because I was age 16 in 1975 when it came out, coming of age so to speak in high school, and that’s when so many things truly resonate or we look back on fondly. It was the first Who non-compilation studio album I bought with my own money (for the single, Squeeze Box, which quickly took a back seat to the rest of the record) and to this day it remains a favorite of mine.

22. Savoy Brown, Leavin’ Again . . . Extended blues rock from the 1970 album Looking In. I finally saw Savoy Brown, by then billed as (leader/guitarist and lone constant member) Kim Simmonds (RIP as of 2022) and Savoy Brown, at the Kitchener Blues Festival in 2013. Great show.

An all-instrumentals show, including a Pink Floyd song suite I put together, cheating a bit with Clare Torry’s improvised ‘wordless vocals’ on The Great Gig In The Sky, drawing from various of their albums. My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. The Allman Brothers Band, Instrumental Illness
2. The Alan Parsons Project, Lucifer
3. The Alan Parsons Project, In The Lap Of The Gods
4. Pink Floyd, The Great Gig In The Sky/Marooned/On The Run/Cluster One/Terminal Frost/Signs Of Life
5. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Hoedown
6. Jeff Beck, Beck’s Bolero
7. The Butterfield Blues Band, East West
8. Eagles, Journey Of The Sorcerer
9. Santana, Soul Sacrifice (live at Fillmore West, 1968)
10. Deep Purple, Son Of Alerik
11. Joe Jackson, Zemeo
12. Genesis, Los Endos

My track-by-track tales:

1. The Allman Brothers Band, Instrumental Illness . . . Twelve-minute track from the final studio album by the band, Hittin’ The Note, released in 2003, serves as the title cut for my all-instrumental song show. Interesting, maybe, for me it is, how the set lists can develop. I enjoy the process of putting things together, developing a flow, throwing the occasional deliberate curveball with a genre change from one song to another, etc. Not to overanalyze it but it’s revealing perhaps in terms of how our brains work, how one thought leads to another, and in this case, the decision to do an all-instrumentals show came from searching for Gram Parsons and Flying Burrito Brothers songs in our radio station’s computer system. Searching his name also brought up The Alan Parsons Project, so I listened to that group’s instrumental In The Lap Of The Gods and that was my eureka moment for this week. Out went Gram Parsons, for this show at least, in came instrumentals, and who better to start with than a band, the Allmans, well known for them. It’s a long list that includes In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed, Pegasus, Mountain Jam to name just a few. And, I’m throwing in a couple from The Alan Parsons Project, too.

2. The Alan Parsons Project, Lucifer . . . A hit in Europe, from the 1979 album Eve. I think most people might recognize the groove, soon enough you’re thinking ‘I know that tune”. The song has been used as the theme music to a German political affairs magazine show, Monitor. Damned If I Do was the hit from Eve in North America (No. 16 in Canada, No. 27 in the US).

3. The Alan Parsons Project, In The Lap Of The Gods . . . And here’s the random song that inspired the set, via the Gram Parsons search. It’s from Pyramid, the 1978 album that preceded Eve.

4. Pink Floyd, The Great Gig In The Sky/Marooned/On The Run/Cluster One/Terminal Frost/Signs Of Life . . . I’m cheating with The Great Gig In The Sky as the lead cut in a nearly half hour suite of Pink Floyd instrumentals I’ve put together, given the spoken word parts and, more so, session singer Clare Torry’s stunning, improvised ‘wordless vocals’ on the track from The Dark Side Of The Moon. Interestingly enough, it’s an album on which Alan Parsons served as a studio engineer and suggested Torry, who he had worked with before, as someone who could add something to keyboard player Richard Wright’s composition. The band had no lyrics for the tune, asked Torry if she could improvise something, and the rest is history. She was originally credited as the vocalist, but later sued and received an undisclosed settlement and a songwriting credit. Marooned, Cluster One (both from The Division Bell album), Terminal Frost and Signs Of Life (from A Momentary Lapse Of Reason) are from the post-Roger Waters, David Gilmour-led version of Pink Floyd while On The Run is also from The Dark Side Of The Moon.

5. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Hoedown . . . An arrangment of a composition by Aaron Copland, who did the music for the ballet Rodeo, which premiered in 1942 and on which his version, titled Hoe-Down, appeared. ELP released their interpretation, with Copland’s permission and credit to him, on their 1972 album Trilogy.

6. Jeff Beck, Beck’s Bolero . . . Writing space, even though it’s unlimited on the web 🙂 does not permit all the insights and intrigue about this track which finally appeared on album on Beck’s seminal 1968 release Truth. But the truth about the track itself is rather murky and has taken many twists and turns over the years. Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame wrote it, or Jeff Beck might have, or they both did, and either Page, Beck or other people produced it. Gee, Jimmy Page involved in disputes or at least questions about credits? Nah, can’t be. See Led Zeppelin and plagiarism. Oh, also, drummer Keith Moon of The Who, credited as “You Know Who” played on it, so did noted session pianist Nicky Hopkins and future Zeppelin bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones and for a while some combination of those guys might have become the first lineup of Led Zeppelin. And Who bassist John Entwistle was also hanging around the studio at the time. Worth reading up on. As for the song itself, you know it, you love it, you’ll know you know it when you hear it.

7. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, East West . . . Another piece that books, or at least long essays, have been written about. It was apparently inspired by an LSD trip taken by guitarist Mike Bloomfield and incorporates elements of jazz, what’s now called ‘world’ music and psychedelic acid rock. It’s the title cut of the second Butterfield band album, released in 1966. It truly is quite the trip.

8. Eagles, Journey Of The Sorcerer . . . The long and winding road that is the root of this instrumental show brings us back, sort of, to Gram Parsons and The Flying Burrito Brothers. That’s because Bernie Leadon, who had been in the Burritos along with Parsons before joining the Eagles, wrote this piece that appeared on the One Of These Nights album, after which Leadon left the band, being replaced by Joe Walsh of solo and James Gang fame. Leadon did return to tour with the Eagles from 2013-15.

9. Santana, Soul Sacrifice (live at Fillmore West, 1968) . . . Not the famous 1969 Woodstock performance that made Santana stars but a 14-plus minute version from an earlier gig, recorded in December of 1968 on the band’s home turf of San Francisco, eight months before the first studio album was released. The performance finally saw physical copy release in 1997 on the Live At The Fillmore 1968 album.

10. Deep Purple, Son Of Alerik . . . Bluesy 10-minute guitar showcase for Ritchie Blackmore with tasteful input from keyboardist Jon Lord, apparently about a Visigoth king, more commonly spelled Alaric. It’s from the Perfect Strangers album in 1984, the first reunion record released by the celebrated so-called Mark II version of Purple – Blackmore, Lord, singer Ian Gillan, bassist Roger Glover and drummer Ian Paice. An edited version was the B side to the Perfect Strangers single and, later, the full version was added as a bonus track on CD re-releases of the album.

11. Joe Jackson, Zemeo . . . Extended moody piece from the excellent Mike’s Murder movie soundtrack album, released in 1983. The movie, starring Debra Winger and about the seedy side of the Los Angeles entertainment world, bombed at the box office. It had a tortured history, was revamped before release and most of Jackson’s music was replaced with a score done by John Barry, noted for his James Bond movie music and theme. But the soundtrack album is to me one of Jackson’s finest and is essentially a companion piece to his 1982 album Night and Day, although he later released Night and Day II, in 2000.

12. Genesis, Los Endos . . . Ending the show with the final track, appropriately titled, from the first album, A Trick Of The Tail, Genesis did after the departure of lead singer Peter Gabriel. That left drummer Phil Collins, somewhat reluctantly at first and surprising as it may seem now, to eventually take the microphone as new frontman after new singer auditions proved fruitless. Collins sings a barely audible snippet from Supper’s Ready, the epic song from the Gabriel era, on the fadeout as a tribute to the original lead singer.

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

1. Peter Gabriel, Intruder
2. Led Zeppelin, In The Evening
3. The Rolling Stones, Fingerprint File
4. Peter Frampton (I’ll Give You) Money (live, from Frampton Comes Alive!)
5. Headstones, Captain Of The Shit Out Of Luck
6. Gov’t Mule, Have Mercy On The Criminal (Elton John cover)
7. Black Oak Arkansas, Mutants Of The Monster
8. Richie Havens, Rocky Raccoon (Beatles cover, live)
9. Bruce Springsteen, Adam Raised A Cain
10. Johnny Winter, I’m Yours And I’m Hers
11. Little Feat, Willin’ (original version, from 1971 self-titled debut album; updated and better-known version appeared on 1972’s Sailin’ Shoes album)
12. Linda Ronstadt, Roll Um Easy (Little Feat cover)
13. Dave Edmunds, (I’m Gonna Start) Living Again If It Kills Me
14. John Lee Hooker, Tupelo
15. Nirvana, Polly
16. Soundgarden, Fresh Tendrils
17. Thin Lizzy, Opium Trail
18. John Hiatt, Perfectly Good Guitar
19.Thunderclap Newman, Accidents
20. Canned Heat, Gotta Boogie (The World Boogie)

My track-by-track tales.

1. Peter Gabriel, Intruder . . . Spooky opening track to Gabriel’s third solo album, all of them to that point simply called “Peter Gabriel’ so the third album became known as ‘Melt’ due to its cover art of Gabriel’s face melting. Gabriel’s old Genesis bandmate Phil Collins guests on drums using the ‘gated reverb’ audio proecessing sound technique for the first time, which Collins later used to great effect on his hit single In The Air Tonight on his first solo album, Face Value. I’m no drum or instrument expert, so I leave the audience to look up ‘gated reverb’. Bottom line, it’s a great drum sound.

2. Led Zeppelin, In The Evening . . . I was going to start this evening’s show with this, from In Through The Out Door, makes sense of course but then I thought, the Intruder is, er, intruding In The Evening. Some have criticized Robert Plant’s vocals for being barely understandable. Yeah, maybe, never occurred to me all that much, actually. Most rock songs, let’s face it, you only focus on certain lyrics anyway, the chorus, the signature line, whatever, I mean we’re not talking Bob Dylan or whoever all the time, it’s bloody rock and roll, after all and this is a pulsating, extended rock track with a nice riff; it kicks butt. So there.

3. The Rolling Stones, Fingerprint File . . . This is why you listen to full albums, not just hits compilations. Amazing funk/rock by the boys, Mick Jagger even goes into a spoken-word rap before rap was a big thing, from 1974’s It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll album which got mixed reviews but some rock critics I think are looking to write something more interesting and provocative, being negative towards great artists, than what they might actually be listening to, if they took the time to really listen. Their loss, in my opinion.

4. Peter Frampton, (I’ll Give You) Money (live, from Frampton Comes Alive!) . . . Nice rocker from the live album that finally made Frampton a big solo star, some years after he had left Humble Pie and released several solo records. The studio version of this song is on his fourth studio album, simply titled Frampton and issued in 1975, and it’s good, but as with most of his material it’s long since been eclipsed, to most people, by the versions on Frampton Comes Alive!

5. Headstones, Captain Of The Shit Out Of Luck . . . Short (2 minutes, 14 seconds) sweet, typically blistering Headstones, great song title, from their 2017 album Little Army. Nice harmonica break by lead singer Hugh Dillon.

6. Gov’t Mule, Have Mercy On The Criminal (Elton John cover) . . . The Mule, led by guitarist/vocalist Warren Haynes, is a band that emerged in the 1990s as a side project out of latter-day versions of The Allman Brothers Band to become a top entry in its own right. The Mule does their own great, original blues-based rock but are also excellent at classic rock covers, either in studio or live versions, this studio version of the Elton John/Bernie Taupin tune from the Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player album among them. It appeared on the bonus 3rd disc of the band’s 2021 mostly blues covers release, Heavy Load Blues.

I like The Mule’s classic rock covers so much that, years ago, I burned a CD of their versions of such material: The Beatles’ She Said She Said and Helter Skelter, Free’s Mr. Big, Steppenwolf’s Don’t Step On The Grass, Sam, Black Sabbath’s War Pigs, Humble Pie’s 30 Days In The Hole, King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man, Deep Purple’s Maybe I’m A Leo, Grand Funk Railroad’s Sin’s A Good Man’s Brother, The Who’s We’re Not Gonna Take It and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Simple Man. The band has also done tribute albums of Pink Floyd (Dark Side Of The Mule) and The Rolling Stones (Stoned Side Of The Mule) material. They’ve also done a reggae album of covers and their own stuff, Dub Side Of The Mule. Great stuff, all of it, a fair bit of their work produced by Canadian Gordie Johnson of Big Sugar fame.

7. Black Oak Arkansas, Mutants Of The Monster . . . Two things about Black Oak Arkansas, the southern hard rock/country rock/boogie rock band fronted by Jim “Dandy’ Mangrum. 1. Van Halen’s David Lee Roth was obviously influenced by Mangrum, just listen, read, look at photos. Not criticizing, I liked Roth as Van Halen’s singer during his heyday (his vocals during various reunions tours were embarrassing; he’d lost it), just saying. It’s pretty evident to anyone. 2. Great tune, Mutants Of The Monster, from an even better named album: 1972’s If An Angel Came To See You, Would You Make Her Feel At Home?

8. Richie Havens, Rocky Racoon (live) . . . Havens reinvented various Beatles tunes including Eleanor Rigby, Lady Madonna, Here Comes The Sun, several others in addition to various Bob Dylan tunes. Here’s his speeded up take on this White Album track and, as is often the case it’s his fast acoustic guitar strumming that draws you in for the duration.

9. Bruce Springsteen, Adam Raised A Cain . . . So, I was on Twittter, now of course known as X, the other day posting a previous show of mine and someone was throwing out one of those sorts of random rock and roll questions that can be irresistible. The question: favourite Springsteen album? I couldn’t really pick between what are and always will be my three favourites from that amazing run Springsteen had starting with 1975’s Born To Run, then 1978’s Darkness On The Edge Of Town and 1980’s The River. So I cheated and listed all three. I like the first two Springsteen albums, preceding those three, and subsequent stuff like Nebraska and Tunnel Of Love and assorted great songs throughout the catalog but if forced to pick, it would be those three and if forced to narrow it down to one it might well be Darkness. And then picking a track from that? Well, so many good ones including the title cut which resonates so much, lyrically, to me. But I threw darts and hit on Adam Raised A Cain. No way to go wrong with that album, really.

10. Johnny Winter, I’m Yours And I’m Hers . . . Usually, it was Johnny Winter covering The Rolling Stones (Jumping Jack Flash, Let It Bleed, Silver Train) but the Stones actually at least once covered Winter. They played this tune, from Winter’s 1969 debut album, to open the 1969 Hyde Park tribute concert to the then-recently deceased Brian Jones. It apparently had been Jones’ favorite song.

11. Little Feat, Willin’ (original version, from Little Feat’s self-titled debut album in 1971; updated and likely best-known version appeared on 1972’s Sailin’ Shoes album) . . . A more spare, acoustic take on the Lowell George-penned tune, Willin’ also later done by the next artist in my set.

12. Linda Ronstadt, Roll Um Easy (Little Feat cover) . . . Speaking of Lowell George, he plays slide guitar on this cover of his tune that Ronstadt did for her 1975 album Prisoner In Disguise. Ronstadt covered Willin’ a year earlier on her Heart Like A Wheel album.

13. Dave Edmunds, (I’m Gonna Start) Living Again If It Kills Me . . . It can be interesting what happens as time passes. Case in point, this song. And in fact the album from which it came, Edmunds’ 1981 release Twangin’. I had gotten into him during my second-last year of college when he had a fairly big hit album, Repeat When Necessary, featuring such commercial tracks as Elvis Costello’s Girls Talk and Graham Parker’s Crawling From The Wreckage. All three artists by then had become favorites of mine but when Twangin’ came out, I remember buying it and being disappointed because to my still obviously developing ears, there was nothing immediate that struck me. Years later, I like the album and this song, both in its ballad but slightly rocked up pace but more so, the lyrics about moving on from the past. Sometimes, you have to live for a while for things to resonate.

14. John Lee Hooker, Tupelo . . . So good. One of my favorite Hooker tracks, any era, this one from his late 1980s-1990s rebirth with various guest stars that started with 1989’s The Healer album. But this spare, acoustic blues is all Hooker, from his 1995 album Chill Out. Carlos Santana, Van Morrison and Booker T. Jones are among the guests on the album but this track is just Hooker, his guitar, his voice. Sublime.

15. Nirvana, Polly . . . Disturbing subject matter always makes it a difficult listen for me and I almost hesitate to play it, but I do like the song, musically. It was written, from the perspective of the perpetrator, about the abduction, rape, and torture, with a blowtorch, of a 14-year-old girl returning home from a punk rock concert in Tacoma, Washington in 1987. The girl managed to escape and the perpetrator was arrested and convicted. He’s serving two consecutive 75-year prison terms.

16. Soundgarden, Fresh Tendrils . . . One of those songs that seems and is familiar – love the sort of descending, backwards riff is how I’d describe it – that one might think it was a hit single but that’s what happens with blockbuster albums, like Superunknown. It’s a terrific album, broke Soundgarden big during that early- to mid-1990s period where it seemed the Seattle grunge sound was taking over music, yet Fresh Tendrils, with its catchy ‘long time coming’ refrain wasn’t a single on an album full of them (Black Hole Sun, Fell On Black Days, Spoonman, maybe my favorite Soundgarden song, among them).

17. Thin Lizzy, Opium Trail . . . Yet another of those songs, this one from the Bad Reputation album (which features that also great title cut) in 1977, that shows Lizzy as being far more than just The Boys Are Back In Town. But Lizzy fans know the depth of quality of the band’s catalog, it’s up to others to investigate if they so choose.

18. John Hiatt, Perfectly Good Guitar . . . Hiatt is one of those artists, like Tom Waits, perhaps, where more people have hits with his songs (Bonnie Raitt with Thing Called Love; George Thorogood a minor hit with The Usual) than Hiatt has had himself. I remember hearing Perfectly Good Guitar, great song, I think so anyway, on the radio when the album of the same name came out in 1993. But, turns out, it wasn’t a chart hit, nor was the album which charted, according to my research, only in Australia where it made the lofty heights of No. 83. I shouldn’t have mentioned The Usual. Now I want a drink. To Hiatt’s songwriting.

19. Thunderclap Newman, Accidents . . . One album, one big hit single, Something In The Air, one big name producer and benefactor, The Who’s Pete Townshend, and then, well, we still have this extended piece from 1969’s debut and only record, Hollywood Dream. Guitarist Jimmy McCulloch, later of Paul McCartney and Wings who died as a result of drug and alcohol abuse at age 26 in 1979, was among the personnel on the Thunderclap Newman album and his solo is a featured portion on Accidents.

20. Canned Heat, Gotta Boogie (The World Boogie) . . . That John Lee Hooker Boogie Chillen riff . . . As we boogie on out of here.

A long song set, nothing under 8 minutes . . . My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. Flash and The Pan, Welcome To The Universe
2. Fleetwood Mac, Future Games
3. Rush, 2112
4. King Crimson, Moonchild
5. Genesis, The Knife (from Genesis Live, 1973 album)
6. Traffic, The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys
7. Jethro Tull, Baker St. Muse
8. Supertramp, Brother Where You Bound
9. The Rolling Stones, Going Home

My track-by-track tales:

1. Flash and The Pan, Welcome To The Universe . . . Eight minutes and change from the second Flash and The Pan album, Lights In The Night, issued in 1980. The group, largely a studio-only enterprise, was put together by the production team of Harry Vanda and George Young, older brother of AC/DC guitarists Angus and Malcolm, with Vanda and George Young producing all the early AC/DC albums up to Highway To Hell when Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange took over for the first of three straight albums, Back In Black and For Those About To Rock being the others. Vanda and George Young returned as AC/DC producers for 1988’s Blow Up Your Video with George Young later doing Stiff Upper Lip in 2000 as sole producer. As for Flash and The Pan, it’s arguably as far from AC/DC’s hard rock as one could get, although Flash does rock, but in a different, synthesizer-based way. Welcome To The Universe was edited in half for single release, retaining the up tempo middle ‘song’ part while losing the dark, spooky intro and outro portions, which I think costs the song its essence. So, here’s the full version.

2. Fleetwood Mac, Future Games . . . Enter American guitarist Bob Welch in 1971 with his title cut on his first of five albums with Fleetwood Mac, signalling a further change in direction from the original blues rock leanings of the band under founder member/guitarist/singer Peter Green. Green left after 1969’s Then Play On, perhaps my favorite Mac album but even by then the sound, with the addition of guitarist Danny Kirwan, was incorporating psychedelic and folk elements that continued with the addition of Welch, who came on board after 1970’s Kiln House. Fleetweed Mac is an interesting band in that sense, essentially three bands under one banner. There’s the Peter Green mostly blues founding phases, then the 1970-74 period featuring, at various times, separately and together, guitarists Welch, Kirwan and Jeremy Spencer, then the commercial monster many hit singles version of guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and singer Stevie Nicks. All have their moments, and the hypnotic Future Games is one of them, from the arguably underappreciated Welch period. He later re-recorded the song, at half its 8-minute-plus Fleetwood Mac length, for his 1979 solo album The Other One, but I prefer the Mac version.

3. Rush, 2112 . . . Full vinyl-side 20-minute long title cut to the band’s 1976 album, one that arguably saved their career. It’s hard to believe now, but Rush’s previous album, Caress Of Steel, had been a sales disappointment and the band’s record label considered dropping them while pushing for a return to more commercial material. That would be songs like In The Mood or Working Man from the debut album, or Fly By Night, the second album’s hit single title cut on a record that, for the first time, featured a lengthy, progressive piece, By-Tor and The Snow Dog, which presaged even longer multi-part suites like The Necromancer and The Fountain Of Lamneth on Caress Of Steel. Yet, Rush held its ground, returned with another epic in 2112, it succeeded commercially this time, and the rest is history.

4. King Crimson, Moonchild . . . Beautiful track from In The Court Of The Crimson King, the debut and still my favorite Crimson album. It’s very ‘quiet’ for the most part yet compelling particularly to me the straight instrumental parts, concentrating on each instrument, particularly to my ears the drums, from about four minutes in and continuing for the rest of the 12-minute song.

5. Genesis, The Knife (from Genesis Live, 1973 album) . . . Hard rocking early Genesis, uncharacteristic of them to that point. The studio version was on Trespass, the band’s second album, released in 1970 with John Mayhew on drums before Phil Collins, who plays on this live version, joined Genesis for Nursery Cryme in 1971.

6. Traffic, The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys . . . I’ve played this title cut to the 1971 Traffic album before but was reminded of it when an old high school and college pal, after I played Traffic’s version of the traditional English/Scottish song John Barleycorn on Monday, pointed me towards a piano-only version done in 2017 by Steve Winwood who of course was the lead singer and multi-instrumentalist for Traffic. That version, available on YouTube, is worth checking out, I’ll likely get back to it sometime but I decided on the Traffic version for this show.

7. Jethro Tull, Baker St. Muse . . . Love the start of this long story song from the Minstreal In The Gallery album. “Baker St. Muse, take 1″, Ian Anderson intones, before a bit of acoustic guitar then ‘shit, shit, shit, take 2…” Leaving a screw up in makes it better, in my opinion. Another long track in a show of long songs, but never boring, kicking in and rocking it up at around 13 minutes of the 16.5 minutes with mention of the album and song title minstrel in the gallery “one day I’ll be a minstrel in the gallery…paint you a picture of the Queen…” so ‘British’, so great.

8. Supertramp, Brother Where You Bound . . . David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame does the guitar solos on this 16-minute title cut from Supertramp’s 1985 album, the first record after the departure of one of the band’s two main songwriters, Roger Hodgson. Rick Davies took over full leadership of the band in that sense and, while things did decline in terms of sales from that point on, Supertramp was already in decline after Breakfast In America, a too pop for my taste albeit good and of course hugely successful commercially album . . . Brother Where You Bound is a far better album, I think, darker, harder, harkening back to earlier Supertramp like Crime Of The Century, than the Breakfast In America followup with Hodgson, . . . Famous Last Words.

9. The Rolling Stones, Going Home . . . Went for a beer with a good pal earlier this week and he brought up the Brian Jones period of the Stones career which, in some ways, is forgotten or overlooked or underappreciated, at least by some, now given the long 60-plus year history of the band. But this lengthy jam was from that Jones period (usually on guitar along with Keith Richards, Jones is on harmonica on the track). It’s on Aftermath, the 1966 album where for the first time, all songs were written by the Stones, i.e. Richards and Mick Jagger, the band’s songwriters. To that point, all Stones albums featured a mix of band-penned tunes with blues and R & B covers, so Aftermath – and Between The Buttons in 1967 – is when the group asserted itself as, arguably, more of an album act while still issuing big hit singles, with Jones experimenting on ‘exotic’ instruments like sitar, vibraphone (percussion), kazoo, koto (a stringed Japanese instrument) and marimba (percussion), among others. So many great deep cuts came out of that period, like Going Home, I Am Waiting, Flight 505, to name a few from Aftermath and Yesterday’s Papers, She Smiled Sweetly, Connection, My Obsession, Please Go Home from Between The Buttons which over time has become one of my favorite Stones’ albums.

Here’s my set list streamed live from 8-10 pm ET Monday, March 18, 2024. I’m back Saturday morning 8-10 am ET with my programmed show. Live in studio each Monday, 8-10 pm.

1. Hawkwind, Sonic Attack
2. Accept, Fast As A Shark
3. Ted Nugent, Stranglehold
4. Budgie, Breadfan
5. Black Sabbath, Supernaut
6. The Rolling Stones, Bite My Head Off
7. Aerosmith, The Hop
8. Eric Burdon & War, Bare Back Ride
9. T. Rex, The Slider
10. Blue Oyster Cult, She’s As Beautiful As A Foot
11. Carlos Santana/John McLaughlin/Mahavishnu Orchestra, A Love Supreme (Part 1, Acknowledgement)
12. Santana, Everything’s Coming Our Way
13. David Baerwald, Bozo Weirdo Wacko Creep
14. Traffic, John Barleycorn Must Die
15. Pretenders, Domestic Silence
16. It’s A Beautiful Day, White Bird
17. Alice Cooper, Generation Landslide
18. April Wine, Silver Dollar
19. David Wilcox, God Is On A Bender
20. Neil Young, Revolution Blues

Alphabet soup set list – songs are by bands/artists A to Z. Set list with my track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. Atomic Rooster, Death Walks Behind You
2. Bad Company, Crazy Circles
3. J.J. Cale, Call The Doctor
4. The Doors, Been Down So Long
5. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Bitches Crystal
6. Faces, Cut Across Shorty (live)
7. The Guess Who, Self Pity
8. Heart, Bebe Le Strange
9. Chris Isaak, Speak Of The Devil
10. Jefferson Airplane, The Last Wall Of The Castle
11. The Kinks, Holloway Jail
12. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Four Walls Of Raiford (demo version)
13. Mott The Hoople, Thunderbuck Ram
14. Nazareth, Fat Man
15. The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Chicken Train
16. Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, The Last DJ
17. Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Fool
18. Keith Richards, Amnesia
19. Steppenwolf, Power Play
20. Ten Years After, Woman Trouble
21. U2, The Three Sunrises
22. Van Halen, Little Dreamer
23. Wishbone Ash, Time Was
24. XTC, Ten Feet Tall
25. Yes, Parallels
26. Warren Zevon, The Overdraft

My track-by-track tales:

1. Atomic Rooster, Death Walks Behind You . . . Spooky title cut, including a galloping riff the future members of Iron Maiden might have been listening to, on the 1970 release from the British progressive hard rockers. It was the band’s second album, released after drummer Carl Palmer, who had been with Rooster keyboardist Vincent Crane in The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, left to join Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

2. Bad Company, Crazy Circles . . . From the 1979 album Desolation Angels. Rock ‘n Roll Fantasy was the big hit and a great track and one of my favorites by Bad Co it is, but I remember this getting a fair bit of airplay back when commercial FM radio played deeper cuts, or maybe I just played it a lot. Cliche/obvious lyrics about life, perhaps, like this verse, but it works for me:

Life is like a game of chance
Some find riches and some romance
Some find happiness and some find sorrow
Some find it today and some maybe tomorrow

I’ve found all of what’s described, as perhaps many may have, at various times.

3. J.J. Cale, Call The Doctor . . . One of those great J.J. Cale tracks (aren’t they all?) that you won’t find on one of his various compilations, so you have to own, search or stream his 1971 debut album, Naturally, to hear it. Most J.J. Cale songs, like this one, are under three minutes and it never ceases to amaze me how much greatness he’s able to squeeze into such short time frames. Less is indeed often more, I suppose, leaving you wanting more and I submit one can never get enough J.J. Cale. The album produced two Cale songs, Call Me The Breeze and After Midnight, later taken to more commercial success by, respectively, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Eric Clapton in more uptempo versions than Cale’s signature laid back style. I like those versions and artists but still prefer Cale’s originals.

4. The Doors, Been Down So Long . . . From perhaps my favorite Doors album, the bluesy L.A. Woman. The track has received varying reviews over the years but I’m going with the reviewer who, according to Wikipedia, said it’s one of the Doors’ ‘must hear’ blues tracks.

5. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Bitches Crystal . . . From Tarkus, ELP’s second album highlighted by the 21-minute title cut that was the entire side one of the original vinyl. This one, Bitches Crystal, condenses all progressive rock elements from each individual artist in the band – keyboards, drums, vocals, guitar and bass – into four minutes.

6. Faces, Cut Across Shorty (live) . . . From the rambling, shambling and that’s exactly what the fun Faces were all about, live album from 1974, Coast to Coast: Overture and Beginners. I had the record on vinyl when it came out, lost it over time, but recovered it on CD via a used shop some time back and glad to have it again. A studio version of this track, popularized by Eddie Cochran, appeared on the Rod Stewart solo album Gasoline Alley during what ultimately became an awkward 1969-74 period (of to me and many people, Rod Stewart’s greatest solo years) where Faces members were backing Stewart on his parallel solo excursions until ultimately Rod broke away, or the band broke from him, Ronnie Wood joined The Rolling Stones and Faces went kaput. The band has reunited off and on, including a stint with former Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall replacing Stewart, and a news report in February 2024 suggested the surviving members of the band (Wood and drummer Kenney Jones) were working on a new album although Stewart said they were ‘struggling’.

“I’ve sent a lot of them [songs] to Ronnie Wood,” Stewart said, according to a story on American songwriter.com. “I told him, ‘This is stuff we’ve recorded with my band, maybe The Faces would like to do it instead?’ We’re still struggling to make this album. We’ll see. Some of them might see the light of day.”

7. The Guess Who, Self Pity . . . I admire Randy Bachman as a guitarist, bandleader and producer but I doubt The Guess Who would have done such a terrific funky, vocal-powered by Burton Cummings song like this one from their 1973 album No. 10, had Bachman not left the band after the American Woman album in 1970, leaving Cummings as the undisputed leader.

8. Heart, Bebe Le Strange . . . Title cut from the band’s 1980 album released as the second single from the record (Even It Up was the first) but it was the first Heart single not to make the US Billboard Top 100. Ridiculous of course, it’s a great song, maybe too similar to Even It Up, but a great staccato type track nevertheless, should have been a bigger hit, I like it, so I’m playing it.

9. Chris Isaak, Speak Of The Devil . . . Isaak is best known by most people for his sultry, sexy hit single Wicked Game from the 1989 album Heart Shaped World. Long ago, before one could call up a song at a keystroke, I bought a compilation of his just to have it, and discovered other great stuff, like this one from an artist whose sound has been compared to the likes of Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson and Duane Eddy.

10. Jefferson Airplane, The Last Wall Of The Castle . . . Jefferson Airplane has a big hit album with Surrealistic Pillow in 1967, an album containing the band’s best-known hit songs Somebody To Love and White Rabbit and what do they do as a followup? They go, essentially, back underground, doing the type of thing I admire in creative terms, releasing the almost anti-commercial, psychedelic After Bathing At Baxters, including this Jorma Kaukonen-penned tune featuring his wicked lead guitar.

11. The Kinks, Holloway Jail . . . A couple jail tunes coming up, led by this one from the to me exceptional but commercial failure album that was Muswell Hillbillies, released in 1971. It would probably be categorized as Americana and might do better on the charts were it released today, which is interesting given that Ray Davies did roots rock solo albums titled Americana and Our Country: Americana Act II in 2017 and ’18.

12. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Four Walls Of Raiford (demo version) . . . Acoustic, blues; it’s not really Lynyrd Skynyrd, in a way. It’s original Skynyrd singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Jeff Carlisi, a longtime member of .38 Special, on a song recorded in 1976 and available on bootlegs and/or the Lynyrd Skynyrd box set released in 1991. Regardless how it came about, a great tune.

13. Mott The Hoople, Thunderbuck Ram . . . Mick Ralphs in a rare lead vocal performance (Ian Hunter of course usually sang lead for Mott) on what becomes a kick butt rocker shortly after the beautiful acoustic intro. An AllMusic site reviewer declared this and the entire Mad Shadows second album by Mott The Hoople, released in 1970 before the band achieved stardom, to be a ‘descent downward into murk.’ To which I say: Open your ears.

14. Nazareth, Fat Man . . . Heavy, bluesy, brooding track from the band’s self-titled debut album, released in 1971.
15. The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Chicken Train . . . Harmonica, fiddles and other fun stuff from the band likely best known for their hits If You Wanna Get To Heaven and Jackie Blue. Dig deeper and they’re so much more, evidenced by this track from their 1973 debut album. I’ve heard it described as “a hillbilly song’. I agree. I like it.

16. Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, The Last DJ . . . OK, yeah this title cut from Petty’s 2002 album was a No. 22 hit but when one is talking the late great Petty, how often do you hear this song referenced? Besides which, while mine is a deep cuts show, I’ve forever stated I do play the occasional single, even hit ones, but for the most part ones that didn’t do so well on the charts or are not often heard since they came out, or are not embedded in the public consciousness as are so many, for instance, of Petty’s songs. So, disclaimer done, this song and the lyrics are exactly why I do my deep cuts show – I play what I want and thankfully am at an independent station that allows me and my fellow DJs here to do so, unlike commercial radio which is rigidly formatted and which prompted me to become a DJ here and create this show. Several songs on the album, like this one, were critical of the music industry and were boycotted by some radio stations, proving Petty’s point.

“I was elated when my song was banned,” Petty told Billboard. “I remember when the radio meant something. We enjoyed the people who were on it, even if we hated them. They had personalities. They were people of taste, who we trusted. And I see that vanishing.”

17. Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Fool . . . Long jam from a band that was part of the 1960s San Francisco scene along with the Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead yet never ascended to those bands’ commercial heights.

18. Keith Richards, Amnesia . . . From Richard’s most recent and so far last solo album, 2015’s Crosseyed Heart. It chugs along around Richards’ distinctive guitar sound and soloing.

19. Steppenwolf, Power Play . . As I’ve often said, Steppenwolf is so far beyond just Magic Carpet Ride and Born To Be Wild, great tunes both of course but selling the band short on the many great songs, with topical at the time and forever lyrics, that the group has released.

20. Ten Years After, Woman Trouble . . . Boogie rock from Alvin Lee and company from the second TYA album, Stonedhenge, released in 1969. TYA was immortalized by Lee’s guitar performace on I’m Going Home from Woodstock yet Lee, and TYA, were more than that space in time – my deliberate nod to the band’s 1971 album A Space In Time which yielded the terrific hit single I’d Love To Change The World. A band well worth exploring more deeply, if you haven’t.

21. U2, The Three Sunrises . . . Nice guitar work from The Edge on this track, originally a B-side on The Unforgettable Fire single from that album in 1984. It was later released on the Wide Awake In America EP in 1985 and then a limited edition expanded version of the compilation The Best Of 1980-1990, released in 1998.

22. Van Halen, Little Dreamer . . . One of my favorites from an album full of them, the band’s explosive 1978 debut record that gave us such timeless tunes as Runnin’ With The Devil, the Eddie Van Halen guitar showcase Eruption, Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love and VH’s cover of the Kinks’ classic You Really Got Me.

23. Wishbone Ash, Time Was . . . All the elements of Wishbone Ash – progressive, folk and hard rock – come together on this 10-minute highlight of the Argus album, 1972.

24. XTC, Ten Feet Tall . . . Making Plans For Nigel and a great track it was, was the only single released from the 1979 XTC album Drums And Wires but I recall this song getting lots of airplay in Canada during my college days.

25. Yes, Parallels . . From the Going For The One album, 1977. The song, written by bassist Chris Squire, was originally targetted for his solo album Fish Out Of Water but he didn’t think it fit for that record so he brought it to the band which gave it a typical orchestral type Yes treatment.

26. Warren Zevon, The Overdraft . . . No, this rocker from the 1982 album The Envoy is not about the usual/perpetual state of my bank account. But it could be. Nice guitar from a usual Zevon accomplice, Waddy Wachtel, later to become a key member of Rolling Stone Keith Richards’ X-Pensive Winos.

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, March 11, 2024
1. Golden Earring, Are You Receiving Me
2. Blind Faith, Had To Cry Today
3. Rush, I Think I’m Going Bald
4. Detroit (featuring Mitch Ryder), Rock ‘N Roll (Lou Reed/Velvet Underground cover)
5. Lou Reed, Kicks
6. The Moving Sidewalks (featuring Billy Gibbons, pre-ZZ Top), Joe Blues
7. The Rolling Stones, Dreamy Skies
8. Robin Trower, Too Rolling Stoned
9. The 31st Of February, (precursor band to The Allman Brothers Band), God Rest His Soul
10. The Allman Brothers Band, Leave My Blues At Home
11. Elton John, Your Sister Can’t Twist (but she can rock ‘n roll)
12. Judas Priest, Invincible Shield
13. KK’s Priest, Reap The Whirlwind
14. Paul McCartney/Wings, Dear Friend
15. John Lennon, Out The Blue
16. George Harrison, Woman Don’t You Cry For Me
17. Ringo Starr, Beaucoups Of Blues
18. Roger Waters, Picture That

Here’s my set list for Saturday morning, March 9/24 airing 8-10 am ET. My track-by-track commentary follows the bare-bones set.

1. The Beatles, Good Morning Good Morning
2. Free, Come Together In The Morning
3. Bob Dylan, When You Gonna Wake Up
4. Johnny Winter, Highway 61 Revisited
5. Jimi Hendrix, Like A Rolling Stone (live, 1967 Monterey Pop Festival version)
6. J. Geils Band, First I Look At The Purse (live, from Full House)
7. Savoy Brown, Money Can’t Save Your Soul
8. Rory Gallagher, Bad Penny
9. Eagles, Those Shoes
10. Supertramp, Another Man’s Woman
11. Status Quo, Big Fat Mama
12. The Rolling Stones, She Smiled Sweetly
13. Neil Young, Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown
14. AC/DC, Sin City
15. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, Heavy Music (from Live Bullet)
16. Funkadelic, Maggot Brain
17. Pink Floyd, Pigs (Three Different Ones)
18. Steely Dan, Don’t Take Me Alive
19. Van Morrison, And The Healing Has Begun
20. Dire Straits, Follow Me Home

My track-by-track tales:

1. The Beatles, Good Morning Good Morning . . . Clever, aren’t I? 🙂 Morning show, so, good morning with a song John Lennon wrote for the Sgt. Pepper album after being inspired by watching a commercial for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, and adapting the jingle. So much good in so many songs comes not just from the tunes, but the vocals. Good morning-ah. That sort of thing often really makes it for me.

2. Free, Come Together In The Morning . . . Sticking with our morning theme, bluesy ballad from singer Paul Rodgers and company, some of whom (drummer Simon Kirke) later formed Bad Company along with Rodgers.

3. Bob Dylan, When You Gonna Wake Up . . . Up-tempo tune, biting lyrics, from Dylan’s Slow Train Coming album in 1979. It was his first after converting to Christianity and threw much of his fan base for a loop, which Dylan has always seemed to like doing or, at least, doing whatever it is he chooses to do, which of course is and should be up to him, then watching the reaction with likely amusement. The album gave us the hit single Gotta Serve Somebody for which Dylan won a Grammy Award but beyond that it’s a terrific listen, certainly musically including this track and the title cut.

4. Johnny Winter, Highway 61 Revisited . . . Playing a Dylan tune inspired me to play people covering Dylan tunes, so here’s Winter’s fiery interpretation of the Dylan classic.
5. Jimi Hendrix, Like A Rolling Stone (live from Monterey Pop Festival, 1967) . . . Great version of another Dylan classic. Hendrix was a huge Dylan fan and of course reinterpreted Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower to huge success and acclaim, so much so that Dylan himself started playing Watchtower in concert, or attempting to, a la Hendrix version. But this is the song, Like A Rolling Stone, as done by Hendrix, that got me into Jimi (and Otis Redding, too) when I heard it on a live album my older brother, a huge musical influence on me, had of the Monterey Pop Festival. It featured Hendrix on one side of the vinyl release and Otis Redding on the other. That album is called Historic Performances Recorded at the Monterey International Pop Festival.
6. J. Geils Band, First I Look At The Purse, (live, from Full House) . . . Propulsive track from a propulsive live band, best heard live and arguably my favorite by Geils in this live version, a song written by Smokey Robinson and his Miracles band partner Bobby Rogers.

7. Savoy Brown, Money Can’t Save Your Soul . . . I got into music discussions on Twitter/X the other night which inspired several tracks I’m playing Saturday morning. This is one of them, from the British blues/rock band Savoy Brown, an arguably underappreciated band but one of my favorites. I saw them, billed as Kim Simmonds (the late great guitarist/singer/songwriter/bandleader) and Savoy Brown, in the mid-2000s at the Kitchener Blues Festival. Great show. A band worth checking out and one that proved to be the building blocks for Foghat, which was formed by three members of Savoy Brown after a split in the original Savoy Brown band in 1971.

8. Rory Gallagher, Bad Penny . . . Another artist and track inspired by my Twitter/X discussions. Someone posted a question, asking for people’s favorite songs by Gallagher, the late great and arguably underrated/underappreciated by the masses, Irish guitarist, songwriter and leader of the band Taste before he went solo. So, I listed a few but Bad Penny is likely my alltimer by Rory G, who has been described as ‘the greatest guitarist you’ve never heard of.” People who know his material know how great he was, of course, and he’s been cited by the likes of Eric Clapton, Alex Lifeson of Rush, Brian May of Queen and U2’s The Edge as being a major influence on their playing.

9. Eagles, Those Shoes . . . Another of those songs that came up in the Twitter/X discussion when I mentioned The Long Run, in response to a discussion question, as being among my favorite Eagles albums despite its dismissal by many critics and even some members of the band in the wake of the monumental Hotel California that preceded it. This is my favorite song on The Long Run.

10. Supertramp, Another Man’s Woman . . . From Crisis, What Crisis?, the band’s 1975 album. Supertramp were huge in Canada by this time, on the heels of the brilliant 1974 record Crime Of The Century but it took a while for widespread U.S. chart success which didn’t happen for the band until the deliberately targeted Breakfast In America commercial monster from 1979 that was a worldwide No. 1 album but I consider to be, while good, too pop-oriented, almost candy-ass crap in spots with Bee Gee-like falsetto vocals the Bee Gees got criticized for yet Supertramp seemed to get a pass on. Breakfast is the worst, to me, of the 4-album run that started in 1974 with Crime Of The Century on through Crisis, What Crisis?, Even In The Quietest Moments and then Breakfast In America.
11. Status Quo, Big Fat Mama . . . Kick butt rocker from the band which first came to prominence with the psychedelic pop hit Pictures Of Matchstick Men in 1968 after which the band started going in a harder rock, boogie rock direction. They lost me after the mid-1970s for the most part, for me that early- to mid-70s period was their hard rocking best with songs like this from the appropriately named 1972 album Piledriver.

12. The Rolling Stones, She Smiled Sweetly . . . Beautiful ballad from the 1967 album Between The Buttons, recorded when founding member/guitarist Brian Jones was still in the band and the Stones arguably sometimes explored tangents they later discarded when they became more the bloozy raunch and roll Stones of legend starting with the 1968 album Beggars Banquet. The late Roy Carr (he died in 2018 at 73), a respected English rock music critic, somewhat dismissed Between The Buttons in his fine 1976 book The Rolling Stones: An Illustrated Record. Carr termed Buttons an album that “sounds more like a bunch of vaudevillian Kinks’ outtakes than a bona fide Stones’ collection.” To which I would say a few things, me being a major Stones fan and all, and even if I weren’t:
1. Roy, my boy, what’s your problem with The Kinks? Amazing band, arguably grossly underappreciated when discussed amid the other big original British Invasion bands like The Beatles, Stones and The Who and possessed, in Ray Davies, of one of the all-time songwriters. And if the Stones were maybe sounding like The Kinks, well, they weren’t; no matter what the Stones do or have ever done – rock, reggae, folk, country, disco, whatever – they always sound like the Stones. That’s why they’re so great – they put their own unique stamp on everything they try and moreso, they’re fearless; they try anything yeah sometimes more successfully than other times but at least they give it a go and by doing so open perhaps unknown or undiscovered avenues to their many listeners.

2. Between The Buttons has really grown on me over the years. I think it’s a brilliant album, full of great tunes like She Smiled Sweetly, My Obession, Backstreet Girl, Connection, Please Go Home to name a few not to mention, on the U.S. version released at that time when bands like The Beatles and Stones had different track listings on many albums in the US and UK, the singles Ruby Tuesday and Let’s Spend The Night Together. But I won’t be too harsh on Roy; he did cite Backstreet Girl and Connection as being worthy . . .
3. But so is She Smiled Sweetly. Great song, great vocal performance by Mick Jagger.
13. Neil Young, Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown . . . Notice the pattern here, in terms of song titles as I typically can’t help myself? We started off with the morning motif. Then we got into money, with it not being able to save a soul, a bad penny and looking at purses when selecting a mate . . . and then . . . relationship issues, another man’s woman, a big fat mama who smiles sweetly and now Neil Young wants to go downtown with her on this track that appeared on his bleak, grief-prompted 1975 release Tonight’s The Night, much of which was written in memory of Young’s Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry, both lost to drug overdoses. A good rocker, nevertheless.
14. AC/DC, Sin City . . . And now we’re downtown, in Sin City, one of my favorite AC/DC tracks, from the Bon Scott era and 1978’s Powerage album.

15. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, Heavy Music . . . From Live Bullet, the 1976 live album, recorded in 1975, that brought Seger into the wider public consciousness beyond his home stomping grounds of Detroit and the state of Michigan. It came out during that 1970s period where double vinyl live albums were breaking some bands, like Seger’s, big; others being KISS with KISS Alive and Peter Frampton with Frampton Comes Alive! This is the second live song in my set that was recorded in Detroit. This Seger tune was recorded at Cobo Hall, which was once the home arena of the NBA’s Detroit Pistons. The other Detroit live recording was earlier in my set, the J. Geils Band’s First I Look At The Purse, recorded at Detroit’s Cinderella Ballroom. Geils was a Boston-area band but developed a huge following in Detroit.
16. Funkadelic, Maggot Brain . . . 10-minute title track improvisation workout by guitar great Eddie Hazel, from the 1971 album by George Clinton’s Funkadelic, part of his music collective P-Funk that also includes Parliament. It’s complex, and space doesn’t permit but it’s all only a keystroke away on the web and worthwhile reading if one is so inclined.
17. Pink Floyd, Pigs (Three Different Ones) . . . Lengthy, nearly 12-minute almost metallic piece, a Roger Waters diatribe against the manipulative elites of our society, from Floyd’s 1977 album Animals and one of my alltime favorite Floyd songs from an album which tends sometimes to get overlooked amid The Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall but is, I think, on par with all of them and then there’s Meddle, before Dark Side, too . . . And The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn debut when Syd Barrett was still in the band and, and, and. Just get all of it, you’ll like it if you don’t already. But, I will say that the run from Meddle through The Wall, if forced to choose, would my favorite five by Floyd.

18. Steely Dan, Don’t Take Me Alive . . . Great guitar work from Larry Charlton, who played on four Steely Dan albums including the one from which I pulled this track, The Royal Scam. Others were Katy Lied, Aja and Gaucho in a career that has seen Charlton play on albums from the likes of Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Johnny Rivers, Barbra Streisand, The Partridge Family (yes, The Partridge Family and David Cassidy solo stuff, too), on and on. Look Charlton up, a lengthy, eclectic discography – not to mention his own work as a solo artist/bandleader.
19. Van Morrison, And The Healing Has Begun . . . One of my favorites, of which yeah there are likely too many to count, from Van The Man, the man whose voice is so much, more so in my opinion than many artists, an amazing instrument in itself. From 1979’s Into The Music album. Brilliant stuff.

20. Dire Straits, Follow Me Home . . . Last track on the second Straits’ album, Communique and a good one to finish up on, this bluesy track, because I am going home in the sense that the show’s done for Saturday morning. Back Monday, live in studio, 8-10 pm ET. Thanks for listening, and reading, if you have and even if not . . . Take care, all.