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So Old It's New

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, May 9, 2022 – on air 8-10 pm ET

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  1. Glenn Miller, In The Mood . . . My sentiments exactly, as I was rummaging through some oldies CDs. And who doesn’t like/can’t resist this timeless tune?
  1. Warren Zevon, Johnny Strikes Up The Band . . . Lead cut and the first single from the Excitable Boy album that didn’t break big until the third single, Werewolves of London made Zevon a household name. The title track was the second of five singles released from the record which has grown, over time, into essentially a greatest hits release.
  1. Paul McCartney & Wings, Spin It On . . . Paulie goes punk on this short rocker from 1979’s Back To The Egg album. The original vinyl LP release sides were labeled Sunny Side Up and Over Easy.
  1. April Wine, Crash and Burn . . . April Wine goes almost metallic on this raver from 1981’s The Nature of The Beast, by which time the band had adopted a harder-rocking arguably simplified sound catered to the American market. And it worked, as the album went platinum in the US – although their earlier stuff is better, to my ears. But it’s all worth playing.
  1. The Rolling Stones, Parachute Woman . . . Another one of those songs whose only bad point is it’s too short. Great cut from a great album, Beggars Banquet.
  1. John Mayall, Possessive Emotions . . . Another from the ‘albums my older brother introduced me to” – Mayall’s 1970 release USA Union. It featured former Canned Heat members Harvey Mandel on guitar and bassist Larry Taylor along with violinist Don “Sugarcane’ Harris. And no drummer, which my brother proudly advised me of and I found fascinating at the time, age 11. Funky tune, yet another example of the interesting sounds Mayall and friends always achieve.
  1. Jackson Browne, Fountain Of Sorrow . . . A relationship song. It could be about Joni Mitchell. It could be about Browne’s deceased wife. It could be about any one of his former flames. Depends on what you read, if you read about it on songmeanings.com or other such sites. In any event, lyrics that could apply to anyone and their relationships.
  1. Fleetwood Mac, Brown Eyes . . . I came across this one via word searching Jackson Browne for the previous track. It’s a beautiful, relatively unknown Christine McVie-penned gem from the Tusk album. Mac founding guitarist Peter Green was invited to play on the song by Mick Fleetwood although his playing is only included in the fadeout.
  1. Mott The Hoople, The Moon Upstairs . . . Raw, raunchy rocker from 1971’s Brain Capers album, the one before the band finally broke big with All The Young Dudes, the album and single, a year later.
  1. George Thorogood, New Hawaiian Boogie . . . I’ve never heard definitively that Link Wray was among Thorogood’s influences, but based on his raw playing on this Elmore James tune, I’d say so.
  1. Link Wray, Big City After Dark . . . Speaking of Wray . . . I can’t do better than a description of this tune I read in a comments field on YouTube: “It sounds like he’s playing barbed wire strings with a switchblade knife.”
  1. Tommy James and The Shondells, Sweet Cherry Wine . . . Psychedelic top 10 hit in Canada and the US in 1969.
  1. Roy Buchanan, After Hours . . . Fantastic guitarist who lived a troubled life of addiction, died young at 48, ruled a suicide, hanged himself in jail after being busted for public intoxication although family and friends disputed the finding. His musical tree includes playing with Ronnie Hawkins and, as a result, tutoring Robbie Robertson of The Band fame.
  1. Ten Years After, I Woke Up This Morning . . . Haven’t played one of my favorite British blues rock bands in a while. So, here we are. From Ssssh, in 1969. I’ve probably said it before but while TYA leader Alvin Lee was justifiably celebrated for his guitar playing, I’ve always liked his singing, too. Great blues rock voice.
  1. Chicago, At The Sunrise . . . I like the contrasting vocals between Peter Cetera and the raunchier Robert Lamm. From the Travel Suite segment of Chicago III, inspired by life on the road for a touring band. Do I have to say I love early jazz-rock fusion Chicago before the schlock shit show they became after Terry Kath died or have I said that too often? Heck, even they recognize it. If you check their set lists, they’re dominated by the early stuff and justifiably so.
  2. Gregg Allman, Wolf’s A Howlin’ . . . One of the few non-cover tunes from what I think is one of Allman’s finest solo records, 1997’s Searching For Simplicity. And a nice setup for my next two tracks.
  1. Gov’t Mule, I Asked For Water (She Gave Me Gasoline) . . . I love the original but can’t get enough of this 9-minute, heavy reinvention of Howlin’ Wolf’s tune. It’s from Heavy Load Blues, an album of covers and originals released by the Mule in late 2021.
  1. Howlin’ Wolf, Three Hundred Pounds Of Joy . . . Speaking of the Wolf . . .
  1. Neil Young, Dirty Old Man . . . Good rocker from Chrome Dreams II, 2007. Funny, or depressing, lyrics depending on one’s perspective. “I like to get hammered on Friday night sometimes I can’t wait so Monday’s alright. It’s a battle with the bottle I win it alright but I lost another round in the bar last night. . . . Yeah I’m gonna get fired for drinkin’ on the job got caught with the boss’s wife in the parkin’ lot.” Etc.
  1. Aerosmith, Hangman Jury . . . From the big comeback album, Permanent Vacation, which came out in 1987 and was also, for old time Aerosmithians, the beginning of the descent into commercially-successful schlock what with outside writers and so on. Still, this one’s a keeper, featuring nice harmonica playing and vocals from Steven Tyler.
  1. Stray, Yesterday’s Promises . . . Spooky, psychedelic track from the relatively unknown English hard rockers. I discovered them a few years ago via a compilation of obscure songs from the UK hard rock and psychedelic scene of the late 1960s to early 70s. I liked the Stray track on it – It’s All In Your Mind, which I’ve played before on the show – so much I picked up a 2-CD compilation of Stray’s material.
  1. Jon Lord with The Hoochie Coochie Men and Jimmy Barnes, Green Onions (live) . . . From a great album of mostly covers, Live At The Basement, a renowned Sydney, Australia blues and jazz club, released in 2003. It featured Lord, the iconic Deep Purple keyboard player, Scottish-born Australian singer/musician Barnes and the Aussie blues band The Hoochie Coochie Men.
  1. Deep Purple, When A Blind Man Cries . . . There’s no figuring out the mercurial Ritchie Blackmore. But he is interesting. He didn’t like this great bluesy ballad, recorded during the Machine Head sessions and the B-side of the Never Before single from the album that gave us Smoke On The Water. “Ritchie no like” I remember singer Ian Gillan saying in some documentary. So, Purple never played it live while Blackmore was in the band, although it’s a fixture in most of their set lists since guitarist Steve Morse replaced Ritchie in the mid-1990s. Yet Blackmore plays, typically, brilliantly on it, as he did on Purple albums like Stormbringer he didn’t like because they were too funky for his taste. Which has always made me wonder why, as arguably the key member of Purple, he didn’t pull rank so to speak and steer the band back in the more hard-rock direction he professed to want and did take with Rainbow. That is, before he turned Rainbow into pretty much a pop band (ugh) in search of mostly US commercial success after singer Ronnie James Dio left, which was why Dio left. Creative differences and all that. Guitar geniuses. What are we to do with them? Listen, I suppose.
  1. Derek and The Dominos, Roll It Over (live) . . . From the Live At The Fillmore album, released in 1994 as an expanded version of the band’s In Concert album that was recorded in 1970 and released in 1973. This track appears on both records.
  1. Savoy Brown, Leavin’ Again . . . As we take our leave, until next week.
So Old It's New

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, May 2, 2022 – on air 8-10 pm ET

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  1. Max Webster, Here Among The Cats . . . Another selection derived from CD cleanup, up popped a Max Webster disc, realized I hadn’t played them in eons, so here we are.
  1. The Stooges, Down On The Street . . . Down and dirty rock from Iggy and the boys.
  1. The Stone Roses, Love Spreads . . . A lot of their other material has grown on me over the years but this remains the band’s best song, to me. Great riff/rocker with a sort of dreamy, drowsy hypnotic effect.
  1. Janis Joplin, Get It While You Can . . . From her final, posthumously-released studio album, Pearl. It’s another album, and artist, I thank my older siblings, in this case my older sister, for playing a lot and getting me into in my youth. I was 11 when it came out in 1970.
  1. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Flat Broke Love . . . One of my favorite BTO tunes and, as you can see, we’re in yet another “Bald Boy song title connectivity” thing.
  1. Ohio Players, Love Rollercoaster . . . Many of the songs in tonight’s set result from personal CD cleanup and shelving. Along with the Max Webster CD mentioned earlier, I came across a bunch of personal mix CDs I had burned years ago, from which I pulled this and several others that follow. So, although many of the songs were hits, often one-hit wonders, and this is almost always a deep cuts show, it’s also called So Old It’s New – and many of these tunes are 40, 50 years old now, dating to 70s and 80s and in some cases, the 60s. So, enjoy. I am.
  1. Billy Preston, Will It Go Round In Circles . . . One of his big hit singles I most remember from the 1970s, the other being Nothing From Nothing.
  1. Supertramp, Another Man’s Woman . . . From Crisis, What Crisis and thanks again to my older brother for getting me into Supertramp – at least for the great run of albums starting with Crime of The Century, then Crisis followed by Even In The Quietest Moments. Then came the monster commercial success of Breakfast in America, whose tour I saw and was great, but the album itself I’ve always ranked below the other three mentioned. Most of the Breakfast songs are overplayed, the album is in many places way too poppy for me (says the guy playing lots of pop tonight from his old burned CDs) and just doesn’t measure up to the previous three more progressive records. And Breakfast, like hugely successful albums can sometimes do (J. Geils Band’s Freeze Frame is an example), led to a split in the band. The next record, Famous Last Words, indeed was just that, the last word for that incarnation of the band. It was total schlock but Rodger Hodgson wanted to continue in that pop direction, Rick Davies didn’t, and Hodgson left. Davies carried on with the Brother Where You Bound album, an excellent record, but after that, while still releasing some more albums, Supertramp sort of just faded away in terms of wide public awareness.

     

  2. Eurythmics, Would I Lie To You? . . . First time I’ve ever played a Eurythmics song on the show. Why? Because it’s a deep cuts show and none of their non-singles does anything for me. But, I do have a singles collection, which I like, and Would I Lie To You popped up on one of my mix discs, too, so here you go. Good rocker, one of my favorites by Eurythmics.
  1. Thomas Dolby, She Blinded Me With Science . . . Science!! Always liked how he belts out that word at various points in the song.
  1. Soft Cell, Tainted Love . . . An old tune, written by Ed Cobb of The Four Preps, who originated in the 1950s. Gloria Jones had a hit with it in 1964, worth checking out in her more R & B/soul version than the synth style Soft Cell used for their big hit. Jones was a keyboardist and vocalist in T. Rex in the 1970s and was in a relationship with Marc Bolan. Which reminds me, I’ve been meaning to get T. Rex into the last few shows, haven’t played them in a while. Perhaps next week.
  1. The Human League, Don’t You Want Me . . . Remember when all this sort of stuff was huge in the early 1980s? The Human League is actually still around, blow me down. Probably playing this to open concerts, then in the middle, then as the encore. Just kidding. They did have other hits, like Mirror Man, for instance.
  1. Simple Minds, Don’t You Forget About Me . . . Easily my favorite Simple Minds tune but then I don’t know many of them besides this. Aside from this song, not typically my type of music but it’s all a matter of taste, of course and that’s cool. Was in The Breakfast Club movie, which I never saw but I’m not a movie buff.
  1. Naked Eyes, Always Something There To Remind Me . . . My mom (RIP) loved this version of the song, a standard by Burt Bacharach/Hal David. A top 10 hit for Naked Eyes, it’s been done by many, including Dionne Warwick and US soul singer Lou Johnson, who took it to No. 49 on Billboard in 1964.
  1. Bonnie Raitt, Spit Of Love . . . Great groove on this one, written by Raitt, whose albums are usually covers-heavy which isn’t a criticism, since she’s always put her own unique and appealing stamp on them.
  1. Big Sugar, Dear Mr. Fantasy . . . Speaking of covers . . . Big Sugar’s heavier, distortion-fueled version of the Traffic classic.
  1. Re-Flex, The Politics Of Dancing (extended mix) . . . Another hit single by a synth pop band used in a few movies, apparently, none of which I’ve seen. Best part of the song, to me: “the politics of . . . ooh, feeling good.” Nice hook.
  1. Men Without Hats, The Safety Dance . . . This Canadian band, huge with this song of course, are also still around as are many of these arguable one-hit wonders.
  1. The Buggles, Video Killed The Radio Star . . . And then once they killed radio, a couple members of The Buggles – singer and bassist Trevor Horn and keyboardist Geoff Downes – joined Yes in a move that raised eyebrows but produced an excellent Yes album, the sometimes often almost metallic Drama, in 1980.
  1. Gary Numan, Cars . . . Another from college days . . . 1979. One of so many great new wave singles around that time.
  1. The Rolling Stones, Sweet Virginia . . . “Got to scrape the shit right off your shoes.” This might be the one track, aside from the hit Tumbling Dice, I’ve never played up to now on the show, from likely my favorite Stones’ album if forced into the impossible task of picking just one: Exile On Main St.
  1. Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Jackie Blue . . . Great tune. And they’re still around with, perhaps surprisingly, several members still hanging in from the band’s beginnings in 1972.
  1. Kim Carnes, Bette Davis Eyes . . . Always reminds me of being in California in the spring and part of the summer of 1981. San Francisco Bay Area, having helped my dad do the driving from Calgary after he was transferred for work. It was all over the radio along with stuff from The Moody Blues’ Long Distance Voyager album and Blue Oyster Cult’s Fire Of Unknown Origin record.
  1. Argent, Hold Your Head Up . . . The big hit from the band formed in 1969 by Rod Argent, keyboardist in The Zombies.
  1. The Lemon Pipers, Green Tambourine . . . Two studio albums, one massive single, this one No. 1 for the Ohio band in 1968.
  1. Albert Hammond, It Never Rains In Southern California . . . I suppose I should have put this before or after the Kim Carnes tune, since that one reminded me of California. But, I was living in Northern California, not Southern. Good tune, another from one of those pre-recorded mix CDs of hits that I later burned onto one of my own eclectic compilation discs.
  1. Santana, Blue Skies . . . From Santana’s 2019 album, Africa Speaks, which features Spanish singer Buika and is very good, sounding to me much like very early Santana including this 9-minute epic. It starts slowly, building into some fiery guitar before settling down again towards the end.

 

So Old It's New

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, April 25, 2022 – on air 8-10 pm ET

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  1. Van Halen, Everybody Wants Some!! . . . Well-known Van Halen tune, although it wasn’t a single, from the Women and Children First album, 1980 complete with David Lee Roth’s fun bedroom rap about lines up the backs of stockings, sexy women’s shoes and so on. Hadn’t heard it in ages but happened to have one of my Van Halen personal mix CDs on in the car the other day, it brought me to laughter, so I decided to play it.
  1. Jerry Lee Lewis, Breathless . . . Continuing with the sex-type thing, er, theme, as you’ll notice from the next few titles. I just get going on this title/song content/theme connectivity stuff and can’t stop, what can I say?
  1. Elvis Presley, Baby, Let’s Play House . . . An Elvis B-side (of I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone) in 1955 that is one of his B-sides to chart, making the No. 5 spot on the US country list.
  1. Powder Blues, Nothin’ But A Tease . . . Slow blues from the Vancouver band, led by transplanted Chicago musician/producer Tom Lavin, that broke fairly big in Canada at the start of the 1980s via up-tempo singles like Doin’ It Right, Boppin’ With The Blues and Thirsty Ears. Lavin has also produced records by Canadian bands Prism and April Wine as well as Long John Baldry.
  1. Buddy Holly, It Doesn’t Matter Anymore . . . So, if you’re following along the song title connectivity thing, he wanted some, didn’t get it, was left breathless and she, who was nothing but a tease, didn’t want to play house so it just doesn’t matter anymore. Time to move on. In putting together the beginning of this set, what a reminder of how good Elvis, Jerry Lee and Buddy Holly were. Just so much great stuff. And in playing Holly, I got reading about him again and was reminded of the plane crash that took his life and that of Richie Valens and “The Big Bopper’ J.P. Richardson. It was a winter tour package of bands, people were getting sick on the tour buses so Holly decided to charter a plane to the next stop. The Big Bopper, ill with the flu, swapped spots with Holly’s band member Waylon Jennings while Valens won a coin flip with another Holly band member, Tommy Allsup, and took his seat on the ill-fated aircraft. Fate: take this path, or that one?
  2. Blondie, Accidents Never Happen . . . One of my favorite Blondie songs, nice beat, nice groove. It wasn’t a single from the Eat To The Beat album although a video was done for it so perhaps a video single but I’m not much into videos. Unless they’re straight ‘performance’ videos of the band playing its song, videos to me are like when a book becomes a movie and re-releases of the book come with whoever plays the lead character on the cover. I like to form my own images of what characters look like, or interpret song lyrics for myself, although I have seen the Accidents video and it’s a simple band ‘performance’ thing.
  1. R.E.M., The Wake-Up Bomb . . . I prefer R.E.M.’s rockier stuff. Like this one from the New Adventures In Hi-Fi album, 1996. Critics tend to rave over 1992’s Automatic For The People album, and it’s good, but I tend to listen to New Adventures more, there’s more songs on it that I like than is the case with Automatic. Music is all about personal taste, of course, but apparently singer Michael Stipe considers New Adventures as his favorite. So there.
  1. Pretenders, Complex Person . . . I had left the Pretenders behind in the early 1980s, after 1983’s terrific Learning To Crawl album as far as new studio releases went. But a few years ago, likely fueled by seeing Pretenders open for The Who and because their stuff was so cheap in a used CD store, I caught up on the discography and am fully up to date, including Chrissie Hynde’s solo albums. And, at least to me, they’re one of those longtime bands/artists that continue to produce worthwhile music up to the present. This now 20 year (!?) old song, from 2002’s excellent Loose Screw album is an example.
  1. The Kinks, Complicated Life . . . The Kinks’ Ray Davies and Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde were once a couple, so I put them back-to-back in my set, talking about complicated complexities. This one’s from a Kinks’ masterpiece, 1971’s Muswell Hillbillies which, criminally, didn’t even chart in the UK and made just No. 100 in the US. Ridiculous to me, because the album – like many underappreciated except for Kinks’ fans albums – is brilliant. Country rock, blues, music hall, they could do it all.
  1. The Guess Who, Life In The Bloodstream . . . Fairly well-known Guess Who track but it wasn’t a single. It’s from 1971’s So Long Bannatyne album but I pulled it off a personal Guess Who favorites CD of hits and deep cuts, two volumes, I burned years ago. And in going over those tracks as I planned this show, once again obvious was how the depth in quality of The Guess Who’s output is astounding.
  1. Murray McLauchlan, Sweeping The Spotlight Away . . . Title cut from the Canadian folk rocker’s 1974 album, which yielded one of his biggest hits, Down By The Henry Moore.
  1. George Harrison, It’s What You Value . . . I’ve always liked this pop rocker from Harrison’s 1976 album, 33 1/3. The lyrics are about Harrison paying noted session drummer Jim Keltner with a Mercedes in lieu of money, for playing on Harrison’s 1974 tour. It took some convincing for Harrison to get Keltner to go on tour, but he finally got him by promising Keltner a new car to replace his old van. Or so the story goes. According to Harrison’s liner notes on remastered versions of the album, the rest of his band members then moaned that all they got was money for playing, while Keltner got a Mercedes. If it were me, I’d want money and then spend it on what I want, even maybe a Mercedes. First world problems, as the saying goes.
  1. John Lennon, God . . . One of Lennon’s finest, musically and of course lyrically, from the Plastic Ono Band album. I’ve played it before, deliberately played it again to set up . . .
  1. U2, God Part II . . . U2’s fine, rockier sequel, which appeared on the Rattle and Hum combination studio-live album.
  1. J.J. Cale, Call The Doctor . . . This song is why you buy – or in the modern world, investigate online – studio albums, not just compilations, if you’re deeply interested in an artist. Typical J.J. Cale, as was often the case with him, a short, bluesy shuffle leaving you wanting more. But you’d have to have, or listen to, his 1971 debut album, Naturally, to hear it. One of my personal favorites, I find it amazing it’s not on any of the various J.J. Cale compilations.
  1. Dire Straits, Where Do You Think You’re Going? . . . One of my deja vu moments. I feel like I’ve played this too recently but, my research indicates no and in any event, my new thing is, so what if I did? Great tune, from the band’s second album, Communique, but of course Dire Straits was so consistently good throughout their six studio albums.

     

  2. Jim Croce, New York’s Not My Home . . . This wasn’t a single, although it appears on Croce’s posthumously-released greatest hits album. Good tune, as is most of this late artist’s work, sadly lost to us in the early 1970s, like Buddy Holly many years before him, in a plane crash flying between tour stops.
  1. Eagles, King Of Hollywood . . . I’ve said it before but I like The Long Run album, even though critics, and the band members themselves, have tended to dismiss it. I suppose, when you’re trying to follow up Hotel California, anything will pale in comparison but in some ways I find The Long Run rawer, edgier – like this tune – and better, which can tend to happen when a band is fried, fraying, having a difficult time in recording, etc. Conflict and difficult circumstances often makes for great art. All a matter of taste and opinion, of course.
  1. Steve Earle and The Dukes, The Tennessee Kid . . . Second time in 2-3 weeks I dig back into Earle’s 2015 Terraplane album, a terrific record I’ve only recently gotten into – and into it major I am – thanks to a recommendation from a music acquaintance on Twitter. Spoken word opening transitions into a pulsating groove overlaid with not so much singing but more of an ongoing spoken monologue.
  1. Bob Dylan, Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again . . . It’s Dylan. Seven minutes, nine verses of typically great lyrics as only Dylan can enunciate them, with that great chorus, love the drumming, the playing, the feel, the song. All a matter of taste of course and some people, still, say Dylan can’t sing. Well, he’s distinctive, certainly not cookie cutter, and simply great – the best Bob Dylan singer there ever was or will be but, sure, not to everyone’s taste. I had always known Dylan, largely via my older brother who was a big fan and as I’ve often mentioned, a huge musical influence. I remember him bringing home the John Wesley Harding album when it came out, 1967. But I had been only a compilations collector of Dylan’s stuff until truly getting into this song, and the Blonde on Blonde album, one afternoon in Peace River, Alberta, 1981. Fresh out of college and having moved west in pursuit of my journalism dream, I was living in a house with several other people. Fun times, one of those life instances where you become friends with people by moving in with them to share rent, instead of becoming enemies by moving in with friends, as can happen.

    Anyway, everyone was out and I happened to be alone, lying on the couch, reading, when I saw one of my roommates’ Blonde on Blonde pre-recorded cassette sitting on a coffee table. I popped it in the player and soon enough, as is the case with me and Dylan, down went the book because I can’t do other things when I listen to Dylan, he pulls me in to full attention. So I just lay back and took the whole album in, and the rest is history. I didn’t have to buy it for a while, because we all shared our music in that house, but soon enough, I was on my own and the album was a regular visitor to my turntable as were Dylan’s other studio works as I collected his entire output.

  1. Them, I’m Gonna Dress In Black . . . Early Them fronted, of course, by Van The Man Morrison. It’s largely due to the organ in this bluesy track but it struck me, in picking this tune, how some Them songs sound like early Animals or, I suppose, vice-versa. I pulled it from a wonderful 3-CD (including a rarities/outtakes disc) Them compilation I own – The Complete Them 1964-1967, with liner notes written by Van the Man. Morrison can often be, or come across as, a curmudgeon, but he’s obviously justifiably proud of Them’s work, ending his insightful notes with “I think of Them as good records. The best part was actually doing the tracks: the best part, and the most enjoyable. There’s a lot of good stuff here.” Indeed.
  1. Johnny Cash, Man In Black . . . Back to my song connectivity thing: The Them song title sets up this famous call to make things bright, as my set list actually grows darker, if anyone’s following along. I still am, ha. We’ve gone from sex to God to travel and approaching the dark side . . .
  1. The Rolling Stones, Dancing With Mr. D . . . via this Stones’ pseudo-sequel to Sympathy For The Devil. It was the opening cut on 1973’s Goats Head Soup album.
  1. Mike Oldfield, Tubular Bells, Part One . . . The first part of Oldfield’s masterpiece was used, of course, as the theme music to the horror film The Exorcist, which naturally boosted sales of Oldfield’s album. According to Wikipedia, Exorcist director William Friedkin had decided to scrap the original score for his movie, written by Lalo Schifrin (perhaps best known for the iconic theme music for the original Mission Impossible TV series) and was seeking alternatives. Friedkin decided on Tubular Bells when, on a visit to Atlantic Records president Ahmet Ertegun’s office, Friedkin saw the album lying around and put it on the stereo. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. I figured I’d play all 25 minutes of Part One by the same sort of happenstance. I was going through CDs, Tubular Bells popped up, I hadn’t played it in ages, did so, realized how much I still like it, how others might, too, and decided to go with it. So now I suppose I’m committed to playing the rest of the album, Part Two, at some future point, perhaps in another long song show. We shall see.
Shows, So Old It's New

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, April 18/22: on air 8-10 pm ET

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1. Tony Joe White, Even Trolls Love Rock and Roll

2. The Jeff Beck Group, Jailhouse Rock

3. David Baerwald, All For You

4. Soundgarden, Spoonman

5. Stone Temple Pilots, Vasoline

6.  Alice In Chains, Dirt

7. Bob Seger, Ain’t Got No Money

8. Stampeders, Then Came The White Man

9. Queen, White Man

10. Steppenwolf, Don’t Step On The Grass, Sam

11. Johnny Rivers, Where Have All The Flowers Gone

12. The Marshall Tucker Band, 24 Hours At A Time

13. April Wine, Juvenile Delinquent ( from Live at the El Mocambo)

14. The Rolling Stones, Sister Morphine

15. Ike & Tina Turner, Come Together

16. Arlo Guthrie, Alice’s Restaurant Massacree

17. Spirit, Mechanical World

18. The Amboy Dukes, Migration

19. Klaatu, Little Neutrino

20. Billy Cobham, Stratus Continue reading So Old It’s New set list for Monday, April 18/22: on air 8-10 pm ET →

Shows, Wadio Wam!

Wadio Wam! Episode 8 – Sampled

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Hey y’all! Hoping you’re enjoying your easter if you celebrate!

Sam wasn’t around last week, but here is last week’s episode where I looked at some of my favourite samples and sampled songs! Pretty fun episode.

This week there will not be a new episode due to Easter and both of us being busy, so we will be replaying our road trips episode from April 3rd, so if you missed it or wanna catch it again live then check it out. Have a great weekend, Wam on!

So Old It's New

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, April 11, 2022 – on air 8-10 pm ET

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  1. David Wilcox, That Hypnotizin’ Boogie . . . From Wilcox’s debut album, Out Of The Woods, released in 1980. I was working in a bar, putting myself through college at the time and remember him playing this, before the album was released. As soon as the record was released, I bought it and have been a Wilcox fan since.
  1. Foghat, Chateau Lafitte ’59 Boogie . . . Speaking of boogie. . . I saw Foghat at the Kitchener Blues Festival some years back, good show.
  1. Paul McCartney & Wings, Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five . . . One of the great deep cuts from Band On The Run but I suppose, given how solid that album is, it’s a fairly well-known track.
  1. The Plastic Ono Band, Blue Suede Shoes (live) . . . From Live Peace In Toronto 1969, the Rock ‘n’ Roll revival concert that featured such ’50s fathers of rock as Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Little Richard as well as Chicago, Alice Cooper and The Doors. I love the MC’s intro to the song: “Get your matches ready” (nowadays it would be, get your smart phones ready” and then John Lennon’s slightly sheepish “OK we’re just gonna play numbers we know, you know, cuz we’ve never played together before and mumble mumble . . . ” And it was true, that version of The Plastic Ono Band – Lennon, Eric Clapton, bassist Klaus Voorman, drummer Alan White (later of Yes) and singer-in-a-bag Yoko Ono, was put together quickly when Lennon was invited to play the show, rehearsed on the plane and the result is a fine, raw live album and a historic moment in rock and roll history.
  1. Traveling Wilburys, Tweeter and the Monkey Man . . . Bob Dylan handles lead vocals on this one, backed by his Wilbury brothers George Harrison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne, with session drummer to the stars Jim Keltner on skins. Roy Orbison, the fifth Wilbury, sat the session out. There’s varying opinions on who actually wrote the song – which Canada’s Headstones rocked up to great effect on their debut album Picture Of Health in 1993. The song is registered to Dylan’s publishing company, but Harrison said it was co-written by Petty with some lyrical input from him and Lynne. Who really knows; I’ve always considered it a Dylan song but in any event it’s a great one.
  1. Graham Parker and The Rumour, Devil’s Sidewalk . . . It wasn’t a single but it’s always been my favorite song from The Up Escalator album. That opening guitar hook did its job, reeling me in forever from the first time I heard it. It’s a great album, features Bruce Springsteen on backing vocals on the song Endless Night and E-Street Band keyboardist Danny Federici throughout. I’m a huge Parker fan and I’d put the record in a tie with Squeezing Out Sparks as maybe Parker’s best, although The Up Escalator didn’t meet with the widespread positive reviews Sparks did. Of course, then there’s earlier albums like Howlin’ Wind, Heat Treatment and Stick To Me so let’s just say that, early on, Parker was near-perfect. I suppose The Up Escalator resonates best with me, as much music does for anyone, because it was a time-and-place record and the first album of his I actually owned, although I knew his earlier hits like Local Girls from Sparks.

     

  2. Moon Martin, Bad News . . . Moon Martin is one of those artists largely known to the masses by one song, his 1979 hit Rolene. But he was great, beyond that. For one thing, he wrote Bad Case Of Loving You (Doctor Doctor) that Robert Palmer turned into a hit. Anyway, Martin started his music career as a rockabilly artist and he incorporated the genre into much of his work, including this cut from his 1980 album Street Fever.
  3. The Rolling Stones, I Got The Blues . . . “At three o’clock in the morning I’m singing my song to you.” I always think of that line when I think of this song, from Sticky Fingers. A slow blues tune maybe best in fact listened to at 3 a.m., half drunk, headphones on, lamenting a lost love.
  1. Peter Tosh, No Sympathy . . . Followers of the show have often detected a symmetry, at least sometimes, to my set lists and despite my internal reservations that I risk being contrived, I find I just naturally make certain connections between songs and artists in my shows. That’s whether it be by title, by lyrical content or, as in this case, by artists’ collaborations and song title. Peter Tosh, likely, being the straight shooter he was, would have had no sympathy for someone lamenting a lost love, and he also later collaborated with and opened for The Rolling Stones. So, here you are, from his fine Legalize It album in 1976, the album before he was signed to Rolling Stones Records and opened for the band on their 1978 tour. I saw that tour but alas, Tosh wasn’t on the bill I saw on Buffalo, July 4, 1978. I got April Wine (which we missed due to a traffic jam coming into the stadium), Atlanta Rhythm Section (great show) and Journey (meh, Tosh would have fit well there, instead). A later journalism colleague of mine saw the same tour, in Cleveland three days earlier I found out nearly 40 years later, and he got Tosh as an opener.
  1. Aerosmith, Reefer Headed Woman . . . Sometimes listed as Reefer Head Woman – in fact most of the YouTube posts refer to it that way although on Aerosmith’s Night In The Ruts album itself it’s listed as Reefer Headed Woman. Whatever, it’s a great Aerosmith treatment of an old blues cut from an album most critics dismissed but is in fact a kick-butt ‘Smiths album.
  1. Van Morrison, Big Time Operators . . . My favorite Van the Man cut many people may not know, a bluesy track from 1993’s Too Long In Exile album. It’s a great lyrical ‘eff you’ to the music industry with great lead guitar from Van himself.
  1. Steve Earle and The Dukes, Better Off Alone . . . I like Steve Earle, lots, got into him via the Copperhead Road album and single way back when and went back and forward with him and have most of his stuff. But I didn’t have, and hadn’t heard, his Terraplane album, from 2015, until a Twitter music acquaintance of mine suggested it and so here we be. Fantastic, all-originals bluesy album.
  2. Billy Joel, The Stranger . . . Title cut from his breakthrough album in 1977, was a single in some countries, notably Japan where it hit No. 2 but in any case just another great song from a great album.
  1. Townes Van Zandt, Brand New Companion . . . Playing a Steve Earle tune reminded me of Townes Van Zandt because Earle did a whole album of Townes tunes, called Townes, in 2009. This track was on it and this is the late great, troubled but appealingly warts and all human Van Zandt’s original.
  1. Free, Be My Friend . . . Great song from the band’s 1970 album Highway and a long overdue return to playing the band on the show.
  1. Bad Company, Heartbeat . . . And playing Free naturally, due to the band connections (Paul Rodgers especially on lead vocals) brought me to Bad Company.
  1. U2, Tryin’ To Throw Your Arms Around The World . . . I was trying to figure out a semi-deep cut from the Achtung Baby album to play which is arguably difficult since most of the tracks on the record are, deservedly, so well known. It came down to this one, or Until The End Of The World, whose lyrics I love, but that was a fairly successful single in some countries and this is supposed to be a deep cuts show and I’ve played it before. So, I’m playing this.
  1. Steely Dan, Aja . . . Jazzy title cut from the album.
  1. Stephen Stills, Treetop Flyer . . . Neil Young, and he’s great, is often more critically acclaimed than the other members of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young but really, each guy has done fine work on his own, particularly, I would submit, Stills as with this one from his excellent 1991 Stills Alone album.
  1. Roxy Music, Re-Make/Re-Model . . . Great funky freaky tune from the early, more experimental days of Roxy Music and a deliberate choice because what follows are a couple cover tunes that indeed are remakes/remodels of well-known songs, which as I’ve often said are my favorite types of covers – they become new songs, essentially.
  1. Patti Smith, Smells Like Teen Spirit . . . An acoustic reinterpretation of the Nirvana song that broke that band big. It’s from an excellent album I’ve periodically mined, Smith’s 2007 covers album Twelve.

     

  2. Jose Feliciano, Light My Fire . . . I remember seeing Feliciano on some variety-type show my parents watched in the late 1960s or early ’70s. I didn’t get into him at the time but never forgot his performance and so, as let’s say a music explorer, eventually found my way back to him. The same thing has happened, maybe a function of age, who knows, for me with various artists my parents listened to – Tom Jones, Glen Campbell, Harry Belafonte, Johnny Cash . . . on and on. It’s a cool thing.
  1. Golden Earring, Kill Me (Ce Soir) . . . Said it a zillion times, Golden Earring so much more than the two hits they are best-known for, especially in North America – Radar Love and Twilight Zone.
  1. Frank Zappa, Muffin Man . . . “He turns to us and speaks. . . . Some people like cupcakes better. I for one, care less for them.” “Goodnight Austin, Texas, wherever you are.” Great Zappa madness, great tune, amazing guitar, what a fantastic artist and brilliant, thoughtful, no BS man he was.
Shows, Wadio Wam!

Wadio Wam! Episode 7 – Roadtrip!

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Hey y’all! Here’s last weeks episode where me and Sam looked at our favourite road trip songs. Give it a listen if you’re interested or if you’re going for a nice drive! We have a fun show planned for next week (hint: does that sound familiar?) so be sure to tune in on Sunday at 1PM.  Wam On!

Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4WeYL02iybxJ02avOetmCC?si=2152d4d63e0f47df

So Old It's New

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, April 4, 2022 – on air 8-10 pm ET

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  1. Yes, Awaken . . . Somehow or other, tonight’s set, which was going to begin with Otis Redding’s Satisfaction (which is later in the list) morphed into a prog-rock show, at least for the first several songs. Like this one, the lone epic-length (15 minutes) track from Yes’s 1977 album, Going For The One, which saw the band record mostly shorter tracks.
  1. The Alan Parsons Project, In The Lap Of The Gods . . . Spacey stuff from Parson’s 1978 album Pyramid, a concept record centered around Egypt’s pyramids and, apparently, the fact pyramid power was something of a ‘thing’ around that time. In fact I recall then-Toronto Maple Leafs’ hockey coach Red Kelly being into it but ultimately it still didn’t win the Leafs their first Stanley Cup since 1967, and they’re still trying.
  1. Jethro Tull, Mine Is The Mountain . . . I’m a big Tull fan anyway so I’ll tend to find value in everything the band releases, and I’m really liking the new album, The Zealot Gene and this to me is one of the stronger tracks on it. My liking of Tull includes even the sythnesizer-heavy 1984 album Under Wraps which I hated at first but has grown on me over time as yet another example of how I like when bands I like try different things. The new album is more let’s say traditional, recognizable Tull and it’s terrific, already after a relative few plays having embedded itself into my brain.
  1. King Crimson, Red . . . Heavy, metallic instrumental title cut from Crimson’s 1974 album, after which leader Robert Fripp put the band on hiatus until they returned with an updated, Talking Heads-type new wave sound for the Discipline-Beat-Three Of A Perfect Pair trilogy of albums starting in 1981.
  2. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Toccata . . . ELP introduced many rock fans to, or reminded them of, classical music, this track an adaptation of Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera’s piano concerto. It appeared on the Brain Salad Surgery album. It’s also probably the type of mind-bending track, especially the last two minutes, that a friend of mine was fearful of during college days when, stoned together, someone in our group sitting around my apartment suggested I put on some ELP and said friend – who moments earlier had been swimming the crawl stroke on my carpet – shrieked, ‘no, no, please, not that!” Luckily for him, I didn’t have any ELP handy at that point. Instead, I put on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon, which was likely worse for my friend’s psyche. If I recall, he then transitioned to swimming the backstroke. Just kidding about that, but he really did do the crawl. Fun times.
  1. Emerson, Lake & Powell, Step Aside . . . Drummer Carl Palmer wasn’t available due to contractual obligations to the band Asia when Keith Emerson and Greg Lake wanted to reform ELP in the mid-1980s. So, Emerson’s friend and drummer to the stars Cozy Powell stepped in for a new ELP’s lone, self-titled studio album from which I pulled this jazzy track.
  1. Saga, Wind Him Up . . . Second single from the Canadian band’s successful 1981 album, Worlds Apart which also gave us their top-30 Billboard single On The Loose.
  1. Rush, The Twilight Zone . . . From 2112 and a tribute to the classic TV show, the Rod Serling-created original one, not the 1980s remake, which I gather was not bad, or the god-awful, mercifully canceled 2020-21 version.
  1. Black Sabbath, Air Dance . . . Jazzy, progressive-type tune from Sabbath’s Never Say Die album. If you didn’t know it was Sabbath, you wouldn’t know it was Sabbath, in my opinion. I like it.
  1. Queen, Good Company . . . Yet another great Brian May-penned Queen song, this one a Dixieland jazz-type tune from A Night At The Opera.
  1. Neil Young, F*!#in’ Up . . . Not much to say aside from the chorus says it all.
  1. The Tragically Hip, Opiated . . . From the first full Hip album, 1989’s Up To Here, which followed their earlier self-titled EP. I bought this one, sight unseen, pre-internet, from a magazine review that said it was Stones-like and before songs like Blow At High Dough and New Orleans Is Sinking from it became hits. So it was kinda cool when they did, because I was rewarded by taking a chance on the review of what is, top to bottom, an excellent album.
  1. George Harrison, Let It Down . . . I’m having one of those deja vu moments again, feeling like I just played this in a recent show but, searches indicate not the case and in any event, so be it if so. Harrison originally offered this a Beatles’ tune during the Get Back/Let It Be sessions but, like the title cut from what became his All Things Must Pass album, it was rejected by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, which contributed to Harrison leaving those sessions for about a week as detailed in the Get Back documentary. He just up and leaves at one point, telling the rest of the guys “I’ll see you around the clubs.” The next day, when John, Paul and Ringo reassemble, Lennon seems to shrug it all off, musing “if he’s not back by Tuesday, we’ll get (Eric) Clapton in.”
  1. John Lennon, Meat City . . . A beautiful noise, I’d call this rocker, which was the B-side to the title cut Mind Games single from Lennon’s 1973 album.
  1. Jefferson Airplane, Blues From An Airplane . . . Lead cut from Takes Off, the Airplane’s 1966 debut album, sung by Marty Balin. Spooky sort of psychedelia, only problem with it is, it’s too short at two minutes, 10 seconds. Then again, good to leave people wanting more.
  1. Otis Redding, Satisfaction . . . The Otis treatment of the Stones’ classic and apparently, with the horns, the way Keith Richards initially envisioned it. I’m glad the Stones’ version turned out the way it did – although they’ve long incorporated horns on it on various tours – but also great that we have Redding’s interpretation. What an artist he was.
  1. The Rolling Stones, Jump On Top Of Me . . . This boogie rocker was the B-side to the 1994 Voodoo Lounge album’s second single, You Got Me Rocking (which has become a Stones’ concert staple). Jump On Top Of Me was also in the soundtrack to the movie Pret-A-Porter (Ready To Wear), a somewhat obscure, critically-carved movie I’ve never seen but it does feature an all-star cast that includes Sophia Loren (who received a supporting actress Golden Globe nomination), Tim Robbins, Julia Roberts and Kim Basinger, among many others.
  1. The Flying Burrito Brothers, High Fashion Queen . . . When I think of or play the Stones, the Burritos often come to mind due to Keith Richards’ friendship with the Burritos’ late leader Gram Parsons. So, here’s the country-boogie Burritos.
  1. Joe Cocker, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood . . . First recorded by the immortal Nina Simone (I’ll have to play her version sometime) and turned into a big hit by The Animals, this is Cocker’s also terrific interpretation. It’s from his 1969 debut album, With A Little Help From My Friends.
  1. Fleetwood Mac, Future Games . . . I’ve said it many times: the mid-period Fleetwood Mac featuring American guitarist/singer/songwriter Bob Welch is terrific, if often relatively underappreciated in between the original blues band led by founder Peter Green and the later Stevie Nicks-Lindsey Buckingham commercial juggernaut. This extended, Welch-penned ethereal title cut from the band’s 1971 album, Welch’s first with the group, is an indication. Welch later re-cut it, at less than half the eight-minute length,for one of his solo albums.
  1. The J. Geils Band, Monkey Island . . . A friend of mine texted me last week, excited over his purchase, after all this time (about time, bud, ha) since its 1972 release, of J. Geils’ terrific Full House live album. I’ve mined it for probably all of its eight songs, over time. Great band, and our discussion prompted me to play this spooky title cut from the band’s 1977 album, which didn’t do so well commercially but is for the most part a terrific deep, dark, moody work.
  1. Doug and The Slugs, Drifting Away . . . And we drift away into planning for next week’s show via one of my favorite relationship tunes, a time and place one for me as I was going through an, in the end, definitely ‘for the best’ breakup with a college girlfriend – although she was the one who introduced me to the Slugs.
Shows, Wadio Wam!

Playlist’s are live!

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Hey y’all!

Just here to update the peoples that our Spotify playlists are officially live! If you now go to an episode’s homepage, you’ll find a link to that week’s Spotify playlist. Hopefully this allows everyone to access the setlist’s they love at the drop of a hat! Thank you for tuning in, if you haven’t checked out Episode 6 yet, I would recommend it, probably one of my favourites yet. Wam on!

Link to our homepage: https://radiowaterloo.ca/wadio-wam/?highlight=wadio%20wam

Shows, Wadio Wam!

Wadio Wam! Episode 6 – Girls Rule, Boys Drool

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Here’s the latest show from Wadio Wam, where we looked at some of our favourite women in music! Wam on!

Also, if you’re a Spotify listener, we have a link to this week’s playlist! we’re working on getting the rest of the playlists up, but I will post when it happens

Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2WSObiLrkt0PhxaDnsHHng?si=66e061d4b2b34296

So Old It's New

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, March 28, 2022 – on air 8-10 pm ET

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  1. Lou Reed, Rock ‘n’ Roll (live, from Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal) . . . From the liner notes of the year 2000 remastered edition of Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal: “Lou Reed sucks, but Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal rules.” – unsolicited customer review on Amazon.com . . . It wasn’t me, honest! For one thing, if and when I do use Amazon, I use Amazon.ca since I’m in Canada although I have been known to go to .com if I can’t find something here. Secondly, I like most of Lou Reed’s stuff and that of the Velvet Underground, most of whose songs he wrote. Like this one. Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal does, indeed, rule. And this live version kicks butt, featuring great twin guitar work by Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, the latter of Alice Cooper fame.
  1. The Rolling Stones, My Obsession . . . Staccato-type track featuring terrific drumming by the late great Charlie Watts, from 1967’s Between The Buttons album.
  1. Johnny Winter, Silver Train . . . The first of several cover tunes, great artists doing other great artists’ songs, in tonight’s set. This is Winter’s version of the Rolling Stones’ song from 1973’s Goats Head Soup album. The typically Winter-ized version actually preceded the Stones’ release, as the Texas guitar slinger heard a demo of the tune and released it on his Still Alive and Well album that preceded Goats Head Soup by a few months. The song was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in 1970 but was shelved before being polished for Goats Head Soup. Winter, who mined the Stones’ and Bob Dylan catalogs for such tunes as Jumping Jack Flash, Highway 61 Revisited and Like A Rolling Stone, also covered Let It Bleed on Still Alive and Well.
  1. Marianne Faithfull, Truth, Bitter Truth . . . From 1981’s Dangerous Acquaintances album, which didn’t do as well as the hard-act-to-follow Broken English. Faithfull herself said Dangerous Acquaintances was a difficult recording, everyone concerned with the project – Faithfull, her session players and the producer – weren’t always on the same page. Nevertheless, I think it’s a pretty good record, featuring such songs as the singles Intrigue and Sweetheart plus For Beauty’s Sake, Easy In The City, Tenderness and this one, a seven-minute epic that starts as almost spoken word before transitioning nicely into the main tune 1:15 in.
  1. Nazareth, Empty Arms, Empty Heart . . . As someone on YouTube commented, yet another great song (by anyone) that most people will never hear. That’s why Bald Boy is here, to dig into deep cuts like this one from Nazareth’s debut, self-titled album in 1971. It’s almost progressive hard rock, at least in terms of how many time signature changes they cram into a three-minute, 12 second song.
  1. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, The Letter . . .A song The Box Tops took to No. 1 on the charts in 1967 and was later covered by Joe Cocker and Al Green, among others. BTO’s rocked up version, whose main riff calls to mind Neil Young’s Southern Man, was recorded in 1971 as Brave Belt morphed into BTO but wasn’t officially released until the 2-CD BTO Anthology came out in 1993.
  1. Paul McCartney and Wings, Let Me Roll It (live, from Wings Over America) . . . Originally on the Band On The Run studio album, it was the B-side to Jet but may as well have been a single, as it’s one of Wings’ best-known tracks and one McCartney almost never fails to play in concert to this day – it appears on five Macca live albums.
  1. Led Zeppelin, Candy Store Rock . . . A shuddering sort of rockabilly tune, apparently one of Robert Plant’s favorites from 1976’s Presence album. It was a difficult album for Plant, who had suffered serious injuries in a car accident and sang from a wheelchair during the sessions.
  1. Budgie, Napoleon Bona Part One & Two . . . Clever, or silly, title, depending on one’s point of view but nevertheless another excellent almost progressive metal offering from the Welsh pioneers who influenced the likes of Iron Maiden and Metallica. Metallica has covered Budgie songs Breadfan, with its hellacious riff, and Crash Course in Brain Surgery. I’ve played Breadfan before but this reminds me to get to Crash Course in Brain Surgery at some point.
  1. Red Rider, Napoleon Sheds His Skin . . . Having fun with Napoleonic titles but aside from that, this is one of the many good tracks on Red Rider’s 1983 Neruda album.
  1. Patti Smith, Changing Of The Guards . . . Another cover, this one of the Bob Dylan song from his Street Legal album in 1978. Smith did it for her all-covers Twelve (for twelve tunes) album, released in 2007. I’ve played things like the Stones’ Gimme Shelter and Hendrix’s Are You Experienced? from it before but definitely an album worth returning to soon. It’s full of interesting Smith interpretations of such songs as the Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit and Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, among others.
  1. Blood, Sweat & Tears, 40,000 Headmen . . . The BS & T jazz-rock fusion treatment, applied to the Traffic tune in a nice version from the ‘3’ album. I remember getting the album when my older sister, brother and I were in the Columbia Record Club in 1970 via which we also got Chicago’s second album and Santana’s Abraxas. Things were different, then, but I suppose a record club is really not much different than ordering online now. Speaking of Abraxas, great album: 1. I need to return to it for some songs soon. 2. I always remember playing charades and our mom hilariously doing pantomime trying to describe the poster of the band members that came with the album. We didn’t ‘get’ what she was trying to describe and were in hysterics, but just more evidence that mom was pretty cool.
  1. Traffic, Light Up Or Leave Me Alone . . . Jim Capaldi wrote and sang this one from The Low Spark Of High-Heeled Boys album while usual lead singer/multi-instrumentalist Steve Winwood provides some nice guitar licks. 
  2. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Pagan Baby . . . Some might consider it repetitive. Others, hypnotic. Or, hypnotically repetitive, which to me is a good thing on yet another CCR deep cut that shows that while they were an amazing singles band and are well-served by compilations, the full picture – as with many bands – is revealed via the individual studio albums. This one’s from 1970’s Pendulum.
  1. Faces, You Can Make Me Dance, Sing Or Anything (Even Take The Dog For A Walk, Mend A Fuse, Fold Away The Ironing Board, Or Any Other Domestic Shortcomings) . . . Not sure what’s better, the song or the fun title, the in-parentheses part of which is not always used, but I like to be thorough. I like the song, a typically fun, shambolic Faces outing, which was their charm. It was the final Faces single, peaking at No. 12 in the UK charts.
  1. Gordon Lightfoot, Me and Bobby McGee . . . From Lightfoot’s 1970 album Sit Down Young Stranger, the title later changed to If You Could Read My Mind when that song from the record became a big hit. Lightfoot’s spare version, which was No. 1 on the Canadian country charts and No. 13 on the pop singles list, is one of the first recordings of the Kris Kristofferson song that soon after became a posthumous No. 1 Billboard hit for Janis Joplin. Roger Miller was the first to record it, taking it to No. 12 on the US country charts in 1969. Charley Pride, Jerry Lee Lewis and Kristofferson himself are among the many others who have covered what is simply a great song. Lewis had a No. 1 US country hit with it, a version I played on the show some time ago.
  1. The Grateful Dead, Throwing Stones . . . From the Dead’s 1987 album In The Dark which was a big commercial success thanks in large measure to the hit single Touch of Grey. This extended, jaunty piece about humanity, with lyrics like “a peaceful place, or so it looks from space; a closer look reveals the human race” was also a single but didn’t chart to my knowledge.
  1. Headstones, Cemetery . . . Hard rocker with upbeat lyrics (kidding) from what is still likely my favorite Headstones album, the debut Picture of Health, from 1993. And I have all of this consistently good Canadian band’s material. So we go, deliberately, from Throwing Stones to the Headstones in a cemetery. Yeah, I know, enough nonsense, Bald Boy. Next! Ha.
  1. Steppenwolf, Power Play . . . Little did I know, when at age nine in 1968 a friend played The Pusher from Steppenwolf’s debut album and our group of friends marveled that the lyrics said “god damn”, that I’d become a lifelong fan of the band that originated in Canada as The Sparrows. I’ve just always loved the band’s gritty sound and John Kay’s vocals. Steppenwolf was far more than the endless plays of Born To Be Wild and Magic Carpet Ride one hears on commercial radio. Great songs, but dig a bit, folks.
  1. Drive-By Truckers, 3 Dimes Down . . . As mentioned last time I played the Truckers, I quite enjoy their stuff, like this rocker from their 2008 album Brighter Than Creation’s Dark. Or maybe I decided to play it because of the album title, given I had just watched a documentary about the cosmic dawn, the period when light emerged, millions of years after the Big Bang, to illuminate what had to that point been a dark universe. On the other hand, if I played songs inspired by what documentaries I watch, then I would have played McCartney and Wings’ Spirits Of Ancient Egypt today since I had also recently watched a show about how we’d build the pyramids today as opposed to how the ancient Egyptians (or aliens, or helped by aliens) did it. I thought of doing just that, but then decided Let Me Roll it is a better Wings’ song than Spirits Of Ancient Egypt, so I played that instead. To refresh any failing memories, the Wings’ tune is No. 7 in tonight’s set.
  1. Uriah Heep, Bird Of Prey . . . A friend of mine occasionally has ribbed me when I play Uriah Heep but, what can I say, we all have guilty pleasures I suppose and I don’t even consider Heep a guilty pleasure. I like their stuff, especially the earlier material like this track from 1971’s Salisbury album. Depending on my mood I can do with or without the late singer David Byron’s operatic oohs and aahs but there’s no doubt bands like Queen and, much later, The Darkness were influenced by it.
  1. Rory Gallagher, Ride On Red, Ride On . . . Gallagher’s smokin’ cover of the song from Louisiana Red’s 1963 debut album, The Lowdown Backporch Blues. It appeared on Gallagher’s 1982 album Jinx.
  1. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, Get Out Of Denver (from Live Bullet) . . . As we, too, get out of here, for another week, riding the rhythms of Seger’s outstanding first live record.
So Old It's New

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, March 21, 2022 – on air 8-10 pm ET

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  1. The Beach Boys, Add Some Music To Your Day . . . From 1970, when The Beach Boys were past their surfer-hit prime but still making good music that was often ignored. This was a single, only made No. 64, from the Sunflower album.
  1. Chicago, A Hit By Varese . . . Jazz-rock fusion from Chicago V in 1972. Saturday In The Park was the big commercial hit from the album but it’s this kind of funky/jazzy groove tune that made early Chicago so great. Written and sung by Chicago keyboardist Robert Lamm, it’s a tribute to influential composer Edgard Varese, who counted Frank Zappa among his biggest fans.
  1. Electric Light Orchestra, So Fine . . . Ooh la ooh la ooh la ooh . . . Up-tempo tune from 1976’s A New World Record album. Wasn’t a single – tough competition from what were singles from the album, Do Ya, Telephone Line and Livin’ Thing – but a pretty well-known track nonetheless, especially the ooh la intro and the African drumming/percussion middle section played by ELO drummer Bev Bevan on a then-cutting edge Moog processor/synthesizer. Quick side note on Bev Bevan in terms of how versatile musicians can be in what may seem disparate associations: he also played drums/percussion for Black Sabbath during the 1980s, the period between Ronnie James Dio’s and Ozzy Osbourne’s stints in the band when Sabbath carried on, led by forever guitarist Tony Iommi and a sometime cast of thousands.
  1. The Beatles, Dig It . . . Just thought I’d throw this 50-second snippet, the one that appears on the Let It Be album, in front of I’ve Got A Feeling. It segues into Let It Be on the original album. The Dig It that appears on the original Let It Be album is actually a snippet within the longer, four-minute version of Dig It available via the Get Back documentary and on various expanded re-releases of the original record.
  1. The Beatles, I’ve Got A Feeling . . . From Let It Be and the famous rooftop concert. I just (finally) watched Get Back, the current documentary reworking of the original Let It Be movie. It’s excellent and does show that, at least musically, The Beatles (particularly once they repaired to their Apple studio from the cavernous Twickenham) were still an excellent functioning band despite the tensions that tended to be the focus of the original Let It Be movie. The new documentary is broader and, I think, provides a more complete picture. There’s no doubt the band was fractured by this point but musically, when push came to shove, professionalism and shared vision in the fact they knew who they were and what standards they had set, took precedence in producing yet more great music.
  2. Bruce Cockburn, And We Dance . . . From Cockburn’s typically excellent 1981 album, Inner City Front. No particular reason for playing the song, other than it comes from an album thta happened to be on top of a CD pile and therefore in line with tonight’s ‘floor show: top of the ‘to file’ pile’ theme, but one never needs an excuse or reason to play Cockburn’s music.
  3. Garland Jeffreys, We The People . . . Reggae tune from Escape Artist, his 1981 album that featured various members of Bruce Springsteen’s band and Graham Parker’s Rumour.
  1. Leon Russell, Stranger In A Strange Land . . . It didn’t occur to me before programming this song for this week but, and I haven’t read anything to that effect in reading about Axl Rose, but it strikes me that the Guns N Roses singer seems influenced by Russell’s vocal style, albeit in a different milieu.
  2. Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane, Street In The City . . . I don’t like repeating myself, or at least not too soon between repeats, not that I suppose anyone is necessarily keeping score, but this might be one of the few tracks from the great 1977 Rough Mix album that I have not yet played on the show.
  3. Neil Young/Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere . . . Title cut from his 1969 album, a country rocker that seems to indicate that, at that point, apparently disillusioned with his life in California, at least from what I’ve read, Young pondered a return home, to Canada.
  4. Mick Jagger, Hang On To Me Tonight . . . The type of ballad I think Mick Jagger does so well, from his excellent – and most Stones-like – 1993 Wandering Spirit album. Nice harmonica break, too, from Jagger, late in the song, proving what Keith Richards has said, that the purest Jagger is when he plays harmonica.
  1. Buddy Guy with Mick Jagger, Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker) . . . A bluesy reinvention – with Jagger on backing vocals – of one of my favorite Stones’ tunes, the second single, behind Angie, from 1973’s Goats Head Soup. Guy’s version came out on a wonderful 2018 compilation, Chicago Plays The Stones, that apparently was a tribute response by Chicago blues artists to the Stones’ own 2016 blues tribute/covers album, Blue and Lonesome. Wonderful stuff, all of it.

  2. Dusty Springfield, Tupelo Honey . . . Perhaps surprisingly, Dusty’s lovely 1973 cover of one of my favorite Van Morrison tunes didn’t make much of an impact on the charts.
  1. Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, Nightwatchman . . . Funky one, and one of my favorites, from Petty’s 1981 Hard Promises album.
  1. Genesis, Watcher Of The Skies . . . Nightwatchman to Watcher, clever, no? From Foxtrot, 1972. The album truly fit my ‘top of the pile’ theme for tonight but it’s also nice to be able to play this because, as it happens, a Genesis tribute band, The Genesis Experience, was in Waterloo last week. By all accounts, including photos from a friend of mine, the group gave a terrific performance – both musically and visually, a key component of that period of Genesis – that included Watcher Of The Skies. I’m not a shill for tribute bands, but the highly professional ones I’ve seen in my time, Beatles and Pink Floyd for instance, tend to be really good.
  2. Pink Floyd, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun (live, Ummagumma version) . . . Speaking of Floyd . . . Great version from the live, and I maintain best, side of 1969’s Ummagumma album.
  3. Emerson Lake & Palmer, Bitches Crystal . . . Continuing the prog theme…from Tarkus. I thought of playing the title cut, which I have before and will again, but at 20 minutes, the show would be over now. Maybe one day, particularly if I’m feeling lazy, I’ll do a five-song show – Tarkus, Genesis’ Supper’s Ready, Yes’s Close To The Edge, Pink Floyd’s Echoes and then, just to change things up to southern rock/jam band, the Allman Brothers’ 33-minute live version of Mountain Jam. Come to think of it, I’ve over time played each of those epics, just not all within the same show.
  4. Arthur Lee with Band-Aid, You Want Change For Your Re-Run . . . Arthur Lee of Love fame had talked with Jimi Hendrix about possibly collaborating, although they never officially did. But, a couple years after Hendrix died, here came Lee with a solo album, Vindicator, backed by a band of session players he branded as Band-Aid in honor of a name that might have been used for a Hendrix-Love union. Vindicator is a very Hendrix-like album, different from the Love sound of, say, Forever Changes, as evidenced by this track.
  1. Oasis, The Shock Of The Lightning . . . Pulled it from an Oasis comp that was laying atop one of my CD piles. Apparently the first/only Oasis single, from their final album, that didn’t debut at No. 1 in the UK.
  2. Gov’t Mule, Game Face . . . Typically great hard, bluesy rock delivered Mule style.
  1. Status Quo, Gerdundula . . . Great Celtic boogie. I have no idea what the title means, despite searches. Might be some German connection, apparently.
  2. The Allman Brothers Band, Come And Go Blues . . . Wasn’t at the top of any pile of CDs in terms of tonight’s theme but came up while I was plugging in other songs and, well, one can never have enough Allman Brothers, I say.
  3. Deep Purple, Drifter . . . Come Taste The Band album was often derided as being too funky, or soulful, for Deep Purple, when it came out in 1975 after Ritchie Blackmore left to form Rainbow. His replacement, Tommy Bolin, was different, sure, but great in his own way, as was Purple. Great album cover, too, five guys’ faces in a glass of wine and then the glass, empty of course, on the back cover.
  4. Elton John, Sixty Years On . . .One of those examples from EJ’s 1970s period up until 1975 or so, where his deep cuts were as good, often arguably better, as his big solo singles.
  1. AC/DC, Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution . . . I second AC/DC’s motion.
Shows, Wadio Wam!

Wadio Wam! Episode 3 + 4 – The End Of The World

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Hey y’all! Here’s our 3rd episode recorded March 6th. Songs for the end of the world! Sorry for the delay with the upload.

By mistake, we forgot to record our 4th show, which was songs for dancing by yourself (I know, I’m just as disappointed as you are), but we’re working on getting our setlist’s/playlists live so if you missed the show you’ll at least be able to see what was played. We got a good show lined up for next Sunday (1-2PM) so be sure to check that one out, but in the meantime here’s songs for the end of the world. Wam on!

Spotify Link for Episode 3: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7rt8sI7cR9K8PLW4nYjCdm?si=0222ff5152474698

Spotify Link for Episode 4: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/50er5MjG1YxJeRZ7oZ9zCT?si=b9867356cf78410d

So Old It's New

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, March 14, 2022 – on air 8-10 pm ET

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  1. Triumph, Blinding Light Show/Moonchild . . . From the Canadian band’s 1976 self-titled debut, later re-released and retitled In the Beginning. Fast, slow, acoustic interlude, progressive hard rock/metal, great stuff.
  1. Little Feat, Let It Roll . . . Rollicking title track from the band’s 1988 album, a return to studio recording for the band after a nine-year hiatus following the death of founder member and leader Lowell George.
  1. Aerosmith, Round and Round . . . Led Zeppelin-like relentless pounder from Toys in the Attic. As allmusic.com reviewers have said, Aerosmith, sometimes considered an American Rolling Stones, actually is more a Stones/Zep combo, resulting in something that is . . . Aerosmith.
  1. Blackfoot, Train, Train . . . Great harmonica intro by Shorty Medlocke, a blues and bluegrass musician who wrote the song and was Blackfoot leader Rickey Medlocke’s grandfather. The younger Medlocke was originally in an early version of Lynyrd Skynyrd, playing drums, before leaving before the band’s first official studio album to become guitarist and frontman for Blackfoot before winding up back on guitar, and the man can really play, in latter-day versions of Skynyrd. Rickey Medlocke’s drumming with Skynyrd eventually appeared on the archival release, Skynyrd’s First . . . and Last, which was itself eventually expanded and re-released as Skynyrd’s First: The Complete Muscle Shoals Album.

     

  2. ZZ Top, Goin’ Down To Mexico . . . Late great bassist Dusty Hill handles lead vocals on this typical blues rocker from ZZ’s first album. It’s called, wait for it, ZZ Top’s First Album.
  1. Lighthouse, Hats Off To The Stranger . . . From what could be termed Canada’s own jazz-rock answer to early Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears. Or, just a great jazz-rock band, a version of which continues to tour to this day while many of its members have gone on to be successful in various aspects of the music industry and beyond.
  1. The Guess Who, Sitar Saga . . . Early stuff from the band, a cool instrumental with Randy Bachman on sitar and Burton Cummings, who had apparently just learned how to play the instrument, on flute. The track was inspired by the next one in tonight’s set, by a Liverpool mystic.
  1. The Beatles, Within You Without You . . . George Harrison’s song from Sgt. Pepper, reflecting his immersion in Hindu teachings, backed not by his Beatle mates but London-based Indian musicians. It’s interesting how one’s tastes change. I can remember in the original vinyl days, and I wasn’t alone among my friends, picking up the needle to skip this song when playing Pepper. Then I got into Ravi Shankar at least a bit via Harrison’s Concert For Bangladesh and I’ve never skipped Within You Without You since.
  1. John Lennon, Steel and Glass . . . Likely my favorite song on Lennon’s Walls and Bridges album. Unless Old Dirt Road is, or the hit single, Whatever Gets You Thru The Night, or . . . Today, it’s Steel and Glass. Great track from a great album.
  1. J.J. Cale, Hey Baby . . . Typically cool shuffle by the master. Eric Clapton and Dire Straits send thanks for J.J.’s influence on some of their works.
  1. Jeff Beck Group, Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You . . . The second, 1970s version of the Jeff Beck Group, with Bobby Tench instead of Rod Stewart on lead vocals, turns Bob Dylan’s country-ish tune from the Nashville Skyline album into a more bluesy, soulful tune. Both versions are excellent.
  1. April Wine, Slow Poke . . . Great bluesy tune. Myles Goodwyn’s lead vocals were actually slowed down in the studio, to better fit the song.
  1. Paice Ashton Lord, I’m Gonna Stop Drinking Again . . . From the one and only album from Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice and keyboardist Jon Lord, and a good one it is, 1977’s Malice In Wonderland. The project also featured late English singer/keyboardist Tony Ashton, whose credits included sessions with Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Jerry Lee Lewis before he found his way into the Deep Purple orbit via some collaborations on the various members’ solo projects. Nazareth used the same album title for its 1980 release, the record featuring the hit single Holiday.
  1. The Rolling Stones, Do You Think I Really Care . . . Dead Flowers-ish country tune that got official release status on the 2011 expanded re-issue of the Stones’ Some Girls album.
  1. The Who, Cry If You Want . . . I confess I don’t listen to The Who’s It’s Hard album, from 1982, all that much. I don’t know anyone who does. It’s not a bad album but arguably not up to previous standards as, by that time, Pete Townshend seemed to be holding back his best material for his own solo albums like 1980’s smash Empty Glass and the good but not quite as, 1982 release, All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes. But, all that said, Cry If You Want, featuring nice drumming by Kenney Jones and angry vocals by Roger Daltrey (maybe pissed at Pete for holding his best stuff back), along with the classic Eminence Front, are top-notch tunes from It’s Hard.
  1. Thunderclap Newman, Accidents . . . Speaking of The Who and Townshend, he produced and played bass (under the fun pseudonym Bijou Drains) on Hollywood Dream, the only Thunderclap Newman studio album. The band, championed by Townshend and Who manager Kit Lambert and featuring future Paul McCartney and Wings guitarist Jimmy McCulloch, is best known for the hit Something In The Air. This is the 9-plus minute album version of Accidents, a pop/progressive piece that was shaved down to three minutes and change and released as the album’s second single.

     

  2. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Framed . . . Title cut, written by the hit factory that was (Jerome) Leiber and (Michael) Stoller, from the Harvey band’s 1972 debut album. It’s amazing how many hit songs – more than 70 chart hits – Lieber and Stoller penned including Hound Dog and Jailhouse Rock. Also amazing is how much like Harvey AC/DC’s Bon Scott sounded, at least to my ears and, at least, based on this track as compared to, say, AC/DC’s Jailbreak.
  1. T-Bone Burnett, Shut It Tight . . . From T-Bone’s 1983 release Proof Through The Night which featured a host of all-star friends including guitarists Pete Townshend, Mick Ronson and, on this track, Richard Thompson on guitar and mandolin. Which is probably why, with Thompson, it could easily be, sounds like, a Fairport Convention song.
  1. Tom Waits, Whistlin’ Past The Graveyard . . . Jaunty, up-tempo tune from the Blue Valentine album, 1978.
  1. Dire Straits, Single Handed Sailor . . . What a great song, about sights and sounds around the Greenwich area of London, England, including the 19th century ship the Cutty Sark – which I first knew to be a brand of whiskey, from a spy novel whose name I can’t remember, read in my early teens. I never developed a taste for the so-called hard stuff so never did try Cutty Sark but perhaps I should. I’ll ask some friends of mine who are into Scotch but I sampled some stuff with them once and they banished me from the room because I kept spoofing their treatment of the tasting as some sort of seance-like religious experience. I didn’t get it, obviously. We’ll see how it goes. If and when they read this, it probably won’t go well. But hey, if you can’t disagree with and have fun with your friends, what kind of friends could they possibly be?
  2. Mountain, For Yasgur’s Farm . . . Dedicated to Max Yasgur, who owned the farm where the 1969 Woodstock Festival was held. He died young, just age 53, of a heart attack in 1973.
  1. Rainbow, Gates Of Babylon . . . Closing out tonight’s set with some harder rock, this epic from Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll, the last Rainbow album, in 1978, featuring the late great Ronnie James Dio on lead vocals. Aside from the songs All Night Long and Since You’ve Been Gone from 1979’s Down To Earth album with Graham Bonnet on lead vocals, only Dio Rainbow is good Rainbow, in my opinion. Aside from the two tracks I just mentioned, and even they are somewhat dubious, the rest of Rainbow (aside from maybe, maybe, the harder-edged 1995 rebirth Stranger In Us All album with Doogie White on lead vox) is way too poppy and overproduced, blatantly, for the American market at the time, pretty much utter shit. What was Ritchie Blackmore thinking? And then, horrors, he brought his latter-day Rainbow singer Joe Lynn Turner into Deep Purple for one ill-fated album, 1990’s one good song (King Of Dreams) disaster, Slaves and Masters. What in god’s name, Ritchie? People rightly called the album Deep (post-Dio) Rainbow. Sell your soul for rock and roll, I guess.
  1. Black Sabbath, Falling Off The Edge Of The World . . . Here’s Ronnie again, fronting the next band he joined, Black Sabbath. I’ve always said that, while I like Dio with his own band, Dio, I’ve always preferred his work with Rainbow and Sabbath. Seems to me he was best working with outstanding guitarists/songwriters like Ritchie Blackmore and Tony Iommi.
  1. UFO, Lights Out (live) . . . Notice how we started tonight’s set with a Blinding Light Show and conclude it with Lights Out? Clever, huh? God, I’m good. Or silly. From UFO’s terrific 1979 live album, Strangers In The Night. See ya next week, thanks for listening/following.
Off The Air, Together With Ukraine

Together With Ukraine – A Drum and Bass Compilation

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Pressure Drop presents,
Thursday, March 3rd, 2022
8 to 10 PM EST
A 2-hour special in support of, “Together with Ukraine”, a Drum and Bass Compilation with tracks donated from some of the top producers worldwide.
All funds raised through sale of this compilation will be donated to Ukrainian Red Cross Society.

With every day that passes, the high-scale humanitarian crisis and assault on the people of Ukraine continues to worsen. Civilian deaths are increasing on a daily basis across the country with no sign of stopping, with millions of citizens already forced out of their homes in search of refuge. As we wake up to yet another day of war, hundreds more innocent lives have been lost and destroyed overnight. We cannot leave this unchecked, and we need to act on this now without hesitation.

Now more than ever is a time for unity, solidarity and support of a nation under attack. It’s crucial for us to use our voice to create widespread and sustained awareness of the situation on the ground in Ukraine, and to give support in every way possible. Whether it’s signing petitions, attending demonstrations, sharing facts on social media, offering help for refugees, or more – this situation cannot be allowed to continue, and engaging in support of any kind for the people of Ukraine is our absolute priority.

Comprised of over 100 exclusive tracks from across the Drum & Bass and wider Bass Music spectrum, alongside over 30 pieces of bespoke visual art, with art direction by Uno (@uno.graphics), we are proud to present our compilation project ‘Together with Ukraine’.

We are incredibly grateful to the music community for supporting our initiative to raise vital funds for humanitarian aid on the front line. All artists and people involved have offered their services free of charge, and all revenue generated will be donated directly to the Ukrainian Red Cross Society. We have set a minimum price of £12 for the compilation, but we would encourage everyone to give generously and donate a higher amount if you have the means to do so.

We would like to thank everybody who has taken part in making this project a reality – including our extended team of Diana and Bohdan (Ukraine), Jan (Germany) and Piotr (Poland) – as well as everybody that is willing to purchase the album.

For more information on the Ukrainian Red Cross Society, and the humanitarian efforts they are undertaking to heal the devastating impacts of the war in Ukraine, please visit their website at redcross.org.ua/en.

credits

released March 4, 2022
Democracy In Perspective / Elevation Hour, Off The Air, Radio Waterloo Production

The Elevation Hour of Hip-Hip on CKMS 102.7FM – Hosted by 9-Duice & Cate Blanchett every Friday 1-2pm

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The Elevation Hour of Hip-Hop

Hosted by 9-Duice & Cate Blanchett. Initially on CKWR 98.7FM, now CKWR 98.5FM in 1995-1996, then on CSCR 90.3FM IN 1997M  now Fusion Radio in Toronto, the Elevation Hour of Hip-Hop is now on CKMS 102.7FM. The Elevation Hour of Hip-hop transcends listeners for 1 hours of the latest and greatest underground and commercial hits that the traditional media outlets won’t play in hip-hop music.

Democracy In Perspective / Elevation Hour is no longer on the CKMS-FM schedule.

So Old It's New

So Old It’s New set list for Monday, March 7, 2022 – on air 8-10 pm ET

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  1. Alice Cooper, Clones (We’re All) . . . I can’t remember the exact genesis of it now but a few weeks back a friend and I got talking about Alice Cooper’s foray into new wave in 1980 via his Flush The Fashion album, from which this was a fair hit. Lots of ‘classic rockers’ were doing similar things at the time, dabbling in new wave sounds, or reggae, or whatever was in then-current fashion.
  2. The Who, 905 . . . Sticking with the clone theme, if you don’t like it, blame my friend . . . Interesting lyrics on this John Entwistle tune, a commentary on cloning but also way beyond that, in my interpretation, at least. The ‘beyond cloning’ thought came to mind just the other day when a friend was opining that nothing, in his view, can ever be truly new anymore given how far humanity has come, which I dispute but in any event prompted an interesting discussion.
  3. Pat Benatar, My Clone Sleeps Alone . . . And so we end the clone segment of songs, from Benatar’s first, and to me still best, album, her debut In The Heat Of The Night, 1979. Not so much on this particular song but on many tunes on the album, there’s that guttural female vocal thing at work that just, well, ‘makes’ the songs. Maybe probably it’s a guy thing to do with possible sexual innuendo, and Linda Ronstadt just a for instance had it, too, especially on a song like You’re No Good.
  1. Ramones, Daytime Dilemma (Dangers Of Love) . . . From 1984’s Too Tough To Die album, a return to the straight ahead punk rock of their early work.
  1. Elvis Costello, Mystery Dance . . . 90 seconds of solid rock from Elvis’s great debut album, My Aim Is True. His aim was indeed bang on.
  1. Joe Jackson, Memphis . . . I turned a female friend on to this tune recently. She wasn’t up on Joe Jackson and had not heard it, arguably few have. Great groove. It’s from 1983’s Mike’s Murder movie soundtrack which followed on the heels and in the same vein as Jackson’s hit 1982 album, Night and Day. I’ve never seen the movie, it’s pretty obscure and I’m not a big movie buff but the soundtrack, all by Jackson, is great and a terrific album on its own.
  1. Flash and The Pan, Atlantis Calling . . .Not sure what more to say that I already over time haven’t about Flash and The Pan, who emerged from the ashes of the Aussie group The Easybeats and were piloted by George Young (older brother to AC/DC’S Young brothers and often producer of their albums) and Harry Vanda in a completely different genre of music.

     

  2. The Clash, The Right Profile . . . About actor Montgomery Clift. Great lyrics, especially near the end with the “but I prefer alcohol’ and then the “uggooogoobuh” babbling part. It’s Montgomery Clift, honey!! Ah, The Clash. Love ’em.
  1. Talking Heads, The Great Curve . . . I stuck this one in here, good funky/new wave tune, because the show is soon to take a curve in a different direction. You’ll see.
  1. Robert Plant, Too Loud . . . From Plant’s somewhat controversial 1985 album, Shaken ‘n’ Stirred. Apart from the more conventional (for him) hit single, Little By Little, the album was a step outside the box for Plant, more electronic, Talking Heads-ish as Plant remarked. Good album, though, good song, if one keeps an open mind.

     

  2. Pearl Jam, Glorified G . . Anti-guns song, good tune, from the band’s second album, Vs. Was never released as a single yet made the US top 40.
  1. The Rolling Stones, Long Long While . . . Rare Stones’ track, from the early days, where Mick Jagger is deferential and apologetic to a woman, although he does say he will ‘try’ to apologize. It was the B-side to Paint It Black.
  1. Bob Marley and The Wailers, Baby We’ve Got A Date (Rock It Baby) . . . Friend of mine suggested some reggae a while back so here’s the first of two in the next few songs.
  1. Midnight Oil, Say Your Prayers . . . I like when Midnight Oil does metallic/industrial type songs. Here’s an example.
  1. Steely Dan, Razor Boy . . . Is there a bad Steely Dan song? I usually don’t go for let’s call it slickly produced music, prefer raunch in my roll. But I make an exception for Steely Dan.
  1. Peter Tosh, Stepping Razor . . . Reggae song No. 2 in tonight’s set. See No. 13 for more info.
  1. Elton John, Holiday Inn . . . One of those songs I feel like I played too recently because I’ve dug into the Madman Across The Water album but, investigation suggests, no. In any event, who cares? Great song from a great album.
  1. Led Zeppelin, Down By The Seaside . . . Always loved this one, from Zep’s Physical Graffiti album. Might be my favorite from the record. Today, anyway.
  1. Lee Harvey Osmond, Cuckoo’s Nest . . . From, as anyone who regularly follows the show knows, one of my favorite artists, Tom Wilson of Junkhouse, solo, Blackie and The Rodeo Kings and Lee Harvey Osmond fame. Do you want to, yet again, hear the story of me meeting him in a Kitchener coffee shop after a reunited Junkhouse played our blues festival some years back? Well, for those who haven’t heard, I just happened to run into him as we were both buying coffee, told him how much I admired his work, we chatted a bit, and that was that.
  1. Van Halen, The Seventh Seal . . . From the last full studio album Van Hagar did with Sammy Hagar, the Balance record, 1995. Hagar and the Van Halen brothers were apparently at each other’s throats by this time yet to me, they produced a very good album. This is the opener and my favorite tune on the platter.
  1. Montrose, Bad Motor Scooter . . . Speaking of Hagar, here’s Sammy singing on arguably Montrose’s best-known tune, and a good one.
  1. Fairport Convention, Sloth . . . What a great band. I don’t play them enough. I have, but . . . So much great music, so little time. Epic track from the British folk-rock stalwarts’ 1970 release, Full House.
  1. Jethro Tull, Thick As A Brick (live Bursting Out version) . . . As promised but you’d have to follow me on Facebook to know why. I had Bursting Out on in the car to and from the gym and various errands this past week, Brick came on, and so I decided to play it and announced as much on FB to some nice and welcome feedback. This is a 12:25 minute version, not the studio album-length epic many know and love, but terrific nonetheless.
  1. Neil Young, No More . . . And that’s it, no more tonight as we close on this one from Young’s 1989 Freedom album. Take care, thanks for listening/following.