My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list that includes a mini-Kris Kristofferson set in tribute to the singer-songwriter who died last week at age 88.

1. Cream, Those Were The Days
2. Blind Faith, Sea Of Joy
3. Led Zeppelin, The Ocean
4. Marianne Faithfull, House Of The Rising Sun
5. The Rolling Stones, Get Close
6. Simon and Garfunkel, Baby Driver
7. Traveling Wilburys, Tweeter And The Monkey Man
8. Bob Dylan, It’s Alright Ma, (I’m Only Bleeding) live, from Before The Flood
9. The Band, Endless Highway, live, from Before The Flood
10. Kris Kristofferson, The Law Is For Protection Of The People
11. Kris Kristofferson, Just the Other Side Of Nowhere
12. Kris Kristofferson, The Junkie and the Juicehead, Minus Me
13. Kris Kristofferson, The Silver Tongued Devil And I
14. Kris Kristofferson, If You Don’t Like Hank Williams
15. Hank Williams, Weary Blues From Waitin’
16. Cheap Trick, Need Your Love (live) from At Budokan
17. Kiss/Ace Frehley, Rocket Ride
18. Alice Cooper, Killer
19. Traffic, Roll Right Stones

My track-by-track tales:

1. Cream, Those Were The Days . . . Short, sweet, seven seconds under three minutes, like a lot of Cream songs as they were often two different bands, the studio band of shorter stuff and the live band with lots of extended workouts of their material, as evidenced on the album from which this track comes, the 1968 release Wheels Of Fire. It was a two-disc set split between studio and live cuts. Those Were The Days was a studio recording yet, within its three minutes, displays all the elements that this “three guys who made a hell of a lot of noise” band as an old friend once described them, could bring to bear. The three guys making a fine musical noise of course being guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist/primary singer Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker.

2. Blind Faith, Sea Of Joy . . . Speaking of Clapton and Baker, they soon – along with Traffic’s Steve Winwood and Family’s Rick Grech – formed another supergroup, Blind Faith, after the breakup of Cream. The one studio release is brilliant, yet another of those albums I will forever thank my late older brother for turning me on to, what a musical influence he was as I often cite him as being. RIP, brother Robert.

3. Led Zeppelin, The Ocean . . . Sticking with the water/sea/ocean motif, here’s Zep, dan dan dun dun dun (my word approximation of the opening riff), singing in the sunshine (that’s the opening lyric) . . . and on we go, from the 1973 album Houses Of The Holy.

4. Marianne Faithfull, House Of The Rising Sun . . . Haunting 1964 version of this perennial, made most famous by The Animals but it’s a traditional tune, authorship unknown although web searches well worth doing simply due to the fascinating stories involved around the song. It’s been covered, of course, by countless artists including Bob Dylan on his self-titled debut album, released in 1962. It’s interesting for me, re Faithfull, being a major Rolling Stones fan and therefore of course knowing about her via her 1960s relationship with Mick Jagger, and I knew she had recorded and released music during the 1960s, including covers of some Stones tunes like As Tears Go By, and that she had co-written Sister Morphine from the 1971 album Sticky Fingers. Then she largely faded from view before re-emerging in the public consciousness via her brilliant 1979 ‘comeback’ album Broken English. But it was as if she was an entirely different artist, having gone through and still not totally recovered from various addictions, her singing voice by 1979 entirely different than during the 1960s, having become cigarette-and-booze addled yet as a result compelling on that remarkable album. A great singer/artist, regardless the time period.

5. The Rolling Stones, Get Close . . . Elton John helps out the boys on this typically Stones-ish groover from the 2023 album Hackney Diamonds. Great album, universally and rightly praised, and apparently they recorded enough tunes for a followup as band members have confirmed, in various interviews, so let’s go, boys, release another studio set, soon, don’t wait 18 years like last time, between new original material releases. Amazing that band principals Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are 81 and 80 now, Richards turns 81 a week before Christmas, and still going strong. The music seems to keep them alive and spry and brings always to me to mind the great Tom Petty lyric ‘you never slow down you never get old’ from his song Mary Jane’s Last Dance although, sadly, Petty only made it to age 66. Heck, I’m 65, still going strong, work out, honestly feel pretty much how I’ve always felt but who knows what’s around the next corner so here’s hoping, and Petty was found to have had various drug issues, mostly to do with a serious hip injury and subsequent treatments.

6. Simon and Garfunkel, Baby Driver . . . Cool little ditty, always loved it, from the 1970 album Bridge Over Troubled Water, the title cut of which was a massive hit, No. 1 single pretty much throughout planet Earth but the album itself is so good in terms of depth that it’s not just singles like the title cut or The Boxer or Cecilia, the other official singles (more on an actual Cecilia, from a personal point of view, in a minute) but essentially every song on the record is a worthy listen.

The song Bridge Over Troubled Water always brings me back to Grade 8. We had a school choir. Can’t recall if we all had to be in it, but anyway I wound up in it, alto voice section, my voice wasn’t yet deep enough for bass, and I remember, we were going to sing the song for a school assembly for whatever function and we rehearsed the absolute shit out of it for weeks, and when the night came, parents in the audience, we nailed it.

Shortly after comes the Grade 8 graduation dance and Cecilia, a girl in my Grade 7 and 8 classes. And I had spent 1967-70 in Peru where my father was working at the time so I knew something of Spanish culture but whatever, I had never ‘hit’ on Cecilia my classmate, lovely girl, but somehow or other wound up slow dancing with her that night, but not being aware enough in relationships at that point, that that last dance slow dance might signify something. Which it might have. Who knows what she might have been thinking. A fun what if. 🙂

7. Traveling Wilburys, Tweeter And The Monkey Man . . . I remember this song striking me when the first Wilburys album came out in 1988 featuring Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and George Harrison. Two years later they did a good but less commercially successful second album, cheekily titled Vol. 3, after the passing of Orbison. He died of a heart attack at age 52, two months after the release of Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1. Both albums are full of good songs but because I’m a big Dylan fan, this is the song that initially hit me. The hard-rocking Canadian band Headstones, love ’em, soon enough did a raucous cover version of Tweeter, which became a hit for them. Both versions are worthy excursions in their own ways.

8. Bob Dylan, It’s Alright Ma, (I’m Only Bleeding) live, from Before The Flood . . . An angry, fiery version of the song which first saw studio release on Dylan’s 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. At the time of release, via its perhaps most renowned line among so many: “But even the president of the United State sometimes must have to stand naked” it could easily have been seen as a diatribe against then US President Lyndon B. Johnson, embroiled in the Vietnam War. By the time of the 1974 Dylan tour with The Band, that lyrical passage took on different resonance given the Watergate scandal which a few months later, in August 1974, ended in the resignation of President Richard Nixon. The 1974 Dylan/The Band tour, beyond the original excellent Before The Flood album, has within the last month been re-released in an expanded 27-CD, 431-track collection from the entire tour. Major Dylan fan that I am, I’ll wait until I can afford it (it’s only about $200 but still) because for one thing, there’s lots of duplication in set lists through the tour and, I’m hoping, as with Dylan’s ongoing Bootleg series, perhaps a 2-CD distillation of it all will be released. But if not, all good; I have Before The Flood, had it since it came out, an excellent live album by Dylan/The Band.

9. The Band, Endless Highway, live, from Before The Flood . . . From that same album, The Band on its own as was Dylan on his own on the previous track although on Before The Flood and through the tour, the artists collaborated as well, with The Band backing Dylan, as they had in the early days, on several songs. A web search of the Before The Flood album will inform as to who played what, when, on the released album.

10. Kris Kristofferson, The Law Is For Protection Of The People . . . From his first, self-titled album, released in 1970. It’s the first of a few tracks, as promised last week and I did play one, Blame It On The Stones, on last Saturday’s show, as a teaser, in honor of and tribute to the amazing songwriter we lost last week at age 88. He truly had a way with words, and what a compelling, forceful voice that could move people. This is the first of several in my mini-KK tribute that I drew from his first album, Kristofferson. Always/often lyrics that rightly call into question the authority of ‘the authorities’, in his subversive manner. Great stuff.

11. Kris Kristofferson, Just the Other Side Of Nowhere . . . Another from his first album, typically heartfelt, relatable lyrics.

12. Kris Kristofferson, The Junkie and the Juicehead, Minus Me . . . Funky type of tune, from 1970, didn’t see official release, as far as I am aware, until a re-released expanded version of his debut album.

13. Kris Kristofferson, The Silver Tongued Devil And I . . . Another of those hurtin’ type tunes from KK, lots of booze-etc fuelled lyrics which reflected a lifestyle Kristofferson eventually kicked. Title cut from his 1971 album.

14. Kris Kristofferson, If You Don’t Like Hank Williams . . . “Honey, you can kiss my ass.” From the 1976 release Surreal Thing wherein KK name drops the great Williams along with many others like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, Waylon Jennings, the Allman Brothers, Linda Ronstadt and The Rolling Stones, again, dating back to Blame It On The Stones, apparently a band he truly adnired and cared about.

15. Hank Williams, Weary Blues From Waitin’ . . . Speaking of Hank Williams . . . A song he originally recorded in 1951, eventually released in September 1953, nine months after Williams died, at age 29, on New Year’s Day of that year. A typical Williams hurtin’ tune:

“Through tears I watch young lovers
As they go strolling by
For all the things that might have been
God forgive me if I cry.”

16. Cheap Trick, Need Your Love (live) from At Budokan . . . A slow-building groove that eventually takes off into hard riff rock during its near-nine minute voyage.

17. Kiss/Ace Frehley, Rocket Ride . . . Good rocker, a double entendre lyrically about space travel and sex. It was one of five new at the time studio tracks that were slapped onto the vinyl side four of the initial release of Kiss Alive II, which came out in 1977. I’m not much of a Kiss fan, but this is a case of not necessarily liking a band, but liking a particular song in this case one written and sung by the band’s lead guitarist. And I always seem to think of Kiss when I play Cheap Trick, largely because I saw them on tour together at the old Pontiac Silverdome, outside Detroit, in 1979. Cheap Trick was big at the time thanks to the hit live album At Budokan. A college buddy of mine and I missed their Toronto show but caught them about a week later in Michigan. Unbeknownst to us, until we picked up a Detroit newspaper, this is pre-internet days, was that Cheap Trick was opening for Kiss as a ‘special guest’ on the Kiss tour. So, I saw, by accident, Kiss’s typically over the top hilarious but good performance, preceded by Cheap Trick’s solid show. One of my younger brothers was the big Kiss fan in the family but never managed to see them live.

18. Alice Cooper, Killer . . . Deep, dark, spooky, early Alice, the title cut from the 1971 album that yielded the singles Under My Wheels and Be My Lover. A year later came the album School’s Out with the title track hit single, in 1973 Billion Dollar Babies, and superstardom.

19. Traffic, Roll Right Stones . . . Typically intoxicating Traffic, to me, anyway, that lovely percussive rhythm that permeates so many of their tracks, particularly on extended pieces like this near-14 minute epic from the 1973 album Shoot Out At The Fantasy Factory.

A two-album show starting with the amazing journey, to quote one of the song titles, that is the rock opera Tommy, released by The Who in 1969, followed by Between The Buttons (UK version), released by The Rolling Stones in 1967.

In between, a one-song bridge, Blame It On The Stones, leading into the Stones album, from the late great Kris Kristofferson, who died at age 88 last week. I’ll play a few more Kristofferson tunes on Monday night’s show, 8-10 pm ET, Oct. 7.

My album commentaries are below each record’s track list and the Kristofferson tune.

The Who – Tommy

1. Overture
2. It’s A Boy
3. 1921
4. Amazing Journey
5. Sparks
6. Eyesight To The Blind (The Hawker)
7. Christmas
8. Cousin Kevin
9. The Acid Queen
10. Underture
11. Do You Think It’s Alright?
12. Fiddle About
13. Pinball Wizard
14. There’s A Doctor
15. Go To The Mirror!
16. Tommy Can You Hear Me?
17. Smash The Mirror
18. Sensation
19. Miracle Cure
20. Sally Simpson
21. I’m Free
22. Welcome
23. Tommy’s Holiday Camp
24. We’re Not Gonna Take It/See Me Feel Me/Listening To You

Tommy is arguably best digested in one go, which is natural in that it was designed as an opera/concept album. But – as in the case of, say, Money being pulled as a single from Pink Floyd’s concept The Dark Side Of The Moon – singles like Pinball Wizard and I’m Free were released from Tommy and, in Pinball Wizard’s case at least, landed on various Who compilations. So the album’s songs – The Acid Queen for me is another – can be appreciated outside the context of the larger work. It might just be me but in listening to the full piece for the first time in a while, I was reminded how many of the songs – 1921, Christmas, Cousin Kevin, Go To The Mirror!, Sally Simpson, Welcome among them – are perhaps not immediately recognizable by title but are instantly familiar, to anyone knowing the album, once the first notes of the tunes are heard. And of course there’s the interconnectivity of offerings like Overture, Underture and Sparks, although they are separated by other songs, with segments of them also sprinkled elsewhere within the album, all culminating in the epic We’re Not Gonna Take It/See Me, Feel Me/Listening To You suite that closes the album and The Who took to epic proportions live, particularly in the perhaps definitive version performed by the band at Woodstock. A remarkable record.

Kris Kristofferson, Blame It On The Stones

Lead track, from his 1970 debut album Kristofferson, a song written in defence of The Rolling Stones, who had just come out of the late 1969 chaos of the infamous Altamont concert, it references their 1966 drug-themed single Mother’s Little Helper and adult angst at the supposed antics and or ‘threat’ of younger generations. “Kids today’, in other words, when adults saying such things obviously forget they were once ‘kids today’. As Keith Richards once opined about what he considered the absurdity of the then to the Stones ‘elder’ establishment, particularly in home country of England, being worried about whatever damage a rock band could do, specifically discussing when he and Mick Jagger were briefly jailed after a 1967 drug bust:

“A country that’s been running a thousand years worried about two herberts running around? Do me a favor. That’s when you realize how fragile our little society is.” Herbert: (from The Lexicon of British slang) UK slang for a foolish person or used as a mild form of abuse. Normally prefixed by “spotty,” e.g. “Will ya look at that spotty Herbert!”

That and more such pearls of Keef wisdom are available in two books I recommend: Stone Me: The Wit and Wisdom of Keith Richards, compiled by Mark Blake and What Would Keith Richards Do? Daily Affirmations From A Rock ‘n’ Roll Survivor, by Jessica Pallington West.

As for Kristofferson, his debut album, beyond the Stones-related song, also included many of his perennials – Help Me Make It Through The Night, Casey’s Last Ride, Sunday Mornin’ Coming Down and of course his own version of his Me And Bobby McGee, which Janis Joplin took, posthumously, to No. 1 on her 1971 album Pearl, released in January of ’71, three months after her death. Kristofferson’s debut album, under its original title, was a commercial failure but after the success of the Joplin cover, was retitled Me And Bobby McGee in 1971 and – showing the power and name recognition of a hit single, cover version or otherwise – reached No. 10 on the country music charts and No. 43 on Billboard’s top 100.

The Rolling Stones – Between The Buttons (UK album track listing)

1. Yesterday’s Papers
2. My Obsession
3. Back Street Girl
4. Connection
5. She Smiled Sweetly
6. Cool, Calm & Collected
7. All Sold Out
8. Please Go Home
9. Who’s Been Sleeping Here?
10. Complicated
11. Miss Amanda Jones
12. Something Happened To Me Yesterday

I’ve never understood the noted English music journalist Roy Carr’s dismissal of this album. I respect Carr, who passed away in 2018, and music is of course subjective to everyone’s ears and tastes but when he – in his 1976 book The Rolling Stones: An Illustrated Record dismissed it as “a bunch of vaudevillian Kinks’ outtakes” I can only say:

1. Why criticize The Kinks, one of the greatest-ever bands?
2. Carr, you’re full of crap. Between The Buttons is a great, creative, inventive album. Amazing stuff like the beautiful She Smiled Sweetly and Backstreet Girl, the latter of which, along with the Bo Diddley-influenced rocker Please Go Home I first cottoned to via my older sister’s Flowers compilation. I’m fully on board with the so-called Big Four studio albums of Rolling Stones lore, those being, in order, the run from Beggars Banquet (1968) to Let It Bleed (1969), Sticky Fingers (1971) and Exile On Main St. (1972) but the band released loads of amazing material, not just hit singles like Satisfaction but deeper cuts as on Between The Buttons, throughout the earlier 1960s Brian Jones era. To each one’s own, obviously, in terms of liking or appreciating, but when one considers that all of it is part of the Stones’ output, throughout the now 60-plus years they’ve been around, the breadth and depth of what they’ve released is mind-boggling.

As mentioned atop the set list program, I’m playing the UK version of Between The Buttons. As was the practice, at least back then, in the UK singles were usually not placed on albums. There wasn’t conformity on track listings on UK and US album releases until 1968 for bands like the Stones and The Beatles. The US/North American version of Between The Buttons thus featured the hit singles Let’s Spend The Night Together and Ruby Tuesday.

I had my show set up before I learned of the passing of singer/songwriter/actor Kris Kristofferson, so I’ll pay tribute to him either on my Saturday morning show Oct. 5 and/or next Monday night, Oct. 7/24. My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. Frank Zappa, The Torture Never Stops
2. Genesis, Squonk
3. Yes, Awaken
4. Rush, The Camera Eye
5. Santana, Blue Skies
6. Queen, Brighton Rock
7. Spirit, Mechanical World
8. Peter Frampton, The Lodger
9. Spooky Tooth, Lost In My Dream
10. U2, Volcano
11. Love, Stay Away
12. Tony Joe White, They Caught The Devil And Put Him In Jail In Eudora, Arkansas
13. Social Distortion, I Was Wrong
14. The Rolling Stones, I Don’t Know Why aka Don’t Know Why I Love You
15. Stevie Wonder, Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away
16. The Doors, When The Music’s Over

My track-by-track tales:

1. Frank Zappa, The Torture Never Stops . . . Near 10-minute piece from Zappa’s 1976 record Zoot Allures. As described by the allmusic review site, the album is a masterpiece of mostly dark, slow, sleazy rock exemplified by this track’s “suggestive lyrics, crawling riffs, searing solos, and female screams of pain”. It also is my tongue-in-cheek warning, for anyone who isn’t into extended, in particular prog-ish pieces, that you face ‘torture’ for the first hour of my set. Five songs to start including 15-plus minutes of Yes, 11 of Rush before we get to nine minutes of not prog but typically intoxicating Santana rhythmic adventures from the excellent 2019 release Africa Speaks.

2. Genesis, Squonk . . . One of my favorite Genesis tracks, from A Trick Of The Tail, the 1976 album that was the first for the band after the departure of lead singer Peter Gabriel. As often happens in such situations with such a key departure, people wondered whether the band would survive. But, as happened with similar occurences with AC/DC (the death of Bon Scott, replaced by Brian Johnson) and Van Halen (the departure of David Lee Roth, replaced by Sammy Hagar), the band persevered and went on to more triumphs although in all cases, probably least so with AC/DC, the music inevitably changed but while perhaps losing some fans, the band gained others.

In the case of Genesis, the music stayed largely progressive for a few albums: Wind and Wuthering, And Then There Were Three and Duke which, in order, followed A Trick Of The Tail – before going full-blown commercial with the 1981 album Abacab, which I quite like. But by then even Gabriel himself, in his solo career, had also and in fact even earlier than Genesis adapted his music to the changing nature of the market where, arguably, full-blown prog rock was relegated to the relative margins. As Phil Collins, who took over lead vocals from Gabriel in Genesis once remarked, Genesis likely would not have survived had the band not embraced a more commercial approach. It’s just the degree to which they did that arguably alienated some of the fan base, like me, for instance. I mean, Invisible Touch, the song? Ugh. Yet, loads of people liked it, massive hit, as was the parent album.

While I always knew of Genesis, it wasn’t until they had the commercial single hit Follow You, Follow Me from And Then There Were Three that I started to fully embrace them, then went back to the Gabriel period and forward with them. My first year of college, journalism school, 1978, playing football, I go to a post-game party with teammates and first song that greets us as we walk into the house that was the site of the gathering is Good Times Roll by The Cars, then someone changes the album on the stereo to A Trick Of The Tail and I’m having a beer with a senior teammate and I, the freshman to college, the team and to Genesis, mention to him that I’d just truly discovered Genesis via Follow You, Follow Me and the album And Then There Were Three. He shakes his head, the knowing vet schooling the rookie, tells me And Then There Were Three is ok, but holds up the album cover of A Trick Of The Tail he had grabbed from near the turntable and says “this is the one.” Thank you, Greg Colbeck, great defensive end, great guy, cool Fu Manchu mustache, heavy machinery equipment school, wherever you may now be.

3. Yes, Awaken . . . Fifteen-plus (15:28 to be exact) minutes of epic, prog-rock excellent excess. Enjoy, or not. I do. All the elements are there, heavy rock in spots, quiet introspection in others, all brilliantly played by master musicians. From the 1977 album Going For The One.

4. Rush, The Camera Eye . . . Instrumental intro builds into a driving, 11-minute excursion from 1981’s Moving Pictures album which yielded the hit single Tom Sawyer and well-known tracks such as Red Barchetta, Limelight and YYZ (the code for Toronto’s Pearson International Airport).

5. Santana, Blue Skies . . . A brew of beautiful sound in that typical Santana smorgasbord, harkening back to the early days on this late career triumph from 2019’s Africa Speaks album. Rivetting vocals from Carlos Santana’s song co-writers Buika, a Spanish singer, and English a capella, jazz, soul and gospel singer Laura Mvula in an extended piece that starts slow until Santana goes off on a guitar shredding trip 4:42 in before the song settles back in to the denouement.

6. Queen, Brighton Rock . . . Hard rock opener to 1974’s Sheer Heart Attack album, which featured the hit Killer Queen but did not include the song Sheer Heart Attack, a furious fast one which was originally intended as the obvious title track but was unfinished and didn’t appear until three albums later, on 1977’s News Of The World. A similar situation happened with the Led Zeppelin song Houses Of The Holy. It was recorded as the title track to the 1973 album but was held back to the next album, 1975’s Physical Graffiti, as the band decided it didn’t with with the rest of the material on Houses Of The Holy.

7. Spirit, Mechanical World . . . Dark, brooding, stop-start hypnotic psychedelic stuff from Spirit’s self-titled debut album in 1968. The album also featured the instrumental Taurus, which became the subject of a lawsuit as, to many ears, Led Zeppelin, often embroiled in plagiarism problems and who had opened for Spirit on Zep’s first North American tour, ripped off the intro to Taurus for the intro to Stairway To Heaven. However, Zeppelin won the case. Suffice it to say there’s lots of interesting reading about it, easily available online.

8. Peter Frampton, The Lodger . . . Many people know, and were introduced to, Frampton’s solo stuff via the former Humble Pie guitarist/singer/songwriter’s 1976 live album Frampton Comes Alive! Count me among those people. But the great songs on that album, in almost all cases, obviously came from previously recorded studio versions from Frampton’s solo career, and they’re worth investigating. Most of them – material from the massively successful live album like It’s A Plain Shame, Lines On My Face, I’ll Give You Money, Baby (Somethin’s Happening) and All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side) – were on his earlier studio albums Wind Of Change, Frampton’s Camel, Somethin’s Happening and Frampton. The Lodger, however, a nice track from Frampton’s 1972 solo debut Wind Of Change, was not on Frampton Comes Alive! Also available on the Frampton compilation Shine On, it featured Ringo Starr on drums and early 1970s Rolling Stones’ horn-playing sideman both in studio and on tour, Jim Price.

9. Spooky Tooth, Lost In My Dream . . . Haunting, atmospheric track from Spooky Two. People sometimes talk about the so-called sophomore slump in terms of albums and there are such cases, The Cars’ Candy-O comes to mind, among many. Candy-O actually outsold the Cars’ self-titled debut, obviously largely because the first album established the band and interest was high in what the band would do next. But while it’s very good, let’s be honest, Candy-O is not as good and if forced to pick one Cars album I’d suggest the pick would be the debut album which, like Elvis Costello’s My Aim Is True, for instance, is essentially a greatest hits album. Back to Spooky Tooth: A great track, Lost In My Dream also served as the title to an excellent 2-CD anthology of Spooky Tooth’s work. The band featured Gary Wright, later of Dream Weaver album and song, and Love Is Alive (the song, from the Dream Weaver album) solo fame and also, in later versions of Spooky Tooth, Mick Jones who went on to form Foreigner.

10. U2, Volcano . . . I have loads of CDs, yeah I’m old fashioned, to quote The Who, talkin’ ’bout my generation . . . but I also do a radio show and you can’t always rely on online sources because uploads come and go, or artists or record companies don’t permit them. So, it’s good to have the physical copies in hand. Anyway, I was going to purge some of my U2, particularly the big hit albums like The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby which I realized I had years ago burned onto CDs, with my own bonus cuts. So I’m thinking, why am I keeping the actual studio CDs, I mean, the liner notes and lyrics are nice to have but . . . I want money, that’s what I want! to quote that famous song.

But, surprisingly to me, no place that gives money for used physical music wants anything to do with these hit U2 albums. Not right now, anyway. Why? Well, as was explained to me, so many copies of those records were sold, so as they’ve been returned as formats and listening habits changed, most stores as a result have a glut of them. Fair enough, and understandable. At any rate, the whole ‘let’s see if I can get cash for these” scenario re U2 also involved their later stuff but I figured, give those albums another listen, maybe there’s something actually worth keeping there. And, blow me down, there is! Like this track, propulsive, addictive bass line for one thing, from U2’s 2014 Songs Of Innocence album. It’s the album that U2 had just sort of appear on iTunes downloads to people’s phones and other devices, which ticked lots of people off, including many musicians who thought, why are you just giving music away, you are enabling that practice. Lots of available reading on that topic, I won’t further indulge it here.

Bottom line, I went back and re-listened to latter day U2, and I’m keeping all of it. Great bands, think what one might want to think of them, but they are great for a reason: Most are incapable of doing bad work, no matter at what stage they’re at in their careers. Volcano, and its parent album, yet another example.

11. Love, Stay Away . . . A diatribe about and lament to lost love, from a Love album that could be seen as an Arthur Lee, Love’s leader and creative force, solo album, originally recorded in 1973. It featured a new version of Love, an all-black band, where the original Love had been integrated but Lee wanted to try different musicians and explore a funky direction also by that point influenced by the music of his by then late friend Jimi Hendrix. What became the album Black Beauty was issued on a label, Buffalo Records, that went out of business so, aside from bootlegs, the album didn’t see widespread light of day until 2014 via the reissue label High Moon. An album worth investigating, as is all of Arthur Lee and Love’s work.

12. Tony Joe White, They Caught The Devil And Put Him In Jail In Eudora, Arkansas . . . Irresistible title, irresistible swamp rock song by the late Louisiana-born artist best known for Polk Salad Annie, which was covered by Elvis Presley. Eudora is located in the southeastern tip of Arkansas, right by the border with Mississippi. Population, as of last reported, 2010 census, 2,269. That’s down 550 from 2000. Maybe the devil escaped and has something to do with the drop off.

13. Social Distortion, I Was Wrong . . . Arguably the California punk band’s lone mainstream hit, my favorite Social Distortion song, from the 1996 album White Light, White Heat, White Trash by which I was introduced to them. Lots of great stuff from the band, including a cover of Ring Of Fire, made famous by Johnny Cash.

14. The Rolling Stones, I Don’t Know Why aka Don’t Know Why I Love You . . . A Stevie Wonder cover from the Let It Bleed sessions with new guitarist Mick Taylor in place of Brian Jones, who had been in serious decline due to substance abuse and was fired by the band. This song was, apparently, recorded the night news came that Jones had died. It has appeared on the ridiculously rich musically Singles Collection: The London Years and on the 1975 Metamorphosis compilation released by former Stones’ manager Allen Klein on his ABKCO Records. Klein’s company – which had gained the rights to the Stones’ Decca/London Records catalog while the Stones had by then launched their own label, Rolling Stones Records featuring the iconic lips and tongue logo – was dredging the vaults for various unauthorized by the Stones yet successful compilation releases like Hot Rocks 1964-71 and its followup, More Hot Rocks (Big Hits and Fazed Cookies) which features deeper cuts.

15. Stevie Wonder, Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away . . . Here’s Wonder himself, from his 1974 album Fulfillingness’ First Finale. Always relevant if sadly not always followed lyrics – essentially summarizing live and let live, walk a mile and the golden rule.

16. The Doors, When The Music’s Over . . . And so it is, for another show. From the Strange Days album, the band’s second, a 1967 release and their that year. The self-titled first album came out in January, Strange Days in September.

Three albums from what at the time was often described as a group of angry young men – that being Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson and Graham Parker in their early, breakthrough years of the late 1970s when new wave and punk rock broke big.

First up is Elvis Costello’s debut My Aim Is True from 1977 followed by Joe Jackson’s first album, 1979’s Look Sharp! and Graham Parker’s 1979 album Squeezing Out Sparks. Rounding out the two-hour slot are three of my favorite songs from Parker’s 1980 album The Up Escalator.

Elvis Costello – My Aim Is True

1. Welcome To The Working Week
2. Miracle Man
3. No Dancing
4. Blame It On Cain
5. Alison
6. Sneaky Feelings
7. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes
8. Less Than Zero
9. Mystery Dance
10. Pay It Back
11. I’m Not Angry
12. Waiting For The End Of The World
13. Watching The Detectives

Joe Jackson – Look Sharp!

1. One More Time
2. Sunday Papers
3. Is She Really Going Out With Him?
4. Happy Loving Couples
5. Throw It Away
6. Baby Stick Around
7. Look Sharp!
8. Fools In Love
9. (Do The) Instant Mash
10. Pretty Girls
11. Got The Time

Graham Parker and The Rumour – Squeezing Out Sparks

1. Discovering Japan
2. Local Girls
3. Nobody Hurts You
4. You Can’t Be Too Strong
5. Passion Is No Ordinary Word
6. Saturday Nite Is Dead
7. Love Gets You Twisted
8. Protection
9. Waiting For The UFOs
10. Don’t Get Excited

Graham Parker extras, a few favorites from The Up Escalator album

1. Devil’s Sidewalk
2. Stupefaction
3. Endless Night

A tribute to the songs of JD Souther, the songwriter well known particularly for his collaborations with the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt. Souther died at age 78 on Sept. 17.

So, a lot of Eagles/Don Henley and Ronstadt tracks, one by Warren Zevon, another by Bonnie Raitt and some stuff performed by Souther himself. Included is his biggest hit, You’re Only Lonely plus an early song with Glenn Frey of Eagles fame in Longbranch Pennywhistle plus work with former members of The Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers and Poco in the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band. My track-by-track tales follow the song list.

Souther was also an actor, with roles in Thirtysomething in 1989 and Nashville in 2012, with his other parts including small roles in the films Postcards From the Edge, Always, Purgatory, Deadline and My Girl 2. A thorough article on him in Variety: JD Souther

The set list:

1. Eagles, The Sad Cafe
2. Eagles, Victim Of Love
3. Bonnie Raitt, Run Like A Thief
4. Linda Ronstadt, White Rhythm And Blues
5. JD Souther, You’re Only Lonely
6. Linda Ronstadt, Prisoner In Disguise
7. Longbranch Pennywhistle, Kite Woman
8. Don Henley, Nobody’s Business
9. Eagles, You Never Cry Like A Lover
10. Linda Ronstadt, Silver Blue
11. The Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, The Heartbreaker
12. Eagles, How Long
13. Don Henley, If Dirt Were Dollars
14. Linda Ronstadt, Simple Man, Simple Dream
15. Eagles, Doolin’ Dalton/Doolin’ Dalton instrumental/Doolin’ Dalton/Desperado (Reprise)
16. Don Henley, Man With A Mission
17. Eagles, James Dean
18. Warren Zevon, Trouble Waiting To Happen
19. Eagles, Last Good Time In Town

My track-by-track tales:

1. Eagles, The Sad Cafe . . . A JD Souther co-write along with Eagles members Don Henley, Glenn Frey and Joe Walsh from The Long Run album. Doing a deep cuts show using Eagles songs can be a challenge, since so many of their songs are widely known, like this one, and appeared on ‘hits’ compilations, as The Sad Cafe did on Eagles Greatest Hits Vol. 2 which came out in 1982, after the first breakup of the band. It was also was part of the double-disc 2003 The Very Best Of compilation. Featured is the saxophone playing of David Sanborn, who played on, besides his own, more albums, by myriad artists across the musical spectrum, than one could count. Look him up for the evidence.

2. Eagles, Victim Of Love . . . The B-side to New Kid In Town, also co-written by JD Souther, from the Hotel California album, and renowned in its own right. Nice guitar work by Don Felder, who c0-wrote the tune along with the usual Eagles songwriting suspects Glenn Frey and Don Henley.

3. Bonnie Raitt, Run Like A Thief . . . Nice ballad from before Raitt achieved widespread commercial success, from her 1975 album Home Plate, cover photo showing Bonnie sliding into, well, home plate. Souther recorded it for his 1972 debut solo album John David Souther and this is the first instance in the set of something that is common – Souther’s songs being done by him, and by other artists; sometimes Souther recorded his versions on his own albums first, other times he followed up previous releases of his songs that were done by others.

4. Linda Ronstadt, White Rhythm And Blues . . . From Ronstadt’s 1978 Living In The USA album, the one with her on roller skates on the cover, somewhat of a reminder for males of a certain age, like me, of Raquel Welch in the 1972 roller derby movie Kansas City Bomber. Both Welch and later Ronstadt were wearing old-time roller skates, not the inline skates of today. Anyway, back to the music. A lovely ballad featuring Ronstadt’s amazing voice. Souther, who was Ronstadt’s romantic partner for a time, did his own version, with Phil Everly of Everly Brothers fame, on harmony/backing vocals on Souther’s 1979 album You’re Only Lonely which yielded JD’s lone big individual chart hit, the title cut.

5. JD Souther, You’re Only Lonely . . . Speaking of which, here’s JD’s big solo hit, Roy Orbison-esque to the point I almost wrote it down as Orbison’s hit Only The Lonely. Both great tunes. You’re Only Lonely hit No. 7 on Billboard and No. 1, for several weeks, on the adult contemporary charts. Among those on the session were David Sanborn on saxophone, studio ace guitarist Danny Kortchmar and Eagles Glenn Frey, Don Felder and Don Henley.

6. Linda Ronstadt, Prisoner In Disguise . . . A beautiful duet with JD and the title cut from Ronstadt’s 1975 album. Souther had previously recorded it for the second Souther-Hillman-Furay Band album (more on them in a bit) and later on Natural History, Souther’s 2011 album of new recordings of his songs that achieved greater success when recorded by many of the artists in this set.

7. Longbranch Pennywhistle, Kite Woman . . . Easily identifiable as a precursor to Eagles music, from the duo of Souther and future Eagle Glenn Frey, 1969.

About Longbranch Pennywhistle, from Wikipedia:
“Longbranch Pennywhistle was a country rock/folk music group featuring Glenn Frey and John David Souther. They originally performed as “John David & Glenn,” but when they added bass player David Jackson, they were encouraged to come up with a new name. Frey suggested “Longbranch,” Souther came up with “Pennywhistle,” and the names were merged at the suggestion of manager Doug Weston. They released a self-titled album in 1969 under Jimmy Bowen’s Amos Records label. Frey had made the migration from Detroit to California and Souther from Amarillo, Texas and were adapting to what would become the California sound. When the Amos Records label dissolved in 1971 the group had already disbanded the year prior.

Frey went on to co-found the Eagles and Souther wrote or co-wrote several of the Eagles’ most popular songs, along with hits for Linda Ronstadt. He also was a third of the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band.”

8. Don Henley, Nobody’s Business . . . Uptempo tune that gallops along, from Henley’s 1982 debut solo album I Can’t Stand Still which featured the hit Dirty Laundry. Co-written, along with Henley, by Souther and Bob Seger, the three of whom combined, with Glenn Frey, to write the earlier Eagles hit Heartache Tonight from The Long Run album.

9. Eagles, You Never Cry Like A Lover . . . Ballad from 1974’s On The Border, which introduced guitarist Don Felder to the Eagles’ lineup.

10. Linda Ronstadt, Silver Blue . . . From Ronstadt’s 1975 album Prisoner in Disguise and another one of those instances where Souther later did his own version of a song he wrote. JD’s Silver Blue came out on his Black Rose album in 1976.

11. The Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, The Heartbreaker . . . Funky country rocker from the trio’s 1974 debut album. Group members: JD Souther, Chris Hillman of Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers and Stephen Stills’ Manassas’ fame and Richie Furay of Buffalo Springfield and Poco – which later included future Eagle Timothy B. Schmit.

12. Eagles, How Long . . . Jaunty number from Souther’s 1972 debut album John David Souther. The Eagles covered it on their 2007 album Long Road Out Of Eden, which was their first full album of new material since 1979’s The Long Run.

13. Don Henley, If Dirt Were Dollars . . . From Henley’s biggest hit album, 1989’s The End Of The Innocence. Could easily have been a hit and I think is pretty well known. Great tune, great lyrics, often caustic or world-weary and realistic which is the case any time Henley and Souther are involved. The line “I was flyin’ back from Lubbock I saw Jesus on the plane . . . or maybe it was Elvis, you know, they kinda look the same’ from the first verse is worth the price of admission alone, to me, anyway. Henley had three top 40 singles off the record – The End Of The Innocence, The Heart Of The Matter and The Last Worthless Evening, plus a No. 48, New York Minute.

14. Linda Ronstadt, Simple Man, Simple Dream . . . From JD Souther’s Black Rose album in 1976, this version cut by Ronstadt for her Simple Dreams album in 1977 which also featured her hit covers of The Rolling Stones’ Tumbling Dice, Buddy Holly’s It’s So Easy, Roy Orbison’s Blue Bayou and Warren Zevon’s Poor Poor Pitiful Me. Souther’s Black Rose also includes his own version of his Faithless Love, which Ronstadt covered in 1974 and I played last Saturday morning in my teaser to tonight’s show featuring Souther’s songs.

15. Eagles, Doolin’ Dalton/Doolin’ Dalton instrumental/Doolin’ Dalton/Desperado (Reprise) . . . Nine minutes or so I’ve pieced together from the Desperado album, where all three songs, including the short instrumental part, appear at different stages of the 1973 release. Doolin’ Dalton leads the album off, then halfway through comes the 48-second banjo pickin’ instrumental featuring Bernie Leadon, before the album wraps up with the reprise including elements of the song Desperado.

16. Don Henley, Man With A Mission . . . From Henley’s second solo album, 1984’s Building The Perfect Beast which gave us the hits The Boys Of Summer, Sunset Grill, All She Wants To Do Is Dance and Not Enough Love In The World. I hadn’t listened to Man With A Mission in a long time but in revisiting it, I hear in it elements, in terms of the arrangement, to the later Eagles’ song Get Over It which was one of the studio cuts on the 1994 reunion live album Hell Freezes Over.

17. Eagles, James Dean . . . A tribute to the actor who died at age 24 in an auto accident. Toe-tapping rocker was the second single, after Already Gone, released from the 1974 album On The Border, but made just No. 77 in the US, No. 56 in Canada. The B-side was Good Day In Hell, the first song on which then-new Eagles guitarist Don Felder announced his musical presence after joining the album sessions midway through.

18. Warren Zevon, Trouble Waiting To Happen . . . Back to Zevon’s 1987 album Sentimental Hygiene I go, was there last Monday, Sept. 16 with The Factory, before JD Souther died and I thought of doing a tribute to him via his songs. Co-written by Zevon and Souther, who also did backing vocals on various Zevon albums.

19. Eagles, Last Good Time In Town . . . Santana-esque hypnotic groove on this one Souther co-wrote with Joe Walsh, from the 2007 Eagles album Long Road Out Of Eden. It rivals the title cut as my favorite from that record.

I’m leading off with three ‘morning’ songs, for my morning show, by Bad Company, early Chicago and The Beatles. I conclude with a couple songs, by the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt, written or co-written by JD (John David) Souther, who died at age 78 this past week. It’s a teaser to a set featuring his songs I’m planning for my next Monday night show, 8-10 pm ET on Sept. 23.

In between, on Saturday’s menu are a pair of one-off studio albums: David + David’s Boomtown, from 1986, and the self-titled album by Arc Angels featuring bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton from the late Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Double Trouble band, released in 1992. While Arc Angels, also comprised of singers/guitarists Charlie Sexton and Doyle Bramhall II, did later release a live album, neither of these artists, at least collectively, have so far issued any other studio work.

I had already planned to play some Arc Angels, hadn’t done so in a while. I was then inspired to play the David + David record, which I’ve often drawn from, by a conversation I had on X/Twitter the other day when someone asked which great albums one might consider to be underrated or underappreciated. I replied with Boomtown, thus launching a spirited, fun chat about the merits of that album. I then realized that Arc Angels was also a great one-off studio project, and here we are.

Of the two Davids, both of whom helped out Sheryl Crow on her 1993 debut album Tuesday Night Music Club, Baerwald, a singer/guitarist/keyboard player, has released sporadic solo albums I’ve drawn from on the show while delving into film and TV soundtracks, also writing an espionage novel, The Fire Agent. Ricketts, also a singer/guitarist/keyboardist, has done some session work but mostly concentrated on production.

Concluding the set are Eagles and Ronstadt songs written and/or co-written by Souther, who died on Sept. 17 at age 78. Souther is one of those artists whose songwriting is pervasive, particularly with the Eagles and Ronstadt, yet it was others, like those artists, who had more commercial success with Souther’s songs than he did. That said, Souther related, in a chat with The Creative Independent, how he was sometimes asked whether it disturbed him that the Eagles had so many hits – New Kid In Town, Best Of My Love, Heartache Tonight among them – with songs he’d written or co-written. His reply was, ‘Would you like to see the (royalty) checks? Pissed off? How could I be pissed off?”

I’m planning to dig deeper into Souther and his songs, both performed by him and others, on Monday night’s show (8-10 pm ET, Sept. 23).

Saturday’s set:

1. Bad Company, Early In The Morning
2. Chicago, Wake Up Sunshine
3. The Beatles, Good Morning Good Morning

David + David – Boomtown

1. Welcome To The Boomtown
2. Swallowed By The Cracks
3. Ain’t So Easy
4. Being Alone Together
5. A Rock For The Forgotten
6. River’s Gonna Rise
7. Swimming In The Ocean
8. All Alone In The Big City
9. Heroes

Arc Angels – Arc Angels

1. Living In A Dream
2. Paradise Cafe
3. Sent By Angels
4. Sweet Nadine
5. Good Time
6. See What Tomorrow Brings
7. Always Believed In You
8. The Famous Jane
9. Spanish Moon
10. Carry Me On
11. Shape I’m In
12. Too Many Ways To Fall

And a two-song teaser for a tribute show to singer/songwriter/musician/actor JD Souther coming 8-10 pm ET Monday, Sept. 23. Souther died at age 78 on Tuesday, Sept. 17.

1. Eagles, Teenage Jail (co-written by Souther, Don Henley and Glenn Frey)
2. Linda Ronstadt, Faithless Love (written by Souther)

About half the set is material I couldn’t squeeze into my recent Labour Day work-oriented show from Sept.2. My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. Fu Manchu, Neptune’s Convoy
2. Flash and The Pan, Media Man
3. The Godfathers, Birth, School, Work, Death
4. The Police, Dead End Job
5. Devo, Working In The Coal Mine
6. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Workin’
7. Warren Zevon, The Factory
8. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, Makin’ Thunderbirds
9. Neil Young, Union Man
10. ZZ Top, I Gotsta Get Paid
11. Thin Lizzy, Cold Sweat
12. Ron Wood, Shirley
13. Rory Gallagher, Smear Campaign
14. The Moody Blues, In My World
15. Free, Sweet Tooth
16. Concrete Blonde, Beware Of Darkness (George Harrison cover)
17. Dave Davies, God In My Brain
18. The Tragically Hip, Vapour Trails
19. Burton Cummings, Not Too Appealing
20. Traffic, Graveyard People
21. Elton John, Empty Sky

My track-by-track tales:

1. Fu Manchu, Neptune’s Convoy . . . Songs by this California stoner band often start off immediately heavy but this one builds, alternating between slow and spooky, punctuated by heavy flourishes, before all hell breaks loose with heavy rock to take us home for the last minute or so of the five-minute experience.

2. Flash and The Pan, Media Man . . . Damning diatribe against media, came out in 1980 on the Lights In The Night album and, sadly, nearly 45 years later things are arguably worse. And my career was in media where, while I loved what I consider a noble, necessary profession and was well-suited to it, I became disturbed by, as the final litany of lyrics, in list form, concludes, how at least some of it is, or can be, bullshit in terms of whatever agendas can be involved in coverage.

3. The Godfathers, Birth, School, Work, Death . . . Sort of sums things up, no? Aside from sex, I suppose. Nihilism, personified, otherwise. And a great tune, regardless. Title cut from the UK punkish band’s 1988 album. I remember having it on vinyl, lost in the mists of time or trade-ins, it was the only song on the album that truly grabbed me, but definitely a good one and I’ll have to dig deeper and rediscover the entire record sometime. The Godfathers were originally around between 1985 and 2000, disbanded then reunited in various configurations in 2008 and continue to this day.

4. The Police, Dead End Job . . . Early Police, straight ahead smokin’ punk rock. It was the B-side on two singles – Can’t Stand Losing You in the UK and Roxanne in the US/North America, both in 1978. It also appears on The Police box set, Message In A Box: The Complete Recordings, released in 1993.

5. Devo, Working In The Coal Mine . . . Infectious groove on all versions in various genres of this Allen Toussaint song, done by the American musician/songwriter/producer himself but likely best known as a hit, produced by Toussaint and his fellow producer and business partner Marshall Sehorn, for pop/R & B singer Lee Dorsey in 1966. It was later done by, among others, the mother-daughter country music duo The Judds. The Devo version also appeared on the Heavy Metal movie soundtrack in 1981 which also featured contributions from Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Sammy Hagar and Nazareth, among many others.

6. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Workin’ . . . The obvious thing, from a ‘work’ songs perspective, would I suppose be to play Skynyrd’s Workin’ For MCA by the original pre-plane crash band, and it came under consideration. But I thought I’d give the post-crash version of the band some love via this hard-rocking number from the 1999 album Edge Of Forever.

I’ve often said and I hold to it: I think the post-crash version of the band is high quality and they still certainly ‘bring it’ live where yes, they rely a lot on the tried and true catalog they’re expected to play and they do it well. But they’ve also released some solid studio albums since reuniting in 1987, some of which they draw from in concert, albeit now with no original members due to the passage of time and, mostly, deaths that have struck even newer members of the apparently star-crossed band whose roots go back to 1964.

Guitarist Rickey Medlocke, who’s been in latter-day versions of the band since 1996, arguably comes as close as possible to being an original member as he was a drummer in very early versions of Skynyrd in 1971-72, just before the release of the 1973 debut record Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd in 1973. Medlocke did record with the group, his early work with the band eventually coming out on the 1978 post-plane crash compilation Skynyrd’s First and . . . Last which was later expanded and re-released as Skynyrd’s First: The Complete Muscle Shoals Album, in 1998.

And, from what I’ve read, original vocalist Ronnie Van Zant supposedly eventually wanted to retire from the road and turn lead vocals over to younger brother Johnny, which wound up happening in 1987, 10 years after the plane crash took Ronnie’s life. There’s so much cross-pollination in so-called southern rock bands. Johnny had his own music career before, apparently at first somewhat reluctantly, taking over fronting Skynyrd, and Donnie, the middle brother of the three Van Zants, was a singer and guitarist in .38 Special before retiring due to health issues in 2013. He also teamed with Johnny to release several albums as Van Zant, a rock outfit which eventually branched into country music. And the late guitarist Hughie Thomasson, a founding member of the Outlaws, teamed with Medlocke and founding member Gary Rossington in the three-axe attack in post-crash versions of Skynyrd.

So, they persevere, it’s what they do, some people like it, some don’t, considering them a glorified tribute band which I can understand but, after some controversies and lawsuits over use of the name, the reconstituted Skynyrd is now doing it with, apparently, the blessings of all concerned, estates of the deceased included. They’re still out there touring, currently co-headlining with ZZ Top, who I’m getting to later in the set. I saw Skynyrd, great show, in 2004, when Rossington and keyboardist Billy Powell, the last remaining members of the band that recorded the first album, were still around. They released a studio album as recently as 2012 and, well, I suppose they’re like Nazareth for me, for some reason, I guess as simple as I still like most of whatever music they’re releasing, I admire their survival instincts and hang with them, loyal, perhaps, to a fault.

7. Warren Zevon, The Factory . . . Up-tempo tune from the Sentimental Hygiene album from 1987. Nothing ever approached the commercial heights for Zevon of Excitable Boy, the 1978 album fuelled by the hit single Werewolves Of London, but aficionados know the depth of Zevon’s catalog. Sentimental Hygiene is notable for Zevon’s main backing band – members of R.E.M. – on the bulk of the album, outside of star session players like Bob Dylan, Don Henley of the Eagles, Mike Campbell of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers and Neil Young on a track or two each. R.E.M.’s Peter Buck (guitar), Mike Mills (bass) and Bill Berry (drums) back Zevon, which led to the apparently drunken session that resulted in the Hindu Love Gods album of covers, recorded around the same time and released in 1990. That album is notable for the cover of Prince’s Raspberry Beret.

8. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, Makin’ Thunderbirds . . . I couldn’t decide between this one and Seger’s Feel Like A Number when I did the ‘work song’ thing on Labour Day, so here it is, a tasty leftover. It’s from his 1982 album The Distance.

9. Neil Young, Union Man . . . Short, sweet, two-minute rockabilly/country/hillbilly tune from Young’s 1980 album Hawks & Doves. I played his Ten Men Workin’ from 1988’s This Note’s For You album in my recent ‘work’ set, meant to juxtapose it with Union Sundown by Bob Dylan, which I did play, but song times and so on didn’t work out that night. So, here’s Union Man.

10. ZZ Top, I Gotsta Get Paid . . . Not to be confused with ZZ Top’s earlier hit, or at least widely known track, Just Got Paid, from the band’s second album, 1972’s Rio Grande Mud. This one’s from 40 years later, from the 2012 La Futura album by which time ZZ Top had long since largely abandoned the successful but divisive among fans and even band members, largely synthesizer approach, for a return to the group’s more bluesy leanings. That said, to me, a band of the quality of ZZ Top, like say The Rolling Stones, can dabble in things yet even if they may appear to go off the rails to some of their fan base (while attracting new fans with new sounds), they’re never too far from their roots, their essence. This track reflects that. It was a single, didn’t chart, classic bands like ZZ Top by now likely don’t give a shit in a totally different musical landscape, yet the song has millions of views on YouTube. Which says something, I think.

11. Thin Lizzy, Cold Sweat . . . Hard rocker from arguably Thin Lizzy’s hardest rocking, almost metal album, 1983’s appropriately-titled Thunder and Lightning which proved to be the band’s last studio release before the death bassist/frontman/songwriter Phil Lynott. The album was also the lone Thin Lizzy studio work featuring guitarist John Sykes. Sykes later joined the hair metal version of Whitesnake – whose roots in part might be found in Sykes’ contribution to the sound of the Lizzy record – and was on board for the monster commercial hit record Whitesnake aka ‘1987’.

12. Ron Wood, Shirley . . . Funky tune from Wood’s first solo album, the 1974 release I’ve Got My Own Album To Do which featured a host of Wood’s musical friends including future Rolling Stones mates Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts. Included in the track listing are the Jagger-Richards songs Sure The One You Need and Act Together, both sung by Richards. Mick Taylor, soon to quit the Stones and be replaced by Wood, contributed guitar, bass, piano and synthesizer to several tracks on the album.

13. Rory Gallagher, Smear Campaign . . . Stop-start sort of hypnotic riff on this one from the late great guitarist/songwriter’s 1987 album Defender. Lyrics applicable to any election campaign.

14. The Moody Blues, In My World . . . Lovely ballad from the band’s 1981 album Long Distance Voyager which I remember being all over radio then via such hits as The Voice and Gemini Dream.

15. Free, Sweet Tooth . . . Heavy blues rock, by a bunch of teenagers at the time, 1968, on the debut album Tons Of Sobs, sounding wonderfully like grizzled blues veterans. Fronted by singer Paul Rodgers backed by guitarist Paul Kossoff, bass player Andy Fraser and drummer Simon Kirke who, with Rodgers, would later form the more commercial, and commercially successful, Bad Company.

16. Concrete Blonde, Beware Of Darkness (George Harrison cover) . . . Nice treatment, on Concrete Blonde’s self-titled 1986 debut album, of the George Harrison classic from All Things Must Pass which, apparently, the former Beatle approved of and enjoyed. Always worth listening to the expressive voice of Concrete Blonde’s singer/bass player Johnette Napolitano. Fantastic singer, great band, yet for whatever reason, despite solid albums, never found much further major success after their breakthrough 1990 album Bloodletting which gave us the hit singles Joey, in particular and to a lesser extent Caroline and Tomorrow, Wendy.

17. Dave Davies, God In My Brain . . . A remarkable track, not only in its hypnotic psychedelic sort of industrial sound but more so because Davies, best known as The Kinks’ lead guitarist and forever battler with brother Ray, wrote and recorded it shortly after suffering a stroke, which the song addresses to a degree, in 2006. It was a new track recorded for the 2006-released compilation Kinked, comprised of Davies’ earlier solo work outside of the parent band which, by then, had not existed for a decade and seems forever dormant. And that’s OK. I’m a huge Kinks’ fan but I say, despite occasional rumors of a reunion, best at this point, 30 years after the last album, to let it be and not just because time has marched on and the brothers are 80 (Ray) and 77 (Dave), respectively, now. The legacy is assured, the influence of their talents widespread, nothing to prove.

18. The Tragically Hip, Vapour Trails . . . Nice groove, guitar work on this one from the renowned Canadian band’s 1998 release Phantom Power which contained the hits Poets, Fireworks and Bobcaygeon. If the song Fireworks doesn’t come immediately to mind via the title, it’s the one that starts with these lyrics; Canadians, at least, of a certain age will likely recall the subject matter of the first two verses:

“If there’s a goal that everyone remembers
It was back in ol’ 72
We all squeezed the stick and we all pulled the trigger
And all I remember is sitting beside you

You said you didn’t give a fuck about hockey
And I never saw someone say that before
You held my hand and we walked home the long way
You were loosening my grip on Bobby Orr”

19. Burton Cummings, Not Too Appealing . . . A song I rediscovered the other day, going through CDs and finding an old Cummings compilation. I like when that happens, you dust something off you haven’t listened to in ages and are rewarded. Anyway, I put it on and the song sounded instantly familiar, although it wasn’t if that makes sense, because I can’t remember when I last heard it, but I obviously must have although it’s not one of his big solo hits on the order of, say, the Guess Who singer’s better-known tracks like Stand Tall, I’m Scared, My Own Way To Rock, Break It To Them Gently and I Will Play A Rhapsody. But it has an irresistible hook, I find. To quote Cummings from his own liner notes on The Collection compilation: “Not Too Appealing was a stream of consciousness song that rolled out one day while I was staying at my then-manager’s house on Maui. . . . I picked up an old acoustic guitar and out came . . . ” The song was released on Cummings’ 1984 album Heart, long after his earlier commercial peak in Canada if not elsewhere had largely waned, and features Timothy B. Schmit, of Poco and Eagles fame, on backing vocals.

20. Traffic, Graveyard People . . . Intoxicating musical and biting lyrical brew from Traffic’s 1974 album When The Eagle Flies by which time the band was long into its latter-day jazz rock mode, long instrumental passages of terrific ensemble playing highlighting keyboards, percussion, bass and saxophone. It was the last Traffic album until Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi reunited for Far From Home in 1994. That album was decent enough but a bit overproduced to my ears and came off sounding more like a Winwood solo album and in fact he played and sang virtually everything on it, leaving drums, percussion and some backing vocals to Capaldi.

21. Elton John, Empty Sky . . . Strangely, perhaps, since I’m a huge Rolling Stones fan, that it took a while for me – until I recently read someone commenting on it in a YouTube clip – to clue in to the fact that the percussion intro to this title cut epic from EJ’s first album, 1969, is essentially a copy of Sympathy For The Devil done by the Stones a year earlier as the opening cut on Beggars Banquet. Paying deliberate homage to Sympathy, perhaps. In any event, not a criticism because I’ve always liked the song as Elton then goes off onto other lyrical and musical tangents, perhaps presaging future lengthy triumphs like Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, from 1973’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

On the menu for Saturday morning: British hard rock/progressive band Wishbone Ash’s 1972 classic album Argus, then Moontan from the Dutch group Golden Earring, the 1973 record famous for its hit single Radar Love, just one of the consistently satisfying songs on a terrific front-to-back album of hard rock with a sometimes progressive edge. I close with AC/DC’s 5-song EP ’74 Jailbreak. Song clips follow my album-by-album commentary.

Wishbone Ash – Argus

Wishbone Ash, according to the allmusic website and I concur, balances hard rock edge and prog-rock ambition complete with twin lead guitars. I quote: “Wishbone Ash can be considered a group who dabbled in the main strains of early-’70s British rock without ever settling on one (were they a prog rock outfit like Yes, a space rock unit like Pink Floyd, a heavy ensemble like Led Zeppelin, or just a boogie band like Ten Years After?).” Yes, they were all of that, and excellent as a result, although I bristle at the reference to Ten Years After, among my favorite bands, as ‘just’ a boogie band. It’s a poor assessment of TYA who yes, were a boogie band but also much more – blues rock, hard rock, etc. so as not to be pigeonholed. As for Wishbone Ash, I would recommend the Argus album as an entry point, and also the fine Time Was double disc CD compilation which contains most of Argus and the fine self-titled 1970 debut record including key tracks Errors Of My Way and Phoenix. All are available as physical copies and also on YouTube and streaming services. Argus song list below.

1. Time Was
2. Sometime World
3. Blowin’ Free
4. The King Will Come
5. Leaf And Stream
6. Warrior
7. Throw Down The Sword

Golden Earring – Moontan (UK/US/North America track listing)

1. Radar Love
2. Candy’s Going Bad
3. Vanilla Queen
4. Big Tree, Blue Sea
5. Are You Receiving Me

Original track listing (The Netherlands)

1. Candy’s Going Bad
2. Are You Receiving Me
3. Suzy Lunacy (Mental Rock)
4. Radar Love
5. Just Like Vince Taylor (Vince Taylor is the man who wrote and performed Brand New Cadillac, a hit for him in 1959 later famously covered by The Clash on their London Calling album, along with Canadian band Teenage Head, and others. I played Vince Taylor’s version long ago on an “old time rock and roll’ show.
6. Vanilla Queen

The original Moontan track listing in Golden Earring’s home country of The Netherlands dropped the epic song Big Tree, Blue Sea in favor of the more pop-oriented Suzy Lunacy (Mental Rock) and Just Like Vince Taylor, which made for a six-song album as opposed to five extended songs elsewhere. To me, Big Tree, Blue Sea is the far better song than either of its replacements, so I’m glad that we in North America got that one instead. To my ears, Just Like Vince Taylor and Suzy Lunacy suggest Golden Earring may have been going for a more accessible mainstream pop sound at least on those two tracks. And, if one investigates their extensive catalog they did have pop leanings at various times. But, suffice it to say, however it came about, the North American version of the album is superior in my view. It’s tighter im terms of being consistently hard-rock focused.

As for the album cover, we in North America got the familiar ‘earring’ cover while overseas issues featured the exotic British dancer and model, nude and otherwise, Jilly Johnson. That album cover did originally appear in the United States, at least, but was quickly withdrawn although times have changed and it’s readily available, at least in my friendly neighborhood and amazing in terms of catalog completeness music store. Jilly Johnson also dabbled in acting, appeared topless in British tabloid the Daily Mirror and, with fellow model Nina Carter, formed the girl group Blonde on Blonde which in 1979 did a fun disco cover, complete with racy video, of Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love. Nina Carter, born Penelope Jane Mallett, as Penny Mallett was a cover girl and centrefold subject in a 1971 issue of Mayfair magazine and was a popular topless Page 3 girl in The Sun tabloid. She and keyboard player of Yes fame Rick Wakeman married in 1984, were separated in 2000 and divorced in 2004.

AC/DC ’74 Jailbreak EP

From the Bon Scott on lead vocals era, featuring songs that had already been released as singles or on various albums in Australia but didn’t see widespread official release in North America until the EP came out in 1984. Included are my two favorites on the EP, Jailbreak (a different song than Thin Lizzy’s Jailbreak) and a smoking hot version of the standard Baby, Please Don’t Go made famous by blues artist Big Joe Williams in 1935 and later covered by Van Morrison’s Them. Among others doing Baby, Please Don’t Go were Aerosmith (on their 2004 covers album Honkin’ On Bobo) and Ted Nugent on the first Amboy Dukes album in 1967 and on his solo Double Live Gonzo! in 1978.

1. Jailbreak
2. You Ain’t Got A Hold On Me
3. Show Business
4. Soul Stripper
5. Baby, Please Don’t Go

A Labour/Labor Day set. Some hits but mostly the usual deeper cuts, all songs and/or artists’ names referencing work in some fashion.

1. Elvis Costello, Welcome To The Working Week
2. The Butterfield Blues Band, Work Song
3. Rush, Working Man
4. Bruce Springsteen, Factory
5. The Rolling Stones, Factory Girl
6. The Clash, Career Opportunities
7. Bob Marley and The Wailers, Work
8. Van Morrison, I’ve Been Working (live, from It’s Too Late To Stop Now)
9. The Who, The Dirty Jobs
10. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, Feel Like A Number
11. John Lennon, Working Class Hero
12. The Beatles, Lovely Rita (she’s a meter maid)
13. AC/DC, What Do You Do For Money Honey
14. Nick Lowe, Switchboard Susan
15. Jim Croce, Workin’ At The Car Wash Blues
16. Goddo, The Bus Driver Blues
17. Neil Young, Ten Men Workin’
18. Bob Dylan, Union Sundown
19. ABBA, Money, Money, Money
20. The Firm, Satisfaction Guaranteed
21. Men At Work, Down By The Sea
22. Blackfoot, Diary Of A Working Man

A two album replay for a Saturday morning. I’m featuring Super Session, the 1968 album put together by multi-instrumentalist and producer Al Kooper along with guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills, billed on the album as Steve Stills, and Selling England By The Pound by Genesis.

Super Session was originally a Kooper-Bloomfield project, the two having played together on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited album in 1965, with Bloomfield shortly thereafter joining The Paul Butterfield Blues Band and later forming The Electric Flag. Kooper went on to found Blood, Sweat & Tears, leaving, after disputes about artistic direction, after that band’s debut album, Child Is Father To The Man was released earlier in 1968. Stills came into the Super Session project, hastily recruited by Kooper, after Bloomfield, suffering from insomnia, left after the first of the two days Kooper had booked for the session in a Los Angeles studio. According to Kooper, as related in a 2020 article on guitar.com, “He left a note that said, ‘Couldn’t sleep, bye.’ So I called every guitar player I knew in Los Angeles and San Francisco: Jerry Garcia, Randy California, Steve Stills and I don’t even remember who else. Stills was the one who got it together.”

What resulted was a tale of two sides of the original vinyl; Bloomfield on five tracks on side one and Stills on the four of side two. A terrific listen, as is 1973’s Selling England By The Pound which, hard to pick, is among my favorites from Genesis’s pure progressive rock early period. Song list below.

Mike Bloomfield/Al Kooper/Steve Stills – Super Session

1. Albert’s Shuffle
2. Stop
3. Man’s Temptation
4. His Holy Modal Majesty
5. Really
6. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
7. Season Of The Witch
8. You Don’t Love Me
9. Harvey’s Tune

Genesis – Selling England By The Pound

1. Dancing With The Moonlit Knight
2. I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)
3. Firth Of Fifth
4. More Fool Me
5. The Battle Of Epping Forest
6. After The Ordeal
7. The Cinema Show
8. Aisle Of Plenty

Among the working titles for The Rolling Stones’ 1978 album Some Girls was More Fast Numbers. With that in mind, I’m opening a fast numbers set with a Stones’ rocker not from Some Girls (that’s just what you’d be expecting 🙂 ) but from their 1989 release Steel Wheels. Then into some interconnected hard rock and metal for a Monday, finishing off with heavy psychedelia from Iron Butterfly. My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. The Rolling Stones, Hold Onto Your Hat
2. Led Zeppelin, Achilles Last Stand
3. Coverdale/Page, Absolution Blues
4. Whitesnake, Take Me With You
5. Rainbow, Stargazer
6. Gillan, Don’t Want The Truth
7. Black Sabbath, Warning
8. Heaven & Hell, Double The Pain
9. Judas Priest, Dissident Aggressor
10. Fight, Little Crazy
11. Iron Maiden, Powerslave
12. Blue Oyster Cult, 7 Screaming Diz-Busters
13. AC/DC, Kick You When You’re Down
14. Van Halen, Pleasure Dome
15. The Joe Perry Project, Rockin’ Train
16. MC5, Sister Anne
17. Pantera, Cemetery Gates
18. Brian May, Resurrection
19. Iron Butterfly, Termination

My track-by-track tales:

1. The Rolling Stones, Hold Onto Your Hat . . . Bill Wyman was still in the Stones at the time of this rocker from 1989’s Steel Wheels album, Wyman’s last with the group, but he doesn’t play bass on it. Ron Wood, who played bass in the original Jeff Beck Group, handles the bottom end while Mick Jagger and Keith Richards trade guitar licks, with Charlie Watts on drums. That’s it, just the four guys, on a stripped-down ‘belter’ as a music writer termed it, akin to, say, Rip This Joint from Exile On Main St. nearly two decades previous. I considered opening this hard-rocking set with Rip This Joint but have played that recently so I figured I’d go with something newer from the Stones although, time flying as it does, this song is already 35 years old (!?).

2. Led Zeppelin, Achilles Last Stand . . . Epic opener to Zep’s 1976 album Presence, as we embark upon a series of songs released by artists who are all connected in one way or another.

3. Coverdale/Page, Absolution Blues . . . From the one-off collaboration between Whitesnake (and onetime Deep Purple) singer David Coverdale and Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, released in 1993. The collective wisdom at the time, which Page called BS but only Page really knows, was that Page partnered with Coverdale to tick Robert Plant off and push Plant into a Zeppelin reunion because the success of the Coverdale/Page album prompted rumours that a new Led Zeppelin, featuring Coverdale, Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham on his father John’s drum stool, would take flight. Plant, who to that point had rebuffed Page’s seemingly endless overtures to reunite (and good for Plant, I thought, move on, you know?), had been critical of Coverdale and Whitesnake, particularly the later 1980s glam/hair metal version of Whitesnake, for ripping off Plant’s vocal style and Led Zeppelin’s music. It’s an argument with some merit but is also a case of pot meeting kettle, given Zep’s own issues over the years in terms of plagiarism problems or, at best, borrowing. In any case, Page and Plant did reunite a year later, without Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, who was apparently miffed at not being invited, for the 1994 Page/Plant live album/MTV Unplugged film No Quarter: Unledded, featuring reinterpretations of Zep songs. And, later, for the 1998 Page/Plant studio album Walking Into Clarksdale and in 2007 the famous reunion concert, with John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham, at the O2 in London.

As for the Coverdale/Page album, it divided critics and likely some fans, but I’ve always liked it, but then I like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and, certainly, earlier, more blues-rock Whitesnake. Coverdale has said there are a few unreleased tracks from the Coverdale/Page sessions that may see release at some point in an expanded version of the album.

4. Whitesnake, Take Me With You . . . Speaking of early Whitesnake, this propulsive rocker is from that band’s first album, Trouble, released in 1978. White Snake, two words, was the name of Coverdale’s first solo record, released in 1977 after Deep Purple, Mark IV version with Tommy Bolin on guitar replacing Ritchie Blackmore who had formed Rainbow, broke up after the 1975 album Come Taste The Band. Along with Coverdale’s second solo effort, 1978’s Northwinds, White Snake the album was produced by Roger Glover, who had been the bass player in the pre-Coverdale days of Deep Purple (and is again now) when Ian Gillan, as he is now, was Purple’s lead singer before being replaced by Coverdale. Coverdale went on to name his band Whitesnake and Trouble included his former Deep Purple mate Jon Lord on keyboards, soon to be joined in early Whitesnake by Purple drummer Ian Paice for three studio albums – Ready and Willin’ (1980), Come An’ Get It (1981) and Saints & Sinners (1982). Paice and Lord then departed for the 1984 reunion of the famed Mark II version of Purple – Blackmore, Gillan, Lord, Paice and Glover – and the Perfect Strangers (1984) and House Of Blue Light (1987) albums before another breakup and round round we go . . . Did I mention how these bands/artists are all connected? Or, perhaps better expressed, convoluted?

5. Rainbow, Stargazer . . . And we’re not done yet with the wider Deep Purple population, which soon enough will bleed into Black Sabbath. But first, here’s Ritchie Blackmore and Rainbow, Ronnie James Dio on lead vocals, from the classic second Rainbow album, Rising, released in 1976.

6. Gillan, Don’t Want The Truth . . . Here’s Ian Gillan, who from 1976 to early 1978 did a jazz fusion/progressive rock thing with The Ian Gillan Band. That group released good, interesting stuff over the course of three studio albums, like Clear Air Turbulence which I’ve previously played on the show, before Gillan returned to hard rock with songs like Don’t Want The Truth from his band simply titled Gillan. The song is on the 1981 release Future Shock, one of five Gillan band studio albums through 1982 after which Ian Gillan joined Black Sabbath. Sabbath had just lost Dio (who after leaving Rainbow had replaced Ozzy Osbourne on lead vocals) to a solo career and had considered Robert Plant and David Coverdale, before settling on Gillan for what became his lone effort with Sabbath, the 1983 album Born Again. As the Robert Shaw character in the 1973 Paul Newman-Robert Redford movie The Sting was wont to say, ‘ya falla?” (follow).

7. Black Sabbath, Warning . . . The original Black Sabbath – Ozzy, Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass) and Bill Ward (drums) – from the self-titled first album, released in 1970. Warning is a cover of a late 1960s song by The Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation that Sabbath expanded from three minutes and change into a 10-minute epic. Dunbar, a drummer, has an extensive musical resume including stints with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and appearances or full band membership on albums by countless artists including Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Ian Hunter, Journey, UFO, Michael Schenker and, them again, Whitesnake.

8. Heaven & Hell, Double The Pain . . . Black Sabbath with Dio in all but name, Heaven And Hell the band – Ronnie James Dio, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Vinny Appice – was named after the 1980 Sabbath album on which Ronnie James Dio first replaced Ozzy Osbourne, who went on to a hugely successful solo career, later to reunite with the original Sabbath members at various times although drummer Bill Ward has not been involved in recent years. Appice replaced Ward for the 1981 Mob Rules album and the 1992 Dio/Sabbath release Dehumanizer, and when that lineup came together to record three new songs for the 2007 compilaton Black Sabbath – The Dio Years, the band went on tour as Heaven & Hell. They did so to fully differentiate themselves from the Ozzy-fronted Sabbath which by that point had reunited various times for concerts and eventually released a new studio album, 13, in 2013. Double The Pain is from Heaven & Hell’s lone studio release, The Devil You Know. It came out in 2009, a year before Dio died of cancer.

9. Judas Priest, Dissident Aggressor . . . Early Priest, kick butt hard rock/metal from the 1977 album Sin After Sin, produced by Roger Glover in another one of those myriad connections within the set. I’m probably over-emphasizing it, there were similar connections among artists in an early rock ‘n’ roll mostly 1950s set I played last Monday, Aug. 19, and such is true of any industry and it’s natural that there would be such cross-pollination within the hard rock/metal genre but I do find it interesting. And it’s why we have things like English music journalist/historian Peter Frame’s Rock Family Trees books, which were turned into a 1990s BBC TV series, and various similar books and websites. And going from a Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio song situation is a reminder that Judas Priest’s Rob Halford sang lead vocals for Black Sabbath at two 1992 shows in Costa Mesa, California, part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Ozzy Osbourne, who had announced a retirement he didn’t follow up on, was playing there and asked Black Sabbath, then on their Dehumanizer tour fronted by Dio, to open for him. Dio refused and quit, and Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi asked Halford to fill in and he pulled off two Sabbath shows, opening for Ozzy. And then Sabbath’s musicians, sans Dio or Halford, backed Ozzy for an encore of Sabbath songs on the second night of his Costa Mesa dates.

10. Fight, Little Crazy . . . Halford was available for those Sabbath shows in part because he had left Judas Priest to form his thrash metal band Fight, which in 1993 released its first of two studio albums, War of Words, from which I pulled this song. Halford returned to Priest – which continued with Tim “Ripper’ Owens on lead vocals for two studio albums and several live releases – in 2003. I saw the reunion tour with Halford in 2004 with Slayer, who covered Priest’s Dissident Aggressor on their 1988 album South of Heaven, opening an excellent double bill. Owens is now the lead singer in former Priest guitarist K.K. Downing’s band, KK’s Priest which has released two studio records in the last four years.

11. Iron Maiden, Powerslave . . . Somewhat typical ‘galloping’ type of Iron Maiden cut, a 7-minute title track to the band’s 1984 album. It was one of many Maiden albums produced by the late Martin Birch. Birch was at the helm for all of Deep Purple’s 1970s albums in addition to the early Rainbow and Whitesnake albums and Black Sabbath’s Ronnie James Dio-fronted records Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules. And two albums – Cultosaurus Erectus (1980) and Fire Of Unknown Origin (1981) featuring the hit single Burnin’ For You – by the next band in the set, Blue Oyster Cult.

12. Blue Oyster Cult, 7 Screaming Diz-Busters . . . Birch wasn’t involved with the album from which this track comes, Tyranny and Mutation, BOC’s second record, released in 1973. Not sure how to describe this one but it’s typical of early BOC. Dark, great riffing, psychedelic in spots, mysterious and spooky in others, an intoxicating 7-minute (one for each titular scream, I suppose) listening experience in my opinion.

13. AC/DC, Kick You When You’re Down . . . As someone on YouTube commented, tasty riff. Hypnotic, irresistible shake and shimmy. From the band’s most recent album, the 2020 release PWR/Up. Recorded at The Warehouse studio in Vancouver, owned by Bryan Adams and where AC/DC has cut its last four studio releases. Other bands/artists having recorded there include Adams himself, The Tragically Hip, Billy Joel, Elvis Costello, R.E.M., Slayer and Colin James.

14. Van Halen, Pleasure Dome . . . I’d describe this, from the Van Hagar-era 1991 For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge album, as progressive hard rock/metal. There’s no real rythmic hook, just Alex Van Halen’s incessant drumming and brother Eddie’s guitar licks but the song itself is the overall hook, careening along in a compelling fashion.

15. The Joe Perry Project, Rockin’ Train . . . Aerosmith was in a chaotic state of drug abuse and other issues when guitarist Perry left during the recording of their 1979 album Night In The Ruts, although he played on six of that album’s nine tracks. I love that raunchy, rocking album, actually; it’s arguably the last featuring the original Aerosmith sound before they cleaned up and ascended massive commercial heights from the late 1980s onward but maybe lost some of their soul what with bringing in outside songwriters and getting into the power ballad hit-making business. I like the later stuff, too, the band still rocks for the most part outside the power ballads, but given a choice I’d take the earlier material.

Anyway, back then Perry formed his own band with a gent named Ralph Morman, who had been in an early 1980s version of Savoy Brown, on lead vocals. At least, he sang on the first of three albums done with various vocalists by Perry’s Project, the 1980 release Let The Music Do The Talking from where I pulled this funky, R & B type rocker. The title track for the Perry Project album was later re-recorded by Aerosmith and released on their 1985 reunion album Done With Mirrors, which to me and many fans comes closest to early Aerosmith as it’s the last of their albums where every song is fully group-penned. Yet, most of the band is on record as being dissatisfied with it. Perry did two more Project albums, 1981’s I’ve Got The Rock ‘n’ Rolls Again and 1983’s Once A Rocker, Always A Rocker, before returning to the mother ship for Done With Mirrors.

16. MC5, Sister Anne . . . Pulsating proto-punk garage rock from the influential Michigan mavens’ 1971 album High Time.

17. Pantera, Cemetery Gates . . . A power ballad with, hey, it’s Pantera, some powerfully heavy passages to it, from the thrash/groove metal band’s breakthrough 1990 album Cowboys From Hell. The album marked the completion of Pantera’s transition from their gla/hair metal beginnings in the 1980s, spandex and all, to what they became. But, while the band has for the most part disowned its earlier material and its then-look, it was pretty heavy, too, albeit probably too derivative of, say, Judas Priest or Kiss to be successful in its own right.

18. Brian May, Resurrection . . . A space rock ethereal intro into some heavy riffing from the Queen guitarist’s first solo album, 1992’s Back To The Light. The late Cozy Powell, whose extensive credits included stints with Jeff Beck, Rainbow, Whitesnake and Black Sabbath, on drums. Powell died in a car crash at age 50 in 1998.

19. Iron Butterfly, Termination . . . As we terminate the show with some hard rocking psychedelia from 1968’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida album. This is a good tune, but like every other song on that album was overshadowed by the 17-minute title cut that was edited down to 2:52 for single release.

An album replay show: on the menu are Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy, Elton John’s Honky Chateau and Naturally, J.J. Cale’s debut album, from 1971.

Playing Zevon was inspired by a friend mentioning him during the week and I haven’t played him in a while, so I figured I’d go with likely his best-known album, largely due to its hit single Werewolves of London. But while that song drew many to Zevon and the 1978 album, his third studio release, there’s depth to the record – and Zevon’s entire catalog, which I do dig into fairly often on the show. Still, perhaps a case for many listeners where a song drives purchase of an album or, nowadays, an online listen at least, one is rewarded with a classic and an entry point into an artist’s work.

The hit singles from 1972’s Honky Chateau were Honky Cat and Rocket Man, but Elton John’s work had such depth in the early to mid-1970s that, like Zevon’s Excitable Boy, every album was a solid song-for-song listen. Examples on Honky Chateau are Amy, one of my favorite EJ deep cuts, Slave, Salvation, Mellow and Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters which is pretty well known and was a single in the UK. Ah, just listen to the whole thing; I’ve already listed seven of the 10 tracks. Depth, as mentioned.

J.J. Cale’s Naturally, a typical laid back effort, features two songs covered by other artists. Lynyrd Skynyrd did Call Me The Breeze on their 1974 album Second Helping while Eric Clapton (who also later had a hit with Cale’s Cocaine) had a hit single with a speeded up version of After Midnight in 1970, a year before Cale’s album was released. Cale had cut a fast version of After Midnight in 1966 as the B-side to an unsuccessful single, Slow Motion and it was Cale’s fast version that Clapton heard and covered in the same style. Cale was then encouraged to put After Midnight on his album to capitalize on the success of Clapton’s version but decided he’d done his own uptempo take already, so he slowed it down for Naturally. I’ve included all three versions, after the bare-bones song list, below.

Warren Zevon – Excitable Boy

1. Johnny Strikes Up The Band
2. Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner
3. Excitable Boy
4. Werewolves Of London
5. Accidentally Like A Martyr
6. Nighttime In The Switching Yard
7. Veracruz
8. Tenderness On The Block
9. Lawyers, Guns And Money

Elton John – Honky Chateau

1. Honky Cat
2. Mellow
3. I Think I’m Going To Kill Myself
4. Susie (Dramas)
5. Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time)
6. Salvation
7. Slave
8. Amy
9. Mona Lisas And Mad Hatters
10. Hercules

J.J. Cale – Naturally

1. Call Me The Breeze
2. Call The Doctor
3. Don’t Go To Strangers
4. Woman I Love
5. Magnolia
6. Clyde
7. Crazy Mama
8. Nowhere To Run
9. After Midnight
10. River Runs Deep
11. Bringing It Back
12. Crying Eyes

A set comprised of mostly early rock and roll, done by the original artists and/or those who were inspired by them, before veering off into other musical territory near the end of the 24-piece program. My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. Johnny and Edgar Winter, Rock & Roll Medley (live: Slippin’ And Slidin’, Jailhouse Rock, Tutti-Frutti, Sick And Tired, I’m Ready, Reelin’ And Rockin’, Blue Suede Shoes, Jenny Take A Ride, Good Golly Miss Molly)
2. The Rolling Stones, Mona (I Need You Baby)
3. Bo Diddley, She’s Fine, She’s Mine
4. Ronnie Wood & Bo Diddley, Crackin’ Up (from Live At The Ritz)
5. The Plastic Ono Band, Money (from Live Peace In Toronto 1969)
6. Paul McCartney, Hi-Heel Sneakers (from Unplugged – The Official Bootleg)
7. The Beatles, A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues (from Live At The BBC)
8. Jerry Lee Lewis, Crazy Arms
9. The Ventures, Walk – Don’t Run
10. Chuck Berry, Guitar Boogie
11. The Champs, Tequila
12. Buddy Holly/The Crickets, Fool’s Paradise
13. Roy Orbison, Go Go Go (Down The Line)
14. Charlie Rich, Lonely Weekends
15. Eddie Cochran, Nervous Breakdown
16. Carl Perkins, (The Right String, Baby, But The) Wrong Yo-Yo
17. Rufus Thomas, Bear Cat
18. Danny & The Juniors, Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay
19. Django Reinhardt, Djangology
20. Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group Live, Scatterbrain
21. Peter Green, White Sky (Love That Evil Woman)
22. Van Morrison, Listen To The Lion
23. Steve Winwood, Night Train
24. Tony Banks, Siren

My track-by-track tales:

1. Johnny Winter and Edgar Winter, Rock & Roll Medley (live: Slippin’ And Slidin’, Jailhouse Rock, Tutti-Frutti, Sick And Tired, I’m Ready, Reelin’ And Rockin’, Blue Suede Shoes, Jenny Take A Ride, Good Golly Miss Molly) . . . Nine rock ‘n roll classics, or at least snippets of them, some longer than others but it works, whipped up in a torrid six minute package. From the Winter brothers’ 1976 live album Together.

2. The Rolling Stones, Mona (I Need You Baby) . . . From their early days, the Stones doing the Bo Diddley beat. The song was first released on the band’s UK debut album, simply titled The Rolling Stones but, with a different track listing that didn’t include Mona, subtitled England’s Newest Hitmakers in North America. The colonies had to wait for 1965’s The Rolling Stones, Now! album to get Mona on an LP, back in the days when British bands like the Stones, Beatles and others, thanks in part to the practice of singles in the UK not usually also being released on albums outside of compilations, often saw their records repackaged and/or bastardized, depending how one looks at it.

For instance: The cover art for the Stones’ 1965 US release December’s Children (And Everybody’s), a photo of the band, was the same photo used for the UK album Out Of Our Heads while the US Out Of Our Heads cover used a different photo (and track listing) of the group. The Beatles, for one, hated the practice and what Capitol Records in the US did to their albums, understandable in terms of artistic integrity, album titles (Beatles ’65, Beatles VI etc. which didn’t exist in the UK) song sequencing, sound mixes and such. But on the flip side, those were the records many North American fans grew up with and were accustomed to, hence things like the 2014 box set CD release The U.S. Albums and, previous to that, the respective 2004 and 2006 boxes The Capitol Albums Volume 1 and 2. As a Stones and Beatles completist, I have all of it and while I grew up in Canada and first heard and had the North American ones, I do prefer the UK versions of the early albums, in at least some measure as a way of honoring the artists’ intentions.

3. Bo Diddley, She’s Fine, She’s Mine . . . And here’s Bo himself, from 1955 with the B-side to Diddley Daddy, the A-side hitting No. 11 on the R & B charts. Diddley’s She’s Fine, She’s Mine was in 1960 adapted by American blues singer/songwriter/harmonica player Willie Cobbs and became his You Don’t Love Me, later to be given an epic 19-minute treatment on The Allman Brothers Band’s classic 1971 live album At Fillmore East.

4. Ronnie Wood & Bo Diddley, Crackin’ Up (from Live At The Ritz) . . . And Bo again, this time with Stones’ guitarist Wood on a rollicking live album recorded in New York City in 1987 and released in 1988. A 10-song trip through mostly Bo’s catalog including Crackin’ Up but also showcasing Plynth (Water Down the Drain) from the Jeff Beck Group’s Beck-Ola album, Ooh La La by another of Wood’s former groups, Faces, and the Stones’ Honky Tonk Women, the album hit No. 40 on the Japanese charts.

5. The Plastic Ono Band, Money (from Live Peace In Toronto 1969) . . . Heavy, gritty version of the rock and roll standard, as performed by the hastily put together band of John Lennon (vocals, guitar), Eric Clapton (guitar), longtime Beatles’ associate Klaus Voorman on bass and future Yes drummer Alan White … and Yoko Ono, literally in the bag for at least part of the performance at the Toronto Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival festival at Varsity Stadium. The festival featured, among others, rock and roll pioneers Bo Diddley (him yet again, not obsessed with him he just keeps popping up; it’s that type of interconnected song set), Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Little Richard along with Chicago, The Doors and Alice Cooper, whose band also served as the backing group for Gene Vincent of Be-Bop-a-Lula fame.

6. Paul McCartney, Hi-Heel Sneakers (from Unplugged -The Official Bootleg) . . . From McCartney’s terrific 1991 release, part of the then-popular MTV Unplugged series that eventually became too much of a good thing. The album, which includes Gene Vincent’s Be-Bop-a-Lula but I decided to play Hi-Heel Sneakers instead, is a nice combination of early rock and roll standards and some Beatles’ material like I’ve Just Seen A Face, Here, There and Everywhere, We Can Work It Out plus McCartney solo stuff like Junk and That Would Be Something. It also includes a great version of Bill Withers’ Ain’t No Sunshine, sung by one of McCartney’s guitarists at the time, Hamish Stuart. Stuart, an original member of the Average White Band, is currently in Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band.

7. The Beatles, A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues (from Live At The BBC) . . . The many connections within the set continue with the Fab Four’s cover of Alabama songwriter/guitarist Terry Thompson’s tune, which was the B-side to American soul singer Arthur Alexander’s hit single You Better Move on, which in 1964 was covered by The Rolling Stones. The Beatles either recorded or performed live on the BBC countless times between 1962 and 1965, many of the results of which appeared on Live At The BBC, a 2-disc set first released in 1994 and then re-released in expanded form along with On Air – Live At The BBC Volume 2 in 2013. A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues, sung by John Lennon, was recorded in early August, 1963 and aired on the BBC later that month.

8. Jerry Lee Lewis, Crazy Arms . . . A No. 1 country hit and top 30 overall chart placing for Ray Price in 1956, it was the first single recorded by Lewis, also in 1956 although it didn’t chart. The song was later released on Lewis’s self-titled debut album in 1958. That record is sometimes referred to as High School Confidential due to that single’s presence on the record, by which time The Killer was a star via hits like Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin’ On, Great Balls Of Fire and Breathless.

9. The Ventures, Walk – Don’t Run . . . The first of three consecutive instrumentals. Written by American jazz guitarist Johnny Smith, The Ventures took it to the top of the charts in 1960 and yes, this is a deep cuts show but as I often mention, I do play the occasional singles that either didn’t chart, ones by relatively obscure artists or songs that may not have been heard, at least by me, in ages. I pulled this one, along with some others in the set, from my trusty 3-CD Totally Essential Rock ‘N’ Roll collection. Not sure how to describe it in words but it’s one of those tunes that one recognizes immediately upon it starting to play.

10. Chuck Berry, Guitar Boogie . . . Perfectly descriptive title for this instrumental from Berry’s 1958 album One Dozen Berrys. It’s got Berry’s signature intro to the point one almost expects him to start singing Johnny B. Goode or something but it works perfectly well without vocals. There’s way more than a dozen strawberries on the cool cover, but the album is called One Dozen Berrys due to its 12 tracks including the hits Sweet Little Sixteen and its B-side Reelin’ and Rockin’ (later an A-side hit) and Rock and Roll Music.

11. The Champs, Tequila . . . Last one in the mini-instrumental set although I suppose it’s technically a semi-instrumental with this one because the word ‘tequila’ is spoken, in a fun and effective way, three times during the two minute, 13-second track. A No. 1 hit in 1958, it’s one of those cool cases where an A-side, in this case Train To Nowhere, a fine song in its own right but unsuccessful, was flipped over by a DJ who played the B-side Tequila at a Cleveland radio station, and the rest is history. The song has been covered countless times by artists from every genre of music one could name and has a big popular culture presence. It’s appeared in movies like Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie and the TV series Happy Days.

12. Buddy Holly/The Crickets, Fool’s Paradise . . . It sounds instantly familiar which I suppose most if not all Holly tunes do, similar to, say, Chuck Berry, which some might consider repeating themselves but I find a testament to the effective hooks and melodies inherent in their work. This was the B-side to the top-30 charting A-side Think It Over which also made No. 9 on the R & B list. Fool’s Paradise made No. 58 on the main charts.

13. Roy Orbison, Go Go Go (Down The Line) . . . B-side to the 1956 single Ooby Dooby and the first song written by Orbison although, according to Wikipedia, Sun Records owner and founder Sam Phillips later bought out out Orbison’s songs and put his own name on the credits. It was later covered and released as Down The Line by both Jerry Lee Lewis and Ricky Nelson, among others including Orbison himself, who reworked it for his 1970 album The Big O.

14. Charlie Rich, Lonely Weekends . . . Does the great country singer ever sound like Elvis Presley on this 1960 rockabilly release, but I suppose lots of these types of songs sound like Elvis, or vice-versa. In any event, it’s all such quality, infectious stuff – short, sweet, effective.

15. Eddie Cochran, Nervous Breakdown . . . As I was saying, about the Charlie Rich tune – short, sweet, infectious, effective. Best known for hit singles like Summertime Blues, Twenty Flight Rock, C’mon Everybody, Somethin’ Else and Cut Across Shorty, Cochran – like his friends Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens – died young in an accident. In Cochran’s case it was in a car crash in 1960 at age 21, just over a year after Holly, 22 and Valens, 17, along with The Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), 28, perished along with pilot Roger Peterson in the February, 1959 plane crash immortalized as The Day The Music Died in Don MacLean’s 1971 hit American Pie. Chillingly, apparently Cochran was spooked by the death of his friends and developed a premonition that he, too, would die young and wanted to cut down on touring to reduce chances of an accident. The single car crash came while he was riding in a taxi on tour in England.

16. Carl Perkins, (The Right String, Baby, But The) Wrong Yo-Yo . . . Terrific toe-tapper by the man likely best known for Blue Suede Shoes, famously covered by Elvis Presley among countless renditions by various artists. Perkins also is responsible for Honey Don’t, Matchbox and Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby, all covered by The Beatles to the point Paul McCartney was once quoted as saying “if there were no Carl Perkins, there would be no Beatles.” I think there would have been, talent of that level tends to emerge regardless but no doubt Perkins was influential and provided at least some degree of push towards prominence.

17. Rufus Thomas, Bear Cat . . . A fun response to the song Hound Dog, by the man who gave the rock and roll world the 1963 hit single Walking The Dog which has been covered by artists like The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Roger Daltrey, Johnny Rivers, Mitch Ryder, Jason & The Scorchers, Green Day and many others.

18. Danny & The Juniors, Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay . . . Best known for their 1957 chart-topping At The Hop, this similar-sounding (especially the intro with the doo-wop vocal harmonies) 1958 followup made No. 19 on the hit parade.

19. Django Reinhardt, Djangology . . . Genre change as we bridge into some more modern, longer material via this 1935 recording by the renowned and influential Belgian jazz/gypsy jazz guitarist.

20. Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group Live, Scatterbrain . . . Beck, hardly a slouch himself, once described Django Reinhardt, in an interview with Guitar World Legends magazine, as “by far the most astonishing guitar player ever” so I figured let’s see what Beck himself has to play in the jazz fusion idiom as on this collaboration with the Czech-born composer/musician/producer Hammer, released on their 1977 album. Hammer, who was in the original lineup of John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra starting in 1971, also played on Beck’s studio albums Wired (1976), There & Back (1980) and Flash (1985). Hammer is well known for various movie and TV scores including the Miami Vice Theme which was a top 20 worldwide hit, including No. 1 on some lists, in 1985.

21. Peter Green, White Sky (Love That Evil Woman) . . . Propulsive near-nine minute title track to the Fleetwood Mac founder member’s 1982 album. Among the personnel on the album was drummer Reg Isidore, best known for his work in Robin Trower’s band on albums between 1973 and 1981 including Trower’s first two solo releases after leaving Procol Harum, the excellent Twice Removed From Yesterday and its followup a year later, the 1974 classic Bridge Of Sighs. Isidore died of a heart attack in 2009 at age 59.

22. Van Morrison, Listen To The Lion . . . An 11-minute voyage into Van The Man’s vocal style from his 1972 album Saint Dominic’s Preview. His voice as I often suggest and marvel at is an instrument in itself. Of course that is true of all singers, and it’s obviously subjective but Morrison’s voice in this regard is exceptional, as demonstrated on this epic as he sings, chants, moans . . . in short, vocalizes. In the words of noted music journalist/critic Robert Christgau in his review of the album and this song, vocals are sometimes more important than words. Also of note on the song is Ronnie Montrose, best known for hard rocking guitar in his band Montrose (from whence singer Sammy Hagar emerged), showing his versatility with some beautiful acoustic playing in tandem with Morrison.

23. Steve Winwood, Night Train . . . Funky, extended closing cut on Winwood’s hit album (No. 1 in Canada, No. 3 in the US) Arc of a Diver, released on the third-last day of 1980. While You See A Chance was the big hit, the title track also made the charts from a true solo album as Winwood sang and played every instrument – guitar, bass, various keyboards and synthesizers, and drums.

24. Tony Banks, Siren . . . And why not a little classical music from the Genesis keyboardist to conclude a set that went down some avenues that – after I intentionally started with lots of early rock and roll – I didn’t expect or necessarily intend. But in the end that’s a lot of the fun of it for me and the results come from having assembled the song list over a period of a few days, meaning I put things down, so to speak, then picked them up the next day and the day after that, in different musical moods each time. Composed by Banks and performed by the City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, this piece is from Banks’ second of now three classical albums, the 2012 release Six Pieces For Orchestra. The others are Seven: A Suite For Orchestra (2004) and Five, depicted as ‘5’ on the album cover, released in 2018. I don’t own any of them but I clued in to Sirens via the 3-CD Genesis compilation R-Kive, a 2014 set that features Genesis band material from all periods of the group plus solo work by Banks, Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford, Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett.

An album replay show featuring releases, in descending order, from 1974, 1973 and 1972: Stormbringer by Deep Purple, Goats Head Soup from The Rolling Stones and Lou Reed’s Transformer. Track listing after my long preamble.

I’ve been revisiting full albums from my formative musical years of late so I expect I’ll be doing album replays for a few weeks at least, on Saturdays. Such an approach works well for my Saturday show because, unlike Mondays when I’m actually live in studio, the Saturday morning set, which I volunteered long ago to do to help the station fill an empty time slot, is one I program via the station computer system. So the songs/albums play straight through, no DJ talk to interrupt anyone should they be recording the record off the radio, and yes I’m dating myself 🙂 from the days we did those sorts of things when a new album was released and an FM station would play the whole thing and you got your blank cassettte tapes ready. And then, me at least, if I liked the album wound up buying it, anyway. Not that such is necessary these days given streaming and such but that’s, for instance, how I got into Joe Jackson, via a Toronto station playing his first album, Look Sharp! in its entirety.

I always remember such a taping circumstance with AC/DC’s Back In Black album where, at the time, shortly after college, I had moved to northern Alberta to start my journalism career and the house I was sharing with a bunch of people was beside a construction zone so every now and then a dump truck would drive by, cross the railroad tracks and shake the foundations of the building. Yes, a deliberate nod to a later AC/DC song Shake Your Foundations from the Fly On The Wall album. So, my cassette tape of Back In Black, recorded off radio, had a brief ‘rumble’ in it because the tape deck shook. As I recall, it was during Shoot To Thrill, so the truck driver’s timing (or mine) was off as obviously the rumble should have come during You Shook Me All Night Long but you can’t have everything. In any event, when I actually bought Back In Black, I kinda missed that dump truck-induced distortion I had grown used to hearing on playback.

Back to Saturday’s set . . .

Stormbringer is from the Mark III version of Deep Purple featuring David Coverdale on lead vocals supported by bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes. The lineup’s first outing was the critically acclaimed and commercially successful Burn album but by the next record, Stormbringer, Hughes in particular was pushing Purple towards a more funky, soulful sound which – while the album was still successful on the charts – guitarist Ritchie Blackmore found distasteful, leading to his eventual departure from the band.

As a forever Purple fan, all personnel versions of the band and they’re up to Mark IX now, I’ve always found Blackmore’s stance interesting given that, while Purple always purported to be a democracy, if the band did have a leader it was Blackmore, so if he didn’t like the direction one wonders why he didn’t put his foot down. But, the ever-mercurial Blackmore was also at the time looking to explore other hard rock musical avenues and had become enamoured of the band Elf, which supported Purple on tour and was led by singer Ronnie James Dio, with whom Blackmore eventually partnered to form the first (and best, to me) versions of Rainbow. Yet despite his misgivings, Blackmore still contributed his usual excellent guitar playing to the Mark III albums and Stormbringer features some of my favorite Deep Purple songs, any era and personnel configuration. Things like the beautiful Holy Man and Soldier of Fortune, featuring the vocals of Hughes and Coverdale, respectively, plus the opening rocker of a title cut.

The Stones’ Goats Head Soup received mixed critical reviews at the time of release and was considered as not measuring up to the so-called ‘big four’ studio albums that preceded it: Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main St. (likely my favorite album by anyone). That four-album run is one of the greatest in rock music history, but to dismiss, or sell short an album like Goats Head Soup that features songs like Angie, Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker), Winter, 100 Years Ago and the infamous Star Star (aka Starfucker, the original title, rejected by the record company) is, well, I’m a big Stones fan so wrong guy to ask I suppose.

And in listening to Transformer again for the first time in ages, in preparing the show, wow, what an album, co-produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson. The record of course features Reed’s most commercially successful song, Walk On The Wild Side, but is full of great stuff like Vicious, Andy’s Chest, Satellite Of Love, Perfect Day and others.

Here’s the set list:

Deep Purple – Stormbringer

1. Stormbringer
2. Love Don’t Mean A Thing
3. Holy Man
4. Hold On
5. Lady Double Dealer
6. You Can’t Do It Right
7. High Ball Shooter
8. The Gypsy
9. Soldier Of Fortune

The Rolling Stones – Goats Head Soup

1. Dancing With Mr. D
2. 100 Years Ago
3. Coming Down Again
4. Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)
5. Angie
6. Silver Train
7. Hide Your Love
8. Winter
9. Can You Hear The Music
10. Star Star

Lou Reed – Transformer

1. Vicious
2. Andy’s Chest
3. Perfect Day
4. Hangin’ Round
5. Walk On The Wild Side
6. Make Up
7. Satellite Of Love
8. Wagon Wheel
9. New York Telephone Conversation
10. I’m So Free
11. Goodnight Ladies

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

1. Meat Loaf, Everything Louder Than Everything Else
2. Bruce Springsteen, Jungleland
3. Argent, Thunder And Lightning
4. Rod Stewart, The Balltrap
5. Long John Baldry, Intro: Conditional Discharge/Don’t Try To Lay No Boogie Woogie On The King Of Rock & Roll
6. Stephen Stills/Manassas, Johnny’s Garden
7. Steve Miller Band, Space Cowboy
8. ZZ Top, Groovy Little Hippie Pad
9. Elvis Presley, The Girl Next Door Went A ‘Walking
10. Blackfoot, Highway Song
11. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, The Faith Healer
12. Beck Bogert Appice, Lady
13. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Woncha Take Me For A While
14. The Rolling Stones, I Just Want To See His Face
15. Groundhogs, Thank Christ For The Bomb
16. Howlin’ Wolf, Poor Boy (from The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions)
17. David Bowie, Stay
18. Little Feat, Dixie Chicken (live, from Waiting For Columbus)

My track-by-track tales:

1. Meat Loaf, Everything Louder Than Everything Else . . . Typically bombastic Meat Loaf, but that’s the point with him. It’s from Bat Out Hell II: Back Into Hell, released in 1993. It’s unclear whether they were inspired by the Meat Loaf song title but Motorhead released a live album in 1999 called Everything Louder Than Everyone Else.

2. Bruce Springsteen, Jungleland . . . Epic track from the Born To Run album, 1975. Violin intro by Suki Lahav, who worked with Springsteen on Born To Run and the preceding album The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle before returning to Israel where she continued her varied career as an actress, lyricist, singer, screenwriter and novelist. And, of course, Jungleland features the memorable saxophone solo by The Big Man, longtime E Street Band member Clarence Clemons until his death at age 69 in 2011, to be replaced by his nephew Jake Clemons.

3. Argent, Thunder And Lightning . . . Propulsive rocker, released in 1974, from the band best known for the hit single Hold Your Head Up. Argent leader Rod Argent was also a founding member of The Zombies and co-wrote such Zombies’ hits as She’s Not There and Time Of The Season.

4. Rod Stewart, The Balltrap . . . Chugging rocker that opened the ‘Fast Side”, side two (side one of course being the ‘Slow Side’) of the original vinyl release of Stewart’s chart-topping 1976 album A Night On The Town.

5. Long John Baldry, Intro: Conditional Discharge/Don’t Try To Lay No Boogie Woogie On The King Of Rock & Roll . . . Speaking of Rod Stewart, he produced six songs on one of his heroes’ albums, Baldry’s 1971 release It Ain’t Easy. Among the other ‘name’ helpers on the record: Elton John (who produced four songs), Ron Wood and Caleb Quaye, Quaye at various times during the 1970s in and out of Elton John’s band.

6. Stephen Stills/Manassas, Johnny’s Garden . . . I got to discussing how great Stephen Still is, with a buddy of mine this past week. So, here he is, a relatively well-known song, from the Manassas album (also the name of the band) although it perhaps surprisingly wasn’t one of the singles released from that renowned 1972 record.

7. Steve Miller Band, Space Cowboy . . . That’s what he truly was early in his career, Miller starting his career as a psychedelic blues rocker. Space Cowboy, from 1969’s Brave New World album, references two Miller tunes – Living In The U.S.A. and Gangster Of Love – from his 1968 album Sailor and Space Cowboy and Gangster Of Love are referenced in the opening lines – ‘some people call me the space cowboy, yeah, some call me the gangster of love’ – of Miller’s breakthrough hit The Joker. That was the title cut from the 1973 album that presaged the hit singles machine period of Miller’s career that included tracks like Fly Like An Eagle, Take The Money And Run and many others.

8. ZZ Top, Heaven, Groovy Little Hippie Pad . . . At the time, a sign of things to come for ZZ Top, the use of synthesizer played by an uncredited Linden Hudson, a longtime friend and confidant of the band members and one of the group’s sound engineers, on this infectious little ditty from the 1981 album El Loco. ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons was apparently inspired to go in the synthesizer direction in part by witnessing a Devo soundcheck. The ZZ Top book Sharp-Dressed Men, by former band crew member David Blayney, includes a section detailing Hudson’s extensive contributions to the shift in sound that reached full-blown status on the next album after El Loco, 1983’s Eliminator which featured such hits as Legs, Sharp Dressed Man and Gimme All Your Lovin’. Hudson, according to the book, later sued over credits that were denied him and the case was reportedly settled out of court for $600,000. Aside from the legal machinations, what’s fascinating, as related in the book, is how Hudson studied song tempos and beats per minute in hit songs, something ZZ Top, and Gibbons in particular, then used to help write songs whose beats and hooks would prove irresistible to listeners. Calculated, yes. Successful, yes.

9. Elvis Presley, The Girl Next Door Went A ‘Walking . . . Rockabilly type tune from Elvis’s 1960 album Elvis Is Back! The album was his first stereo album and first one of fresh material, outside of compilations, issued after his 1958-60 stint in the U.S. Army. Elvis served in West Germany as a regular soldier despite offers to enlist in Special Services, the entertainment branch of the U.S. military where he, like many who did serve in that branch, would have entertained the troops and lived in priority housing. There’s lots of interesting reading about Presley’s military stint available including how Presley’s manager Colonel Tom Parker kept the machine going, so to speak, in terms of releasing music while Elvis was overseas.

As for the Elvis Is Back! album, as I was telling a friend the other day, while I’m a big fan, I suppose not big enough of one because, like perhaps many people, I’ve always owned various Elvis hits compilations but never any of his actual studio records which of course go deeper. That is, until last week when I was in my neighborhood independent music shop and for $15 there sat a used, great condition, 4-CD, 8-individual albums remastered with a plethora of bonus track singles box set of Elvis’s early stuff. It runs from his 1956 debut “Elvis Presley” (the one with ‘Elvis’ printed vertically down the left hand side with ‘Presley’ horizontally on the bottom and the man himself pictured playing his guitar, a cover later copied by The Clash on their London Calling album) through to the 1960 gospel album His Hand In Mine. So I quickly checked the web, confirmed this was a legit release, saw that the same set was available online for a minimum of $50 and a maximum of the sky’s the limit, and now it’s mine. Sounds great, is great, it’s Elvis, what more can one want? Especially for $15, plus tax, $18.07 total. I am pleased.

10. Blackfoot, Highway Song . . . I say this every time I play one of them, which I have, so at risk of and in fact repeating myself I’ll say it again: Every so-called southern rock band seems to have a lengthy, signature tune. Think Lynyrd Skynyrd with Freebird, the Outlaws with Green Grass and High Tides and Molly Hatchet with Fall Of The Peacemakers, all amazing tunes. This is Blackfoot’s such song, from the band’s 1979 album Strikes with a cool cover of a cobra about to, er, strike. There are so many connections between the various successful southern rock bands. Blackfoot leader, guitarist, singer and frontman Rickey Medlocke was in early versions of Lynyrd Skynyrd, as a drummer and sometime singer before that band released an official album although his work is all over the 1978 original band post-plane crash compilation of early material called Skynyrd’s First . . . And Last which was later expanded and re-released in 1998 as Skynyrd’s First: The Complete Muscle Shoals Album. By then, Medlocke had become a permanent member of the reconstituted Skynyrd, in which he remains to this day. And the late Hughie Thomasson, a founding member of the Outlaws, was Medlocke’s guitar sparring partner with Skynyrd from 1996 to 2005 before he left to reform the Outlaws, dying of a heart attack at age 55 in 2007.

11. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, The Faith Healer . . . A relentless groove to this one from the Scottish band’s second studio album, the 1973 release Next.

12. Beck Bogert Appice, Lady . . . I’ll just repeat what I said/wrote about the previous track by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. Different song of course, but same effect. From the lone studio album, the self-titled 1973 record, issued by the supergroup of guitarist Jeff Beck, bass player Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice, the latter two having previously played together in Vanilla Fudge and Cactus. Appice later was a member of Rod Stewart’s band for the albums Footloose and Fancy Free, Blondes Have More Fun, Foolish Behaviour and Tonight I’m Yours, issued from 1977 to 1981. Appice’s drummer brother Vinny is best known for his work in the Ronnie James Dio lead singer version of Black Sabbath as well as Dio the band.

13. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Woncha Take Me For A While . . . Typically gritty C.F. (Fred) Turner vocal on this part ballad, part rocker, a power ballad in today’s parlance, from the 1975 album Head On, perhaps best known for the hits Take It Like A Man, Lookin’ Out For #1 and the original packaging where the album cover expanded into a poster featuring head shots of the four band members at the time – bass player Turner, guitarist Randy Bachman, drummer Rob Bachman and guitarist Blair Thornton. Little Richard played piano on two songs on the album – Take It Like A Man and Stay Alive.

14. The Rolling Stones, I Just Want To See His Face aka Just Wanna See His Face . . . I mentioned gospel music earlier while discussing Elvis’s 1960 album His Hand In Mine and I also had a discussion about gospel music in general over the weekend with a friend who mentioned an album of gospel tunes he had recently purchased. One doesn’t have to be religious, or spiritual, to enjoy what is simply a great genre of music. Here’s the Stones’ successful stab at it, from Exile On Main St.

15. Groundhogs, Thank Christ For The Bomb . . . A multipart piece about war. Initially acoustic with vocals followed by a low-key instrumental passage that develops into a heavy rock coda ending in, of course, explosions. It’s the title track to the English blues rock band’s 1970 album.

16. Howlin’ Wolf, Poor Boy (from The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions) . . . This one came to mind to play thanks to having attended the annual Kitchener Blues Festival over the weekend. One of the artists, the noted Canadian musician and producer Colin Linden, not only played a fine set on Saturday afternoon but, earlier that day, held one of the festival’s ‘workshops’, where artists interact with an interviewer, and the audience, telling tales of their careers. It’s fascinating stuff, and I got to thinking of The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions album because Linden mentioned it while relating a story – both at the workshop and later at his actual show – about how as a youngster his musical life was changed when he discovered the blues great, then later met him when the Wolf, real name Chester Burnett, was playing at a Toronto club. The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions album was originally released in 1971 and was re-released in an expanded deluxe edition in 2002. Receiving top billing with Wolf on the album cover are Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood and The Rolling Stones’ rhythm section of drummer Charlie Watts and bassist Bill Wyman. Clapton and the two Rolling Stones play on the entire album, Winwood contributes piano or organ to five songs while among others contributing are Beatles’ drummer Ringo Starr, Beatles associate Klaus Voorman on bass and Stones’ pianist Ian Stewart.

17. David Bowie, Stay . . . Great funk/soul rocking number from the 1976 album Station To Station. It was released as a single but didn’t chart. Golden Years was the big hit from the album.

18. Little Feat, Dixie Chicken (live, from Waiting For Columbus) . . . Little Feat was backed by the Tower Of Power horn section on the shows from which Waiting For Columbus was drawn. This is an extended 9-minute workout of the title track from the band’s 1973 album.

A blues-blues rock-oriented show, leading with Colin James in recognition of his headlining slot at the annual Kitchener Blues Festival which began Thursday night here and runs through Sunday.

Included in the set are blues legends/influencers like John Lee Hooker, his cousin Earl Hooker and Muddy Waters, the early, Peter Green-led blues version of Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack with Christine Perfect, later Christine McVie and a future Mac member on lead vocals, Jethro Tull from that band’s first, blues-oriented album This Was and atypical AC/DC with the bluesy Ride On. It’s from the 1976 album (not released in North America until 1981) Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap and later appeared on the 1986 album Who Made Who which is the soundtrack to the movie Maximum Overdrive, loosely based on Stephen King’s short story Trucks.

1. Colin James, Real Stuff
2. Fleetwood Mac, Cold Black Night
3. Ten Years After, I Woke Up This Morning
4. The Butterfield Blues Band, Morning Blues
5. Chicken Shack, I’d Rather Go Blind
6. The Allman Brothers Band, You Don’t Love Me (live, from At Fillmore East)
7. Jethro Tull, It’s Breaking Me Up
8. John Lee Hooker, It Serves You Right To Suffer
9. Earl Hooker, Wah Wah Blues
10. Muddy Waters, The Blues Had A Baby And They Named It Rock & Roll
11. Johnny Winter, Like A Rolling Stone
12. The Rolling Stones, Ventilator Blues
13. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Dirty Pool
14. Rory Gallagher, I Could’ve Had Religion (from Live In Europe)
15. Eric Clapton, Double Trouble (live, from Just One Night)
16. Boz Scaggs, Loan Me A Dime (Duane Allman slide guitar)
17. Led Zeppelin, Tea For One
18. AC/DC, Ride On

Lots of covers (and radical reinventions in some cases, like Oingo Boingo doing The Kinks and XTC doing Bob Dylan) plus a one-hit wonder segment including In The Year 2525 by Sager and Evans, Venus by Shocking Blue and Mason Williams’ Classical Gas. My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. Jeff Healey, Jambalaya (On the Bayou) (Hank Williams cover)
2. Cat Stevens, Indian Ocean
3. Phil Collins, Tomorrow Never Knows (Beatles cover)
4. Love, August
5. Martha and The Muffins, About Insomnia
6. The Rolling Stones, Love In Vain (Robert Johnson cover, from semi-acoustic live, part studio album Stripped, studio session with false start including laugh-filled discussion over screwup)
7. Zager and Evans, In The Year 2525
8. Mason Williams, Classical Gas
9. Shocking Blue, Venus
10. 999, Homicide
11. XTC, All Along The Watchtower (Bob Dylan cover)
12. Oingo Boingo, You Really Got Me (Kinks cover)
13. Slash featuring Demi Lovato, Papa Was A Rolling Stone (Temptations cover)
14. The Doors, The Spy
15. Robert Plant, Embrace Another Fall
16. Mudcrutch, Lover Of The Bayou (Byrds cover)
17. Van Morrison, T.B. Sheets
18. Booker T. & The M.G.’s, Melting Pot
19. Kris Kristofferson, Me and Bobby McGee
20. Robert Palmer, Remember To Remember

My track-by-track tales:

1. Jeff Healey, Jambalaya (On the Bayou) (Hank Williams cover) . . . Rocking version of the Hank Williams classic, released on Healey’s 2008 album Mess Of Blues, a covers album which came out just two weeks after his passing, of cancer, at age 41. Healey had previously released another covers album, Cover To Cover, in 1995.

2. Cat Stevens, Indian Ocean . . . One of my favorite Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam songs, a touching ‘world music’ track first released as a digital download to benefit 2004 Asian/Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami relief efforts. It saw physical release on the 2005 compilation Cat Stevens Gold.

3. Phil Collins, Tomorrow Never Knows (Beatles cover) . . . From his debut solo release, Face Value, issue in 1981 which featured the big hit In The Air Tonight and another top 10 track in Canada and the USA, I Missed Again. I first heard the album, playing over the store’s sound system, while browsing a record store in the San Francisco Bay Area with one of my younger brothers during some time I spent in California the spring and summer of 1981.

4. Love, August . . . Well, it is August, so I figure I had to get this in before the end of the month. From the fourth Love album, 1969’s Four Sail, a somewhat harder rocking album, of which this song is an example, than the previous psychedelic fare serve up by Arthur Lee and friends, although any Love is good Love, to me. Great band, never sold all that many records but hugely influential particularly via albums like the seminal 1967 release Forever Changes.

5. Martha and The Muffins, About Insomnia . . . A track, actually a single that didn’t chart, from 1980’s Trance and Dance album. It’s about (not really but it fits) my last couple nights of not getting much sleep, just an hour or two here and there but I’m in remarkably fine fettle all things considered. Martha and The Muffins is of course best-known for the 1979 hit single Echo Beach although they had other hits, at least in home country Canada, like Paint By Number Heart, Women Around The World At Work, Danseparc (Every Day It’s Tomorrow) and Black Stations/White Stations (during the 1983-86 period when the band was also known as M + M).

6. The Rolling Stones, Love In Vain (Robert Johnson cover, from semi-acoustic live, part studio 1995 album Stripped) . . . From a studio session in Tokyo with false start including brief laugh-filled discussion between Ron Wood and Keith Richards about guitar arpeggios after Wood messes up (sounded fine to me but I don’t play guitar) and wants to start over. Love In Vain has a long history with the Stones, dating to its first studio release on 1969’s Let It Bleed album, the 1970 live album Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out! and many concert renditions since.

7. Zager and Evans, In The Year 2525 . . . First in my one-hit wonder mini-set. I’ve been planning to play this and the several songs that follow, for a few weeks, finally getting to it for tonight’s show. Not much more to say about these songs except they’re great and, so what if the artists never approached the same commercial heights, they did what they did and their legacy is assured.

8. Mason Williams, Classical Gas . . . From the 1968 album The Mason Williams Phonograph Record. Williams may have been a one-hit wonder but still with us at age 85 he is/was an accomplished writer and comedian, among other artistic pursuits. Among his comedy writing credits are The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour and Saturday Night Live.

9. Shocking Blue, Venus . . . They were a one-hit wonder (but actually maybe not, more on that in a bit) featuring the striking singer Mariska Veres who sadly died young, of cancer, age 59 in 2006. But in putting together the show I explored the Dutch band’s ouevre and in addition to their own stuff, like Venus and Send Me A Postcard (with Veres sounding like Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane, or vice-versa) they did fine covers of Hank Williams’ Jambalaya, just a terrific up-tempo reinvention of the tune I played earlier in the show as covered by Canadian Jeff Healey, and the classic John D. Loudermilk tune Tobacco Road.

10. 999, Homicide . . . Not sure why but I scared the shit out of a friend years ago and she told me as much the next day, she was listening to the show, when I played this track from the English punk/new wave band. It’s just a song, as I told her, it’s arguably aggressive for sure but it’s not advocating anything the way I read the lyrics and there’s any number of songs about disturbing subject matter. Like for example Polly, by Nirvana, about the abduction, rape, and torture of a 14-year-old girl returning home from a punk rock concert in Tacoma, Washington in 1987 that I played fairly recently. I like Polly a lot musically but it’s quite disturbing to the point I’m often reluctant to play it and almost feel bad for liking it, musically, but, fortunately, the perpetrator was caught and is behind bars, serving two concurrent 75-year terms. In any event, Homicide by 999 is a propulsive track, hit No. 40 on the charts in 1978, my first year of college which coincided with punk/new wave breaking big and contributing to opening my musical horizons.

11. XTC, All Along The Watchtower (Bob Dylan cover) . . . I like lots of XTC, including of course the hit that got me and many people into them, 1979’s Making Plans For Nigel, but I’d never heard their cover of the Dylan tune until I went down the YouTube rabbit hole some time back. XTC reinterpreted the Dylan tune, as Jimi Hendrix also of course did, in a different fashion, on the band’s 1978 debut album White Music.

12. Oingo Boingo, You Really Got Me (Kinks cover) . . . I discovered this major reinterpretation by the California ska/new wave band of The Kinks’ classic while listening to some of the earlier songs in the set, on YouTube, as I prepared tonight’s show. Playing it reminds me and brings a smile to my face, of my equally music-loving younger brother, into classic rock along with me, Stones, etc. with his ‘what’s happened to you?’ when he at some point saw my late 70s early 80s punk/new wave albums, Haircut One Hundred, Fabulous Poodles and the like. He said something like, what next, Oingo Boingo? Not at the time, although I’d heard of them and thought the name was cool, but here I go playing them. Cool version, akin to, say, how Devo reinvented the Stones’ Satisfaction.

13. Slash featuring Demi Lovato, Papa Was A Rolling Stone (Temptations cover) . . . From Orgy of the Damned, a covers album by the Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver, Slash’s Snakepit etc. guitarist, released just a couple months ago, May 2024.

14. The Doors, The Spy . . . Spooky sort of track, musically and lyrically, from 1970’s Morrison Hotel album.

15. Robert Plant, Embrace Another Fall . . . Intoxicating experimental world beat folk rock from Plant’s 2014 album Lullaby . . . and the Ceaseless Roar as Plant continues on his late career amazing musical explorations.

16. Mudcrutch, Lover Of The Bayou (The Byrds cover) . . . Tom Petty’s original, pre-Heartbreakers band which reformed and released two studio albums, in 2008 and 2016 before Petty’s 2017 passing. Here, from the first Mudcrutch album, the band covers one of my favorite Byrds tunes and of course Petty was hugely influenced musically by The Byrds, to whom he and friends pay great tribute on this track.

17. Van Morrison, T.B. Sheets . . . Near 10-minute piece, his voice as always an instrument in itself, from Van the Man’s 1967 debut solo album Blowin’ Your Mind after he left Them.

18. Booker T. & The M.G.’s, Melting Pot . . . Title cut, typical funky R & B fuelled instrumental rock, from the band’s 1971 album.

19. Kris Kristofferson, Me and Bobby McGee . . . Sometimes a song covered by someone else overshadows the original, which is what Janis Joplin’s No. 1 cover of the KK tune did. As did, maybe, Roger Miller’s cover. Or the one by Jerry Lee Lewis. Yet . . . crazy as it maybe sounds, as with Jimi Hendrix’s reinterpretation of Bob Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower which even Dylan himself said became ‘a Jimi Hendrix song’, I still prefer the originals while loving the covers. Honestly. I mean, I absolutely love the Joplin version, particularly the way she sings the “windshield wipers slappin’ ‘taaaam” (time)’ but well, Kristofferson if one checks out his stuff Bobby McGee and beyond is/was just an amazing songwriter. And emotive singer. In any case, his song includes one of the best, and perhaps most true or accurate lines ever, depending obviously upon how one looks at life: But I’d trade all of my tomorrows for a single yesterday. And I don’t live in the past, but sometimes would be interesting to go back.

20. Robert Palmer, Remember To Remember . . . He topped the charts later on with stuff like Addicted To Love and so on but for me, it’s the back-to-back albums, Secrets in 1979 and Clues in 1980. Track-for-track excellent, this one from Secrets whose hit was the cover of the Moon Martin-penned Bad Case Of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor).

A ‘brothers’ set airing for a Saturday morning. I was undecided as to what direction to go for Saturday’s show until something in my brain told me I had not played The Doobie Brothers in a while. So that led to loading a bunch of Doobies songs into the system, which led to loading songs by bands with ‘Brothers’ in their name, which further led to what I finally settled on, a brother act show featuring bands that include actual brothers and bands which may not be so familial but feature the word ‘Brothers’ in their name. Must be something to do with the fact I am one of four brothers (and one sister).

So: We have AC/DC with the Young brothers, Angus and Malcolm, Collective Soul with the Roland brothers Ed and Dean, the Allmans of Duane and Gregg, The Kinks of the forever fractious Ray and Dave Davies, early Dire Straits which featured Mark and David Knopfler for the first few albums, the similarly to The Kinks at odds Everly Brothers Don and Phil, same with the Oasis brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher, the Wilson brothers and cousin Mike Love in The Beach Boys, the brothers Gibb of the Bee Gees, John and Tom Fogerty of CCR, at various points Randy, Tim and Rob Bachman in Bachman-Turner Overdrive, the Van Halen brothers guitarist Eddie and drummer Alex, and Dean and Robert DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots.

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

1. AC/DC, Let There Be Rock
2. Collective Soul, Disciplined Breakdown
3. The Allman Brothers Band, Heart Of Stone
4. The Doobie Brothers, Toulouse Street
5. The Kinks, Living On A Thin Line
6. Dire Straits, In The Gallery
7. The Flying Burrito Brothers, Wild Horses
8. The Everly Brothers, Crying In The Rain
9. The Beach Boys, Sail On Sailor
10. Bee Gees, Lonely Days
11. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Effigy
12. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Blue Moanin’
13. Van Halen, Cabo Wabo (Sammy Hagar lead vocals)
14. Van Halen, D.O.A. (David Lee Roth lead vocals)
15. Van Halen, Year To The Day (Gary Cherone lead vocals)
16. Oasis, I Am The Walrus (live)
17. The Chambers Brothers, Time Has Come Today
18. Stone Temple Pilots, All In The Suit That You Wear
19. The Allman Brothers Band, Mountain Jam (live, from Eat A Peach, recorded March 13, 1971 at Fillmore East, New York City)

My track-by-track tales:

1. AC/DC, Let There Be Rock . . . Title cut from the band’s 1977 album, Bon Scott still around and on lead vocals, and it does, er, rock as Bon, lyrically, takes us through the history of rock and roll music, to that point.

2. Collective Soul, Disciplined Breakdown . . . Title cut from the band’s 1997 release, typically grungy, tuneful guitar work.

3. The Allman Brothers Band, Heart Of Stone . . . No brothers in The Rolling Stones, my favorite band who I always play, but I’ll always figure a way to get them in my sets. 🙂 This is the Allmans’ fine cover of the early Stones’ tune, released on the final Allmans’ studio album, Hittin’ The Note, a terrific statement released in 2003.

4. The Doobie Brothers, Toulouse Street . . . Hauntingly beautiful, somewhat spooky title cut from the band’s 1972 album.

5. The Kinks, Living On A Thin Line . . . A minor hit, one of my favorite Kinks tracks, written and sung by guitarist Dave Davies, easily one of his best, a passionate vocal performance commentary on England at the time of writing.

“All the stories have been told of kings and days of old but there’s no England now . . . all the wars that were won and lost somehow don’t seem to matter so much anymore . . . all the lies we were told . . . I see change but inside we’re the same as we ever were . . . Now another century nearly gone, what are we gonna leave for the young? . . . ”

It’s from the 1984 album Word Of Mouth and the song was used later in an episode of The Sopranos but I’m not much of a TV series buff outside of Star Trek and a few others, so never heard it there. But if the show gave the song deserved exposure, that’s great. Word Of Mouth was the last in a commercial hot streak, certainly at least in North America, for The Kinks that started with the 1979 album Low Budget and continued through 1981’s Give The People What They Want and 1983’s State Of Confusion which featured the hits Come Dancing and Don’t Forget To Dance.

6. Dire Straits, In The Gallery . . . Yet another fine, bluesy cut from the band’s self-titled debut album, released in 1978.

7. The Flying Burrito Brothers, Wild Horses . . . A cover of The Rolling Stones’ tune, came out on the Burritos’ second album, Burrito Deluxe, released in 1970, a year before the Stones’ own version appeared on their Sticky Fingers album. By that point, Burritos’ leader Gram Parsons and the Stones’ Keith Richards had become friends and sometime collaborators at least in terms of influencing each other’s music. A nice version of an amazing song, one I was revisiting the other day via the version on the Stones’ live semi-acoustic 1995 album Stripped, a very worthwhile listen.

8. The Everly Brothers, Crying In The Rain . . . A No. 6 hit in the USA in 1961, not quite as successful elsewhere but relatively well-known.

9. The Beach Boys, Sail On Sailor . . . One of my favorite Beach Boys songs, released in 1973 via the Holland album. Sail On Sailor was a single, pretty well known I would think although it made little dent in the charts, grazing the top 50, or worse, depending on country. It was an interesting period for the band, thought by many to be a spent force distanced from their hugely hit successful surfer music of the 1960s, some conflict within the group as to whether they should progress musically or rely on past hits at least in terms of live performance, yet they came up with an excellent track like this, sung by new guitarist Blondie Chaplin, later a studio session player and touring musician with The Rolling Stones.

10. Bee Gees, Lonely Days . . . The Bee Gees tend to get pigeonholed by some as a disco band given their contributions to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, late 1970s but they were truly an amazing band well before that, as this earlier multi-part track from the 1970 album 2 Years On demonstrates.

11. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Effigy . . . Extended cut from CCR’s 1969 album Willie and the Poor Boys, remarkably perhaps the prolific band’s third studio album release that year. Obviously known for their well-known hit singles, CCR was, as demonstrated by songs like this jam, far more.

12. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Blue Moanin’ . . . A typical BTO chugger, particularly when C.F. (Fred Turner) is singing.

13. Van Halen, Cabo Wabo (Sammy Hagar lead vocals) . . . First of three from the various configurations of Van Halen, this the Van Hagar version, from the OU812 album, the second of four studio records with Hagar on lead vocals.

14. Van Halen, D.O.A. (David Lee Roth lead vocals) . . . One of my favorites from the Roth version of the band, a kick butt tune from VH II.

15. Van Halen, Year To The Day (Gary Cherone lead vocals) . . . From the ill-fated Van Halen 3 version, which is what that lineup’s lone studio album, released in 1998, was called. It bombed, relatively speaking, although it was a top five charting record, actually but of course many fans would buy it out of brand recongition and curiousity about the new lineup. It took me many listens but I did finally ‘get’ the record although I think it simply wasn’t to most VH fans’ taste. Many never accepted Cherone, the style of music was different, most of the songs, like this near-nine minute track, were longer, less immediate and with fewer obvious hooks, almost progressive rock in spots, than what the band had produced to that point, although Cabo Wabo from OU812 checks in at seven minutes. Still, aside from two short instrumental interludes, every song on Van Halen 3 was at least 5:30 in length, somewhat atypical for the band. Soon enough, Hagar was back to record some new tracks for a double disc compilation. What then followed was what became an ill-fated reunion tour of the Van Hagar lineup, although I saw the first leg of the trek in Toronto and it was a great show. But a big Van Halen fan friend of mine, who had seen the Toronto concert, also saw a later gig, five months later in Hamilton, Ontario and said it was awful, the conflicts within the band evident on stage and affecting the music, as were Eddie Van Halen’s struggles with substance abuse.

16. Oasis, I Am The Walrus (live) . . . The Gallagher brothers pay homage to one of their acknowledged influences, The Beatles. The track was recorded at a concert in Glasgow, Scotland in 1994 and first released in an 8-minute version as the B-side to the hit single Cigarettes and Alcohol. I’m playing the edited 6:25 version that appeared on The Masterplan, a 1998 compilation of B-sides that hadn’t made it to albums at that point.

17. The Chambers Brothers, Time Has Come Today . . . Yeah, it was a hit, No. 11 in the US, No. 9 in Canada, but it’s by a band of real brothers and I occasionally play singles one might not have heard in a while, despite mine being for the very most part a deep cuts show. What’s interesting about Time Has Come Today is the number of versions of it that were done. The original 1966 version, clocking in at 2:37, was rejected by Columbia Records. The band then released the full 11:06 epic version of psychedelic soul as the ostensible title cut of the 1967 album The Time Has Come. Then came two hit single versions, both released in 1968 – one a 3:05 edit and the other 4:45. I’m playing the 4:45 version but all of them are of course excellent.

18. Stone Temple Pilots, All In The Suit That You Wear . . . A to that point unreleased track that came out on the band’s hits compilation, Thank You, in 2003. I like a lot of STP’s stuff, saw them as an opening act for The Rolling Stones on the Voodoo Lounge tour stop in Toronto in 1994, one of the more memorable performances I’ve experienced from Stones’ opening acts I’ve witnessed over many shows over the years. Some of them: AC/DC at the 2003 SARS Toronto Rocks show (also have seen AC/DC on their own) and also at SARS, Rush, The Guess Who including Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings at a time before legal issues over naming rights cropped up, The Isley Brothers, The Tea Party, Sass Jordan, Blue Rodeo, The Flaming Lips . . . at other Stones shows: Atlanta Rhythm Section, Big Sugar (have also seen them separately in a small venue, great band but too bloody loud for my ears, frankly; I wore ear plugs but was seriously worried until the ringing stopped three days later), The White Stripes, No Doubt, Beck. That’s the great thing sometimes, going to concerts by iconic acts like the Stones; the undercard so to speak can be so rewarding which is why I always take in opening acts. Like Pretenders opening for The Who in Toronto in 2006, or Slayer for Judas Priest in 2004, etc.

19. The Allman Brothers Band, Mountain Jam . . . (live, from Eat A Peach, recorded March 13, 1971 at Fillmore East, New York City) . . . 33 minutes the Allmans had the great ability to jam for almost literally hours on end and never be boring. This version was originally split in two on first vinyl pressings of Eat A Peach but has since come out as the one full version on CD reissues of the album and various expanded re-releases of the At Fillmore East album.

Music for a Monday night . . .

1. The Guess Who, Key
2. Steppenwolf, Monster/Suicide/America
3. Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Change Your Mind
4. Neil Young, Scenery (from 1995’s Mirror Ball album, with Pearl Jam as Young’s backing band)
5. Dire Straits, Once Upon A Time In The West (live)
6. Headstones, Hotel Room
7. Saga, Humble Stance
8. Klaatu, Around The Universe In 80 Days
9. Queen, The Prophet’s Song
10. Rainbow, Mistreated (live)
11. Mick Taylor, Twisted Sister
12. The Rolling Stones, Around And Around (live, Love You Live El Mocambo side)

A ‘three artists’ set list – John Mayall, Tom Cochrane/Red Rider, Mick Jagger. Of late I’ve been doing ‘three (or maybe two, time permitting) album’ sets, live or studio records, on a Saturday but this time it’s assorted tracks from three artists. Originally, it was going to be two artists: Jagger, who celebrates his 81st birthday today, Friday, July 26 and still going strong fronting The Rolling Stones who just completed a tour, and Cochrane with and without his original band Red Rider, because he’s playing a festival in my town, Kitchener, Ontario on Saturday.

Then came news that this past Monday, July 22, the so-called Godfather of British Blues, John Mayall, had died at age 90. He was an artist and bandleader who had nurtured the careers of guitar greats like Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor, and perhaps less widely known but no less accomplished players like Walter Trout and Coco Montoya, who I saw play with Mayall’s Bluesbreakers in the late 1980s at, Ontario residents will remember, the old rotating stage at the Ontario Place Forum on the Toronto waterfront. Taylor was the opening act that night and then guested with Mayall, who, believe it or not, acted as one of his own roadies. I remember him coming out, pre-set, adjusting and tinkering with the equipment and my younger brother and I exchanged glances like ‘is that him, yeah, it is, wow, cool. Obviously no airs about him.” If you want a job done right, one supposes . . .

Mayall was making music until near the end, consistently releasing new music every year or two, most recently in 2022. Just a few weeks ago on my show I played a track from his 2016 album Talk About That (and he recorded two more studio albums after that) and mentioned how he was still releasing new music although he had retired from touring aside from a gig here or there close to his California home. I most recently saw him at the Kitchener Blues Festival in 2011, a fine afternoon show on the last day of a festival which that year also featured Gregg Allman, the Winter brothers Johnny and Edgar, separately, and Mayall.

And it’s interesting perhaps about Mayall in that although he was thought of as a blues artist, and he was, his horizons were broad if you delve deeply into his music, evidenced by some stuff I’m playing on the show including tracks like Nature’s Disappearing – from the drummer-less album USA Union in 1970 which was my introduction to Mayall as my older brother had the album – and other excursions like his 1972 live album Jazz Blues Fusion. He was forever experimenting, searching for new sounds but for the very most part always based in blues.

So, a three-artist set: Cochrane/Red Rider, Jagger and Mayall. Some hits or at least fairly well-known tunes, some maybe more obscure deep cut stuff, all of it among my favorites by these artists.

1. John Mayall, Wake Up Call (title cut from Mayall’s 1993 album, with Mick Taylor trying to beg off the session on a fun intro phone call, along with Mavis Staples)

2. Red Rider, Light In The Tunnel (first of three tracks from the 1983 album Neruda that are an overall intro piece to the record.)

3. Red Rider, Power (Strength In Numbers)

4. Red Rider, Human Race

5. Mick Jagger, Out Of Focus

6. John Mayall, Nature’s Disappearing

7. Tom Cochrane & Red Rider, Just Like Ali

8. Mick Jagger with Buddy Guy, Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker) … a bluesy rearrangement of the Stones’ Goats Heat Soup album tune, released on the 2018 album Chicago Plays The Stones. It’s a tribute to The Rolling Stones by some of the artists who inspired them.

9. Red Rider, Napoleon Sheds His Skin

10. John Mayall, Night Flyer

11. Mick Jagger, Evening Gown . . . the type of country-ish ballad Jagger, in my view, does so well. Along the same lines later in the set are Hang On To Me Tonight and Party Doll.

12. Red Rider, Lunatic Fringe

13. John Mayall, Ain’t No Brakeman

14. Mick Jagger, Think . . . cover of a tune made famous by James Brown.

15. John Mayall, Broken Wings . . . beautiful, haunting track from Mayall’s The Blues Alone, just Mayall on guitar with drummer Keef Hartley.

16. Mick Jagger, Hang On To Me Tonight

17. John Mayall, Mail Order Mystics

18. Mick Jagger, Sweet Thing

19. Red Rider, Young Thing, Wild Dreams (Rock Me)

20. Mick Jagger, Too Many Cooks (Spoil The Soup)

21. John Mayall, Spinning Coin

22. Mick Jagger, Party Doll

23. John Mayall, Took The Car

24. Mick Jagger, Mother Of A Man

25. John Mayall, Room To Move

26. John Mayall, Fly Tomorrow

Music for a Monday night. My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Nut Rocker (live, from Pictures at an Exhibition)
2. Golden Earring, Sleepwalkin’
3. Deep Purple, A Bit On The Side
4. Jethro Tull, Rock Island
5. David Bowie, Shadow Man
6. The Rolling Stones, Laugh I Nearly Died
7. Elvis Costello, Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down
8. The Byrds, You’re Still On My Mind
9. Warren Zevon, Poisonous Lookalike
10. The Kingsmen, Death Of An Angel
11. Grand Funk Railroad, Creepin’
12. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Don’t Kill It Carol
13. Gov’t Mule, Silent Scream
14. Eric Clapton, Black Summer Rain
15. Rory Gallagher, I’m Not Awake Yet
16. The Butterfield Blues Band, Just To Be With You
17. Kansas, Throwing Mountains
18. Patti Smith, Birdland
19. George Thorogood & The Destroyers, That’s It, I Quit

My track-by-track tales:

1. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Nut Rocker (live, from Pictures at an Exhibition) . . . One of ELP’s several rock interpretations of classical works, this one from the album where the band put its stamp on the piano suite by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. Nut Rocker, however, was the last track on the album and lone piece not by Mussorgsky. It was ELP’s adaptation of a work by another Russian composer, Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. Nut Rocker was also a hit single in 1962 for American instrumental ensemble B. Bumble and the Stingers, who were famously among the many artists name-checked by the one-hit wonder band Reunion on their 1974 hit Life Is A Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me), which I played a few weeks ago although B. Bumble is referred to as B.B. Bumble in the first verse of the Reunion song.

2. Golden Earring, Sleepwalkin’ . . . Funky boogie boppin’ single, didn’t chart, from the 1976 album To The Hilt. Much more to the Dutch band than just the songs Radar Love and Twilight Zone.

3. Deep Purple, A Bit On The Side . . . Chugging, driving rocker from the new Deep Purple album, = 1, released this past Friday, July 19, to celebrate my birthday. 🙂 Officially a senior now, at 65. Just coincidence, of course, but a nice birthday present to myself. It’s the first studio album to feature Purple’s new guitarist, Northern Irish player Simon McBride. McBride replaces Steve Morse, who McBride filled in for on tour a couple years ago when Morse took a break from the band to care for his ailing wife who has, alas, since died. Morse eventually left the group and McBride was made a fulltime member. I liked the Morse period, which covered eight studio albums from 1996 to 2021, but McBride has fit right in and the album, rightly, is getting good reviews but I’m probably the wrong person to ask, being a huge Deep Purple fan. As for the album’s title, according to Wikipedia “the album has been described as having a loose concept around the idea that in a world growing ever more complex, everything eventually simplifies down to a single, unified essence. Everything equals one.” There’s a mathematical equation on the inside sleeve of the album cover, which gives me nightmares about high school algebra, but the cover is cool: a simple = 1 and “Deep Purple” on an otherwise entirely white background, somewhat akin to The Beatles’ White Album.

4. Jethro Tull, Rock Island . . . I’ve been going through some of Tull’s more recent albums of late, and played Occasional Demons from 1993’s Catfish Rising a couple weeks ago. This is the title cut from the album preceding that one, released in 1989. Typical Tull, part ballad, some riff rocking, nice.

5. David Bowie, Shadow Man . . . Haunting, spooky track featuring a stirring vocal performance by Bowie. It was originally recorded in 1971, but left unfinished, during the sessions for the classic 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars. Bowie reworked it in 2000 for the Toy album project, which wasn’t released on its own until 2021 although Shadow Man was included on the 3-CD deluxe edition of the compilation Nothing Has Changed, released in 2014.

6. The Rolling Stones, Laugh I Nearly Died . . . Slow burning bluesy funk track, if that makes sense but I think you can marry myriad genres, a mashup of sorts. Apparently used in the TV series Supernatural, which I’ve never seen but aside from sports, history documentaries and Star Trek I’m not a big TV watcher although all of that consumes enough time. Probably a good thing I’ve not seen Supernatural, although now I’m tempted, because then I’d think of scenes from the show instead of enjoying the song. It’s like when a novel becomes a movie and the paperback is re-released with a character or two, as portrayed by actors, on the cover. Just not my cup of tea – I prefer to imagine what characters look like or interpret the song for myself, but I ‘get’ the tie-ins.

7. Elvis Costello, Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down . . . Just randomly picked Almost Blue, Costello’s 1981 country and western covers album, off the shelf and played it driving back and forth to the gym this past week. A Merle Haggard tune, nicely done, on a solid album. The older I get, the more I seem to enjoy country music. Interesting.

8. The Byrds, You’re Still On My Mind . . . Still in the country groove, here’s another hurtin’ tune, from the Sweetheart Of The Rodeo album, the one record Gram Parsons, who sings the tune, did with the Byrds before leaving to form The Flying Burrito Brothers.

9. Warren Zevon, Poisonous Lookalike . . . About a relationship gone bad, from Zevon’s 1995 album Mutineer. David Lindley helps out on fiddle and cittern, a guitar-like stringed instrument, similar to a lute, dating to the Renaissance. Lindley, who had an extensive session playing history with many artists including Zevon, Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt, is perhaps best known on his own for his 1981 debut solo album El Rayo-X. That record featured the hit single Mercury Blues (also done by Steve Miller on the Fly Like An Eagle album), written by blues musicians K. C. Douglas and Robert Geddins and first recorded by Douglas in 1948.

10. The Kingsmen, Death Of An Angel . . . Slightly speeded up version of a spooky sort of song originally done in 1955 by the Los Angeles-based doo-wop vocal group Donald Woods and The Vel-Aires. It was released on the 1964 album The Kingsmen Volume II, subtitled “More Great Songs From The Group That Gave You ‘Louie, Louie’ “.

11. Grand Funk Railroad, Creepin’ . . . Inspired to play it by a friend mentioning it, an appropriately-titled track from 1973’s We’re An American Band album, it was the B-side to the title cut No. 1 single.

12. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Don’t Kill It Carol . . . Two different English bands with one leader. There’s the 1960s Manfred Mann of hits like Do Wah Diddy Diddy, Pretty Flamingo and their cover of Bob Dylan’s Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn), released as Mighty Quinn by Manfred Mann. Then there’s the 1970s progressive/jazz rock Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, best known for their 1976 hit single cover of Bruce Springsteen’s Blinded By The Light. The trippy, psychedelic Don’t Kill It Carol, from 1979’s Angel Station album, made it just inside the top 50 in the UK.

13. Gov’t Mule, Silent Scream . . . Bluesy, dark, near 11-minute epic from the Mule’s 2004 album Deja Voodoo.

14. Eric Clapton, Black Summer Rain . . . Lovely track from the 1976 album No Reason To Cry. Among the personnel on the album were Bob Dylan, all members of The Band, Ron Wood, ace session guitarist Jesse Ed Davis and Yvonne Elliman, who contributed vocals to four Clapton studio albums during the 1970s and was part of his touring band.

15. Rory Gallagher, I’m Not Awake Yet . . . Typically fine guitar picking on this cantering cut from Gallagher’s second solo album – Deuce, released in 1971 – after the 1970 breakup of Taste.

16. The Butterfield Blues Band, Just To Be With You . . . Soulful blues from Paul Buttefield and friends from the In Your Own Dream album, released in 1968.

17. Kansas, Throwing Mountains . . . Great prog rock from a band that, like a lot of people, I first appreciated during the 1970s for their hits Carry On Wayward Son and Dust In The Wind but investigated more deeply, and was rewarded, as time passed. This one’s from a latter day album with a great title – The Absence of Presence – released in 2020.

18. Patti Smith, Birdland . . . I’d describe this harrowing, nine-minute production from Smith’s debut release, the 1975 album Horses, as progressive punk stirring spoken word art rock. According to Wikipedia, it was inspired by A Book of Dreams, a 1973 memoir of Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich by his son Peter, and revolves around a narrative in which Peter, at his father’s funeral, imagines leaving on a UFO piloted by his father’s spirit.

19. George Thorogood & The Destroyers, That’s It, I Quit . . . I’m outta here, quitting for the night as Thorogood covers a Nick Lowe-penned song, from The Destroyers’ 2003 album Ride ‘Til I Die. The song was also done by English band Dr. Feelgood, released on the 1977 album Be Seeing You, produced by Lowe.

Another album replay set list for my Saturday show. The three records I’m playing – Black And Blue by The Rolling Stones, In Through The Out Door by Led Zeppelin and Drama from Yes – all came to mind thanks to chats with friends the past week or so.

The Stones and Zep albums, released in 1976 and 1979, respectively, came up in a discussion about albums that may not have been necessarily well received critically upon release but have seemed to stand the test of time and in the view of some, and also in so-called retrospective reviews by journalists, have risen in stature.

There’s the Stones, “auditioning guitar players” as Keith Richards termed Black And Blue. It was recorded in sessions stretching, in various stints, from late 1974 to early 1976 before its April, 1976 release and featured various guitarists including eventual Stone Ron Wood after the departure of Mick Taylor. What resulted was a brew of rock, funk, soul, disco and reggae helped along by the presence, among others, of keyboardist Billy Preston who contributed live and in studio to various Stones projects during that period, and percussionist Ollie Brown. The departed Taylor was on record as saying he enjoyed the album.

Then Zeppelin, in relative tatters with Robert Plant still mourning the death of his young son and Jimmy Page and John Bonham in the throes of drug and booze addiction, releasing a somewhat uncharacteristic, keyboard-heavy album. That’s due in large measure to the influence of bassist/keyboard player John Paul Jones, a noted if perhaps underappreciated session player along with Page in the early 1960s, who co-wrote six of the seven songs on the album, previously unheard of for anyone outside the Page-Plant songwriting duo.

And then there’s Drama, the out of left field in terms of personnel Yes album from 1980 featuring members of The Buggles of Video Killed The Radio Star fame when Trevor Horn (lead vocals, replaced longtime Yes singer Jon Anderson) and Geoff Downes (keyboards) replaced Rick Wakeman. I got talking about it, and Yes in general, when a friend mentioned he was going to see Yes on a bill with Deep Purple coming up in August and we agreed that Drama is a damn fine album. It’s one of my favorites by Yes, I don’t hear much difference between Horn’s vocals and Anderson’s, but that’s not even really the point because I like the almost metallic sound of the record, particularly its opening track, the 10-minute epic Machine Messiah. And the rest of it. So, here you go, three interesting albums for a Saturday morning.

The Rolling Stones – Black And Blue

1. Hot Stuff
2. Hand Of Fate
3. Cherry Oh Baby
4. Memory Motel
5. Hey Negrita
6. Melody
7. Fool To Cry
8. Crazy Mama

Led Zeppelin – In Through The Out Door

1. In The Evening
2. South Bound Suarez
3. Fool In The Rain
4. Hot Dog
5. Carouselambra
6. All My Love
7. I’m Gonna Crawl

Yes – Drama

1. Machine Messiah
2. White Car
3. Does It Really Happen?
4. Into The Lens
5. Run Through The Light
6. Tempus Fugit

My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list. Audio log of the show unavailable, alas, this week.

1. Montrose, Space Station #5
2. Atomic Rooster, Head In The Sky
3. Camel, Never Let Go
4. J.J. Cale, Stay Around
5. Steely Dan, I Got The News
6. The Rolling Stones, Terrifying
7. Boz Scaggs, Runnin’ Blue
8. Paris, Black Book
9. Fleetwood Mac, Born Enchanter
10. Joe Cocker, Hitchcock Railway
11. Jimi Hendrix, Ezy Ryder
12. Bill Withers, Harlem
13. Peter Gabriel, The Rhythm Of The Heat
14. Pink Floyd, Cymbaline
15. Ten Years After, Convention Prevention
16. Steve Earle, I’m Looking Through You (Beatles cover)
17. Traffic, Many A Mile To Freedom
18. Frank Zappa/The Mothers Of Invention (credited as The Mothers), Fifty-Fifty
19. Rare Earth, Ma

My track-by-track tales:

1. Montrose, Space Station #5 . . . Montrose has been top of mind because I watched a documentary on Sammy Hagar last week, so here you go. Cool ‘space’ intro and then into a propulsive hard rock tune from Montrose’s self-titled debut album, released in 1973 with Hagar of course on lead vocals. It’s where the eventual connections between Hagar and Van Halen arguably began. Eddie Van Halen was a fan of Montrose guitarist Ronnie Montrose and the Montrose album was produced by Ted Templeman, five years before Van Halen’s debut which was produced by Templeman among many Van Halen albums he was involved with, although just one, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, with the Van Hagar version of the band. Templeman, well-known for his production work with The Doobie Brothers and Van Morrison, also worked on solo albums by both Hagar and David Lee Roth.

2. Atomic Rooster, Head In The Sky . . . Driving rocker from a progressive British band whose roots are traced to The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown (known for the single Fire) which featured the late keyboardist Vincent Crane and drummer Carl Palmer, before he left in 1970 after one album with Rooster to join Emerson, Lake and Palmer. This is from the band’s third album, In Hearing Of, released in 1971.

3. Camel, Never Let Go . . . From the English progressive rock band’s self-titled debut album in 1973, melding acoustic and harder rock flourishes.

4. J.J. Cale, Stay Around . . . Typical bluesy, relaxed groove from J.J., an artist I often say did essentially the same thing for countless albums yet was always different enough to never be boring or repetitive. This is the title cut from a 2019 posthumous release of to that point unreleased material. It was put together by Cale’s widow Christine Lakeland, who was a member of his band and appeared on many albums, and his longtime friend and manager, Mike Kappus, who also worked extensively with John Lee Hooker and Robert Cray, among others.

5. Steely Dan, I Got The News . . . Funky, jazzy track from an often funky, jazzy band, from 1977’s Aja album.

6. The Rolling Stones, Terrifying . . . A swinging tune from the 1989 album Steel Wheels. It was the fourth single released from the album, did reasonably well yet isn’t among the band’s well-known tracks in terms of widespread recognition. So, I’m happy to use it as a relative deep cut.

7. Boz Scaggs, Runnin’ Blue . . . Many people I think remember Boz Scaggs for hits like Lido Shuffle and Lowdown but, long before those hits he was a member of the pre-commercial hits Steve Miller Band during that group’s early, psychedelic and blues period, then a fine solo artist in his own right as evidenced by this rhythm and blues tune from his 1971 album Boz Scaggs & Band.

8. Paris, Black Book . . . Hard rocking tune by a hard rocking, Led Zeppelin-ish band put together by mid-period Fleetwood Mac member and, later, solo artist Bob Welch, after he left Fleetwood Mac following 1974’s Heroes Are Hard To Find album. Also in the band, which released two albums in 1976, was former/original Jethro Tull bass player Glenn Cornick.

9. Fleetwood Mac, Born Enchanter . . . And here’s Welch in a different light, on this jazzy, er, enchanting tune he wrote and sang for the aforementioned 1974 Fleetwood Mac album Heroes Are Hard To Find. It was Welch’s last of five albums with the Mac, which recruited Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham and went on to massive commercial success. The band was essentially three different groups: the early, blues-oriented outfit led by Peter Green, the Welch period and the Nicks-Buckingham lineup, all excellent in their own ways.

10. Joe Cocker, Hitchcock Railway . . . Bouncy, jaunty track from Cocker’s second album, the 1969 release Joe Cocker! Cocker is joined by a host of session players including The Grease Band. That group, which backed Cocker at Woodstock, included such luminaries as keyboardist/bassist Chris Stainton, whose long list of credits include albums with Eric Clapton, Leon Russell (who also plays on the Cocker album), Spooky Tooth, Pete Townshend and Ian Hunter, and guitarist Henry McCullough, later of Paul McCartney and Wings.

11. Jimi Hendrix, Ezy Ryder . . . From the first of countless posthumous Hendrix releases, the Cry Of Love which came out in March, 1971. I remember my older brother having it, him being a big Hendrix fan who introduced me to Jimi’s music. The album was comprised of material Hendrix was working on for a planned fourth studio album, which he never completed before his death. Ezy Ryder, a funk-driven rocker, is one of the few available studio recordings by the Band of Gypsys – Hendrix, bass player Billy Cox and drummer Buddy Miles. The trio is well-known for the album Band of Gypsys, recorded at New York City’s Fillmore East venue as the calendar flipped from 1969 to 1970.

12. Bill Withers, Harlem . . . Ever-escalating soul track from Withers’ 1971 album Just As I Am. It’s the one featuring his biggest hit, Ain’t No Sunshine and is notable for the who’s who of musicians backing Withers, including Stephen Stills, Booker T. Jones and Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn of of Booker T. and The M.G.’s fame, and session drummer to the stars Jim Keltner.

13. Peter Gabriel, The Rhythm Of The Heat . . . Haunting track from Gabriel’s 1982 album, his fourth. It was called Security in North America and featured the hit Shock The Monkey, although Gabriel reluctantly went along with the ‘Security’ nomenclature the record company wanted in order to differentiate the album from what preceded it. The first four Gabriel albums are officially called, simply, Peter Gabriel but the first three are also unofficially known and identifiable as, in order, Car, Scratch and Melt based on their cover art.

14. Pink Floyd, Cymbaline . . . Early Floyd, a pastoral-type track whose sound is at odds with the dark lyrics. It’s from the More movie soundtrack, released in 1969. The movie, about drug addiction, is currently available on YouTube but, regardless, the album hangs together well as a stand-alone statement.

15. Ten Years After, Convention Prevention . . . Typically fine boogie rock from TYA, from 1972’s Rock & Roll Music To The World album.

16. Steve Earle, I’m Looking Through You (Beatles cover) . . . Earle gives the Rubber Soul song the country/bluegrass treatment; from his 1995 album Train a Comin’.

17. Traffic, Many A Mile To Freedom . . . Beautiful track from The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys album, released in 1971. Jethro Tull, and I love that band, isn’t the only group employing fabulous flute playing – here courtesy Chris Wood.

18. Frank Zappa/The Mothers Of Invention (credited as simply The Mothers), Fifty-Fifty . . . Typically great guitar by Zappa on this one from 1973’s Over-Nite Sensation, coupled with the renowned Jean-Luc Ponty on violin. Vocals by Ricky Lancelotti, lost to the world to a drug overdose in 1980, age 35.

19. Rare Earth, Ma . . . Epic, 17-minutes and change title track from the band’s 1973 album. Written by Motown ace songwriter/producer Norman Whitfield, who often teamed with Barrett Strong to write such classics as Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone, to which Ma is considered to be something of a companion piece. Among their other collaborations: I Heard It Through The Grapevine, War and Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me).

I’m featuring late 1970s-early 1980s punk/new wave and ska songs, stuff I got into during my college days, plus a segment, near the end of the set, of one-hit wonder type material of the kind one used to find on compilations from record labels like K-tel. I’ve done full shows of one-hit wonder stuff in the past, likely will do so again at some point.

This show includes Reunion’s Life Is A Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me), which famously name-checks myriad artists, songs and record companies, and Blue Swede’s Hooked On A Feeling, aka the Ooga-Chaka song (Ooga-Chaka Ooga-Ooga Ooga-Chaka Ooga-Ooga Ooga-Chaka …). The Blue Swede song returned to prominence via its presence in the first Guardians Of The Galaxy movie and as lead cut on the soundtrack, in 2014.

Sugarloaf, meantime, was at least a two-hit wonder. Besides what I’m playing, Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You, the group’s Green-Eyed Lady was an even bigger hit. And Hot Chocolate, represented in the set by the song Emma (you may recall the lyric Emma, Emmalene…a sad song, actually) had many hits in the UK and North America, including You Sexy Thing, Every 1’s A Winner, You Could Have Been A Lady (a North American hit single for April Wine) and Brother Louie, which American band Stories turned into the North American chart-topping version I’m playing on the show.

I’ve got a double dip of Flash and The Pan because I think those two, similar songs, Walking In The Rain from the first album and the title cut from the second release, Lights In the Night, are something of a piece, to my ears anyway.

1. Madness, One Step Beyond
2. The Selecter, On My Radio
3. The Clash, Revolution Rock
4. Dead Kennedys, Too Drunk To Fuck
5. Devo, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
6. Blondie, I Know But I Don’t Know
7. Ramones, I Just Want To Have Something To Do
8. The Specials, Rat Race
9. Flash and The Pan, Walking In The Rain
10. Flash and The Pan, Lights In The Night
11. Elvis Costello, Waiting For The End Of The World
12. Joe Jackson, Throw It Away
13. Teenage Head, Brand New Cadillac
14. Graham Parker and The Rumour, The Heat In Harlem
15. Talking Heads, The Overload
16. The Police, Deathwish
17. Nick Lowe, Big Kick, Plain Scrap!
18. Split Enz, What’s The Matter With You
19. Ian Dury, There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards
20. Pretenders, Private Life
21. The Boomtown Rats, Up All Night
22. The Cars, You Can’t Hold On Too Long
23. The Motels, Take The L
24. XTC, Ten Feet Tall
25. Reunion, Life Is A Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me)
26. Stories, Brother Louie
27. Sammy Johns, Chevy Van
28. Redbone, Come And Get Your Love
29. Sugarloaf, Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You
30. Hot Chocolate, Emma
31. Blue Swede, Hooked On A Feeling
32. Billy Swan, I Can Help
33. Hot Butter, Popcorn

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

1. New Barbarians (Ron Wood, Keith Richards and friends), Am I Grooving You (live)
2. John Mayall, Gimme Some Of That Gumbo
3. Robin Trower, Victims Of The Fury
4. UFO, Queen Of The Deep
5. Pat Benatar, My Clone Sleeps Alone
6. Budgie, Parents
7. Dio, Don’t Talk To Strangers
8. Black Sabbath, End Of The Beginning
9. Bad Company, Evil Wind
10. Jeff Beck, Let Me Love You
11. ZZ Top, Snappy Kakkie
12. Stevie Wonder, Another Star
13. Joe Jackson, Blaze Of Glory
14. Jethro Tull, Occasional Demons
15. Little Feat, I Do What The Telephone Tells Me To Do
16. Santana, Every Step Of The Way (live, from Lotus)

My track-by-track tales:

1. New Barbarians (Ron Wood, Keith Richards and famous musician friends), Am I Grooving You (live) . . . A song I first heard on Wood’s debut solo record, 1974’s I’ve Got My Own Album To Do, first recorded in 1967 by American soul singer Freddie Scott. The New Barbarians were comprised of Wood, Richards, saxophonist and Rolling Stones session player/touring member Bobby Keys, renowned bassist Stanley Clarke, keyboardist Ian McLagan of Faces fame, who also played with the Stones on their 1978 tour of the United States, and drummer Joseph (Ziggy/Zigaboo) Modeliste of funk band The Meters. They toured the US in 1979 in support of Wood’s then new album Gimme Some Neck. They also stopped in Oshawa, Ontario for the Keith Richards/New Barbarians/Rolling Stones show I still can barely believe I somehow managed to get tickets to, proceeds to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB). It was Richards’ sentence for his 1978 conviction on drug charges resulting from an arrest in Toronto in 1977 around the time the Stones were in the city leading up to their famous club shows at the El Mocambo. That resulted in one vinyl side of the live album Love You Live and, more recently, a full-blown (and mind-blowing) 2-CD release of the shows, El Mocambo 1977, issued in 2022.

This live version is from New Barbarians: Live In Maryland – Buried Alive, a document of the tour that was released in a 2-CD package in 2006. Am I Grooving You was c0-written by Bert Berns (aka Bert Russell; he was born Bert Russell Berns) and Jeff Barry, hitmakers extraordinaire with a long list they either wrote or co-wrote with others. From Berns: Twist and Shout, Piece Of My Heart, Here Comes The Night, Hang On Sloopy, Cry To Me and Everybody Needs Somebody To Love. From Barry: Do Wah Diddy Diddy, Da Doo Ron Ron, River Deep-Mountain High, Leader Of The Pack, Sugar Sugar and I Honestly Love You. Berns wasn’t with us long. He had a history of cardiac trouble after his heart was damaged by a childhood bout with rheumatic fever and died of heart failure in 1967, age 38. He was the subject of the 2016 film Bang! The Bert Berns Story.

2. John Mayall, Gimme Some Of That Gumbo . . . Now age 90, the blues legend announced his retirement from touring in 2021, but left open the possibility of doing shows close to his California home. He’s released new studio albums, consistently, every two or three years, the most recent being The Sun Is Shining Down in 2022. This funky, bluesy number, featuring some fine lead guitar work from Rocky Athas, no longer in the band but who was with Mayall when I saw him at the 2011 Kitchener Blues Festival, is from the 2016 album Talk About That.

3. Robin Trower, Victims Of The Fury . . . Spooky title track from Trower’s 1980 album, the last to feature the guitarist’s classic trio of himself, bassist/soulful singer James Dewar and drummer Bill Lordan.

4. UFO, Queen Of The Deep . . . From 1974’s Phenomenon album, the third UFO album and first to feature guitarist Michael Schenker as the band moved to a more straightforward hard rock sound from their earlier space rock, psychedelic approach.

5. Pat Benatar, My Clone Sleeps Alone . . . From her first, and still for my money best album, the 1979 debut release In The Heat Of The Night. Benatar hit it really big a year later with the Hit Me With Your Best Shot single from the Crimes Of Passion album, a good record, but I still prefer the first one.

6. Budgie, Parents . . . And we enter the hard rock/metal portion of the show with this 10-minute piece from the Welsh band that never achieved widespread commercial success but was influential. Among Budgie’s disciples are Iron Maiden and Metallica, who covered Breadfan, a hellacious riff rocker I’ve played before on the show, on the Garage, Inc. covers album.

7. Dio, Don’t Talk To Strangers . . . The late Ronnie James Dio was a fantastic singer and while I like his work with his namesake band, I prefer his stuff fronting Rainbow and Black Sabbath during the time he was with those groups. Perhaps it’s because, while Dio the band had lots of fine guitarists, in Rainbow and Sabbath, Dio the singer was working with all-time great guitarist/songwriters Ritchie Blackmore and Tony Iommi. Still, as mentioned I do like Dio the band and this is a good song if you’re into hard rock/metal, from a solid record, Dio’s debut release, 1983’s Holy Diver.

8. Black Sabbath, End Of The Beginning . . . Speaking of Sabbath, a doom metal track from 13, the final studio album by the group, released in 2013 which, according to bassist Geezer Butler, is part of the reason for the album title, apparently suggested by singer Ozzy Osbourne. Also according to Butler, the band was being pressured by the record company for a 13-song album but in the end just eight songs made the standard edition although my deluxe 2-CD version has 11 tracks. The original lineup – Ozzy, Butler, guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward – had previously reunited for a concert that resulted in the 1998 live album Reuion, which featured two new studio songs including the hit single Psycho Man. But 13 wasn’t a full reunion as Ward did not participate, citing contractual issues. Brad Wilk of Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave fame handled the drumsticks in Ward’s place.

The song title reminds me of Winston Churchill’s famous line, one of my favorites of his many, after the British victory over the Germans at El Alamein in North Africa in November, 1942 as the tide of World War II turned in favor of the Allies: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” What an orator Churchill was.

9. Bad Company, Evil Wind . . . Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy was the big hit on the 1979 album Desolation Angels, and it’s a good one along with the other single, Gone Gone Gone, but the release is full of great songs, this being one of them. “That was full of Paul’s (singer Rodgers) tumbleweed across the plains imagery,” drummer Simon Kirke is quoted as saying in the liner notes booklet to The “Original” Bad Company Anthology. “I think Paul was a cowboy or one of those bounty hunters in another life.”

10. Jeff Beck, Let Me Love You . . . The Truth is, the album from which this comes is ridiculously good.

11. ZZ Top, Snappy Kakkie . . . If you played this funky groove tune to casual, hits-oriented listeners and asked them to identify the band, I wonder whether they could. And it’s OK if they couldn’t. We’re all into what we’re into, as deeply as we want to be. But that’s what of course makes great bands and albums and shows the value of listening to deep cuts. From the Tejas album, 1976.

12. Stevie Wonder, Another Star . . . I was spinning Wonder’s Songs In The Key Of Life the other day and was ‘oh yeah’ on this one, remembering it, having not heard it in a while. I’m playing the full 8:28 album version, which was cut down to five minutes and change for single release. The Latin-influenced exercise in rhythm was the fourth of five singles released from the album. I Wish, Isn’t She Lovely, Sir Duke and As were the others. Another Star made No. 32 on the US Billboard chart, No. 29 in the UK, No. 51 in Canada and No. 2 on Billboard’s dance/disco list.

13. Joe Jackson, Blaze Of Glory . . . Title track to JJ’s 1989 album. Despite being full of good songs, like this one, it had just one single that charted to any great degree. That was Nineteen Forever, which made the top 20 in the USA. Another good one, Down To London, managed to make, wait for it, No. 126 in Australia, despite much critical acclaim both for the song and album. No wonder Jackson was disappointed; he thought the record represented some of his finest work and I agree, but then I’m a huge fan.

14. Jethro Tull, Occasional Demons . . . Good rocker from the 1993 release Catfish Rising, one of my favorite later period (30 years ago now!) Tull albums.

15. Little Feat, I Do What The Telephone Tells Me To Do . . . Prescient, perhaps, given the ubiquity of people and their (smart)phones although this song, from 2003’s latter-day Kickin’ It At The Barn album, is more about actually calling on a phone or waiting for it to ring than, say, walking, head down and oblivious, texting or scrolling and risking bumping into people or something worse, say at a crosswalk. “Head’s up!” I have been known to say, sometimes to a ‘thank you’ response, other times drawing a dirty look. Anyway . . . Little Feat is still around, with original member and keyboard player Bill Payne still in the band as are longtime stalwarts Sam Clayton (congas, percussion, vocals) and bassist Kenny Gradney, both of whom have been in the lineup since 1972. And they’ve just released a new album. It’s called Sam’s Place, Clayton does most of the singing and is well-suited to the mostly blues covers like Got My Mojo Working and Long Distance Call, which features Bonnie Raitt on co-lead vocals with Clayton.

16. Santana, Every Step Of The Way (live, from Lotus) . . . Intoxicating instrumental that saw studio release as a nine-minute cut on 1972’s Caravanserai, whose 10 tracks included seven instrumentals as Santana moved in a jazz fusion direction. The Lotus version runs 11 minutes, 30 seconds featuring typically fiery fretwork from Carlos Santana along with the usual Santana band brew of bongos, congas and maracas.