No shows for a bit, I’m taking a break. Aiming to be back on my regular Saturday 7-9 am, Monday 8-10 pm schedule on Saturday, June 24.  There will be programmed music in those time slots while I’m off.

What started with my usual Victoria Day opener, this time a live version of Victoria by The Kinks, soon became a hard rock/metal show, as the muse morphed . . .

1. The Kinks, Victoria (live, from One For The Road)
2. Mott The Hoople, Rock And Roll Queen
3. The Who, The Acid Queen
4. Stampeders, Then Came The White Man
5. Aerosmith, Kings And Queens
6. Metallica, King Nothing
7. Megadeth, Kill The King
8. Budgie, If I Were Brittania I’d Waive The Rules
9. The Rolling Stones, Dirty Work
10. Accept, Restless And Wild
11. Deep Purple, Under The Gun
12. Black Sabbath, Johnny Blade
13. Blue Oyster Cult, Hot Rails To Hell
14. Mountain, Sittin’ On A Rainbow
15. Rainbow, A Light In The Black
16. Trapeze, Jury
17. Uriah Heep, The Magician’s Birthday
18. Judas Priest, Never The Heroes
19. Whitesnake, Sweet Talker
20. Fu Manchu, Strato-Streak
21. AC/DC, All Screwed Up
22. Ted Nugent, Baby, Please Don’t Go (live, from Double Live Gonzo!)
23. Pantera, Cemetery Gates

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

1. The Rolling Stones, Too Tough
2. Ten Years After, 50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain
3. Hawkwind, Brainstorm
4. Pete Townshend, Communication
5. Faces, Bad ‘N’ Ruin
6. Jimi Hendrix, Like A Rolling Stone (from Live At Monterey)
7. Neil Young, Albuquerque
8. The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Arroyo
9. The Beatles, Doctor Robert
10. Grateful Dead, Friend Of The Devil
11. Funkadelic, Wars Of Armageddon
12. Supertramp, Crime Of The Century (live, Paris album)
13. Warren Zevon, Genius
14. Elton John, Stinker
15. Tommy Bolin, Lotus
16. Spooky Tooth, Wildfire
17. Eric Burdon & War, Pretty Colors
18. Grand Funk Railroad, Mr. Limousine Driver
19. AC/DC, Ride On
20. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Am I Losin’
21. Gregg Allman, House Of Blues
22. Fleetwood Mac, Coming Home

    My track-by-track tales:

    1. The Rolling Stones, Too Tough . . . Gritty riff-rocker from 1983’s Undercover album, almost metallic Stones likely due to the 1980s touch of overproduction; I recall a critic lamenting the ‘showy guitars’ but heck, man, the Stones are, at their best, a guitar band after all. Speaking of which, nice solo by Ron Wood. Something of an overlooked album, Undercover, the title tune was a hit, the mini-epic Too Much Blood was just that, a tale about cannibalistic serial killers, apparently gleaned from a newspaper article from a real-life crime in Paris, with Mick Jagger rapping references to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and An Officer and A Gentleman ‘something you can take the wife to, you know what I mean?”. Too Tough was a US or North America-only single, didn’t chart although I remember hearing it on radio. The Stones didn’t tour to promote the album as the so-called ‘World War III’ between Jagger and Keith Richards about the band’s direction, Jagger’s solo aspirations and so on heated up for most of the rest of the decade, perhaps accounting for the relative low profile of the record.
       
    2. Ten Years After, 50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain. . . . Slow building into Alvin Lee guitar wank blues rock rom 1970’s Cricklewood Green album. Interesting aspect to the song, descriptive enough for sure, may be a comment I discovered on YouTube about it. “I’d come home, find my husband, head set on, tapping his foot in an inhuman speed. This was one of his favorites. We made love on acid while this played. I thought it possible we were flying on a cloud.”
       
    3. Hawkwind, Brainstorm . . . Space rock epic proving that maintaining a riff, embellished with other instrumental accents, over an 11-minute, 34-second period of time can keep a long song compelling. In that sense, it’s actually too short. Driving an endless road to infinity comes to mind.
       
    4. Pete Townshend, Communication . . . Sometimes I think artists pick the wrong songs as singles. Take Townshend’s All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes album, from which the up-tempo, catchy Communication is drawn. It wasn’t a single. Had it been, it might have helped push the album to more than a middling chart performance. Townshend overlooked, for single release, to me the album’s best songs, Exquisitely Bored and The Sea Refuses No River, both of which I’ve previously played. Instead, he goes with Face Dances, Pt. 2 and Uniforms. Neither ever did much for me. Townshend corrected his errors upon the 2005 release of the 2-CD compilation Gold with Exquisitely Bored and The Sea Refuses No River making the cut. On the flip side, not releasing those great songs as singles means they haven’t been overplayed.
       
    5. Faces, Bad ‘N’ Ruin . . . Stop, start, reverse sort of riff, if that makes sense, by Ron Wood on this boozy rocker (is there any other kind of Faces song?) from 1971’s Long Player album. Reminds me a bit of Johnny Winter’s I’m Yours And I’m Hers from his self-titled 1969 album. Bad ‘N’ Ruin is from that glorious period of so much great Faces and Rod Stewart music between 1969 and 1974.
       
    6. Jimi Hendrix, Like A Rolling Stone (from Live At Monterey) . . . Played it before, probably too much, but I can never get enough of this example of Hendrix doing Dylan. Features the classic mid-song Hendrix response to a fan in the crowd: “Yes I know I missed a verse don’t worry . . . ” Gotta love the live experience.
       
    7. Neil Young, Albuquerque . . . Raw road song, in search of self, or something, ‘I’ll find somewhere where they don’t care who I am’ from the bleak Tonight’s The Night album. On a lighter note, Bugs Bunny always knew he should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.
       
    8. The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Arroyo . . . Sounds crazy, maybe, but nearly 50 years later, after only really knowing and growing up in the 1970s with this band’s two big hits, If You Wanna Get To Heaven and Jackie Blue, I bought a compilation of theirs maybe a year ago now, cheap, from my friendly neighborhood independent record store’s used rack. Great stuff, like this hypnotic track.
       
    9. The Beatles, Doctor Robert . . . From Revolver. About drugs.
       
    10. Grateful Dead, Friend Of The Devil . . . Such a great, jaunty, country rocker from American Beauty.
        
    11. Funkadelic, Wars Of Armageddon . . . Freak-out jam in the psychedelic funk fusion of sounds that is the Maggot Brain album.
        
    12. Supertramp, Crime Of The Century (live, Paris album) . . . Title cut from the band’s breakthrough 1974 studio album, done live on the 1979 Breakfast In America tour that, seemingly, everyone on Earth, including me, saw, given how big Supertramp was then.
        
    13. Warren Zevon, Genius . . . Typically wonderful wordplay from Zevon. How many other artists could start with ‘a bitter pot of je ne sais quoi’ stirring it with a monkey’s paw while weaving together Miles Davis’s classic album Kind Of Blue, Mata Hari, Albert Einstein and unindicted co-conspirators first made famous during the Watergate scandal, and make it all work? It’s from the My Ride’s Here album in 2002. I had stopped buying Zevon’s individual albums by then, around the time of 1989’s Transverse City, but later in 2002 he issued a compilation titled Genius, which included the song plus various other tracks from the 1990s, and I was re-hooked, saw the error of my ways and filled out my studio album collection.
        
    14. Elton John, Stinker . . . Catchy funk-rock tune from 1974’s Caribou album, it features the Tower of Power horn section.
        
    15. Tommy Bolin, Lotus . . . Beautiful, soulful yet rocking track from Bolin’s 1975 solo debut Teaser, issued during the period he was also in Deep Purple for the Come Taste The Band album and tour.
        
    16. Spooky Tooth, Wildfire . . . Nice riff from future Foreigner founder member Mick Jones on his first outing with Spooky Tooth and the band’s singer/keyboardist Gary Wright, later of solo fame via such hits as Dream Weaver and Love Is Alive. It’s from the 1973 album You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw.
        
    17. Eric Burdon & War, Pretty Colors . . . So intoxicatingly funky, from The Black-Man’s Burdon, 1970. What a collaboration.
        
    18. Grand Funk Railroad, Mr. Limousine Driver . . . Early Grand Funk raunch and roll, lovemaking, or wanting to, in the back seat after a show.
        
    19. AC/DC, Ride On . . . A song where AC/DC proves they could easily have been a blues band. I suppose The Jack is another one. Anyway, it’s from the Bon Scott era, originally on the album Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap which was released in Australia in 1976 but not until 1981 elsewhere, more than a year after Scott’s death. The song – presumably largely thanks to the line ‘looking for a truck’ – also appeared on the soundtrack/pseudo compilation album Who Made Who in 1986 that accompanied the Stephen King movie Maximum Overdrive, which was loosely based on his short story Trucks. King is a big AC/DC fan.
        
    20. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Am I Losin’ . . . Heartfelt song about losing a friend, likely over money based on the lyrics, apparently singer/lyricist Ronnie Van Zant’s thoughts about original Skynyrd drummer Bob Burns. Guitar solo by Ed King.
        
    21. Gregg Allman, House Of Blues . . . Mid-tempo blues from one of my favorite Gregg Allman solo albums, 1997’s Searching For Simplicity. Thirteen songs, eight covers, this one’s an Allman original.
        
    22. Fleetwood Mac, Coming Home . . . I say this often, I realize, but it bears repeating. The middle period of Fleetwood Mac, with guitarist/singer/songwriter Bob Welch in between the early, Peter Green-led blues band and the later commercial monster featuring Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, is brilliant. This atmospheric, almost Pink Floyd-ish track from 1974’s Heroes Are Hard To Find album is further proof. The Mac is essentially three different bands, all worthwhile listening although the Welch period stuff seems to be the least celebrated.

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

1. Joe Jackson, 1-2-3 Go (This Town’s A Fairground)
2. Tim Curry, I Do The Rock
3. Stray Cats, Rev It Up And Go
4. Madness, One Step Beyond . . .
5. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Born To Move
6. Lighthouse, Broken Guitar Blues
7. Traveling Wilburys, Dirty World
8. Elvis Costello and The Attractions, Goon Squad
9. The Clash, Armagideon Time
10. Yes, The Ancient: Giants Under The Sun
11. Wishbone Ash, The King Will Come
12. Rush, Natural Science
13. John Mellencamp, All Along The Watchtower
14. The Rolling Stones, Congratulations
15. John Lennon, Bony Moronie
16. Deep Purple, Lady Luck
17. Iggy Pop, Sister Midnight
18. Golden Earring, Kill Me (Ce Soir)
19. The Rocky Horror Picture Show Soundtrack, Over At The Frankenstein Place
20. Moby Grape, Murder In My Heart For The Judge
21. Iron Butterfly, Belda-Beast
22. David Bowie, Teenage Wildlife
23. Jethro Tull, No Lullaby

    My track-by-track tales:

    1. Joe Jackson, 1-2-3 Go (This Town’s A Fairground) . . . Yet another slice of infectious, driving pop rock excellence from the Mike’s Murder movie soundtrack, released in 1983 and, musically, something of a companion piece to JJ’s 1982 album Night And Day. It’s terrific stuff, but of course I’m a big Joe Jackson fan as often stated. The soundtrack essentially became another studio album for Jackson because as things developed, little of his music was retained for the film, the bulk of whose score wound up being done by John Barry of James Bond film score fame. The film, starring Debra Winger, was a box-office bomb. Perhaps keeping more of Jackson’s music would have helped, he says with a smile.
       
    2. Tim Curry, I Do The Rock . . . From the Rocky Horror Picture Show star’s 1979 album Fearless, which I heard on the store sound system and impulse bought while browsing through Toronto’s original Sam The Record Man outlet on Yonge St., long since gone but not forgotten. I get to the actual Rocky Horror soundtrack later in the set with Curry, who played Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the zany cult movie, not singing on the track I chose. You’ll see/hear.
       
    3. Stray Cats, Rev It Up And Go . . . Another of one of those “rifling through my CDs and oh, yeah, these guys, haven’t played them in ages” picks. Rockabilly! Great stuff, kicking off with the Chuck Berry guitar lick you’ve heard on just about every one of his songs, then into it. He didn’t produce this one but Dave Edmunds, known to dabble in a little rockabilly himself, has produced much of the Stray Cats’ material over time. And the band, which has tended to alternate between active and dormant periods in and around Brian Seitzer’s solo and Brian Seitzer Orchestra work, is currently active, having released ’40’, their first studio album in nearly 30 years, in 2019.
       
    4. Madness, One Step Beyond . . . Perfect name for an out-there ska song, especially the intro. Infectious stuff. Here I am with my Beatles and my Stones and Zeppelin and Purple and so on and then I remember being immediately hooked watching the video for One Step Beyond on Toronto TV station City’s old ‘The New Music’ show in 1979. All my friends thought I had lost it. I thought they might consider expanding their horizons, but to each their own. Interesting reading about the song. It’s a cover of a tune by Jamaican ska singer Prince Buster and released in 1964, with Madness incorporating elements from other songs by Buster, and others, into the band’s final version.
       
    5. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Born To Move . . . Screeeech as we bank around the corner and off into a totally different direction. CCR. I’ve been in a phase of listening to them lately. ‘Nuff said, really. Obviously great band, including their deeper cuts, like this one from the Pendulum album, released in 1970. The boys were lazy that year, Pendulum being only their second LP release after coming out with three albums in 1969.
       
    6. Lighthouse, Broken Guitar Blues . . . Guy gets on a plane, nowhere good to store his six-string, a song results. From Canada’s answer to early Chicago or Blood, Sweat & Tears, or vice-versa, it’s actually more of a straight ahead rocker, which fits since it’s about a guitar, than Lighthouse’s usual more horn-drenched jazz-rock fusion stuff.
       
    7. Traveling Wilburys, Dirty World . . . Lucky Wilbury (aka Bob Dylan) handles most of the lead vocals on this one from Vol. 1 of the ‘family’ project that also included Wilburys Nelson (George Harrison), Otis (Jeff Lynne), Lefty (Roy Orbison) and Charlie T., Jr. (Tom Petty). What a wonderful project it was. When Lefty died, the boys persevered, or maybe it was a group of entirely different people, or split personalities, who issued the second album, Vol. 3. Just having fun. Lucky became Boo; Nelson became Spike; Otis became Clayton and Charlie T. became Muddy. And now Nelson/Spike and Charlie T./Muddy are also gone. Session players included drummer Buster Sidebury (Jim Keltner) and Ken Milbury (Gary Moore) on lead guitar on one song, She’s My Baby, on Vol. 3. To quote the Robert Shaw character in the classic 1973 movie The Sting, ‘ya falla?” (follow). Don’t worry about it, just enjoy.
       
    8. Elvis Costello and The Attractions, Goon Squad . . . Love the, how is one to describe music in words, best to listen to it of course but that sort of descending beat on this one, from 1979’s Armed Forces album. Serious, deep lyrics perfectly accompanied by the darkish music.
       
    9. The Clash, Armagideon Time . . . Available since then on various Clash compilations, it was originally the B-side to the 1979 album title cut single London Calling. As related by longime Clash associate and sometime manager Kosmo Vinyl in the liner notes to the box set Clash On Broadway, he had a notion that all great singles should be 2 minutes, 58 seconds long. Why 2:58, who knows? Probably to sound cooler than saying ‘three minutes’. So Clash co-founder Joe Strummer tells him “just stop us when we get to 2:58.” In studio later, the band is cooking, recording the track and Vinyl is vexxed as to what to do as 2:58 approaches, so he risks calling from the control room for the band to wind it up only to have, and you can hear it on the song, Strummer sing back “okay, okay, don’t push us when we’re hot!” And the band plays on for another minute, everyone loves what’s on tape and Vinyl, who thought his life was at risk for interrupting, is still with us at 66. Strummer, sadly, died at age 50 in 2002 of a heart attack caused by an undiagnosed congenital heart defect.
       
    10. Yes, The Ancient: Giants Under The Sun . . . Another 180 turn in the set. Speaking of risk, I figured I might risk a backlash from some if I played the entire Tales From Topographic Oceans album, which is four songs, one per vinyl side, on original release in 1973. To many, that represented pure prog rock excess and perhaps it was but all kidding aside it’s a great album and as mentioned earlier about expanded horizons, what is the beauty of music, which is really a mood exercise, other than how you can go from raunch and roll to ska to rockabilly to prog and beyond, and enjoy it all because it’s all creative and has merit. If you have an open mind. Anyway, another Yes epic, 18 minutes and change, at times tribal, almost funky, with beautiful acoustic guitar passages and back again. Sublime, really.
        
    11. Wishbone Ash, The King Will Come . . . I suppose I should have played this when King Charles was crowned last week. But I’m not much into the monarchy and I’ll leave it at that. Good song, though, as I find most Wishbone Ash is.
        
    12. Rush, Natural Science . . . And so ends the prog segment with this classic from 1980’s Permanent Waves album.
        
    13. John Mellencamp, All Along The Watchtower . . . I’ve been in a Mellencamp listening phase of late but this cover of the Bob Dylan song is a very recent, wonderful discovery for me, from the used rack in my local independent store just last Friday. It was one of those buys, $6 as I recall, where I knew I better pick it up because it’s fairly rare to my knowledge, would likely be gone soon and I’d regret it, even though it’s available online but I still like physical product. It’s from Mellencamp’s acoustic live album The Good Samaritan Tour 2000, released on CD in 2021. It’s the soundtrack to a documentary film of about 40 minutes’ length that chronicles a tour in 2000 when Mellencamp performed, unannounced, for free in public parks and common spaces across the United States as a thank you to his fans for their ongoing support. The documentary, with all performance footage filmed by fans thus lending the show its raw appeal, originally appeared on Turner Classic Movie’s YouTube channel and both the album and documentary are still available there. It’s great stuff, more than just the music but, musically, it’s just Mellencamp and his acoustic band, guitars, fiddles, accordion, no drums. Sometimes there’s big crowds, sometimes just a handful of people in a park although as the tour developed things exploded, in a wonderful way. They do a selection of his own material like Small Town and Pink Houses and covers of songs by Woody Guthrie (Oklahoma Hills), Dylan, The Rolling Stones (Street Fighting Man and The Spider and The Fly), Donovan’s Hey Gyp, also done by The Animals, and Cut Across Shorty which was done by Eddie Cochran and, later, Rod Stewart.
        
    14. The Rolling Stones, Congratulations . . . An early Mick Jagger-Keith Richards penned ballad, from 1964 with its typical mocking and sarcastic lyrics about a relationship. It was the B-side to Time Is On My Side in the US and was on the album 12 X 5 in those early days when many British Invasion bands’ releases differed on either side of the pond. It didn’t appear on a UK album until the Decca Records compilation No Stone Unturned in 1973.
        
    15. John Lennon, Bony Moronie . . . From Lennon’s 1975 album of rock ‘n’ roll standards called, wait for it, Rock ‘N’ Roll. Great fun, back to his roots.
        
    16. Deep Purple, Lady Luck . . . Not sure what else to say about the Come Taste The Band album I’ve not already said. It’s the one and only one Purple did with the late guitarist Tommy Bolin, lots of people think it’s too different than what many consider ‘should’ be the sound of Deep Purple because it incorporated some funk elements, but that’s what makes it great and shows the band’s musical diversity. And, despite what some folks seem to think, it does rock. As evidence, I present Lady Luck, among several up-tempo tunes on the album starting with the blistering lead track, Comin’ Home. Other than that, I like the album cover, all the boys in a full glass of red wine on the front and the empty glass on the back and since I was having a glass myself when putting the show together, here we are.
    17. Iggy Pop, Sister Midnight . . . From 1977’s The Idiot which is almost a David Bowie album, or a co-Pop/Bowie album given that Bowie plays keyboards on it, produced it and wrote or co-wrote many of the songs including this one that Bowie wrote with his longtime guitarist Carlos Alomar. Recorded around the time of Bowie’s so-called Berlin period that yielded experimental albums like Low, it’s definitely a departure from the punk inclinations of much of the garage rock type material Pop released as main man in The Stooges. Pop described the more mechanical, electronic sound as “a cross between James Brown and Kraftwerk.” Pop returned to a more Stooges-like sound on his next album, Lust For Life which was also released in 1977 and co-produced by Bowie.
        
    18. Golden Earring, Kill Me (Ce Soir) . . . From Switch, the 1975 album followup to 1973’s Moontan and its hit Radar Love, after which many people, at least in North America, went back to ignoring Golden Earring until 1982’s hit single Twilight Zone. Lots of good music in between and beyond, but who knows what the real recipe for widespread success and acclaim is? I think Motley Crue (and that whole genre of overproduced hair metal) is utter garbage, the worst successful band in the history of popular music, for instance. Yet . . .
    19. The Rocky Horror Picture Show Soundtrack, Over At The Frankenstein Place . . . What a fun movie and forever trigger of memories of college days. What I haven’t mentioned before, not sure how or why I overlooked it, is that John ‘Rabbit’ Bundrick, arguably most famous for his keyboard work with The Who, played on the Rocky Horror film soundtrack. Besides The Who, the widely respected and in demand musician has, since the 1970s, played on albums by Free, Johnny Nash of I Can See Clearly Now fame, Donovan, Eric Burdon and Fairport Convention, among others.
        
    20. Moby Grape, Murder In My Heart For The Judge . . . Funky, rocking blues number from the San Francisco band’s second album, Wow, in 1968. Love the psychedelic ‘grapes’ album cover. I mean, what else?
        
    21. Iron Butterfly, Belda-Beast . . . As with Golden Earring, one song – the epic In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida – can overwhelm the rest of a band’s catalog, or even what they actually could be about musically. And it’s interesting that the band was considered heavy when lots of their material, to my ears, is like this song from Ball, the 1969 followup to the Gadda album. It’s eerie, psychedelic and melodic, with nice touches of organ. Relaxing and dreamy, yet still electric. Nice work.
        
    22. David Bowie, Teenage Wildlife . . . To each their own of course but another example of why it pays to listen to full albums, not just hits or compilations of hits. And without that fact, I wouldn’t have my deep cuts show. The longest song on 1980’s Scary Monsters album that featured the hit singles Ashes To Ashes and Fashion, it’s got a similar arrangement to Bowie’s own song Heroes and has been seen, lyrically, as taking aim at what Bowie perceived to be his imitators, like Gary Numan – “one of the new wave boys, same old thing in brand new drag comes sweeping into view as ugly as a teenage millionaire.” King Crimson leader/guitarist Robert Fripp played on most of the album, including Teenage Wildlife, which also featured Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band keyboardist Roy Bittan.
        
    23. Jethro Tull, No Lullaby . . . Great drumming by Barriemore Barlow, especially on the intro, on this killer cut from 1978’s Heavy Horses. Thrust and parry, indeed, as the lyrics suggest.