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

1. Santana, All Aboard
2. Edgar Winter’s White Trash, Give It Everything You Got
3. Santana, Soul Sacrifice (live at The Fillmore 1968)
4. The Rolling Stones, Gunface
5. Bruce Springsteen, Point Blank
6. Tom Waits, 16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought Six
7. Stray Cats, 18 Miles From Memphis
8. Cat Stevens, 18th Avenue (Kansas City Nightmare)
9. Spirit, 1984
10. Guns N’ Roses, 14 Years
11. Izzy Stradlin, Shuffle It All
12. Ron Wood, Seven Days
13. Keith Richards, Struggle
14. 54-40, Nice To Luv You
15. The Kinks, Yo-Yo
16. Steely Dan, Babylon Sisters
17. The Police, It’s Alright For You
18. Gordon Lightfoot, I’m Not Sayin’/Ribbon Of Darkness
19. Bob Dylan, Slow Train
20. Humble Pie, Road Hog
21. The Doors, I Can’t See Your Face In My Mind
22. Eric Clapton, Double Trouble (live, from Just One Night)
23. Jethro Tull, Life Is A Long Song
24. U2, Until The End Of The World

My track-by-track tales:

1. Santana, All Aboard . . . A short instrumental to start things off, from the 2016 album Santana IV. It was so named as it represented a reunion of most of the original members of the Santana band which had recorded the group’s first three albums – Santana, Abraxas and Santana (commonly referred to as Santana III to distinguish it from the first album) – between 1969 and 1971.

2. Edgar Winter’s White Trash, Give It Everything You Got . . . Funky, bluesy, soulful song from Winter’s second studio album but first under the moniker of his White Trash group, released in 1971 after 1970’s debut Entrance. White Trash was produced by Rick Derringer, who worked extensively with both Edgar and Johnny Winter, played guitar on the White Trash album and toured with Edgar’s band, resulting in the 1972 live album Roadwork.

3. Santana, Soul Sacrifice (live at The Fillmore 1968) . . . Back to Santana we go, this one a 14.5 minute version of the instrumental that, before the band had ever released a studio album, brought them to prominence thanks to its performance at the 1969 Woodstock festival. The version I’m playing was recorded months earlier, in December, 1968 at Fillmore West in San Francisco but not commercially released until 1997 as part of the album Live At The Fillmore 1968.

4. The Rolling Stones, Gunface . . . Menacing funk rocker, lots of great guitar, from the 1997 album Bridges To Babylon, a latter day Stones’ treat. It’s memorable for me not just for the album itself, which I like as I do all Stones’ material, but because I took my then age 9 older son to his first concert, Stones on their Bridges To Babylon tour at Toronto’s then-named Skydome, now Rogers Centre, April 1998.

Three things from that show stick out to me, beyond the actual concert. Pre-show, outside the stadium we run into a couple work friends of mine who are startled by, when in fun quizzing my son Mark about the Stones, he responds with mentions of deep tracks he’s learned (and my friends may not have known) through my playing of Stones’ albums at home. So, they stood corrected or at least surprised. Second, once we got to our seats, Mark just looking around the massive stadium, marvelling at it all, the stage, etc. and turning to me and saying “this is so cool.” And it was. And third, the Stones come out, blitz through the opener Satisfaction and I turn to my son in jest and say “wow, we can go home now that was so great a performance.” But of course we didn’t. An amazing and memorable night, our first of several Stones trips together.

5. Bruce Springsteen, Point Blank . . . One of my favorites from The River, the third album in the remarkable streak that saw Springsteen issue Born To Run, Darkness On The Edge Of Town and The River between 1975 and 1980 and in many ways those three albums remain the foundation of his art. A brooding lament to lost love and the twists and turns of life.

6. Tom Waits, 16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought Six . . . From 1983’s Swordfishtrombones album, where Waits moved from more traditional song structures to experimental sounds often housed within odd time signatures. In short, unconventional. An acquired taste, perhaps, but Waits puts many fine offerings on the menu.

7. Stray Cats, 18 Miles From Memphis . . . Infectious rockabilly, typical of the band, from their 1983 album Rant N Rave With The Stray Cats, the followup to their 1982 breakthrough Built For Speed which featured such hits as Rock This Town and Stray Cat Strut. Built For Speed, the group’s first North American release, was actually a compilation of their first two albums, the self-titled debut and Gonna Ball, both released in 1981 in the UK where the group first achieved success before returning to the USA.

8. Cat Stevens, 18th Avenue (Kansas City Nightmare) . . . One of those multi-faceted Stevens’ productions, this one from his 1972 album Catch Bull At Four. Slow buildup, then into a relatively heavy rocking orchestral portion as the song plays out over its four minutes and change. I played Stevens’ 18-minute Foreigner Suite in mid-October and commented at the time on what a wonderful trip through assorted tempos that song is; Stevens does similar things here, within a much shorter time frame.

9. Spirit, 1984 . . . Los Angeles psychedelic/progressive rock band Spirit is perhaps best known to some as being involved in a lawsuit with Led Zeppelin – ultimately settled in Zep’s favor – over similarities in the Spirit instrumental Taurus, released in 1968, and the intro to Stairway To Heaven, released in 1971. Much reading available on that and people will form their own views. But there’s far more to Spirit than that one instrumental and the song 1984 is just one example. A haunting, hypnotic bass line is a feature of this 1969 track which fits the lyrics revolving around the warnings within George Orwell’s dystopian novel.

10. Guns N’ Roses, 14 Years . . . A co-write between Axl Rose and guitarist Izzy Stradlin, who was soon to leave the band after the Use Your Illusion albums. This bluesy track, mainly sung by Stradlin, was on Use Your Illusion II, released simultaneously with Use Your Illusion I on September 17, 1991. The music market was obviously different then but G N’ R was among the biggest bands on the planet at that point and I recall lineups at record stores waiting to purchase the albums.

11. Izzy Stradlin and the Ju Ju Hounds, Shuffle It All . . . From Stradlin’s first solo album after leaving Guns N’ Roses, released in 1992 and sounding very much like a Keith Richards of Rolling Stones fame solo album. So yes, it’s derivative, but so many bands were inspired by the Stones who were in turn inspired by their deep blues predecessors and, as Richards has said, the best tribute a musician can have is that he or she ‘passed it on.” And we’ll get to Keith in a solo song soon but first a track from his Stones’ guitar henchman/ancient art of weaving compadre Ronnie Wood.

12. Ron Wood, Seven Days . . . A Bob Dylan tune Wood covered on his 1979 album Gimme Some Neck after which he and Keith Richards formed the New Barbarians, who toured North America and opened for Led Zeppelin at the Knebworth (UK) Festival. I saw the New Barbarians at the Rolling Stones one-off concert in Oshawa, Ontario that was part of Richards’ penance for an earlier drug bust in Toronto, great show by both bands. Another worthy cover of Seven Days is by Joe Cocker, on his 1982 album Sheffield Steel.

13. Keith Richards, Struggle . . . Instantly recognizable riffology from Richards, from his debut solo album Talk Is Cheap, 1988 during the so-called World War III period where Richards and Rolling Stones partner/frontman Mick Jagger were at odds. Richards’ solo albums were rightfully critically acclaimed as media seemed to take sides in the ‘war’ but Jagger’s solo albums – particularly Wandering Spirit, his 1993 offering that was the most Stones’ like – were solid as well. The difference to me as a fan of the band and both songwriting principals being that Jagger was going for experimentation outside the Stones’ bubble – which can be argued should be the essence of a solo album, be different than what your band is known for – while Richards preferred, and that’s obviously fine, to continue musically to live within that basic Stones framework.

14. 54-40, Nice To Luv You . . . Likely the song that turned me on to 54-40. I’d heard of them, the Canadian band having been around for more than 10 years before their 1992 album Dear Dear came out but this single, which charted in Canada, is what got me into the band along with the second single from the album, She-La. I saw them live in Toronto in the early 2000s; great show.

15. The Kinks, Yo-Yo . . . The Kinks were on a hot streak during the early 1960s – You Really Got Me; All Day And All Of The Night – and then again during the late 1970s into the early 1980s starting maybe with 1977’s Sleepwalker and 1978’s Misfits but truly breaking through with 1979’s Low Budget album and its follow up, 1981’s Give The People What They Want, from which I pulled this track. In between Give The People and Low Budget was the raucously terrific live album One For The Road.

16. Steely Dan, Babylon Sisters . . . Suave and sophisticated in typically jazzy Steely Dan fashion, from the 1980 album Gaucho, which was to be the group’s last studio album until their reunion 20 years later for -after some live reunion tours and a live album – two more studio efforts.

17. The Police, It’s Alright For You . . . Driving rocker from the band’s second album, Reggata de Blanc with its big hit single Message In A Bottle. Could easily have been a single, wasn’t, but likely and rightly so remains a well-known Police track to fans of the band.

18. Gordon Lightfoot, I’m Not Sayin’/Ribbon Of Darkness . . . A combination of two tracks that initially appeared on Lightfoot’s debut album, Lightfoot! released in 1966. It was later put together for the Gord’s Gold compilation. Marty Robbins took Ribbon Of Darkness to No. 1 on the country charts in 1965.

19. Bob Dylan, Slow Train . . . Dylan threw critics and some fans for a loop when he came out with the Slow Train Coming album in 1979, the artist having embraced Christianity. But to me what seemed to have been somewhat lost over his three ‘Christian’ albums – Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot Of Love – was not only the great players Dylan had backing him, people like Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame, session drummer to the stars Jim Keltner to name two, but more so the typically great and often prescient Dylan lyrics throughout the trilogy. Slow Train has, to my reading of the lyrics, nothing much if anything to do with religion, it’s cutting social/political commentary. As for the playing, I recommend not just the studio albums but The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979–1981 which features Dylan’s crack band in live settings.

20. Humble Pie, Road Hog . . . Nice blues rocker from the 1975 Street Rats album, the band falling apart, critically panned but what do critics know, constantly comparing to what was or what they think should be.

21. The Doors, I Can’t See Your Face In My Mind . . . One of those spooky, immersive Doors tracks you can only find by investigating the actual studio albums; this one from the band’s second release, 1967’s Strange Days.

22. Eric Clapton, Double Trouble (live, from Just One Night album) . . . Eric does justice to the Otis Rush tune on his, Clapton’s, 1980 live album. I well knew, from college days, but never actually owned this album until recently, some tracks from it are on the Clapton Crossroads box set but there I was earlier this year, flipping through the used CD rack in my friendly neighborhood and still thankfully surviving local record store and lo and behold there it was, cheap, too . . . I thrust my arms in the air in victory, to knowing smiles from the staff, and bought the sucker.

23. Jethro Tull, Life Is A Long Song . . . A nice one from one of my alltime favorite groups, Tull. It was first released on an EP in the United Kingdom, later placed on the 1972 compilation album Living In The Past which was, for many in North America at least, something of an intro to Tull and as such almost standing alone, albeit being a compilation, as a studio album in its own right, while not actually being one. Tull opened with this when my eldest son and I saw them for the fourth of five shows, over time together as we saw them, this time in 2005 at Toronto’s Massey Hall.

24. U2, Until The End Of The World . . . Another of those probably well-known songs by a great band where one thinks, this was a hit single yet it wasn’t. It’s an album track on Achtung Baby which may be my favorite U2 record although I’m also partial to War, Boy and I guess the great but overplayed Joshua Tree whose best track, to me, is the non-single Bullet The Blue Sky. Back to Until The End Of The World: Great lyrics to a pulsating riffing beat: “Everybody having a good time, except you, you were talking about the end of the world . . . you miss too much these days if you stop to think . . . I was drowning in sorrows but my sorrows they learned to swim…”

What was also impressive to me is how U2 played the Achtung Baby album live. They knew they had a good one; on the tour they came out and the first six songs and seven of the first nine were from the new album they risked the audience not knowing yet, but on they went to great acclaim. It to me was akin, and even more daring since U2 opened with entirely new stuff, to when I saw The Rolling Stones in 1978 on the Some Girls album tour and they confidently played eight of 10 songs from the album in the middle of the set, knowing they were promoting a winner that would come to be known as such.

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

1. The Rolling Stones, Can’t You Hear Me Knocking
2. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Born To Run
3. Johnny Winter, Feedback On Highway 101
4. The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Arroyo
5. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, F*!#n’ Up
6. Bob Seger, Love The One You’re With
7. John Mellencamp, French Shoes
8. Pretenders, Pop Star
9. Ten Years After, Let The Sky Fall
10. Bruce Springsteen, Blinded By The Light
11. Black Sabbath, The Shining
12. Robert Palmer, Under Suspicion
13. Dead Kennedys, Police Truck
14. Ozzy Osbourne, Diary Of A Madman
15. Talking Heads, Memories Can’t Wait
16. Small Faces, The Autumn Stone
17. Jeff Beck, Let Me Love You
18. Small Faces/Faces, Three Button Hand Me Down
19. Faces, Maybe I’m Amazed (live)
20. Rod Stewart, Seems Like A Long Time
21. George Thorogood, No Expectations

My track-by-track tales:

1. The Rolling Stones, Can’t You Hear Me Knocking . . . Two songs in one, really, opening with the great Keith Richards riff before the entire band kicks in along with Mick Jagger’s vocals and then a bit before halfway through it becomes a Santana-esque instrumental jam highlighted by Mick Taylor’s guitar improvisations teamed up with saxophone player Bobby Keys as they just kept the tapes running.

2. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Born To Run . . . Along with the title track of The Last Rebel album, released in 1993 and from which Born To Run (not the Springsteen song) comes, this extended bluesy rock piece is one of my favorites by the post-plane crash version of Lynyrd Skynyrd and in fact one of my favorites of theirs, period. I’m admittedly loyal to the brand, but it’s because in my view the band has released quality music throughout their career, still going strong at least on the touring circuit, eight studio albums (though none since 2012) since the plane crash in 1977. Yet they aren’t always given a chance by fans of the so-called original band and that’s fine, but those fans tend to forget or overlook that Skynyrd’s lineup, even during the so-called classic years and they were of course the foundation upon which the reputation was built, was relatively fluid and changing, easily looked up. Guitarist Steve Gaines, for instance, who tragically perished in the plane crash, seems to be looked upon in some quarters as an original member yet, brilliant as he was, he only played on one studio album, the pre-crash 1977 release Street Survivors and before that, the 1976 live album One More From The Road.

3. Johnny Winter, Feedback On Highway 101 . . . Boogie rocker from Winter’s 1974 album Saints & Sinners. It was written by Van Morrison and targeted for Van The Man’s 1973 album Hard Nose The Highway but shelved, only appearing on bootlegs, with Winter’s cover to my knowledge the only official commercial release.

4. The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Arroyo . . . Funky country blues from the band’s 1976 album Men From Earth. Like many, perhaps, for the longest time I was satisfied with knowing the Daredevils’ two mid-1970s hits, Jackie Blue and If You Wanna Get To Heaven. Then, one day, I picked up, cheap in a used store, their 21-track CD compilation Time Warp: The Very Best Of The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, released in 2000. What a revelation. Great stuff, beyond those two aforementioned well-known hits, including a terrific swamp rock song, E.E. Lawson, I played back on my April 15, 2023 show. So it’s long past time I dug back into the Daredevils.

5. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, F*!#n’ Up . . . From Neil’s grungy, feedback- and distortion-laden 1990 album Ragged Glory and that it is, terrific unadulterated raunch and roll in all its glory. The chorus/hook “why do I keep effing up” is, I suppose, something we all feel from time to time as we may periodcally fall down, the key of course being to get back up. As time passes and now halfway into my seventh decade, as long as I maintain roof overhead and food on the table, I’m good.

6. Bob Seger, Love The One You’re With . . . Seger’s cover of Stephen Still’s 1970 hit single, from Stills’ self-titled debut solo album. Seger did it on his 1972 mostly-covers release, Smokin’ O.P.’s, which apparently stood for ‘smoking other people’s songs’. Among the other songs on a solid, mostly hard-rocking record are Bo Diddley’s Bo Diddley, Tim Hardin’s If I Were A Carpenter and Chuck Berry’s Let It Rock along with Seger’s own Heavy Music. Heavy Music, Bo Diddley and Let It Rock became staples of Seger’s early concerts and appeared on his first live album, Live Bullet, released in 1976.

7. John Mellencamp, French Shoes . . . A seeming diatribe against a man’s choice of footwear, the Los Angeles Times’ review said the lyrics – “you know the type, without any heels, leather soles, kind of a slip-on deal; no man should be wearin’ those funny French shoes” were ‘vaguely homophobic’ as Mellencamp goes on with this passage “I know it’s not right to judge a man by his clothes, by the way he looks or the people he may know; I’m embarrassed to say if I had to choose I could never really trust any man wearing those funny French shoes.”

Hmm. I just like the musical groove on this one, from Mellencamp’s 1993 album Human Wheels.

8. Pretenders, Pop Star . . . Biting, cynical lyrics about music and celebrity culture in general, set to a driving, infectious, raw beat with a razor-like riff, topped as always on Pretenders material by Chrissie Hynde’s uniquely compelling vocals. From the 1999 album Viva El Amor!

9. Ten Years After, Let The Sky Fall . . . Melodic rocker from TYA’s A Space In Time album. It was released in 1971 and featured a less heavy sound but as compelling in its way as the harder mostly blues rock of previous efforts and resulted in the hit single I’d Love To Change The World.

10. Bruce Springsteen, Blinded By The Light . . . From Springsteen’s 1973 debut album, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. The song came about when Columbia Records president Clive Davis listened to an early version of the album and felt it lacked a potential single. So Springsteen wrote Blinded By The Light and Spirit In The Night, both of which became hit singles with Blinded By The Light going to No. 1 in 1976 — for Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. I like the Springsteen versions of each song as much, though. Springsteen’s wordplay is more pronounced and compelling in his versions, particularly I’d suggest in Blinded By the Light, while musically, arguably, Manfred Mann’s takes are more striking. To me it’s akin to hearing Bob Dylan’s original All Along The Watchtower, a lyrical tour de force as is so much Dylan, as compared to the famous Jimi Hendrix musical reinvention.

11. Black Sabbath, The Shining . . . Typical monumental riffing from guitarist Tony Iommi on this one, from the 1987 album The Eternal Idol, during the arguably underappreciated Tony Martin on lead vocals era. It was a period during which Iommi was the lone constant in a revolving door of musicians that sometimes included original bassist Geezer Butler and also featured, at times, noted drummer Cozy Powell, although it’s former Kiss sticksman Eric Singer on this album.

12. Robert Palmer, Under Suspicion . . . A lament to lost love, “under suspicion of leaving the scene of a broken heart/a hit and run love affair’. It’s from Palmer’s 1979 album Secrets which is what got me – and perhaps many others – into his material via such hits as the Moon Martin-penned track Bad Case Of Lovin’ You (Doctor Doctor), Jealous and Todd Rundgren’s Can We Still Be Friends?

13. Dead Kennedys, Police Truck . . . A staccato driving riff by Raymond John “East Bay Ray” Pepperall of the San Francisco Bay Area punk/hardcore band on this satirical attack on police brutality. It was released in 1980 as the B-side to the single Holiday In Cambodia, one of my go-to Dead Kennedys tracks I’ve previously played on the show, along with Too Drunk To Fuck. Reading about musicians’ influences I always find interesting given the genres they wind up working most often in, like punk rock. But music is an art form of time, place and mood such that you can be listening to jazz one minute and metal the next. In Pepperall’s case, his musical education was broad in a household where his parents listened to a wide range of music including blues artists like Muddy Waters, jazz like Count Basie and folk/protest singer/songwriters like Pete Seeger. Once he picked up a guitar himself, he was fueled by such disparate sounds as Syd Barrett on Pink Floyd’s debut album The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, The Ohio Players and Elvis Presley’s renowned guitarist Scotty Moore, as well as the music of spaghetti western movies.

14. Ozzy Osbourne, Diary Of A Madman . . . Ever-changing from slow to fast, soft and heavy and back again title track from Ozzy’s second solo album after his departure from Black Sabbath, released a year after his debut Blizzard Of Ozz came out in 1980.

15. Talking Heads, Memories Can’t Wait . . . A random selection as I happened to pick out a mix CD I burned years ago of tracks by Talking Heads, Martha and The Muffins, B-52s, The Monks and The Cars for some listening in the car while doing errands and such last week. Memories Can’t Wait, with that mesmerizing bass line, is from the 1979 album Fear Of Music and, while it’s a pretty well-known Talking Heads track, was perhaps surprisingly never released as a single although it’s wound up on several compilations of the band’s work. Life During Wartime – ‘this ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around, no time for dancing, or lovey dovey, I ain’t got time for that now’ etc. – was the hit single from Fear Of Music, an excellent album.

16. Small Faces, The Autumn Stone . . . Rod Stewart came to mind to play, and he’s coming up, but that thought process led me to a mini-set featuring Faces, Small included, and some of the people involved before and during the time Stewart was in the group. Small Faces featured Steve Marriott on lead vocals, guitar, harmonica and piano, Ronnie Lane bass and vocals, Ian McLagan on keyboards and Kenney Jones on drums. The Autumn Stone, a beautiful if haunting folk-rock song, wasn’t released until a 1969 compilation of live songs and unreleased studio cuts called In Memoriam (for that version of the band) after Marriott left to form Humble Pie with Peter Frampton. Stewart and Ron Wood came from the Jeff Beck Group to fill out the roster of what became known as, simply, Faces – apparently partly due to the fact Stewart and Wood were taller than the other guys hence ‘Small’ would no longer have made sense. Unless they called it Small/Tall Faces.

17. Jeff Beck, Let Me Love You . . . Heavy blues rock from 1968 and the Truth is, OK I couldn’t resist that play on the album title, it’s an essential release for anyone interested in what’s become known as classic rock music. Jeff Beck on guitar, Rod Stewart lead vocals, Ron Wood bass, Mick Waller on drums. After one more album, Beck-Ola, together, the band broke up with Stewart and Wood, now on guitar as well as occasional bass, were off to lend some height, and a raunchier sound, to Small Faces.

18. Small Faces/Faces, Three Button Hand Me Down . . . They were still called Small Faces, in some quarters at least, which is why I’ve listed the artist as Small Faces/Faces. This boogie rocker is from 1970’s First Step, the reconfigured band’s, er, first step together with the new boys on the album cover along with the holdovers although depending on the market in which the record was released, it was credited either to Small Faces (like my copy, in North America) or Faces, elsewhere. Ron Wood, sitting in the middle of the group photo, holds a copy of the book First Step: How to Play the Guitar Plectrum (pick) Style, evidently symbolic of the fact he’d moved from bass with Jeff Beck’s band to guitar with Faces.

19. Faces, Maybe I’m Amazed (live) . . . Live version of the Paul McCartney classic. It was recorded at Fillmore East in New York City and, along with another cover, of the Big Bill Broonzy song I Feel So Good, placed on the otherwise all studio second Faces album, Long Player, released in 1971. Rod Stewart’s intro: “Here’s one you may well know, you may not know it, and if you don’t know it I really don’t know where you’ve been, so you should know the tune, here we go . . . ”

20. Rod Stewart, Seems Like A Long Time . . . From Every Picture Tells A Story, the 1971 Stewart solo album that included his big hit single Maggie May. Stewart, who had a concurrent solo and Faces career between 1969 and 1974, was often backed by all or some members of Faces on his solo releases, with Ron Wood on guitar and Ian McLagan on organ on Every Picture Tells A Story. On drums was Stewart and Wood’s former Jeff Beck bandmate Mick Waller. The years 1969-74 were a remarkable creative time for Stewart, nicely described in the liner notes to a 3-CD package, Reason To Believe: The Complete Mercury Studio Recordings containing every studio album plus non-album rarities he recorded for the label: “The seamless blend of electric and acoustic instrumentation employed blurred the lines between the blues, rock, folk, country and soul.” It’s my favorite Stewart period although 1975-77, after Faces broke up and featuring the albums Atlantic Crossing, A Night On The Town and Footloose & Fancy Free, has much to recommend it.

21. George Thorogood, No Expectations . . . I started the set with the Stones, ending with them, sort of. Here’s Thorogood’s pretty faithful to the original cover of the Beggars Banquet tune, from his 2017 solo album Party Of One. No Destroyers, just Thorogood and his guitar doing songs such as Willie Dixon’s Wang Dang Doodle, John Lee Hooker’s Boogie Chillen and Elmore James’ The Sky Is Crying. Other notable covers of No Expectations – I should play them sometime – are uptempo takes by Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings on the bluesy acoustic original.

So Old It’s New ‘weird shit’ (a shit-show, perhaps?) and a few other things, curios and otherwise, that struck my fancy in assembling this set. Lots of Pink Floyd to start, from a couple albums that Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, according to one of my books on the band, did actually refer to as “our weird shit” period. My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. Pink Floyd, Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast (Rise and Shine/Sunny Side Up/Morning Glory)
2. Pink Floyd, Atom Heart Mother (Father’s Shout/Breasty Milky/Mother Fore/Funky Dung/Mind Your Throats Please/Remergence)
3. Pink Floyd, Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict
4. Pink Floyd, The Grand Vizer’s Garden Party: Entrance/Entertainment/Exit
5. Pink Floyd, A Saucerful Of Secrets (live, from Ummagumma)
6. The Beatles, Revolution 1
7. The Beatles, Revolution 9
8. Plastic Ono Band, John John (Let’s Hope For Peace) (live)
9. The Rolling Stones, Country Honk
10. Frank Zappa, He Used To Cut The Grass
11. Soft Machine, All White
12. King Crimson, Book Of Saturday
13. Genesis, Duke’s Travels/Duke’s End

My track-by-track tales:

1. Pink Floyd, Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast (Rise and Shine/Sunny Side Up/Morning Glory) . . . A 13-minute ‘song’ in three sections during which Floyd roadie Alan Stiles goes about his morning routine, talks about liking marmalade among other things, fries some bacon, pours some cereal into a bowl, etc. all to interspersed musical accompaniment, mostly piano/keyboards and acoustic guitar but the full band does get into it in the concluding Morning Glory segment. This was actually the last track on the 1970 album Atom Heart Mother, the one with the cow – named Lulabelle III, apparently – on the cover but, since this is a morning show logic dictates I serve breakfast first. The ‘Psychedelic’ in the title is rooted in at least one of the many species of morning glory plants whose seeds contain a hallucinogen. Pink Floyd performed the piece a handful of times on stage, during which roadies cooked and fed the band breakfast and the group took time, as is the English way, for tea.

2. Pink Floyd, Atom Heart Mother (Father’s Shout/Breasty Milky/Mother Fore/Funky Dung/Mind Your Throats Please/Remergence) . . . This was the first track on the album, an almost 24-minute instrumental epic in six movements taking up the entire side one of the original vinyl, as Pink Floyd gets to the heart of the matter. Speaking of ‘Breasty Milky’ it could lend itself to the cow on the album cover but, apparently, from my readings the cow cover – and no text whatsoever to indicate the artist behind the album – was deliberately designed to have no meaning or relation to the songs within, hmm . . . as with all art, likely best left open to interpretation.

3. Pink Floyd, Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict . . . Arguably, the best parts of Ummagumma are the live album – which I dip into shortly – and the front and back covers although there are interesting or bizarre, depending on one’s point of view, experimental excursions – like this one – on the studio album portion.

The front cover is a Droste Effect (a repeated picture within a picture within a picture . . . ) of the four band members, although it’s not exactly the same picture as they shift positions in each image. It’s one of the most well-known covers in rock music. Guitarist David Gilmour sits on a chair in a doorway in the foreground of the lead image, with bassist Roger Waters sitting on the floor behind him, drummer Nick Mason standing looking skyward behind Waters and keyboardist Richard Wright doing a shoulder stand on the grass, behind Mason. Gilmour then moves to the grass as the last person in ‘line’ in the second image – although I always noticed he doesn’t do the shoulder stand as well as the others, maybe intentionally, who knows; Gilmour splayed his legs open while everyone else held them tight together – with Waters moving up to sit in the chair, Mason sitting on the floor and Wright standing where Mason was, and back, back, back it goes.

Fascinating stuff when you’re a 10-year-old kid in 1969 and your older brother by eight years brings the album home; one can only imagine the effect of looking at it under the influence. I may have done so later on, when I started experimenting, but I can’t remember. I do remember in college, during a ‘stone’, a buddy of mine swimming, doing the crawl stroke including turning his head to the side to take breaths, on my apartment carpet to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon while another friend begged me not to under any circumstances put on any Emerson, Lake & Palmer when I went to grab another LP, because in his stoned state he figured he couldn’t handle it.

“No, no, no, not that,” is an exact quote. I would have thought Floyd was more ‘damaging’ than ELP, but our minds all work in their individual ways and I suppose the album title and artwork of Brain Salad Surgery, or Tarkus (a giant armadillo tank) could send you for a loop, in a stoned state or otherwise.

Back to Ummagumma. The back cover is Floyd roadies Alan Styles (him again, from Atom Heart Mother’s Psychedelic Breakfast) and Peter Watts standing on an airport runway with the band’s impressive array of equipment arranged in the shape of an arrowhead, set up to create the illusion of a military aircraft about to take off with its payload.

The ‘song’ about furry animals grooving with a Pict (an indigenous people living in what is now Scotland during the Middle Ages) is a Roger Waters soundscape, including some spoken-word passages, as one of five studio creations on the album. Each band member got one track except for Waters with two, his other one the more conventional pastoral ballad Grantchester Meadows, very nice piece actually, complete with bird sounds throughout, along with a buzzing bee that gets swatted at the abrupt end, appropriately enough, for the insect.

4. Pink Floyd, The Grand Vizer’s Garden Party: Entrance/Entertainment/Exit . . . A drum and percussion showcase, with flute passages by Nick Mason’s then wife Lindy, an accomplished flautist, on Mason’s studio track on Ummagumma. The name of the album is an English slang term for sex, although in the book Pink Floyd: All The Songs – The Story Behind Every Track, Mason suggests the title meant nothing, it just “sounded interesting and nice.” It’s also been suggested, according to the same book, that it could be a tribute to the Dune science fiction universe since Umma means prophet in one of the languages spoken in author Frank Herbert’s creation. As for the other individual members’ studio tracks that I’m not playing (perhaps I should do an Ummagumma full album play), Gilmour in some parts of his The Narrow Way gives a hint of the type of playing that was to come on the epic Echoes from 1971’s Meddle album, while keyboardist Wright runs the gamut of classical, symphonic and experimental music on his four-part Sysyphus instrumental piece, named after the character Sisyphus in Greek mythology condemned to roll a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back, endlessly. Wright chose to spell his piece Sysyphus, reasons unclear, perhaps he liked the ‘sysy’ effect.

5. Pink Floyd, A Saucerful Of Secrets (live, from Ummagumma) . . . Terrific version, some have suggested it’s the definitive take and I can see/hear it, of the instrumental title track to Floyd’s 1968 studio album, recorded in the UK in the spring of 1969. The other live tracks on Ummagumma are Astronomy Domine, Careful With That Axe, Eugene and Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun.

6. The Beatles, Revolution 1 . . . If you want fast hard rock, you listen to the best-known version of Revolution, released as the B-side of the No. 1 smash hit Hey Jude but Revolution of course a Beatles’ classic in its own right that topped charts in some countries and made No. 12 on the US Billboard list. If you want a laid-back, bluesy version, you listen to Revolution 1, very cool, I think, from The Beatles (aka likely best known as The White Album). If you want experimental . . .

7. The Beatles, Revolution 9 . . . It’s Number 9, Number 9, Number 9 . . . you know it, you love it or hate it, but there it is, the John Lennon-Yoko Ono soundscape production. You never know what you’ll discover on repeat listens, which I’ll admit don’t happen often, it’s usually a skip for me while listening to the album which is why you discover, or rediscover, new things when you come to it fresh after a long period of avoidance. Originally, Revolution 1 was a shade over 10 minutes long, with the last six minutes of experimental sounds winding up being cut and forming the basis of Revolution 9. George Harrison participated in the production of 9 but Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr didn’t, and McCartney didn’t want it on the album. He wasn’t necessarily opposed to the piece, he just didn’t think such a release should come under The Beatles name.

According to All The Songs – The Story Behind Every Beatles Release, McCartney took Revolution 9’s presence on The White Album, to quote from the book, “very badly, especially since he was very much involved in the avant-garde and had already created a similar sound edit in January 1967 for the Carnival of Light for the London Roundhouse Theatre. He had worked on it with The Beatles, but had never considered it a work that would fit on a Beatles album.” The session, and sounds coming out of it, for the Carnival of Light track is described in Mark Lewisohn’s superbly comprehensive book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions – The Official Story Of The Abbey Road Years.

As for All The Songs, it’s a great series of hefty hardcovers that recently took flight, quite a number of them now and more coming including one on Fleetwood Mac due for publication in 2025. Others in the series I own are on Pink Floyd, as mentioned earlier, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Others on my list, when time and money permit although I’ve flipped the ones I’ve seen in bookstores, are on David Bowie, Queen, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Led Zeppelin and Metallica, among others including Prince, Michael Jackson and Dolly Parton.

8. Plastic Ono Band, John John (Let’s Hope For Peace) . . . Speaking of ‘weird’ . . . It’s a Yoko creation from Plastic Ono Band – Live Peace In Toronto 1969 at the Rock and Roll Revival festival, an event played by John Lennon’s hastily-assembled band that included guitarist Eric Clapton, future Yes drummer Alan White and longtime Beatles’ associate Klaus Voorman on bass. And Yoko, on lead and backing vocals, ‘wind’ and ‘presence’ on such tracks as this one, one of two Ono songs comprising side two of the original vinyl. Side one featured rock and roll standards like Money and Blue Suede Shoes, plus The Beatles’ Yer Blues, written by Lennon, and Lennon/Plastic Ono Band songs Cold Turkey and Give Peace A Chance. That side met with generally positive reviews, the Yoko side, not so much.

Here’s a hilarious take on Yoko’s performance from an archived allmusic site review that’s on the Live Peace In Toronto album’s Wikipedia page and I confirmed by finding the original on a web search, although you won’t see it now on allmusic. It seems to have been edited out and while the review of her part of the album retains parts of the original review, it’s much less harsh. But the original is worthwhile reading and some would no doubt think, bang on:

“Side two, alas, was devoted entirely to Ono’s wailing, pitchless, brainless, banshee vocalizing on “Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking For Her Hand In The Snow)” and “John John (Let’s Hope for Peace)” – the former backed with plodding rock rhythms and the latter with feedback. No wonder you see many used copies of the LP with worn A-sides and clean, unplayed B-sides – and Yoko’s “art” is just as irritating today as it was in 1969. But in those days, if you wanted John you had to take the whole package.”

Yet, in listening to the entire 13 minutes of John John in prepping the show . . . call me crazy but it’s actually digestible and not as bad as I remember when, like a lot of people, I probably played side two of the album just once, first listen when I got the record, due to what I used to describe as Yoko’s ‘haiiiyi yi yip yip yipping’, or something like that. And I’m likely not alone in thinking that the applause from the audience after her tracks wasn’t in appreciation but rather more a ‘Thank God it’s over’ response. Iggy Pop, though, said he found the Yoko side more interesting and I can see the musically adventurous Pop thinking that, while Perry Farrell of alternative rock band Jane’s Addiction, according to Wikipedia, said Ono’s sound experimentations were a cornerstone of his musical education.

I will say that I’m still not necessarily a fan of Yoko’s music or however one would term what she does and has done, but she has become let’s say more palatable to me over time. For instance, I – and many others – hated it when I first got Lennon’s 1980 comeback from five years away album Double Fantasy which was sequenced as a Lennon track, then a Yoko track, etc. which meant you, back in the original vinyl days, had to keep lifting the needle off the record just to hear Lennon’s stuff unlike once CDs came into existence you could program around Yoko. One solution at the time was, just make a cassette tape of the album, sans Yoko. Yet in listening to some of that stuff now, not saying she’s great or whatever, parts of me will always think she was just an opportunist, but as mentioned, it’s actually listenable, Talking Heads-ish in spots, etc. Or, you can call me crazy.

9. The Rolling Stones, Country Honk . . . Much more conventional music now but still something of a curio from the Let It Bleed album, this country version of Honky Tonk Women, an homage to artists such as Hank Williams. It was one of the first Stones tracks guitarist Mick Taylor played on, as he also did on the universally-known hit single. Keith Richards, who was friends and sharing musical ideas with country rock artist Gram Parsons at the time, is on record as saying this version is how he originally envisioned Honky Tonk Women. And while reviews seem divided on Country Honk, I can see the merits in it, but obviously to most ears I think Honky Tonky Women is ‘the’ version. It’s perhaps akin to The Beatles’ Revolution 1 and Revolution, the rock single version.

10. Frank Zappa, He Used To Cut The Grass . . . Improvisational excellence featuring Zappa’s typical great guitar, from the 1979 album Joe’s Garage. Is it jazz, is it rock . . . It’s Zappa music.

11. Soft Machine, All White . . . From Fifth, the 1972 album, yes, the fifth by the band, by which time the ever-changing in both members and music Soft Machine had abandoned vocals entirely and gone from progressive and psychedelic experimental rock to working almost entirely within the jazz idiom. Soft Machine was inactive as a group in terms of studio releases between 1981 and 2018, when several former members revived the brand with a new studio album, Hidden Details, following up with Other Doors in 2023.

12. King Crimson, Book Of Saturdays . . . Beautiful acoustic track featuring the nice touch of a violin player, new member at the time David Cross, from the 1973 album Larks’ Tongues In Aspic. It was the fifth studio album by King Crimson which, aside from the one constant in guitarist/leader Robert Fripp was, like Soft Machine, an ever-evolving project that Fripp, by all accounts, put to bed permanently after a 2021 tour.

13. Genesis, Duke’s Travels/Duke’s End . . . Classic closing suite featuring some great drumming by Phil Collins as Genesis seemed to perfectly balance their progressive rock origins with their newfound affinity for pop music on Duke, the band’s 1980 album.

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

1. The Law, Laying Down The Law
2. Chris Whitley, Phone Call From Leavenworth
3. Joe Satriani, Clouds Race Across The Sky
4. War, Galaxy
5. Ohio Players, Good Luck Charm
6. David Wilcox, Cheap Beer Joint
7. Van Morrison, Moonshine Whiskey
8. The White Stripes, One More Cup Of Coffee
9. Supertramp, Child Of Vision
10. Midnight Oil, Seeing Is Believing
11. Love, The Castle
12. Iggy Pop, Wild America
13. Gary Moore, World Of Confusion
14. The Motels, Apocalypso
15. Doug And The Slugs, Tropical Rainstorm
16. Jimi Hendrix, In From The Storm
17. Styx, Man In The Wilderness
18. Status Quo, Softer Ride
19. Gov’t Mule, Inside Outside Woman Blues #3
20. The Rolling Stones, Till The Next Goodbye

My track-by-track tales:

1. The Law, Laying Down The Law . . . I forgot about this Paul Rodgers-penned tune when I did a mini-Rodgers set last Saturday featuring a song each from his solo career and time with Free, Bad Company and The Firm. He also did one album with drummer Kenney Jones of Faces and The Who fame, in 1991, under the banner of The Law. To me this Bad Company-like song is the best on the record and actually hit No. 2 on the US singles charts (No. 68 in Canada) but then it’s going to sound like that, or Free, with Rodgers singing. Among those playing on various tracks on the album were David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame, Chris Rea and Pino Palladino, who toured as The Who’s bass player after the death of John Entwistle and played on the band’s two – so far – 21st century studio albums, Endless Wire (2006) and WHO (2019). Palladino is a prolific session bassist who has also worked with Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Don Henley, among many others.

2. Chris Whitley, Phone Call From Leavenworth . . . Acoustic bluesy brilliance from the late Whitley, lost to us at age 45, in 2005, of lung cancer. But he left behind lots of not always commercially successful but nevertheless fine albums, perhaps the best of which remains his debut, the 1991 release Living With The Law from which I pulled this track. As for Leavenworth, I recommend the book The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison by Pete Early which I read years ago. It’s a harrowing, rivetting trip into the US prison system in general and, at least as of Early’s 1992 book, what was considered among the most notorious, dreaded facilities in America. It apparently remains so.

I have no opinion on it, not trying to be political in any way and I don’t imagine victims of the incarcerated criminals would have much if any sympathy. I was just thinking of the song, remembered the book I’d read years ago, and researched the prison to the present day so I’m merely an observer. Leavenworth, in May, 2024, came out of a 2-month lockdown on inmates’ movements and daily routines imposed because a firearm got into the facility. Friends and family of inmates say conditions inside the prison are inhumane while the employees’ union says the prison is woefully understaffed, leading to problems. A story via a Kansas City TV station.

3. Joe Satriani, Clouds Race Across The Sky . . . A jazzy sort of trip from Satriani’s electronic music oriented 2000 album Engines Of Creation. It was originally titled As They Sleep, referring to Satriani watching his wife and son sleeping while “having metaphysical questions race through my head” as he wrote in the liner notes to the 2-CD collection The Essential Joe Satriani. He later changed the title to Clouds Race Across The Sky as he sat on his porch one night, strumming his guitar while watching the clouds do exactly that, as he contemplated life and our place in it.

4. War, Galaxy . . . Funky title track to War’s 1977 album from the band that brought us such hits as Why Can’t We Be Friends?, Low Rider and The Cisco Kid after starting their career with two albums collaborating with Eric Burdon of The Animals fame, which produced the hit Spill The Wine.

5. Ohio Players, Good Luck Charm . . . An extended piece of nearly 10 minutes, more in a jazz vein than perhaps more typical Ohio Players funky, raunchy fare like Love Rollercoaster; this one’s sultry smooth. From the 1977 album Mr. Mean.

6. David Wilcox, Cheap Beer Joint . . . If ever a song matched its title . . . you feel like you’re in a smoky dive listening to it. Nothing wrong with dive bars, they have character. And characters. Wilcox, who cut his teeth with Ian and Sylvia Tyson’s Great Speckled Bird, playing on the second and third of that group’s three studio albums, later went solo and has been a perennial on the Canadian music scene since his first album, Out Of The Woods, was released in 1977. I saw/heard him play most of it, including this bluesy barroom song, while working in an Oakville, Ontario bar myself paying my way through college. If you’re wondering, the bar I worked in wasn’t a dive but rather a multiple-room place – live rock bands upstairs, a disco on the ground floor, a folk band-oriented intimate room a floor down and a summertime patio bar beside one of the rivers/creeks that flows through town. It was called, naturally, The Riverside, later Sharkey’s, now long gone.

7. Van Morrison, Moonshine Whiskey . . . Terrific ever-changing tempo country rock/soul tune from 1971’s Tupelo Honey album. Ronnie Montrose of Montrose band fame was the lead guitarist on the album that was produced by Ted Templeman, who has worked a few Van The Man albums along with Montrose, Van Halen and Doobie Brothers releases, among many others, over the course of his lengthy career.

8. The White Stripes, One More Cup Of Coffee . . . As a big Bob Dylan fan I hereby put my stamp of approval on this cover of one of my favorite Dylan songs, which he released on his 1976 album Desire. That said, nobody can sing the line “Your daddy, he’s an outlaw and a wanderer by trade, he’ll teach you how to pick and choose, and how to throw the blade” like Dylan. In Dylan-speak, it’s ‘blade-uh”.

9. Supertramp, Child Of Vision . . . It might sound sacrilegious to some, but of Supertramp’s big four albums – Crime Of The Century, Crisis? What Crisis?, Even In The Quietest Moments and Breakfast In America, Breakfast – the most successful one commercially – is my least favorite. Probably because hit singles like The Logical Song, Goodbye Stranger and Take The Long Way Home have been played to the point of overkill. It’s a great album, don’t get me wrong, and I loved it when it came out, saw the tour in Toronto but, well, beyond the overplayed hits, it’s a bit too pop for me compared to the previous three records. But, this is why you have deeper cuts, like Child Of Vision from Breakfast, which I’d suggest harkens back to earlier Supertramp, with the last four minutes or so of this 7:31-long track a nice keyboard-dominated instrumental.

10. Midnight Oil, Seeing Is Believing . . . As is hearing. Great groove on this one. The opening riff/hook, which repeats at points throughout, sounds almost like, but different enough, from the James Bond theme I opened last Monday’s show with. Seeing Is Believing is from one of my favorite if relatively underappreciated Midnight Oil albums, the almost metallic/industrial-sounding 1998 release Redneck Wonderland.

11. Love, The Castle . . . Inventive playing and tempo changes on this psychedelic/progressive rock tune – all in three minutes – from Love’s second album, the 1966 release Da Capo.

12. Iggy Pop, Wild America . . . Grungy, metallic rocker from Pop’s 1993 album American Caesar. Terrific tune. Song-title wise, maybe 30 years ahead of its time, given last week’s election results? Relax, I’m just having fun.

13. Gary Moore, World Of Confusion . . . I’ve heard this song, a Moore original, described as “Manic Depression (by Jimi Hendrix) on steroids” and it is very derivative of the Hendrix song and we’ll get to Jimi in a bit. A nice heavy one, regardless, from Moore’s 2002 album Scars.

14. The Motels, Apocalypso . . . Latinesque in spots, to my ears, with some sterling saxophone from the band’s keyboard player Marty Jourard supporting the distinctive singing of Martha Davis, the band’s chief songwriter who also plays guitar. It’s from the new wave/pop band’s All Four One album, released in 1982. It was The Motels’ commercial breakthrough with hits Take The L and Only The Lonely which the group followed on 1983’s Little Robbers release with the hit Suddenly Last Summer. All Four One was originally to be titled Apocalypso but that version of the album was rejected by the record company as being too dark and not having any potential hits, although Only The Lonely was on the track list albeit in a less polished, production-wise, form. So the entire album was redone and came out as All Four One. Some Motels fans prefer the more raw version but the redo served its intended purpose as All Four One sold well. The Apocalpyso album was eventually released in 2011, 30 years after its recording. There’s an 18-minute YouTube video comparing the two albums I discovered while putting the show together, worthwhile viewing to anyone interested.

15. Doug And The Slugs, Tropical Rainstorm . . . The hit was the pop song Too Bad and I like it but this bluesy cut is one of my favorites from the Canadian band’s 1980 debut album Cognac and Bologna, and one of my favorite Slugs tunes, period. A clear case where what you hear released as singles isn’t always truly representative of a band or, at least, some of what they can do.

16. Jimi Hendrix, In From The Storm . . . Good rocker in an R & B vein, which is supposedly the direction Hendrix was heading before he died. In From The Storm came out on The Cry Of Love album in 1971, the first posthumous Hendrix release after his death in September, 1970. The entire Cry Of Love album was re-issued in 1997 as part of First Rays Of The New Rising Sun, put together by the Hendrix family trust on its Experience Hendrix label. Experience Hendrix re-released The Cry Of Love, on its own, in 2014.

17. Styx, Man In The Wilderness . . . Originally a six-minute album track on the band’s 1977 record The Grand Illusion, this is the previously unreleased full version, a minute longer, that came out on the 2004 double disc compilation Come Sail Away – The Styx Anthology. That release was retitled Gold in 2006 as part of Universal Music’s compilation series and it’s all I need of Styx. I was never a huge fan, my younger brother was, although I do like most of the hits of theirs that I know plus Miss America, a good rocker from The Grand Illusion that wasn’t released as a single but is on Gold. So it is a good comp in that sense as it digs relatively deep. Lyrically, Man In The Wilderness what one would expect from its title, someone trying to find themselves. Musically, it starts as a power ballad of sorts before transitioning into a guitar riff and soloing showcase about midway through, on both versions of the song.

18. Status Quo, Softer Ride . . . Softer, for about a minute of funky finger-picking on the four-minute tune before things heat up on a nice boogie rocker from Quo’s 1973 album Hello! It was their sixth studio album and first UK chart-topper.

19. Gov’t Mule, Inside Outside Woman Blues #3 . . . Nine minutes of bluesy, metallic, hard-rocking guitar-shredding from Warren Haynes and the boys, from the 2009 album By A Thread. The record was co-produced by Haynes and Gordie Johnson of Big Sugar and Grady fame, who has worked with Gov’t Mule on several albums among his many production credits.
“The number “3” refers to the fact that we did three versions of it, and we liked all three of them, so we included ‘3’ on the CD,” Haynes told The Washington Post upon the album’s release. “No. 1 is on the vinyl and No. 2 will come out somewhere — we’re not sure exactly where — but eventually all three versions will be available. 1 and 2 are just live performances with the vocal and all the instrumentation going to tape live, as if we were on stage, so they just kind of have their own vibe. They differ a bit in arrangement and from a sonic perspective, but mostly in the interpretation and the improvisation.”

Version 1 is on YouTube; I’ve never seen or heard Version 2 but maybe, as Haynes said, it’s out there somewhere.

20. The Rolling Stones, Till The Next Goodbye . . . A lovely ballad from 1974’s It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll album as I say adios, for this show, at least.

I start with a four-song ‘sung by Paul Rodgers’ set from various stages of the great singer’s career with The Firm (along with Jimmy Page), Free, Bad Company and as a solo artist. Then on to a few songs – Pete Townshend, Bob Dylan and three involving session keyboardist to the stars Nicky Hopkins – inspired by conversations I had with friends this past week. I wrap up with Neil Young, some reggae, Deep Purple and The Allman Brothers Band.

1. The Firm, Midnight Moonlight
2. Paul Rodgers, Morning After The Night Before
3. Free, Come Together In The Morning
4. Bad Company, Electricland
5. Pete Townshend, Sheraton Gibson
6. Bob Dylan, Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands
7. Nicky Hopkins/Ry Cooder/Mick Jagger/Bill Wyman/Charlie Watts, Blow With Ry
8. Nicky Hopkins/Ry Cooder/Mick Jagger/Bill Wyman/Charlie Watts, Edward’s Thrump Up
9. Quicksilver Messenger Service, Edward, The Mad Shirt Grinder
10. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Sedan Delivery
11. Peter Tosh, Stepping Razor
12. Bob Marley and The Wailers, Concrete Jungle
13. Deep Purple, The Mule
14. The Allman Brothers Band, Mountain Jam (live)

My track-by-track tales:

1. The Firm, Midnight Moonlight . . . From the 1980s supergroup’s self-titled debut album, released in 1985 and featuring singer Paul Rodgers of Free and Bad Company fame and former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. Also on board were drummer Chris Slade (Manfred Mann’s Earth Band and later AC/DC, notably on the Razors Edge album) and bassist Tony Franklin. Franklin’s extensive resume includes Page’s 1988 album Outrider and several albums with English folk rock singer/songwriter/guitarist Roy Harper, with whom Page and Zeppelin had a long association, including naming the song Hats Off To (Roy) Harper, from Led Zeppelin III, after him. Harper is also known for his lead vocals on Pink Floyd’s Have A Cigar, from the 1975 album Wish You Were Here.

A nine-minute combination acoustic/electric guitar-based track that ebbs and flows along depending which guitar takes the spotlight along with Rodgers’ vocals, Midnight Moonlight is rooted in the sessions for the Led Zeppelin album Physical Graffiti, released in 1975. It was then titled Swan Song (also the name of Led Zeppelin’s record label) but left unfinished at that point although it is available on YouTube. After a second album, Mean Business, released in 1986, The Firm closed up shop.

2. Paul Rodgers, Morning After The Night Before . . . Appropriate title and tune, for some mornings, perhaps. It’s a good one, a catchy mid-tempo rocker about life on the rock and roll road featuring lyrics like “the morning after the night before, I pick up my suitcase and I head for the door, I may never see this old room again, but the one I’m headed for will be exactly the same” later changing to “I may never see this room again, but I’ll always remember your voice (later changing to your face) and your name . . . ” It’s likely my favorite on Rodgers’ first solo album, Cut Loose, released in 1983 after the breakup of the original Bad Company. It’s a solo album in the truest sense of the term as Rodgers wrote and sang every song, played every instrument – guitar, bass, drums and keyboards – and produced the disc.

3. Free, Come Together In The Morning . . . The beautiful and bluesy sounds of Free, from the band’s final studio album, Heartbreaker, released in 1973.

4. Bad Company, Electricland . . . From Rough Diamonds, the 1982 album that was the last for the original lineup of Rodgers, guitarist Mick Ralphs, bassist Boz Burrell and drummer Simon Kirke. It tends to get critically panned but, and granted I’m a fan of anything Rodgers has been involved in, particularly Free and Bad Company, but I’ve always liked the album particularly this nice groove track and Painted Face, both written by Rodgers. He apparently wrote it while flying into Las Vegas, hence lyrics like “the neon lights go flashing by, electric land is in my eyes, the underworld is on the move and everybody’s got something to prove . . . ”

5. Pete Townshend, Sheraton Gibson . . . First of a few songs in what I’ll call my “inspiration from conversation” set within the overall list. I played The Who’s Quadrophenia album on last Saturday’s show and mid-week a friend texted me, talking about a Pete Townshend solo live performance of the Quadrophenia song I’m One (from Deep End Live!, released in 1986). There’s a lyric in that song “I got a Gibson, without a case . . . ” which my friend cited, prompting me to text back that he had reminded me of one of my favorite Townshend tunes, Sheraton Gibson. To which my friend replied “in my mind is a Cleveland afternoon”, one of the lines in Sheraton Gibson – which opens with the phrase, repeated throughout, “I’m sittin’ in the Sheraton Gibson playin’ my Gibson . . .”
The song, from Townshend’s first solo album, 1972’s Who Came First, is about missing home while on tour. I’ll let Townshend explain it, as he did in the liner notes to the expanded 2006 re-release of the album.

“I wrote this after a really good barbecue with the James Gang, their managers and families outside Cleveland. I had a good, good day. The next day (in Cincinnati), I was not only missing home as usual, but also Cleveland.”

Hence lyrics like “Cleveland, you blow my mind . . . thinkin’ about a sunny barbecue; I’m sittin’ in the Sheraton Gibson playin’ my Gibson, in my mind is a Cleveland afternoon.”

The Sheraton Gibson, a Cincinnati landmark since 1849, closed in 1974 but lives on in Townshend’s terrific tune.

6. Bob Dylan, Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands . . . That text chat got me thinking of hotels, which led me to thinking of the line from Dylan’s stirring song of memories and lament to his estranged wife Sara, who happened to visit the studio and have Dylan look at her and say ‘this one’s for you’ as he recorded the tune that appeared on his 1976 album Desire. She was stunned by the tribute, they reconciled but finally divorced in 1977.

“Stayin’ up for days in the Chelsea Hotel
Writin’ Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands for you”

So, I figured I’d play Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands, the epic 11-plus minute track from Dylan’s classic 1966 album Blonde On Blonde.

Sad Eyed Lady brings up another personal memory, about the song and the album from which it came. My older brother had always been into Dylan, which is how I was introduced to his music although for the most part I was into the hits or well-known songs – Like A Rolling Stone, Lay Lady Lay, Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, songs like Hurricane from the Desire album, etc. Then came the fall of 1981. I was in Peace River, Alberta, starting my journalism career, sharing a house with a few other people and one Sunday afternoon, everyone else was out and I was lying on the couch reading but noticed a friend’s pre-recorded cassette tape of Blonde On Blonde sitting on a coffee table. I popped it in and within moments down went the book – I am compelled to listen to Dylan undistracted, he’s not background music at least to me – and I lay back and let the album wash over me. Visions Of Johanna, Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, Sad Eyed Lady, on and on. I was transfixed and soon enough was catching up on his catalogue and then moving forward, album by album as they were released.

7. Nicky Hopkins/Ry Cooder/Mick Jagger/Bill Wyman/Charlie Watts, Blow With Ry . . . From Jamming With Edward, a pseudo-Rolling Stones release featuring their longtime session pianist/organist Hopkins and guitarist Cooder that a different friend of mine mentioned this week, we got discussing it, and here we are, the first of two tracks from it for this show. I’ve played material from Jamming With Edward before, but not recently. It was recorded in 1969 during the sessions for the Stones’ Let It Bleed album “while waiting for our guitar player to get out of bed” Mick Jagger writes about the absent Keith Richards in the liner notes to the album, finally released in 1972. It’s the kind of thing that, had it not been a band the stature of the Stones, had they not had their own label, Rolling Stones Records, chances are it would never have been released but it was, after being brought out of mothballs by producer Glyn Johns and Rolling Stones Records founding president Marshall Chess. People seem to like it or dismiss it or consign it to bootleg status, but I like it as do most Stones fans I know – it’s loose, sloppy and fun and there’s some fine, er, jamming on it. As the liner notes on the 1995 Virgin Records re-release state: A curio to top all curios, perhaps?

Here’s Jagger’s full notes/letter to buyers/listeners, from the original 1972 release, which tell the tale:

“Howdy doody whoever receives this record.

“Here’s a nice little piece of bullshit about this hot waxing which we cut one night in London, England while waiting for our guitar player to get out of bed. It was promptly forgotten (which may have been for the better) until it was unearthed from the family vaults by those two impressive entrepreneurs – Glyn Johns and Marshall Chess. It was they who convinced the artists that this historic jam of the giants should be unleashed on an unsuspecting public.

“As it cost about $2.98 to make the record, we thought that a price of $3.98 was appropriate for the finished product. I think that is about what it is worth. No doubt some stores may even give it away. The album consists of the Rolling Stones’ rhythm section plus solos from two instrumentalists – Nicky ‘Woof Woof’ Hopkins and Ry Cooder, plus the numbled bathroom mumblings of myself. I hope you spend longer listing to this record than we did making it.”

Yours faithfully,

Mick Jagger

The album made No. 7 on the Dutch charts and No. 33 on Billboard in the US.

As for the titular Edward, that’s Hopkins, who played not only with the Stones but countless artists including The Kinks, The Who, Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart and on solo albums by Beatles John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. The late Stones’ guitarist and founding member of the band, Brian Jones, bestowed the nickname on Hopkins during a 1967 session in London. The story goes that Jones was tuning his guitar and asked Hopkins to give him an E chord on piano. Given other studio noise, Hopkins couldn’t quite hear Jones so Jones shouted “Give me an E, like in Edward!” The rest, including some album and song titles, is history.

8. Nicky Hopkins/Ry Cooder/Mick Jagger/Bill Wyman/Charlie Watts, Edward’s Thrump Up . . . Song titles like this one for a nice groove track that is an eight-minute showcase for Hopkins’ talents.

9. Quicksilver Messenger Service, Edward, The Mad Shirt Grinder . . . Another piano showcase for Hopkins via this extended piece he wrote – as briefly a full-time group member – for the San Francisco psychedelic rock band’s 1969 album Shady Grove.

10. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Sedan Delivery . . . Dirty, gritty, grungy raunch and roll from 1979’s Rust Never Sleeps album.

11. Peter Tosh, Stepping Razor . . . A song written in 1967 by Joe Higgs, a mentor to many Jamaican reggae artists, including Tosh, Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff, who described him as the ‘Father of reggae’. Tosh released it on his second solo album after he left Marley’s Wailers, the 1977 record Equal Rights. Tosh originally credited it to himself and it’s his memorable performance that made the song well known but, after litigation, subsequent re-releases of the album – and appearances the song has made on Tosh compilations – have credited Higgs. It’s a hypnotic, powerful, angry song with what I’d describe as having a catchy, escalating chorus, culminating in the well-known line “I’m dangerous.”:

“I’m like a flashing laser and a rolling thunder
I’m dangerous, dangerous
I’m like a stepping razor
Don’t you watch my size
I’m dangerous, I’m dangerous
Treat me good
If you wanna live
You better treat me good”

12. Bob Marley and The Wailers, Concrete Jungle . . . From the harder edge of Tosh to Marley, from his 1973 album Catch A Fire, which still featured Tosh along with enduring Marley songs like Concrete Jungle, Kinky Reggae and Stir It Up. Just me, perhaps, but I’ve always seen Tosh as The Rolling Stones to Marley’s being The Beatles in terms of approach but of course four giant artists I enjoy who stand alone within their genres. Marley’s is an arguably more subtle style than Tosh’s more direct approach, perhaps heard in their respective versions of the song Get Up, Stand Up, which they co-wrote. The Stones collaborated with Tosh on his 1978 album Bush Doctor which Keith Richards plays on and contains the Tosh-Mick Jagger duet on The Temptations’ track (You Gotta Walk) Don’t Look Back. It was the first of three records Tosh did while signed to Rolling Stones Records and he also opened for the Stones on some dates on their 1978 American tour in support of the Some Girls album.

13. Deep Purple, The Mule . . . I suppose we all know people who are stubborn as a mule as the saying goes although the song was, according to Purple singer Ian Gillan, inspired by the character The Mule from science fiction writer Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. The Mule is a mutant who can sense and manipulate the emotions of others. “Now I have become a fool because I listened to the mule.” In any case, a good track showcasing Purple’s typical instrumental talents, from 1971’s Fireball album. It was often extended to twice or more its 5:16 studio length in concert and on live albums like Made In Japan as a showcase for a drum solo by Ian Paice.

14. The Allman Brothers Band, Mountain Jam (live) . . . Something of a convoluted history on the release of this one. Originally played and recorded at the March 12-13, 1971 shows that became the landmark live album At Fillmore East, the 33-minute epic wasn’t on the original Fillmore record which was limited to seven songs on vinyl. This version of Mountain Jam first appeared on Eat A Peach, which was released in 1972 and featured new studio material and live work from the March, 1971 shows that didn’t fit on the original At Fillmore East, plus material from Fillmore shows the band did in June 1971. At Fillmore East was re-released in expanded form in 2003 and included Mountain Jam which by then had also come out on a 1992 compilation of all the Fillmore shows the Allmans did in 1971, titled The Fillmore Concerts. As Robert Shaw’s character in the 1973 movie The Sting was wont to say ‘ya falla (follow)?’

It’s 33 minutes that are never boring, which was the Allmans’ genius, their ability to sustain your interest throughout their long jams. A passage in the liner notes to The Fillmore Concerts release perhaps says it best:

“In other hands, the idea of extended jams that The Allman Brothers Band perfected during their early-Seventies heyday has deteriorated into long-winded show-off exercises. But one can’t blame the Allmans for that; it’s not their fault their imitators turned out to be far less inspired, that few could replicate their devotion to the blues and their determination to burn their own trail.”