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

1. Spencer Davis Group, Keep On Running
2. Dire Straits, Solid Rock (live, Alchemy album)
3. J.J. Cale, Rock and Roll Records
4. Alice Cooper, Generation Landslide
5. David + David, Swallowed By The Cracks
6. The Rolling Stones, Do You Think I Really Care (Some Girls album outtake)
7. Mudcrutch, Scare Easy
8. Steppenwolf, Renegade
9. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Deja Vu
10. The Byrds, Everybody’s Been Burned
11. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, The Lee Shore
12. Crosby, Stills & Nash, Shadow Captain
13. Crosby, Stills & Nash, In My Dreams
14. Crosby, Stills & Nash, Yours And Mine
15. David Crosby, Drive My Car
16. Deep Purple, Vavoom: Ted The Mechanic
17. ZZ Top, Manic Mechanic
18. David Bowie, Drive-In Saturday
19. Moby Grape, Sitting By The Window
20. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Temptation
21. Jethro Tull, She Said She Was A Dancer
22. Afro Celt Soundsystem with Robert Plant, Life Begin Again
23. Carla Olson & Mick Taylor, Winter
24. Sass Jordan, Leaving Trunk
25. Talking Heads, What A Day That Was (live, from Stop Making Sense)

    
    My track-by-track tales:

    1. Spencer Davis Group, Keep On Running . . . Interesting, perhaps, how songs do in different countries. Written by Jamaican singer-songwriter Jackie Edwards, the Spencer Davis Group, fronted by singer-guitarist Steve Winwood, took it to No. 1 in the UK in late 1965. It only managed No. 76 in the US although it did hit No. 22 in Canada and was a top 10 hit in most of Europe. Within two years, the band had universal chart success with Gimme Some Lovin’ and I’m A Man, later nicely covered by Chicago on that band’s debut album.
    2. Dire Straits, Solid Rock (live, Alchemy album) . . . Almost double the length of the 3:19 version from 1980’s Making Movies studio album, this is from 1984’s Alchemy, a document of the band’s 1982 Love Over Gold album tour.
    3. J.J. Cale, Rock and Roll Records . . . From the always dependable late great artist. So consistently good. My only criticism, if it’s that, would be that so many of his songs are too short. On the other hand, always leave them wanting more. A perfect example of that would be Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Fortunate Son, which always prompts me into multiple replays.
    4. Alice Cooper, Generation Landslide . . . This song, and the whole Billion Dollar Babies album always takes me back to high school, grades 9 and 10 for me, the 1972-73 and ’73-74 school years. We had a juke box in our cafeteria and for much of that period of time you could count on hearing this song, Hello Hooray, Elected, No More Mr. Nice Guy or the title track – all school day long. And why not? It’s a great album.
    5. David + David, Swallowed By The Cracks . . . Back to Boomtown I go, drawing from the 1986 album from Davids Baerwald and Ricketts that, arguably, not a lot of people are familiar with but those who are ackowledge as a terrific release. Every song is good. Both guys contributed songs and playing (Baerwald guitar, Ricketts bass) to Sheryl Crow’s 1993 debut album Tuesday Night Music Club. Baerwald continues to release sporadic solo records while also working on TV and movie scores, while Ricketts moved largely into record production and session playing gigs.
    6. The Rolling Stones, Do You Think I Really Care . . . Up tempo country tune from the original Some Girls album sessions. It was released, along with other outtakes from the sessions, on the bonus disc of the 2011 deluxe re-issue.
    7. Mudcrutch, Scare Easy . . . Featuring Tom Petty, guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboard player Benmont Tench, Mudcrutch was the precursor to Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. They formed in Florida in the early 1970s, were unsuccessful in terms of recorded releases but reformed in 2007 and produced two albums, Mudcrutch in 2008 and Mudcrutch 2 in 2016. The latter album was Petty’s last recorded studio work before his death. This is from the first album and the band sounds like, well, Tom Petty. Nice guitar by Campbell and Tom Leadon, the brother of former Eagles’ guitarist and banjo player Bernie Leadon.
    8. Steppenwolf, Renegade . . . Jon Kay’s autobiographical song about his childhood escape, with his mother, from Germany in 1945 ahead of the advancing Soviet troops near the end of World War II.

        

    9. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Deja Vu . . . Title cut from the band’s 1970 album, the first of a mini-set in tribute to last week’s passing of David Crosby at age 81. All songs in the set were written, or co-written, by Crosby. I hope this doesn’t sound bad but, I’m not sure how much more of this I’m going to do. It depends on the artist, I suppose because, as I mentioned recently with the deaths of Jeff Beck and then Rob Bachman of BTO fame, it’s just our reality. So many of these artists are in their 70s and 80s now and inevitability looms.
    10. The Byrds, Everybody’s Been Burned . . . A haunting, jazz-influenced song written by Crosby, from The Byrds’ 1967 album Younger Than Yesterday.
    11. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, The Lee Shore . . . Originally recorded in 1969, it first came out on CSNY’s 1971 live album 4 Way Street but vocal overdubs were done in 1991 when this version appeared on that year’s CSN box set.

         

    12. Crosby, Stills & Nash, Shadow Captain . . . Sublime soft rock from 1977’s CSN album (not to be confused with the later box set)
    13. Crosby, Stills & Nash, In My Dreams . . . And another, beautiful acoustic piece from 1977’s CSN. Sad that he died, of course, but if it prompted me – and many – getting back into listening to, and playing, Crosby’s material, what better legacy can you leave?
    14. Crosby, Stills & Nash, Yours And Mine . . . One of those cool, smooth sort of jazzy, hypnotic tunes I tend not to be able to resist. It’s from the 1990 album Live It Up. Branford Marsalis delivers some sweet saxophone.
    15. David Crosby, Drive My Car . . . Not to be confused with The Beatles song. Originally released on Crosby’s 1989 album Oh Yes I Can, this is a previously unreleased version of the bluesy cut, recorded in 1978 but not released until the 1991 CSN box set.
    16. Deep Purple, Vavoom: Ted The Mechanic . . . One of my favorites from the excellent Purpendicular album. Released in 1996, it was the first with guitarist Steve Morse replacing Ritchie Blackmore. Morse was with Purple for eight studio albums but left the band in July, 2022 due to the illness of his wife Janine.
    17. ZZ Top, Manic Mechanic . . . I’ve always loved this interesting, fun track from 1979’s Deguello album. I used to have fun ‘playing’ it with my two then young boys in our air guitar band. One of the boys wound up becoming a good guitarist, outside his day job. And, in researching the track and album over time, I learned something about pitch shifting, a sound recording technique used mostly on vocals over the years in music and cartoons like Tweety, Daffy Duck, Alvin and the Chipmunks and, more recently, South Park. It’s interesting reading.
    18. David Bowie, Drive-In Saturday . . . “His name was always Buddy’ and assorted other lyrics including references to Mick Jagger, the model Twiggy (dating myself, or Bowie did but she was still current then) and Carl Jung, from Bowie’s Aladdin Sane album, 1973.
    19. Moby Grape, Sitting By The Window . . . Beautiful track by the San Francisco rock/psychedelic band, from their 1967 debut album. Never as commercially successful as their contemporaries like the Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and others, in part due to management issues, they nevertheless released some impressive music. Still around, too, original surviving members playing occasional live shows.
    20. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Temptation . . . Best known for I Put A Spell On You, Hawkins’ theatrical performances were a big influence on artists such as Alice Cooper who in turn influenced other artists down the line. Another of his typically spooky tracks, I can’t be certain but who knows, this standard, first recorded by Bing Crosby in 1933 and done by Hawkins in 1958, may have influenced the tune used in the scene with the dancing Orion green-skinned slave girl in the original Star Trek pilot episode, The Cage, produced in 1964.
    21. Jethro Tull, She Said She Was A Dancer . . . Bluesy song, Cold War-era fun lyrics from Tull’s 1987 Crest of a Knave album. Excellent album, excellent tour, I saw the Toronto show.
    22. Afro Celt Soundsystem with Robert Plant, Life Begin Again . . .Compilations sometimes get a bad rap and I get it, people complain about what’s on or not on them, etc. and unless you’re content with just the hits, you don’t get the true flavor of an artist unless you have the original studio records. But a well-thought out compilation can be rewarding. Like Robert Plant’s 2003 2-CD release, Sixty Six To Timbuktu. It features most of his solo hits to that point but also rarities including early, pre-Led Zeppelin solo stuff like covers of well known songs like Hey Joe, made famous by Jimi Hendrix and Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth. Not to mention interesting stuff like this song the ever-experimental Plant did in 2001 with Afro Celt Soundsystem. It’s a British group fusing electronic music with traditional Gaelic and West African music. It’s a wonderful creative stew I’d not have been aware of but for the Plant compilation.
    23. Carla Olson & Mick Taylor, Winter . . . Extended rendition of the great Rolling Stones track from Goats Head Soup, the former Stones’ guitarist Taylor teaming up with Olson, the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter/guitarist.
    24. Sass Jordan, Leaving Trunk . . . From Rebel Moon Blues, released in 2020. It’s the first of Jordan’s now two blues covers albums, the second being 2022’s Bitches Blues. They’re terrific albums; Jordan’s muscular, earthy voice a perfect fit for the material.
    25. Talking Heads, What A Day That Was (live, from Stop Making Sense) . . . Propulsive track from the 1984 live album soundtrack to the concert film of the same name. The album, originally nine songs in length, was re-released in a 16-song package in 1999.