1. The Beatles, Good Morning Good Morning . . . It’s arguably difficult to find a Beatles’ deep cut, since almost everything they produced is so well known, like this one, one of my favorites from the Sgt. Pepper album. Just love everything about it, the lyrics, the tune, the playing. Someone on You Tube commented that the lyric “everything is closed it’s like a ruin’ was prescient to these covid times. Indeed. Sadly.

2. John Lennon, Gimme Some Truth . . . Vitriolic Lennon cut from the Imagine album. It led off side two of the original vinyl album, quite the contrast to the placid, hopeful title track that led off side one. Great guitar work by George Harrison, who played on half the original album’s 10 songs.

3. Alice Cooper, Some Folks . . . From Welcome To My Nightmare, Vincent Furnier’s first solo release after the breakup of the original Alice Cooper band, after which he adopted the name as both his legal and stage names. Canadian Prakash John, who later formed R & B band The Lincolns, had played with Lou Reed and joined Cooper’s band for this and several subsequent albums.
   
4. Little Feat, Fat Man In The Bathtub . . . The ‘good’ trouble with playing Little Feat, and I played Roll Um Easy about a month ago, is that you then want to play them all the time. So, here comes another one from the same Dixie Chicken album that produced Roll Um Easy and so many other great ones, including the title cut. My Little Feat phase continues.

5. The Rolling Stones, Out Of Control (live) . . . Extended 8-minute version of the track that originally appeared on 1997’s Bridges To Babylon album, with a bass line similar to The Temptations’ Papa Was A Rolling Stone. One of my favorite latter-day Stones’ songs, or favorite songs of theirs, period – especially this live version from the No Security album. Killer guitar and harmonica work, especially once things really ramp up at about the five-minute mark. Always reminds me of Midnight Rambler in the sense that the live version (especially, with Rambler, the one on Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out) eclipses the studio recording.

6. Jason and The Scorchers, 19^th Nervous Breakdown . . . More Stones, only in a, er, scorching version done by Jason and the boys. Such a great tune, regardless who does it or in what arrangent. Nash The Slash’s cover of it, which I’ve played previously, comes to mind. Pulled this one off Cover You: A Tribute To The Rolling Stones, one of many available tribute albums to the Stones.

7. Pearl Jam, Crazy Mary . . . One of my favorite songs done by Pearl Jam. It’s written by singer-songwriter Victoria Williams but was released first by Pearl Jam on Sweet Relief: A Benefit For Victoria Williams, who had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. It’s a tribute record comprised of Williams songs, covered by alternative rock bands and released in 1993. I was reminded of this one by a recent thrift store run with two good friends during which one of my buddies picked up the album and was contemplating buying it. I told him to get it, if just for Crazy Mary alone. Heck, it was about a buck at the thrift store. So, he did buy it, put it on as we drove to our next stop, and he liked it. Who wouldn’t?

8. Graham Parker & The Rumour, Protection . . . From the great Squeezing Out Sparks album in 1979. It’s the one that, via the Local Girls single, introduced me to Parker during my college days when he, Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello were arguably the big three among the ‘angry young men’ of the era. Parker lost me by the mid-1980s but he’s still going, perhaps worthy of re-investigation. No, check that. I just did. Nothing resonates with him, sadly, anymore.

9. Joe Jackson, TV Age . . . Speaking of angry young men . . . I got into Joe Jackson via Toronto rock station Q-107’s old ‘album replay’ show, where they’d play full albums between midnight and about 6 am on Friday or Saturday nights. Back when commercial FM rock radio was open-minded, creative and therefore outstanding, not tied to the same old, same old. So anyway, one night I listened, the Look Sharp album was on, I loved it and out I went the next day to buy it, another from that musically-expansive experience that were my college days of the late 1970s. Jackson quickly branched out though, departing the punk/new wave scene after three albums, with 1981’s jump blues/swing covers release Jumpin’ Jive and then 1982’s brilliant, jazzy Night and Day album. He had served notice that he was going to take his music wherever his muse directed, and I’ve chosen to follow him everywhere he’s gone, to great reward.

10. Elvis Costello, Brilliant Mistake . . . From King Of America, 1986. I bought the album, had been up to then into all Costello’s work. And lasted one more album, But it’s also around the time I started to lose interest in him, which is interesting, perhaps, because while I’ve faithfully followed Joe Jackson’s musical travels from day one, I’ve not done the same with Costello. But as I get older, I find myself catching up to the material I missed. Like the album he did with Burt Bacharach. This track was not originally a single but became one of Costello’s better-known songs and is now on several compilations. Good tune, with typically good lyrics.

11. Ian Dury, There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards . . . Another college days discovery who I was really into for a number of years. Clever title, clever, interesting song, musically, by a very diverse artist.

12. Bryan Ferry, Tokyo Joe . . . Great up tempo track from Ferry’s 1977 solo release In Your Mind, the first solo release on which he wrote all the songs. Roxy Music was on hiatus at the time but the energetic album is very Roxy-like and does feature Roxy guitarist Phil Manzanera, who contributed to several Ferry solo albums.

13. Jeff Beck, Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You . . . Nice cover of a Bob Dylan tune originally on Nashville Skyline and featured on Beck’s 1972 release. Bobby Tench handles lead vocals on this fourth and final Jeff Beck Group album, the second version of the band that originally featured singer Rod Stewart and bassist Ron Wood that resulted in the classic Truth and Beck-Ola albums.

14. Savoy Brown, Stay While The Night Is Young . . . Great mid-tempo track from Savoy Brown’s Raw Sienna album. Led by lone original member Kim Simmonds, the group is still around, releasing occasional albums and playing live. I saw them, billed as Kim Simmonds and Savoy Brown, at a Kitchener Blues Festival a few years ago. Great blues-rock show.

15. The Notting Hillbillies, Railroad Worksong . . . From the one-off Dire Straits offshoot band album, Missing…Presumed Having A Good Time, released in 1990 and featuring Straits men Mark Knopfler and Guy Fletcher. The album was almost entirely covers of traditional tunes, like this excellent selection.

16. Queen, ’39 . . . Beautiful, Brian May-penned track from A Night At The Opera, one of my favorite Queen tunes and I find so many of them are written by May.

17. Iggy Pop, Cold Metal . . . Hard rocker from Iggy’s 1988 Instinct album, the song leads us into a metal/hard rock set within the overall show.

18. Metallica, Holier Than Thou . . . Kick-butt banger from “the black album’ which, given big singles like, particularly Nothing Else Matters and The Unforgiven, introduced the band to a more maintream audience but also miffed some of their metal fans. This track, though, is one of many on the album proving Metallica had not abandoned its roots, merely let them flower. Great vitriolic lyrics. Probably about a relationship breakup. More than probably.

19. Black Sabbath, The Shining . . . From the largely underappreciated, perhaps aside from big Sabbath fans, Tony Martin on lead vocals period. The Martin-fronted albums feature some great Sabbath stuff relatively few people have heard, with guitarist Tony Iommi the lone constant, holding it all together with his typically huge heavy riffs. I find it a fascinating period in Black Sabbath history including the fact it was on and off. Ronnie James Dio left, in comes Martin. Dio returns, out goes Martin, then back in he comes. Etc. And all the while, there is/was Iommi. Much respect to him.

20. AC/DC, Gone Shootin’ . . . From the Bon Scott period and 1978’s Powerage, one of my favorite albums by the band. So much quality stuff on this album that I often mine for the show, so I essentially just threw a dart and it hit this boogie-like track with its insistent, hypnotic riff. You can’t go wrong with anything from this album.

21. Ian Gillan Band, Clear Air Turbulence . . . Funky track from Ian Gillan’s first post-Deep Purple project, this the title cut from the band’s second album, in 1977. Not the type of thing he would have done with Deep Purple when he was in that band, certainly likely not if Ritchie Blackmore had any say in the matter. Yet, if you listen to Purple now, during the very good and creative Steve Morse era, they are doing material like this as they continue to explore more diverse paths.22. Ohio Players, Fopp . . . Great funk from the Honey album, 1975. It’s the one with the great No. 1 single, Love Rollercoaster. This was the third single from the album, made No. 30 on the pop charts and No. 9 on the R & B list. Great band, great provocative and erotic album covers, along the lines of early Roxy Music cover art.

23. The Tragically Hip, So Hard Done By . . . One of my favorite Hip tracks, from 1994’s Day for Night album. I love the introductory build into the hard riff that propels a tune featuring some great lyrics. “It’s a monumental big screen kiss, it’s so deep it’s meaningless.” . . . “Just then the stripper stopped in a coughing fit, she said ‘sorry I can’t go on with this.’ ” . Etc. etc. Great song. Every time I listen to this I think back to the year I took off to work, between high school and college. I grew by leaps and bounds that year, hanging out with adults in the working world at my dad’s engineering company and recognizing that adults were a barrel of laughs no matter how old they were, that we all had things in common. I kept them young, they educated me. Case in point, going to a strip joint after work and the stripper was playing with an ice cube, tossed it towards our table, it splashed into one of my friends’ drink, a martini I guess and the impact of the ice cube ejected the olive from my buddy’s drink. Laughs all around, including the stripper who, unlike in the song, did go on with things. 

24. Murray McLauchlan, Burned Out Car . . . Great tune about a sad subject, homelessness, co-written with Junkhouse leader Tom Wilson. Junkhouse recorded it, with Sarah McLauchlan helping out, for their 1995 Birthday Boy album. Murray McLauchlan, with Wilson on backing vocals, released it on his excellent, comprehensive 2007 double-disc compilation Songs From The Street.

25. Junkhouse, Oh, What A Feeling . . . Speaking of Junkhouse . . . A friend of mine recently mentioned the Canadian band Crowbar, which like Junkhouse leader Tom Wilson came out of Hamilton, Ontario. So, while I was fiddling with the McLauchlan/Junkhouse connection, I remembered Junkhouse had done a cover of Crowbar’s hit tune. So, here it is. Such a great artist, Wilson – with Junkhouse, solo work, Blackie and The Rodeo Kings and Lee Harvey Osmond. I saw a reunited Junkhouse at a recent Kitchener Blues Festival and ran into Wilson at a coffee shop the next morning. What a pleasant, humble individual; I just said hi, I really enjoy your work and we had a brief chat, I mentioned I was a journalist so we had the writing, albeit in different forms, in common at least somewhat. And while I was thinking of songs to play today, I hit upon an interview with Wilson on You Tube during which he was asked about his myriad projects. His answer? For a creative person it’s a need to do it; it’s like he has to. His reward is just that he can keep on doing it. I’m glad he does.

26. Led Zeppelin, Tea For One . . . Great blues track. It closes the Presence album and is one of my two favorites on the album and by the band in general, the other being the set opener, Achilles Last Stand.

1. Ted Nugent, Turn It Up . . . Rip-roaring start to the set with this one from the Motor City Madman. Not into his politics, but I do like much of his music, certainly the earlier stuff I know, plus his work with the Amboy Dukes. This is from his second solo studio album, Free For All in 1976. Derek St. Holmes is lead vocalist on it and four other tracks on the album which also features a pre-big stardom Meat Loaf. Yes, him. He sings five songs. Maybe next week, or soon, I’ll play the one he does lead vocals on and the other one I had in mind for today, Hammerdown.

2. Fu Manchu, Missing Link . . . Great heavy stoner rock from these California boys, from their 1996 release and third album, In Search Of. One of those bands I got into by chance. Just happened to walk into a used record store in Oakville, ON when I was still living there and where I grew up, hence the occasional Oakville references. The place was a hole in the wall, Cactus Records if I recall, across the street from Records On Wheels which is, apparently, still there on Kerr St. according to a web check just now. Good for that guy. Anyway, both places were run by the same type of people who run, say, our wonderful Encore Records here in Kitchener – people who truly know and are passionate about music, don’t just sell it. So, anyway, finally, ha ha, the Cactus owner had the Fu Manchu album on and we agreed that it sounded like, or at least was heavily influenced by, Black Sabbath. I liked what I heard, total impulse buy, still like it, and the band and all their work.

3. Stray, All In Your Mind . . . Another fairly recent discovery, this UK band formed in 1966 and are still going, off and on playing live if not necessarily recording. Got into them via the 2016 compilation I’m A Freak Baby . . . A Journey Through The British Heavy Psych and Hard Rock Underground Scene 1968-72. A friend of mine sends me a message on Facebook: ‘You have to get this!” So I got the excellent 3-CD set and was introduced to this 1970 track, a 9-minute, 36-second blast of exactly what the compilation’s billing says: heavy psychedelic and hard rock. Great stuff and I liked it, and the band, so much that I shortly thereafter became the proud owner of Time Machine: Anthology 1970-1977, a 2-CD compilation of Stray’s work. Why they weren’t bigger is one of those music mysteries. (Lack of) Marketing, management, whatever. Iron Maiden later covered this tune, at half the length. Meantime, in 2019 out came I’m A Freak Baby 2: A Further Journey . . . 1968-73 (they added a year). It includes another Stray tune, a short rocking romp, The Man Who Paints The Pictures, from 1968 when the band members were just 16. So I contacted the same friend on Facebook and said: “You have to get this!” Not sure if he did.

4. Elton John, Ticking . . . Dark subject matter on this deep cut from EJ’s 1974 album, Caribou, the one with The Bitch Is Back (please, no) and Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me on it. It’s a fictional account, Bernie Taupin’s lyrics a commentary on violence in the United States primarily and in society in general. It’s about a man who had a repressed childhood, later snapped and killed 14 people in a New York City bar. Wikipedia doesn’t describe it as fictional, most other sources do. Which is why you can’t always trust the wiki. Anyway, a 2015 Rolling Stone poll had it among Elton John fans’ favorites among his non-hits.

5. Gregg Allman, Love The Poison . . . Up tempo tune from the late great Allman, who I saw live at the Kitchener Blues Festival in August of 2011 and not a moment too soon, as he later had to cancel that tour, once he got to Europe, due to the various ongoing health issues that eventually killed him in 2017. This one’s from his fine 1997 album, Searching For Simplicity. All his solo work is great, I find, and nice companion pieces to the mother ship’s output.

6. Sea Level, Nothing Matters But The Fever . . . Another from The Allman Brothers Band family, a jazz-rock-blues fusion outfit fronted by keyboard player/percussionist Chuck Leavell between 1976-81. The band name comes from a pun on his name: C. Leavell. Leavell, a widely respected artist with an extensive resume, moved on to become a session player with and member of The Rolling Stones’ touring band, to which he belongs to this day.

7. Sammy Hagar, Little White Lie . . . Big hit from the former Montrose and Van Halen singer’s 1997 Marching To Mars album. Great, slow-building into a high-intensity bluesy rock tune. Nothing wrong with it aside from fact that, at a shade under three minutes, it’s arguably too short. But, hey, leave ’em wanting more, which is the key to so many great songs. CCR’S Fortunate Son always comes to mind for me in that regard. Which is why I tend to play Fortunate Son several times, each time I play it. This one? Arguably my favorite solo Sammy song.

8. Traveling Wilburys, Tweeter And The Monkey Man . . . Lead vocals by Bob Dylan on this, my favorite track and a minor hit single from the Wilburys debut in 1988. You know the supergroup, sadly three of the five of whom have now gone to the great studio and concert stage in the sky. Dylan. Jeff Lynne of ELO fame. Still around. Gone are George Harrison. Tom Petty. Roy Orbison, who sadly wasn’t around for the second, and as a likely result less successful second Wilburys album, cheekily titled Vol. 3. Canada’s Headstones did a wicked, rocked up blistering cover of Tweeter with slightly altered lyrics incorporating more Canadian references including to their hometown of Kingston, on their 1993 debut album, Picture of Health. I’ve played the Headstones’ version previously, likely will come around to it again at some point, but it’s been ages since I played the original on the show, if ever. An oversight now rectified.

9. Pete Townshend, Sheraton Gibson . . . Always loved this one, remains among my favorite Townshend solo works. Such a nice little ditty. From his debut solo album, Who Came First, in 1972.

10. Billy Joel, Captain Jack . . . Early Billy Joel is, to me, the best Billy Joel. Fantastic track, dark subject matter about a drug dealer and his teen customers, apparently Joel was searching for inspiration one day and got it by looking out his apartment window. But, so much great art comes from darkness. One of those tunes you get into when you buy an album for the big single (the title cut, Piano Man) and then are immensely rewarded by the rest of the release.

11. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Midnight Moses . . . Great riff on this one from the late great Alex Harvey’s outfit. They never really got beyond cult status on these shores but big, deservedly so, in the UK.

12. Lou Reed, Vicious . . . Lead cut from Transformer. Mick Ronson on lead guitar, David Bowie backing vocals, third single from the album that of course gave us Walk On The Wild side. Didn’t chart, that I’m aware of, Vicious. Absurd.

13. Cat Stevens, Indian Ocean . . . From the 2-CD ‘Gold’ compilation, released in 2005. This wonderful tune was a new track then, recorded and released for the compilation and credited under Stevens’ now and long since legal name, Yusuf Islam. I love most of his stuff including the well-known hits but this has become a real favorite.

14. Taj Mahal, Senor Blues . . . Such a versatile artist, as demonstrated by this title cut from his 1997 jazz/blues/soul- and world music inflected album. Usually classified as blues, and that’s great as blues is great music, but he’s so much more than that.

15. Buddy Guy, I Gotta Try You Girl . . . A 12-minute hypnotic track with typical great guitar work, from Guy’s fantastic Sweet Tea album, 2001. To quote Guy, from the album’s liner notes: “the sound and style reminds me of . . . the Sonny Boy Williamsons, the Lightinin’ Hopkins. All those people just playin’ for the drop of the dime in the hat. The Saturday night fish fries . . . you had fun, you woke up the next morning with a headache, you just drank the wine or the beer, grab the guitar and go doin’ it again.” I’m out of booze. Buddy’s inspired me to replenish, put this on with headphones and just drift into its embrace. And, the title leads me into my closing segment featuring mostly female artists and/or lead singers.

16. Patti Smith, Kimberly . . . What a great album Horses is, including of course this track featuring Smith’s always amazingly unique vocals. I got into Smith during my college days via a bar band that came to the pub I was then working at in my hometown of Oakville, ON, as a doorman/bouncer. Oliver Heavyside, a.k.a. / later The Partland Brothers. They were one of the best bar bands I saw there and, among their various covers including a lot of Jethro Tull and Springsteen, was the Springsteen/Smith-penned Because The Night which appeared on Smith’s 1978 album Easter, a version I’ve played on the show. So, as is my wont when I like a song, or anything, I delve deeper, wound up buying the Easter album and from there went back, and forward, with Smith.

17. Alannah Myles, Hurry Make Love . . . I’ve always liked this one from her first album. Black Velvet was the monster hit with others like Still Got This Thing, Love Is, etc. doing well or at least being well known, from a terrific album. Great line within: “Don’t stay up with your damned TV, somebody else might make love to me.” Sadly true, sometimes, perhaps, when the moods don’t mesh. Myles was sidelined with some serious health issues involving mostly her back, limiting her mobility. I saw her live in Barrie, ON in1993, fully healthy, as one of several opening acts for Van Halen/Hagar on Canada Day. She toured as recently as 2013, released an album in 2014 and was interviewed in 2018 by an online site where she discussed possibly doing a blues album. Often unfairly classified as a one-hit wonder but definitely not. Check out Rockinghorse, the title cut from her second album, which I’ve played before, for instance.

18. Pretenders, Kinda Nice, I Like It . . . Typical sultry, sexy vocals from Chrissie Hynde on this great, slow-burning track from Loose Screw, the band’s 2002 release. It’s arguably the album that got me back into the band. Not sure why I got it/what drew me to it; rock radio now being what it is I doubt I heard any of it on radio so perhaps just a whim. But it paid off and I’ve been major back into the band ever since.

19. The Rolling Stones, Star Star (a.k.a. Starfucker) . . . Second straight week I get into a Stones’ ‘swear word’ song (last week, Cocksucker Blues). Just something to get out of my system, who knows? They wrote ’em, I just like ’em, so I play ’em. Original title on this one is/was Starfucker and the band still refers to it by that name, although record-company pressure had it retitled as Star Star on Goats Head Soup in1973. They played it the first two times I ever saw them, July 4, 1978 at Rich Stadium near Buffalo, Orchard Park where the NFL’s Bills play, and 1979 at the benefit show for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind in Oshawa, ON that resulted from Keith Richards’ Toronto drug bust in 1977. Richards’ and Ron Wood’s band The New Barbarians opened the show in Oshawa. A great and wild afternoon of music. New Barbarians, really Woody’s band, did their set, featuring some of his solo stuff and Keef wrapped things up with his/Stones’ Before They Make Me Run and then . . . was very cool. Out, again, there is Keith, on a stool, acoustic guitar on lap. Starts strumming. No lights, just a white spotlight. Then, out of the dark, all dressed in white, comes Mick Jagger and we’re into Prodigal Son, the old blues cover from Beggars Banquet that Mick and Keith also did, in this duo way, on the 1969 tour immortalized in the Gimme Shelter movie and long since now available on CD/DVD on the expanded re-release of the great live album, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! Yeah, I was there. Me and my buddy saw the first afternoon show, hid in a bathroom in an attempt to stay for the second show, but were found out and had to leave. What an experience, one of just 10,000 people to see those shows; still have no idea how I got tickets, really, but being a major Stones’ fan I simply had to, and I did. My friend had never seen the band, but was major into music and I remember saying, ‘wanna go, I got tickets’ and he was “you honor me.” Yeah.

20. Marianne Faithfull, Why D’Ya Do It . . . Blistering, vitriolic track musically, vocally, lyrically, from Faithfull’s brilliant Broken English album in 1979. And her voice, by then indeed broken by drink, drugs and smoking, was yet arguably even more compelling.

21. Tracy Chapman, Bang Bang Bang . . . Was digging into her stuff again recently and, as promised recently to my friends and show followers on Facebook, back to playing this amazing singer-songwriter on the show. Always so lyrically topical, her voice is missing these days as she has not released new material since 2008 although a greatest hits album did come out in 2015. She’s not retired but in a couple recent interviews, most recently in 2020 to a UK outlet, she admitted to being a reserved sort not comfortable in the public eye, accounting for her inactivity musically. To which I would say, Tracy you don’t have to tour, just record! But if not, the beauty of art is that we still have her amazing catalog, so far and if that’s as far as she goes, all good for the amazing, passionate and topical tunes she has given us.

22. Blondie, Fade Away And Radiate . . . A favorite of mine, from Parallel Lines, the band’s third album and the one that represented a commercial breakthrough what with such hits as Heart of Glass, One Way or Another and Hanging On The Telephone. I must admit, though, to not owning any individual Blondie album, not even back then when they were hot. Just a one single-CD compilation and a wonderfully comprehensive 47-track double disc retrospective, from which I pulled this great track, as we fade away … until next week. Thanks for listening/following.

1. Queen, Let Me Entertain You . . . From the 1978 album, Jazz. A logical set opener. I saw the Jazz tour at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, great show that opened with the smokin’ fast version of We Will Rock You that hadn’t been heard, to my knowledge, until that time and appears on the live album, Live Killers, that resulted from the tour. Then they went into Let Me Entertain you, and saved the more familiar We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions for their second encore.

2. Judas Priest, Delivering The Goods . . . From the Killing Machine album, 1978. The album was retitled Hell Bent For Leather in North America, particularly the United States, due to an American school shooting. So, I won’t say, ‘killer song’. Oops.

3. Black Sabbath, Neon Knights . . . Kick ass album opener from the first release with the late great Ronnie James Dio taking over from Ozzy Osbourne on lead vocals. It was actually the last song recorded for the album, as a space filler for side one of the vinyl release. Space filler! Some filler! Amazingly, while the song, a single, made No. 22 in the UK, it didn’t chart anywhere else. But what a great cut to open an album with, what with people wondering at the time what the band would be like without Ozzy. Well, like this, the band replied. The whole album, and all the stuff they did with Dio, is terrific after he had just come out of working with Ritchie Blackmore for the first three (and easily best, in my opinion) Rainbow albums.Dio added so much to Rainbow and Sabbath and in fact I like his work with those two bands better than I like his own stuff as front man and brains behind his band, Dio. Dio, the band, is good stuff but for me, not up to the quality of his Rainbow/Sabbath work. I got into this album, and a lot of heavy rock like AC/DC and Ted Nugent when I worked at a pub in Oakville, Ontario putting myself through college. The pub, the old Riverside, any Oakvillians will remember, featured rock bands but we had a DJ playing music between live sets and he played the heck out of this album, Nugent’s Double Live Gonzo and AC/DC’s Highway To Hell and Back In Black. Great stuff, great memories.

4. Motorhead, (Don’t Need) Religion . . . Somehow I feel like I just recently played this song, but I checked and not the case. Ah, I was going to, but whatever set I had going that day went in a different direction, or I ran out of time. In any event . . . I came late to Motorhead. I had heard Ace of Spades but didn’t dig any deeper for a long time. I do remember hearing Motorhead’s Orgasmatron album when it came into the Oakville newspaper I was then working for, to the entertainment section for review purposes. One of the entertainment reporters let me borrow it, I hated it, so did he, and we later used it as a frisbee for a few tosses in the newsroom and then pinned the vinyl album to a bulletin board as a show of contempt for it.But in the end, prompted by reading an album reviews book with the irresistible title of Riff Kills Man: 25 Years of Hard Rock & Heavy Metal – a book that author Martin Popoff later expanded and the jumping off point for his now countless works – I started sampling more in that genre. Bands like Iron Maiden and the so-called new wave of British heavy metal that was spawned in the late 1970s-early 1980s. So, it all brought me back to Motorhead and . . . I liked it. This one from the Iron Fist album in 1982. I share the title and lyric sentiments. Orgasmatron came two albums later, in 1986. I own it now.
   
5. U2, Bullet The Blue Sky . . . Arguably my favorite U2 song, never a single, never on compilations perhaps due to its political nature, it being inspired by lead singer Bono’s trip to Nicaragua and El Salvador during the mid-1980s and his resulting observations on the effects of American military intervention and policies there during that period. It’s just so menacing, so passionate. I never tire of it. It appeared on the monster commercial success that was The Joshua Tree in 1987, the album that truly broke U2 big everywhere. I had been into them since the first album, Boy, in 1980 via the single I Will Follow but after Joshua Tree the band became ubiquitous.You know how sometimes you like a band and you wish them success, but then when they achieve massive success you almost feel like you’ve lost them to the masses, to the newbies? It’s a silly feeling in many ways, because people are going to come to embrace music in however they come to it, whenever they do, via a movie soundtrack, big hit album or single, however it happens, and that’s good. But I do remember U2 at the time of Joshua Tree appearing on the cover of Time magazine and I said to a friend of mine who had also been into them from the beginning: “It’s over. They’re on the cover of Time.” It wasn’t over, of course. U2 continued to do amazing work (i.e. Achtung Baby) and on (really) to the present day although people aren’t as willing to give their newer work as much of a chance. I still think they’re pretty good but I can see the view that, maybe, something was lost along the way.

6. Van Halen, Little Dreamer … One of my favorite VH songs, from the debut album in 1978. What a terrific album it is, arguably still their best though there’s lots of great stuff, obviously, throughout the catalogue in both the David Lee Roth and Van (Sammy) Hagar eras. This one came to mind to play this week after yet another of my music conversations on Twitter. Someone asked the Twitterverse to name just three of their favorite Van Halen songs. So, as is my wont, I went in the deep cuts direction with this, D.O.A., Mean Street. I’ve always liked this lyrical passage: “And then they went and they voted you least likely to succeed. I had to tell them, baby, you were armed with all you’d need.”
7. Robin Trower, Shame The Devil . . . Trower’s 70s work, particularly featuring the late great bassist/vocalist James Dewar, is stellar. This great tune, from 1975’s For Earth Below, is yet another indication of that. Great album covers, too.

8. Tommy Bolin, Shake The Devil . . . From Bolin’s second solo album, Private Eyes, 1976. It followed Teaser, which he did while still with Deep Purple during his brief stint with that band, on the Come Taste The Band album. Great riff by a great guitarist and musician, lost to us via drug overdose while touring in support of this album, opening at the time for Jeff Beck.

9. Kiss, Rocket Ride . . . I’m not into Kiss but I do like this song. It’s essentially a solo work by guitarist Ace Frehley, from the one studio side of the Alive II album, released in 1977. Frehley sings and plays all guitars, with only Kiss’s then-drummer, Peter Criss, on the kit. I got into this one via my younger brother, five years junior and a huge Kiss fan at the time. And I saw Kiss live, while my brother didn’t, to his chagrin. It was by happenstance, me seeing Kiss. Cheap Trick was big at the time in the wake of their At Budokan album. But a college buddy of mine and I missed/couldn’t get tickets for their Toronto performance but a week later they were in Pontiac, Michigan at the Silverdome stadium, so we went. In those pre-internet days, 1979,we didn’t know until we got there and picked up a newspaper that it was Cheap Trick as ‘special guest’ opening for Kiss, then on tour in support of their Dynasty album. Great show, by both bands including of course, Kiss’s typically over-the-top but fun performance.
   
10. Pete Townshend, I Am An Animal . . . From Townshend’s brilliant Empty Glass album, 1980. Playing this today was inspired by my old friend Gerry Telford. It’s gratifying how my show seems to be resonating more and more with more people. The feedback and occasional music discussions on both Facebook and Twitter are yet another source of inspiration for what I play in subsequent shows. Gerry is a big Genesis,Who and both bands’ solo offshoots fan and enjoyed the fact I played Peter Gabriel’s Mother of Violence two weeks ago. He equated it with this track by Townshend, which also prompted some discussion about Empty Glass with a recently newfound fellow music aficionado, Ted Martin. Great lyrics including the passage that first grabbed me way back when: “I will be immersed, Queen of the fucking universe.” Pete, the ongoing observer of angst.
    
11. R.E.M., Low . . . Losing My Religion was the monster single from the 1991 Out of Time album, but I’ve always liked this hypnotic track the best from that release. Great lyrics.
    
12. The Rolling Stones, Cocksucker Blues . . . Thanks to the wonders of independent radio,I can play a track like this although were I in studio, policy is (or at least was) that we warn listeners in advance about language some may find offensive. So, you’ve been warned, since I’m posting my programmed sets and commentaries in advance these days given our studio is closed due to covid protocols and I’ve yet to get off my butt and learn live remote broadcasts. Maybe by the time the studio reopens, which I gather may be on the table or at least up for discussion. Anyway, this actually fine slow acoustic blues tune was the Stones’ kiss-off to Decca Records, their first record company with which the band had a stormy relationship.It was 1969 and the Stones were leaving the label and starting their own, Rolling Stones Records (distributed then by Atlanic Records), complete with the famous tongue logo. Decca claimed the band still owed them one single, so the boys came up with this one, specifically to anger the record company, which given its language and subject matter, declined to release it. Also known as Schoolboy Blues.
13. Gov’t Mule, Mr. Big . . . Got back into the band Free in recent weeks, playing Soon I Will Be Gone and Songs of Yesterday in my last two shows. So, sticking somewhat with the program, here’s the great Gov’t Mule, the Allman Brothers’ offshoot with guitarist Warren Haynes at the helm that became and remains a force in its own right, with their version of yet another Free track. The song originally appeared on the Mule’s self-titled debut album in 1995 but I pulled this perhaps more raw version from the band’s 2016 release of alternate versions and outtakes, The Tel-Star Sessions. Any Mule is good Mule.
    
14. Cry Of Love, Too Cold In The Winter . . . Sticking with the Free motif, I’ve always thought this band, which featured later Black Crowes’ guitarist Audley Freed, sounded like Free and should have been a lot bigger. This great song, from 1993’s debut album Brother, was a No. 13 single and the whole album is great. But they only did one more, four years later, Cry Of Love founder Freed then joined the Crowes and that was that.
    
15. The Butterfield Blues Band, Last Hope’s Gone . . . A great slinky, soulful, jazzy track from 1968’s In My Own Dream album, by which time the band had long since dropped the “Paul’ from its billing as The Paul Butterfield Blues band on the debut album in 1965. From the second album, East-West in 1966, onward it was just “Butterfield” and the band pursued a slightly different direction from the original straight blues, still to great effect though. Compelling music.
    
16. Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road . . . Inspired by old friend Eileen Morkin and her husband Bill Paul, formerly a longtime top executive and now a consultant to Golf Canada. Eileen and Bill, an old high school and college football teammate, celebrated their 27^th wedding anniversary recently, Eileen posted the news and we subsequently got talking. Bill’s a huge Springsteen fan so I told Eileen I’d play a track in their honor. I was going to play She’s The One (I will soon) from the Born To Run album but she suggested Thunder Road instead. So, here you go. Great lyrics; I can see why she picked this one.
    
17. The Clash, Charlie Don’t Surf . . . From the sprawling Sandinista! Triple vinyl album, 1980. The title comes from a line of dialogue by the surfing-obsessed character, Colonel Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall in the classic 1979 film Apocalypse Now. I just re-watched it recently for first time in ages and got laughing with a friend about the crazy scene where Duvall’s character insists on having some of his men surf a beach during a battle. It culminates of course in Duvall’s famous line “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Smells like . . . victory.” But the entire scene is full of great lines, mostly from Duvall. He earned an Oscar nomination for it as best supporting actor. I think it’s the best scene in a movie full of them, worth the price of admission. Unforgettable.
    
18. Concrete Blonde, Tomorrow, Wendy . . . This one inspired by Ted Martin’s recent “60 as he approaches age 60” song posting. In one of his lists, he mentioned Concrete Blonde, might even have been this song, can’t recall now, but it reminded me I had not played this band in ages. Great track from the Bloodletting album, 1990, which resulted in Concrete Blonde’s biggest hit, Joey. Typically great vocals from bassist/lead singer Johnette Napolitano.
    
19. Flash and The Pan, Jetsetters Ball . . . Like many, I got into these quirky and fun new wave guys via the self-titled debut album in 1978, yet another college days discovery what with the hit single Hey St. Peter and the B-side, Walking In The Rain, which I’ve always liked better and remains my favorite Flash and The Pan song. This one’s from the 1982 album Headlines, the third of six albums by the group led by Harry Vanda and George Young, who had been in Australian rock/pop hit machine The Easybeats during the 1960s. The late Young was the older brother of AC/DC’s Young brothers, Angus and Malcolm. And, as half the production team of Vanda and Young produced the early AC/DC albums, during the Bon Scott era, up to Powerage and the live album If You Want Blood in 1978.
    
20. Chilliwack, Communication Breakdown . . . Not the Led Zeppelin song, this one Chilliwack’s own and a good rocker. This is the full, album version, about a minute longer at 3:45 than single versions that have appeared on compilatons. The album version includes the soft, almost fully acoustic intro before ripping into the main rock riff. It’s from the 1979 Breakdown in Paradise release. It didn’t do well for the band, thanks in part to the collapse of their then-label Mushroom Records, an independent label for which early Heart also recorded.
    
21. Steely Dan, The Royal Scam . . . One of my favorite Steely Dan tracks, the title cut from their 1976 album. Like Midnite Cruiser, a track I’ve played before from the 1972 debut, Can’t Buy A Thrill, The Royal Scam is to me a surprising omission from many Steely Dan compilations. More proof that while compilations are great, they don’t always or even often represent the full context of a band or artist.
    
22. Neil Young, Crime In The City (Sixty To Zero Part 1) . . . Great, extended (nearly nine minutes) tune from Young’s 1989 release, Freedom, which gave us the hit single (in rocking and acoustic versions) Rocking In The Free World. Great album, great song, this, musically and lyrically.
    
23. Supertramp, Brother Where You Bound . . . Epic, 16-minute title track from the first post-Rodger Hodgson album, in 1985. It’s a great one, apparently demo’d for the previous album, Famous Last Words, but shelved as ‘too progressive rock’ to fit with the rest of that album. David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame plays the guitar solos on the track while Scott Gorham of Thin Lizzy plays rhythm guitar. Apparently while doing the track, the band thought they needed a Gilmour-like sound. Someone from the record company then said, why don’t we see if Gilmour himself might be interested. So they sent Gilmour a demo, he liked it, was indeed interested in playing on the song and, voila!
    
24. Fleetwood Mac, That’s All For Everyone . . . And indeed, that is all for this week’s show. Off we go, on the heels of one of my favorite songs from 1979’s Tusk album, a beautiful track that’s also one of my favorites by the band in the Lindsey Buckingam-Stevie Nicks era.

1. Free, Songs Of Yesterday . . . Played Free near the end of my show last week – Soon I Will Be Gone – which tweaked my brain to this track as an obvious opener for this week, since it’s what my show’s all about. That said, my mantra for the show is ‘old bands, old tracks, old bands, their new tracks, if they’re still around, alive and kicking.” So I do play new stuff by classic rock bands, if they’re still releasing stuff. But not in this case. Great band, Free. This one, a jaunty track is how I’d describe it, is from their second, self-titled album in 1969. It features one of the greatest album covers ever. The album didn’t do well, though, only made No. 22 in the UK and didn’t chart at all in North America. Perhaps had this been released as a single, the album may have done better. Instead, Broad Daylight and I’ll Be Creepin’ were the singles, good tunes, but not with the immediacy, perhaps, that propel songs up the charts.

    

2. Pink Floyd, Interstellar Overdrive . . . More connections between my shows. I played Yes’s Sound Chaser to open last week’s show and in my commentary, I pulled from the album liner notes which described the song as “Yes in interstellar overdrive”. So, naturally, it prompted me to think of this Pink Floyd psychedelic instrumental from their 1967 debut, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. So why didn’t I play it last week when I was putting together my show? Well, for one thing, I forgot about the liner notes until later, when I did my commentary and besides, I opened with about half an hour of prog/psychedelic stuff and figured that was enough. 🙂

3. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Trilogy . . . Speaking of prog, didn’t get to ELP last week, although I did play an early King Crimson track, I Talk To The Wind, with Greg Lake on vocals. So, I thought I’d play ELP this week. Great song, all of the great ELP elements, the piano/keyboards of the beautiful, mellow first part of the almost nine-minute tune, until the full force of the band is unleashed.

4. John Mayall, Broken Wings . . . One of my favorite Mayall songs, not with the Bluesbreakers but just Mayall, on the appropriately named 1967 release, The Blues Alone. The album features Mayall playing every instrument aside from Keith “Keef’ Hartley helping him out on drums and percussion – except for this beautiful, tender song on which Mayall also does the drumming.

5. Van Morrison, Astral Weeks . . . I love Van the Man but Astral Weeks is one of those great albums, usually a top critics’ choice, that admittedly took me a long time to get into. But as with most such albums that aren’t necessarily ‘immediate’, once you ‘get it’, wow. Great stuff, front to back including this title track. Just let it wash over you.

6. Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band, Take A Chance . . . I’ve always liked this one, from 1991’s The Fire Inside. It was a single, made it to No. 10 on some charts, yet, and maybe I’m wrong, it seems somewhat overlooked in Seger’s ouvre. Perhaps because it’s not on any compilations.

7. Neil Young, Spirit Road . . . Chugging rocker from the Chrome Dreams II album in 2007. In typical quirky Neil Young fashion, there was no Chrome Dreams I preceding it. Well, actually, there was. It just never came out, officially. Recorded between 1975 and ’77, Chrome Dreams was supposed to be released in 1977 but was shelved in favor of American Stars ‘N Bars. However, several of the tunes recorded for the original Chrome Dreams – Pocahontas, Like A Hurricane, Powderfinger, Sedan Delivery – did come out on various albums, in different arrangements or versions. And, this track starts me off on a mini-set featuring song titles about roads, and/or driving. I’m still in this rut and can’t seem to get out. Maybe it’s a good thing. Who knows? Who cares? One of these weeks I’m going to go back to just playing tunes with no pattern to them whatsoever. Whatever moves me at the time is how it goes.

8. Ry Cooder, Drive Like I Never Been Hurt . . . How to describe Ry Cooder? Great name, for one thing. Ry Cooder. Just sounds cool. Great guitarist, purveyor of all sorts of wonderful music and styles including movie soundtracks, session player/guest musician to the stars, a star on his own albeit not always commercially massive.This one from I, Flathead in 2008.

9. David Bowie, Always Crashing In The Same Car . . . From 1977’s Low, the first of Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy of albums, the others being Heroes, also in 1977, and Lodger in 1979. Collaborating with Brian Eno and producer Tony Visconti, Bowie experimented with various soundscapes to produce some perhaps less accessible but, on repeat listens, brilliant music. According to Wikipedia, the song is about repeatedly making the same mistakes and refers to a real-life incident during the height of Bowie’s cocaine addiction. He spotted a drug dealer on the streets who he believed had ripped him off. So Bowie repeatedly rammed his car into the dealer’s car, then returned to his hotel and wound up driving around in circles in the underground garage.

10. Led Zeppelin, Trampled Underfoot . . . A relentless funk-influenced propulsive piece from Physical Graffiti. Bass/keyboard player John Paul Jones plays clavinet on it and said he was inspired by Stevie Wonder’s clavinet-fuelled 1972 hit Superstition for the beat.

11. The Rolling Stones, Fingerprint File . . . Certainly at the time, an arguably uncharacteristic track for the Stones. I’ve always loved it, I’d describe the riff as a musical razor, if there could be such a thing, cutting its way, in a good way, into your consciousness. Funky, jazzy, delicious stuff.

12. Black Sabbath, The Dark/Zero The Hero . . . Short instrumental The Dark segues into one of my favorite tracks from Born Again, the 1983 one and only Sabbath album featuring vocalist Ian Gillan of Deep Purple fame. The stories about this album and tour – which was lampooned in the movie This Is Spinal Tap – are legend and far too lengthy to get into here, but easily searchable. Good, heavy album, though. I like it, as do most Sabs fans I know. I find Sabbath fascinating in the original post-Ozzy Osbourne years, first with the great Ronnie James Dio on vocals and then especially after he left. You had Gillan, then the Tony Martin period of revolving lineups with the lone constant, Tony Iommi, holding it all together and producing some great, if perhaps less well known or appreciated music.

13. Deep Purple, Gettin’ Tighter . . . Up-tempo tune from Come Taste The Band, the one and only album Purple did with guitarist Tommy Bolin. Lots of funk elements on the record, which threw a lot of people at the time although, given the increasing influence of bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes, who sings this one, that was already seeping into Purple on the previous album, Stormbringer, and helped drive original guitarist Ritchie Blackmore out of the band in disgust. Organ/keyboard player Jon Lord liked Come Taste The Band but said he didn’t consider it to really be a Purple album. I’m glad it is, being a big fan of the band. It shows their eclecticism, it still rocks in a lot of spots, and it’s one of my favorites by the group.

14. Pretenders, Precious . . . Lead cut from the first Pretenders album, 1979. What an opening salvo. I can’t describe the song/lyrics any better than music critic Simon Reynolds, via Wikipedia: “a strafing stream of syllables” mixing “speed rap, jive talk, baby babble” and the song as “punk skat, all hiccoughs, vocal tics, gasps and feral growls, weirdly poised between love and hate, oral sensuality and staccato, stabbing aggression.” Yes.

15. The Who, Slip Kid . . . Opening track from 1975’s The Who By Numbers, one of my favorite Who albums. It’s one of the first albums I bought with my own money and the Who release I really grew up with, so to speak. I knew all the previous hits, Tommy, Who’s Next etc. but this one holds a special place. Bought it for the single, Squeeze Box, which quickly became my least-listened to song on a great album. This song, a leftover from the abandoned Lifehouse project that morphed into Who’s Next, was the second single from the album, but didn’t chart. The band was somewhat in tatters at the time, lyrically it’s a very personal, Pete Townshend album, really, given the internal angst he typically lets out in song. He was having his doubts about himself, the future of the band and indeed rock music at the time, which the song expresses well, especially given Roger Daltrey’s swaggering, growly vocals. None of that internal band stuff I knew of at the time, though. I just enjoyed the album, one of The Who’s best, in my opinion, solid throughout. I’d say my favorite song on it is How Many Friends, but I’ve played that recently so decided to go with Slip Kid.

16. Aerosmith, Nobody’s Fault . . . From the great Rocks album. So difficult to pick a favorite song by great bands one likes, but all the great hits aside, if I had to pick just one, this very well could be the Aerosmith tune I’d take with me to a desert island. Great playing, great vocals by Steven Tyler (“now we’re just a little too LATE” etc.), just a great tune.

17. Rod Stewart, Mandolin Wind . . . From Every Picture Tells A Story, the album with Maggie May on it. Maggie May prompted me to buy the album way back when, but this Stewart-penned tune rivals it as easily one of Rod’s best. I saw him live, August 1988 in Toronto and he played it. Surprisingly, to me, many in the crowd did not recognize it, it didn’t get much reaction and I can only presume it’s because most of the crowd had grown up on just his big radio hits. I was inspired to play this one via a Twitter discussion where a fellow music aficionado asked people to post songs featuring mandolin. I used this one, to great feedback.

18. Love, Signed D.C. . . . The Forever Changes album gets most of the, er, love in the Love catalogue, and it’s a fantastic album. But this beautiful song, about a harrowing topic – drug addiction – from Love’s self-titled debut album in 1966 remains my favorite single song by the band.

19. Fairport Convention, Matty Groves . . . I got into this great UK folk rock band primarily through my love of Jethro Tull. Dave Pegg, Tull’s bassist in the early 1980s, had been in Fairport earlier so my natural inclination for following the various branches of band trees brought me to the Convention. A bit late, because FP started in 1967 led by renowned guitarist Richard Thompson, but I quickly made up for lost time with a band that for a too-brief period featured the amazing vocals of the late Sandy Denny. Pegg remains in the still-active band. They continue to record and tour and feature another Tull alumnus, 1980s drummer Gerry Conway.

20. Eric Burdon & War, Bare Back Ride . . . A La Grange-like riff, before ZZ Top did it, in 1973. This one from 1970’s Black-Man’s Burdon, the second and final album from the terrific jazz-rock funk and soul fusion marriage that was Burdon’s collaboration with War. That pairing produced the great single, Spill The Wine, which Burdon opened with when I saw him at the 2016 Kitchener Blues Festival. Great show by a great artist, still in great voice when I saw him, then age 75. He turns 80 on May 11.

21. ZZ Top, Hot, Blue and Righteous . . . Speaking of ZZ Top . . . A beautiful slow, wonderfully sung almost gospel blues from 1973’s Tres Hombres, the album that featured La Grange.

22. Mose Allison, Stop This World . . . The Who covered his Young Man Blues on Live At Leeds. Many, including John Mayall and Blue Cheer, have done Parchman Farm. All great covers, in fact Allison termed The Who’s Live At Leeds version of Young Man Blues ‘the command performance’ of that song. The great thing about music is how those covers prompt interested listeners into checking out the originals, and the original artists, which is how I got into this late great, and influential, jazz and blues pianist.

1. Yes, Sound Chaser . . . A progressive rock segment to start the show. This opener is a track from Relayer, the lone Yes studio album featuring keyboard player Patrick Moraz, who replaced the departed Rick Wakeman (who later returned). The expanded re-release liner notes for the 1974 album describes the track as “Yes in interstellar overdrive, an otherworldly rocker led by Moraz’s ghostly jazz riff.” Guitarist Steve Howe described it as ‘two strong entities going against one another – this keyboard tune really hammering away against Chris (Squire) and I doing our guitar and bass riffs.”

   It’s great stuff. I was at first going to open with The Gates of Delirium, the epic 22-minute album opener but decided I might bore some people not into prog, hence fell back to risking boring them with Sound Chaser’s nine and a half minutes. Ha ha. Perhaps I’ll get to The Gates of Delirium another time, maybe in an all-prog show, since I didn’t include, for example, Emerson, Lake & Palmer this evening. We’ll see; it’s whatever moves me for a given show.
   

2. FM, Black Noise . . . Great 10-minute title track from the prog/space rock band and 1977 album that gave us the hit single Phasors On Stun, and also introduced listeners to the late great Nash the Slash, who later went solo.
   
3. King Crimson, I Talk To The Wind . . . I enjoy all King Crimson but the 1969 debut album, In The Court Of The Crimson King, remains my favorite. I Talk To The Wind is one of the five pieces on the album, all great, all sung by the amazing, late great Greg Lake, later of course of ELP. So, I guess I did touch on ELP, in a way, today.
   
4. Genesis, Dancing With The Moonlit Knight . . . from the great Selling England By The Pound album, 1973. Just love that little, periodic, how does one describe it in print, noo noo noo noo noodling . . . I think anyone who knows the track knows what I mean. And then later it transtions into the fierce instrumental section, then back again – everything that made Genesis, of that period, so great and interesting.

   I actually got into Genesis relatively late, with the And Then There Were Three album in 1978 via the single Follow You, Follow Me, arguably the band’s most commercial offering to that point, representing the start of a major stylistic transition by the band and more accessible to me, who to that point was more a raunch and roller who had essentially ignored prog rock aside from occasional well-known tunes like Yes’s Roundabout.

   I had always been aware of Genesis, of course; I remember high school friends talking up A Trick of The Tail when it came out in 1976 and actually decided to investigate that album, and beyond, once I got to college two years later. It was after a football game, we were at a party and Tail was on the turntable. A teammate looked at me and said ‘this is the one you need to hear.” So I did, then, and of course later and so off I went back into the Genesis catalogue and the rest is history, for me and all progressive rock music, an association that seems to get stronger the older I get. Not sure what that means, if anything.
   

5. Peter Gabriel, Mother Of Violence . . . And so we go with more Peter Gabriel singing, this time not with Genesis but from his second solo album, 1978. As with his first four solo works, simply titled Peter Gabriel although they’ve come to be known, via their album covers, as Car, Scratch, Melt or Melted Face and Security (only in the US and Canada, Geffen Records slapped that title on against Gabriel’s wishes, though he reluctantly agreed to it and came up with the title Security himself. It’s the album with Shock The Monkey on it and I remember the title as a sticker on the original vinyl wrap. Anyway, nice song, good album, no big hits, arguably somewhat overlooked in Gabriel’s catalogue. Robert Fripp of King Crimson fame plays guitar on it as does later Crimson bassist/Chapman stick player Tony Levin. Roy Bittan of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band also appears, on keyboards, on more than half the album.
   
6. Pink Floyd, Keep Talking . . . From the second post-Roger Waters album, The Division Bell, 1994. It features Stephen Hawking in a few spoken word segments that I think add nice touches to the track. Waters of course hated and criticized the whole enterprise, dismissing this album in particular as crap: “Just rubbish, nonsense from beginning to end.”. And I always laughed at his thoughts on the first David Gilmour-led album in 1987, calling A Momentary Lapse of Reason “a quite clever forgery”.

   The Lapse album title I always thought something of an at least potentially unfortunate name, or maybe probably deliberate satire, all things considered given the Floyd internecine fighting at the time, although the title stems from a lyric in the song One Slip. At any rate, musicially, Floyd continued on quite well I thought, how could it not, with Gilmour on guitar. Lyrically, without Waters, not so much. Great album covers, though, the beds on the beach for A Momentary Lapse Of Reason and the two heads for The Division Bell. Among Pink Floyd’s best, in my opinion.
   

7. Traffic, Rock And Roll Stew . . . So, we now deliberately shift the tone of the show, via the title, just so damn clever, lol, to more of a traditional I guess one would say, for me anyway, rock direction, with this up tempo number by the endlessly terrific Traffic.
   
8. The Rolling Stones, Ventilator Blues . . . A hypnotic track, just listen to the repetitive, metronome-like guitar riff throughout. One of my favorites from the brilliant Exile On Main St. album and a rare co-writing credit, along with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, granted to then-band member and amazing guitarist Mick Taylor, who contributed so much (including songwriting he claims he was not credited for, arguably true, easily searchable online for particulars) during his 1969-74 tenure.

   That said, while I love Taylor’s playing, one could reason it was the Stones’ environment that stimulated his creative juices more than the other way around, since he’s done little in the way of great solo work since. I have all his albums and they’re not, to me, memorable, rarely play them and am not prompted to play them often because they never stick in even my Stones-loyalist head enough to make me want to. Same with most of Bill Wyman’s solo work, and he’s another who has periodically complained about credits (I do like his In Another Land on the Satanic Majesties album). Taylor’s replacement, Ron Wood, a good musician (especially with Faces/Rod Stewart) who technically Taylor can play rings around, has done much better solo work. As a friend of mine once said during a beer-fuelled discussion with other buddies, “it’s all about songwriting!” And it is. Taylor’s done some great session work though, notably with Bob Dylan and of course before joining the Stones he contributed greatly to John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, and Mayall recommended him to the Stones when they were looking for a replacement for Brian Jones.

9. AC/DC, Ride On . . . Proof, from the early days, that AC/DC could/can really play the blues. Uncharacteristic for them, but a great tune from the Bon Scott era, released on the Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap album that came out in 1976 in Australia but not until 1981 in North America, on the heels of the massively-successful Back In Black album. So many songs have memorable lines, this one for me being the ‘looking for a truck” in terms of where it’s placed, and how it’s sung, in the song. Which is, reason suggests, why the song was selected for the Who Made Who pseudo-compilation, released in 1986 as the soundtrack to the Stephen King movie Maximum Overdrive, an adaptation of his short story Trucks. I say pseudo-compilation because AC/DC has no – band policy apparently – official compilations (other than a couple box sets of mostly archival, unreleased and live stuff). Another soundtrack/compilation of their material is Iron Man 2.

    

   10. Pat Travers, Crash And Burn . . . I love Travers’ big hit Snortin’ Whiskey but after hearing it for the first time back in 1980, it drew me to the album from which it came, I fell in love with this title track and it, arguably, remains my favorite by Travers. Saw him in a smokin’ set at the Kitchener Blues Festival a few years ago.

    

   11. Red Rider, Napoleon Sheds His Skin . . From the great Neruda album, 1983. The White Hot and Don’t Fight It singles initially brought the band to my attention, followed by Lunatic Fringe. Then I went out to Peace River, Alberta for my first full-time journalism job and back then, pre-internet and way up north, radio wasn’t the greatest in terms of tunes so you often bought stuff sight unseen, word of mouth recommendations or from reviews in music magazines that existed then, which is how I wound up getting Neruda.

12. Bill Withers, Use Me . . . I always knew of Withers’ beautiful Ain’t No Sunshine and Just The Two Of Us but in perhaps something of a musical role reversal I admit I got into this tune via Mick Jagger’s cover of it on his 1993 solo release Wandering Spirit. Yes, I know, so much of my music interests are somehow connected to The Rolling Stones. What can I say? Love that band. And most of those connections lead to great music.

13. Joe Cocker, Look What You’ve Done . . . Great track from a great album I got into during those early career days in Peace River, 1981-83, this from 1982. Cocker’s cover of Bob Dylan’s Seven Days, which I’ve played on the show and was also done by the Stones’ Ron Wood on his 1979 Gimme Some Neck album, drew me to the Cocker work. It’s a reggae-ified (is that a word? it is now) spin that features the rhythm section/production duo of drummer Sly (Dunbar) and bassist Robbie ( Shakespeare). The album also features the Steve Winwood song Talking Back To The Night, which Cocker actually released first, three months before Winwood’s album of the same name came out in August of 1982.

14. Dr. John, I Walk On Guilded Splinters . . . Sometimes titled I Walk On Gilded Splinters. In any event, another example, for anyone who isn’t aware of his music, that the good doctor was far more than his hit single from way back, Right Place Wrong Time. Great gumbo, this. Covered by many artists, including Humble Pie’s 23-minute live version on Performance Rockin’ The Fillmore and various latter-day Allman Brothers Instant Live series albums, a few of which I own.

15. Little Feat, Roll Um Easy . . . What a band, Little Feat. Never massively commercially successful, highly influential, widely respected by other musicians…I saw the latter-day, post-Lowell George version, fronted by Paul Barrere, also now passed, at a club in Hamilton, Ont. Great show. This song came out in 1973 on the terrific Dixie Chicken album, Barrere’s first with the band, and was covered two years later by Linda Ronstadt, with George playing slide guitar on it.

16. Nick Lowe, Big Kick, Plain Scrap . . . From my college period, 1978-80 when all the punk/new wave stuff broke big, this from 1979’s Labour Of Lust. The hit was Cruel To Be Kind but the whole album is great, Switchboard Susan, which I’ve played before, on and on. Hard to pick a track to play because to me they’re all so good, but on the flip side, it’s a great album to dig into for my programs.

17. The Police, Shadows In The Rain . . . Nothing to do with anything, really and not sure why I thought of this, other than I’m playing a Police song, but I remember an old acquaintance of mine claimed to be one of 14 people to see the band in a Toronto pub, before they were big or had an album out. Who knows, who cares, just came to mind, great tune from a great band that became really, really big.

18. The Kinks, Little Bit Of Emotion . . . From 1979’s Low Budget, great album by the Kinks that, maybe surprisingly, didn’t do so well for them commercially on their home turf in the UK but restored them, in large measure, to commercial prominence in the colonies, what with (Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman and other hits. Always one of my favorite bands, just quite amazing to me, musically, lyrically mostly from Ray Davies but also many great tunes from brother Dave. The live album and DVD that came out of the resulting tour, One For The Road, is terrific.

19. Warren Zevon, Basket Case . . . Anyone who knows Zevon well knows he’s much more than Werewolves of London or, for that matter, the entire Excitable Boy album from which it came, a brilliant offering that expanded his audience, at least temporarily. But album to album, track to track, great lyric to great lyric, his catalogue is brilliant including this mid-tempo rocker from My Ride’s Here in 2002. The album was released shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer and a year before his untimely passing just two weeks before the release of his final studio album, The Wind, in 2003.

20. Midnight Oil, No Time For Games . . . Good rocker from the band’s early days, this from the 1980 EP Bird Noises. I remember reading about them early on, but confess that, like perhaps many people, never really heard them until Beds Are Burning and The Dead Heart from the 1987 Diesel and Dust album that broke them big outside Australia and deep music aficionados. Then, as so often happens when an album, or single, introduces you to an artist, you go back and are often rewarded.

21. Free, Soon I Will Be Gone . . . I haven’t played this brilliant band in a while. Good to get back to them. It’s always difficult for me to choose a track of Free’s to play, since there’s so many good ones, the band obviously having far more depth to its catalogue than just the great All Right Now. But I deliberately chose this beautiful one for its title, since the show is almost at its conclusion and I’ve been in this maybe rut, not sure if it’s good or not and I may break free soon, of tying song titles, in spots, to the set list.

22. Coverdale-Page, Over Now . . . And, so ends the show. Good relationship/breakup/rail at a former flame lyrics on a great track from this one-off collaboration in 1993, the Coverdale/Page album. I remember when word came that David Coverdale and Jimmy Page were working together. It was interesting because that was around the time that Coverdale and Whitesnake were commercially huge, or had been, and Robert Plant was miffed and started knocking Coverdale as “Cover-version” due to some of Whitesnake’s Zep-sounding stuff. Which was true, but I also always found it rich, since Led Zeppelin has a checkered history of plagiarism, or at the very least, accusations of heavy borrowing and adapting. Besides, early Whitesnake, up to about 1982, after Deep Purple broke up for the first time in 1976, was quite different, very bluesy, very good. As was the later Whitesnake, but not as much to my taste, too over-produced and ‘hair metal’ for me. So Coverdale and Page got together and it’s a damn good album, which apparently served as the catalyst for Page and Plant reuniting for the 1994 No Quarter live album/MTV special featuring Zep tracks and some new stuff, followed four years later by the Page-Plant studio album Walking Into Clarksdale.

1. Fleetwood Mac, Coming Your Way . . . I always think of my late older brother whenever I listen to this track, or the album from which it came, Then Play On, 1969. We were living in Peru at the time, my dad was working there but the older kids would go back to North America for high school and it was always fun when they came home for holidays, bringing back with them the newest popular music that, back then, took more time to come to places like the little South American mining town we lived in. A great Latin-type, propulsive track, with great drumming and percussion from Mick Fleetwood. It was written by guitarist Danny Kirwan,who had just joined the band for this last album of the Peter Green era.
2. Keith Richards, 999 . . . One of my favorite Keith Richards’ solo tunes, or for that matter any of the songs from Rolling Stones, Inc. Such a great intro, and great groove throughout. From his second solo album, Main Offender, 1992. Around this time, individual members of the Stones were pretty hot with their solo work – this from Richards, Mick Jagger’s most Stones-like solo album, Wandering Spirit in 1993 and Slide On This from Ron Wood, in 1992. Combined, would have made an amazing Stones double or triple album but that’s OK because we have it all. And Stones’ fanatics like me make our own Stones’ solo playlists.
3. Eric Clapton, The Core . . . Like many, perhaps, I bought Clapton’s Slowhand album when it came out for the single, Lay Down Sally, but quickly grew to like and appreciate the entire work, which is solid, track for track, including this nearly nine-minute excursion, featuring co-lead vocals by Marcy Levy.
4. Robert Palmer, Jealous . . . Another one from my college days, from the Secrets album, 1979, whose big hit was Palmer’s cover of the Moon Martin tune, Bad Case Of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor). Great tune, the Martin one, and I’ll have to get back to Martin on my show soon…but I’ve always liked this riff-rocker Jealous at least as much, if not more, than Doctor, Doctor.
5. Dead Kennedys, Holiday In Cambodia . . . got into these guys due to their name, thought it was cool, funny and perverse, as is the title of this track. Sick, perhaps, but it’s only rock and roll/punk/hardcore so, relax and enjoy. Great stuff from a great band.
6. BB Gabor, Moscow Drug Club . . . and so we slow things down in the set, with this subversive tune from the late, great Gabor.
7. The Smashing Pumpkins, Aeroplane Flies High . . . I had never heard this tune, recorded during the Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness sessions, until I bought a Pumpkins’ double hits compilation years ago, the second CD of which contains B-sides and previously unreleased material. Good, extended, tune.
8. Jefferson Airplane, Comin’ Back To Me . . . beautiful song by Marty Balin from Surrealistic Pillow, featuring guitar by Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia. The song has apparently appeared in several movies although, not being a huge movie buff, none of which I’ve seen. But I can see how it would fit some movies.
9. Leon Russell, Back To The Island . . . another good one by the late great Russell, an artist I have not played in a while but always seems to draw a good reaction when I play him.
10. Doug and The Slugs, Tropical Rainstorm  . . . one of my favorites by The Slugs, a nice, bluesy one from the Cognac and Bologna album, 1980. I saw the band, before they released that debut album, at a pub in Oakville, Ontario, with my then-girlfriend, during college. She was from Mississauga, but had spent a year or so in Vancouver and fell in love with the band, was excited to hear they were coming to town, we went, and I liked them, too.
11. Dire Straits, In The Gallery  . . . from the self-titled debut album, 1978. One of those albums that one bought for the hit, Sultans of Swing, only to then be blown away by the rest of it, and by everything else this band ever produced.
12. Bob Dylan, Senor (Tales of Yankee Power) . . . one of my favorite Dylan tunes, from the Street Legal album…he’s always got such great, memorable lines in nearly every one of his songs, for me that being the opening “can you tell me where we’re heading, Lincoln County road or Armageddon . . . ”
13. Iron Butterfly, Unconscious Power . . . great tune from the debut album, Heavy. Nice bass line.
14. John Lennon, God . . . was reminded to play this, long time since I did, by a Twitter conversation about great lyrics. For me, that would be the opening line of this, one of my favorite Lennon songs, “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” Which then leads, of course, into the long list of things he says he doesn’t believe in, culminating in “Beatles’. From the Plastic Ono Band album, which contains another influential song on my then-young brain, Working Class Hero – which I’ll have to play again sometime.
15. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Walk On The Water . . . notice the pattern here with, at least, song titles? Unconscious Power, God, Walk On The Water. . . .so clever, your friendly neighborhood DJ, lol. This is, I think, a pretty well-known tune by CCR, as so much of their output is, and comes from the debut, self-titled album in 1968. But it was a B-side to I Put A Spell On You, which as the A-side only made No. 58 on the singles charts. Amazing, to me, that either track didn’t chart higher.
16. Chris Whitley, Big Sky Country . . . the song that got me into this late great, blues/rock singer songwriter. It was the second single from his 1991 debut album, Living With The Law, the title cut of which was the first single. Both tracks made the top 40 and rightly so. The whole album is brilliant.
17. Jethro Tull, Cold Wind To Valhalla . . . Yet another great track from this amazing band, nobody like them, really. And another artist I always thank my older brother for introducing me to, when he brought the Stand Up album home. This one’s from Minstrel In The Gallery.
18. Roxy Music, Oh Yeah . . . beautiful track from the Flesh + Blood album, 1980, by which time Roxy had largely departed from the early, art-rock/avant garde days and had gone more mainstream, but still great. Made No. 5 in the UK. Features the well-known chorus refrain ‘there’s a band playing on the radio’ and in fact is titled Oh Yeah (There’s A Band Playing On The Radio) on some releases.
19. Frank Zappa, Dirty Love . . . nice, tight, rock song with fun lyrics and typically amazing guitar by Zappa and other instrumentation by the rest of his band.
20. Bob Seger, Beautiful Loser . . . title cut from his 1975 album, before he really broke big into the mainstream with the live album, Live Bullet, a year later. This track was combined with Travelin’ Man from the Beautiful Loser album on Live Bullet, but I’ve played the studio cut here. A now well-known Seger tune, Beautiful Loser but amazingly, made only No. 103 on the Billboard chart. Probably would have been Top 10 had he released it later, once he broke big.
21. Bruce Springsteen, Point Blank . . . haunting song from The River album, one of the three Springsteen albums I consider my favorites and interchangeably rank 1,2, 3 – Born To Run, Darkness On The Edge Of Town and The River.
22. Cream, Deserted Cities Of The Heart . . . so great. “Cream’ of the crop – the vocals/bass from Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker’s drumming and Eric Clapton’s guitar solo. Magnificent.
23. Faces, Had Me A Real Good Time . . . and I did, yet again, in putting another show together. Thanks to any and all who tune/tuned in. Another great raunch and roller by one of the greatest raunch and roll bands ever.
24. The Allman Brothers Band, End Of The Line . . . from 1991, from Shades of Two Worlds, the second post-reunion album with the new lineup featuring Warren Haynes. Yet another great tune from a great, great band, one of my all-time favorite groups.