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

1. The Rolling Stones, One Hit (To The Body)
2. Deep Purple, King Of Dreams
3. Aerosmith, Eat The Rich
4. Black Sabbath, Get A Grip
5. The Who, Eminence Front
6. Foreigner, Lowdown and Dirty
7. Rod Stewart, Passion
8. Motley Crue, Hooligan’s Holiday
9. Stevie Wonder, Race Babbling
10. Genesis, The Serpent
11. Pink Floyd, Learning To Fly
12. Elton John, Johnny B. Goode
13. AC/DC, Sink The Pink
14. Bad Company, Holy Water
15. Bob Dylan, Mr. Bojangles
16. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, My Wheels Won’t Turn
17. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Nighttime For The Generals
18. Van Halen, Fire In The Hole
19. Queen, Put Out The Fire
20. The Clash, This Is England
21. The Doors, Ships W/Sails
22. Fleetwood Mac, These Strange Times 

    My track-by-track tales:

    1. The Rolling Stones, One Hit (To The Body) . . . Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame provides a solo on this killer cut that opened the critically-panned and loathed by some fans album Dirty Work, although honestly I’ve never gotten what all the fuss is about over the Page solo. I think it’s more of a ‘wow, Page is playing on a Stones’ song’ than anything else. I saw/heard the Stones play it on the Steel Wheels tour stop in Toronto in 1989 and didn’t hear anything that Page did that Keith Richards and/or Ronnie Wood couldn’t or didn’t. But then, while I respect his abilities, I’m not a big Jimmy Page fan. My judgment, rightly or wrongly, is admittedly affected by his/Zep’s plagiarism issues, or at least widespread accusations, lawsuits and settlements to do with plagiarism, and his scuzzy character, at least during Zep’s heyday, as revealed in books like Hammer of The Gods. In any event, I’ve always liked the Dirty Work album. The Stones were falling apart, fighting each other, yet they still produced in my view – and of course I’m a big fan – a kick butt album that reflected that anger with songs like One Hit, Dirty Work the title cut, Had It With You, and others. I remember noted rock critic Peter Goddard of The Toronto Star celebrating it for those reasons, upon release. And “Bad’ is arguably a relative term, in terms of this set list, such judgments dependent on people’s expectations of a band/artist and so on – although many of the source albums are, indeed, certainly not the various artists’ prime slabs.
    2. Deep Purple, King Of Dreams . . . The Slaves and Masters album is often disparagingly called a “Deep Rainbow’ album due to the presence of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore’s friend and post-Ronnie James Dio lead Rainbow singer Joe Lynn Turner on vocals. I didn’t like Rainbow after Dio left and singers like Graham Bonnet and then Turner came in and the direction went way too pop for my tastes, and I don’t like Deep Rainbow. Aside from this song. King of Dreams is, by light years, the best song on the only Deep Purple album I almost never play beyond this opening cut. And Purple is one of my favorite bands. The record might be good but there’s nothing else compelling enough that has ever prompted me to repeat listens. I tried again in putting together this show and, no. Same result. Even Blackmore realized it, had to admit reality and soon enough, Ian Gillan was back at the Purple mic for The Battle Rages On album in 1993, the perpetual battle between Gillan and Blackmore indeed raging on to the point that Blackmore finally up and quit in the middle of that tour, to be temporarily replaced by Joe Satriani and, eventually, permanently by Steve Morse. Morse has since, alas, left Purple after eight creatively productive studio albums to care for his ailing wife, with Northern Ireland guitarist Simon McBride replacing him as a full-fledged member.
    3. Aerosmith, Eat The Rich . . . The Get A Grip album, from 1993, was suggested to me by show follower Ted Martin, who mentioned he never progressed further in the Aerosmith catalog. So, he was spared the agony and eye-rolling disillusion fostered by crap like the Music From Another Dimension album and other such overproduced Bon Jovi-type schlock of Aerosmith’s latter, albeit hugely commercially successful days of outside songwriters and power ballad hair metal type hits. I cannot stand that sound. Music From Another Dimension came out in 2012 and is the last studio work of original material by Aerosmith, after which guitarist Joe Perry I recall reading said ‘nobody wants new Aerosmith songs’ or something like that. The sentiment is often true of many so-called legacy classic rock bands but in Aerosmith’s case, thank Christ for no new stuff, if they were to continue with the schlock shit they were releasing from, say, after the Pump album in 1989 onward. Now, I will backtrack a bit. Get A Grip is actually not a bad album. I think Nine Lives (1997) and Just Push Play (2001) are way worse, but I’ve never played them enough, beyond knowing the singles like Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees) or Jaded to know them well enough to find a decent ‘good song on a bad album.’ This sad state of affairs from the band that gave us such classic hits as Walk This Way, Sweet Emotion and deep cuts like Nobody’s Fault from the Rocks album, until they decided outside writers was the way to go and it made them loads of money but at the expense, arguably, of their integrity. Maybe they should have continued doing drugs and boozing. Anyway, Get A Grip gave us hits like Livin’ On The Edge, Cryin’ and Amazing, which are ok, but Eat The Rich, the album opener and a less successful single, is easily the best song on the record, harkening back to early Aerosmith in at least some respects.
    4. Black Sabbath, Get A Grip . . . Speaking of Get A Grip, the Aerosmith album does have a title cut, it’s pretty lousy, so since this is a ‘good songs on bad albums’ show I thought it would be fun to use a different song with the same title, from Sabbath’s 1995 album Forbidden. The record was crucified by critics, many fans and even band members but again, I actually like it. But I like every Sabbath album. It’s from the I think underappreciated Tony Martin on vocals era, with guitarist Tony Iommi as always holding the fort and firing away from his arsenal of heavy riffs. I think the album failed for at least two reasons: the cartoon-type cover of the Grim Reaper, and more so the fact it was produced by a rapper, Ernie C of the rap metal band Body Count, with Body Count member Ice-T helping out on vocals on the album opener, The Illusion Of Power. Many people apparently couldn’t get beyond that, but I’ve never listened to Body Count so I really have no opinion on the matter.
    5. The Who, Eminence Front . . . From It’s Hard, the second studio album The Who did, after Face Dances, with former Face Kenney Jones on drums replacing the dear departed Keith Moon. To many, including at least at first, Roger Daltrey who didn’t think Jones was the right fit, The Who was no longer really The Who without Moon, although of course the band, without Jones, continues on with live work and has released two more studio albums since It’s Hard in 1982. It’s Hard is a wimpy album, inferior to Pete Townshend’s solo stuff at the time. I barely play it aside from two cuts – Cry If You Want which has nice military-type patter drumming from Jones and Eminence Front – by far the best song on the album and the only one that’s still played live and deemed worthy of a spot on Who hits compilations.
    6. Foreigner, Lowdown and Dirty . . . Not a massive Foreigner fan but I do like their early hits like Cold As Ice, the entire Double Vision album and the slightly later hit Urgent. Anyway, singer Lou Gramm left Foreigner in 1990, later to return, but in the meantime in came onetime, latter-day Montrose singer Johnny Edwards for 1993’s Unusual Heat album. The record bombed, Edwards returned to obscurity, I eventually traded the record in and replaced it with a hits compilation – which is all I really need from Foreigner – that included this worthy rocker, which stiffed as Unual Heat’s single, unfairly, I thought.
    7. Rod Stewart, Passion . . . Stewart had lost me by the time of 1980’s Foolish Behaviour album, which I did buy on vinyl at the time only for this song, the lead single, and a deserved hit it was. I no longer have the album, having traded in most of my vinyl when CDs came into existence. But that’s what hits compilations are for, songs like this when you couldn’t care less for the rest of the studio record.
    8. Motley Crue, Hooligan’s Holiday . . . This will likely be the only time I ever play a Motley Crue song although come to think of it I may have played this long ago. More on that later, as to why. I absolutely loathe this band. Utter, hair metal garbage in my opinion, the absolute worst most successful band in rock history. To each their own of course but I just don’t get their success. Dr. Feelgood is an OK song, but . . . actually, it’s garbage too, I just listened to it to check. Maybe I despise them for effing up The Beatles’ Helter Skelter, Brownsville Station’s Smokin’ In The Boys Room (I guess they needed a hit and figured nobody would remember the original) and, most egregiously, the Stones’ Street Fighting Man. But no, I just despise them in general and in particular, Vince Neil’s awful singing. Nails on the blackboard stuff, to my ears. Which is why I like Hooligan’s Holiday. Neil doesn’t sing it. It’s John Corabi, a far better singer on the one, self-titled album Motley Crue did with him, released in 1994 during a time when Neil had left the band. Naturally, the fan base didn’t accept the grungier-sounding Crue without Neil and he soon returned, alas. I actually, unfortunately, saw Vince Neil in concert. He was touring in support of his first solo album, while out of the Crue, and opened for Van Halen when I saw the Van Hagar version on Canada Day, 1993 in Barrie, Ontario. Van Halen was great but my funniest memory of the show is Neil’s set so in a way glad I saw it. He was awful, people were pissed, throwing water bottles and such at the stage, demanding he leave and for the first time in my concert experience I saw a performer give himself his own encore. “I’m not finished yet!” Neil screamed amid the deluge, and went into another, unwelcome, song. What a joke. 
    9. Stevie Wonder, Race Babbling . . . Wonder had an amazing run of albums through the 1970s, from 1972’s Talking Book with the big hit single Superstition, among other great songs, through Innervisions, Fulfillingness’ First Finale and Songs In The Key Of Life in 1976. Then came the concept album/soundtrack Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants Volume I which, while yielding the hit single Send One Your Love, otherwise largely confused people and is probably why there never was a Volume II. Side point: Bad move to call an album Volume I. There rarely is a Volume II. See, for example, Van Halen’s Best Of Vol. I (although there was a later Best of Both Worlds, split between David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar-sung songs) and Blue Rodeo’s Greatest Hits Vol. I (there’s never been a Vol. II). As for Secret Life Of Plants, it’s a worthy listen, especially to my ears this hypnotic, near-nine minute sonic exploration.
    10. Genesis, The Serpent . . . From the first Genesis album, released in 1969 when the band members were still schoolboys. The album was a flop, but I hear elements of the future progressive Genesis sound in The Serpent.
        
    11. Pink Floyd, Learning To Fly . . . I suppose I could have picked The Final Cut, essentially a Roger Waters solo album, but A Momentary Lapse Of Reason was suggested to me and it’s similar in that it could be argued it’s essentially a David Gilmour solo album, after the acrimonious split with Waters. The cover is cool, all those beds on the beach, and they were actual beds, not trick photography or computer graphics. The album title is ridiculous, when you think about the fact that the band had just lost its main lyricist and conceptualist, so it could be argued it was a lapse of reason indeed in soldiering on as Pink Floyd. But maybe it was tongue in cheek just to piss Waters off even more because he’s so full of himself he almost dared Gilmour to try to pull an album off without him, Gilmour did, lawsuits ensued and here we are. Other titles that were considered: Signs Of Life (the first piece on the album, an instrumental with the nice sounds of someone rowing a boat, and the album was recorded on Gilmour’s houseboat studio), Of Promises Broken and Delusions Of Maturity. I don’t listen to it much other than this excellent track although in putting together the show I did listen again and aside from songs like Dogs of War where Gilmour steps out of character and seemingly tries to channel Waters in terms of cynical worldview, it’s an OK album. Learning To Fly was the hit single, deservedly so, and reflects Gilmour’s love of flying, as he was learning to be a pilot at the time of the record’s recording. The album sounds like Pink Floyd, or at least what one might expect of Floyd, given Gilmour’s guitar playing but it suffers lyrically due to the absence of Waters, who famously called the album “a pretty fair forgery.” I thought that line was hilarious.
        
    12. Elton John, Johnny B. Goode . . . Elton John was somewhat lost in the late 1970s. His commercial fortunes were in decline, disco was the big thing at the time so, like many classic rockers of the period he tried his hand at that genre with 1979’s Victim Of Love album. The result was this interesting, extended (eight minutes) take on the Chuck Berry hit. It’s somewhat like Devo doing the Stones’ Satisfaction, hence it’s at least not bad – and I love Devo’s take on Satisfaction – because the source material is so good. The album was a relative failure but, like many in this list, probably more because it was Elton John doing it and expectations for him and the type of music he was known for put him in a box. Not saying it’s a great album, but had it been issued by someone else, it may have done better.
        
    13. AC/DC, Sink The Pink . . . Few people ever talk about 1985’s Fly On The Wall, which was arguably the nadir for AC/DC commercially, during the 1980s although many bands would sell their souls for sales of one million units, some of which is obviously automatic buying from fans, based on reputation. I rarely play it, although in compiling this show it hit me that it’s not as mediocre as I remember, raw and down and dirty. Sink The Pink along with Shake Your Foundations are the best songs and both received new leases on life after being re-released on 1986’s Who Made Who, the soundtrack to the Stephen King film Maximum Overdrive, based on his short story Trucks.
        
    14. Bad Company, Holy Water . . . I’m not a fan of the Brian Howe on lead vocals period of Bad Company. I’m usually more open-minded but the Howe-fronted Bad Co., while commercially successful, reaked of that overproduced 1980s sound I so loathe. It sounds like bad Foreigner. That said, I’ve always liked this title cut to the band’s 1990 album. Otherwise, I’m definitely of the “no Paul Rodgers singing, no Bad Company’ persuasion.
    15. Bob Dylan, Mr. Bojangles . . . From 1973’s Dylan album. Dylan didn’t want it released, maintaining the various cover songs, including Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi, were just warmups for studio sessions. But Columbia Records, miffed that Dylan had left the label for a brief fling with David Geffen’s Asylum Records, released it anyway, apparently out of spite. So, we got Dylan’s take on such tunes as Jerry Jeff Walker’s Mr. Bojangles. Dylan, according to a book I have, later said “I didn’t think it (the album) was that bad, really.” However, when he soon returned to Columbia, he demanded the album be deleted from the catalogue. I found my copy in a used bin years ago, and being the completist I am for artists I like, had to have it.
        
    16. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, My Wheels Won’t Turn . . . From Freeways, the 1977 album that represents the last studio work of the original BTO, although they reunited for another album in 1984 without the late drummer Rob Bachman. Freeways was a different sort of record. It moved away from the usual sledgehammer sound of BTO and, even moreso than its predecessor Head On that featured such songs at Lookin’ Out For #1, embraced jazz, light rock and pop. It didn’t do well. My Wheels Won’t Turn didn’t chart, although it’s a song akin to earlier BTO and I remember it, briefly, being played on radio.
        
    17. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Nighttime For The Generals . . . Another from the suggestion box. The title cut from the American Dream album, essentially a Neil Young solo song, was the hit but I’ve always liked this somewhat overproduced (it was 1988, after all) but biting commentary written and sung by the late David Crosby.
        
    18. Van Halen, Fire In The Hole . . . Ah, Van Halen 3. Named ‘3’ because by 1998 the band was on its third singer, Extreme’s Gary Cherone, after having parted ways with first David Lee Roth and then Sammy Hagar, both of whom later returned, and left, and returned, as was the way with Van Halen. The Cherone period was forgettable, it took me about 20 listens to finally ‘get’ the album as, at the time I was commuting two hours a day back and forth to work and wanted to like it and finally sort of did. Upon finally ‘getting it’ I realized it’s not all that bad. It just was completely out of sync with what most Van Halen fans wanted or expected. Lots of long songs, for instance, few immediate hooks, and, hate to say it but maybe over the heads of some headbangers. I’m not suggesting it’s the band’s best album, it’s their worst including a dreadful or let’s be kind and say interesting vocal performance by Eddie VH himself on one track, How Many Say I. He even (yikes) did it in concert, which took some, er, balls to do. But, for all of that, had it been issued under a different name, the album may have been more accepted. As for Fire In The Hole, it’s arguably one of the more typical Van Halen-ish tracks on the album, a rocker that features fine guitar playing. In that respect it is Van Halen, after all.
        
    19. Queen, Put Out The Fire . . . From 1982’s Hot Space album, on which Queen went further in the funk, rhythmic and disco direction that began on the previous album, The Game via the hit Another One Bites The Dust and such tracks as Dragon Attack. Hot Space divided fans and critics who derided the full-blown move to synthnesizers – interesting because on their 1970s albums Queen made a point of putting verbiage like ‘no synthesizers used’ in their liner notes, just in case people thought they might be ‘cheating’ with some of their operatic opuses. Put Out The Fire, written by guitarist Brian May, sounds like more ‘traditional’ earlier Queen. I’ve always liked the album. It represents the sometime conundrum of art vis-a-vis expectations. If a band continues as many fans and critics expect, sounding a certain way, they can then be criticized for not progressing. But if they try something different, they upset those who want the sound they’ve grown accustomed to. The artist can’t win.
    20. The Clash, This Is England . . . From Cut The Crap, the Clash album done after Mick Jones departed, leaving Joe Strummer fully in charge. By all accounts it is crap, but I wouldn’t really know, never owned it, barely heard it and only have This Is England on an ‘essential’ Clash compilation I have in addition to all the other studio albums. Not a bad song, though, one that could easily have fit on the reggae-tinged Sandinista! album.
        
    21. The Doors, Ships W/Sails . . . Extended jazzy, percussive piece from the first of two albums the band did, 1971’s Other Voices, after the passing of lead singer Jim Morrison. Lead vocals were shared by keyboard player Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger. This song became an extended jam on the subsequent tour supporting the album. It’s not a bad effort by any means, but the remaining members ran out of steam by the second post-Morrison record, Full Circle, in 1972. I suppose I should have mined Full Circle, more appropriately, for a ‘good song on a bad album’ but I don’t know that record well enough. Both albums were reissued in a two-fer package, by Rhino Records, in 2015.
        
    22. Fleetwood Mac, These Strange Times . . . A spoken word track from 1995’s Time album, with drummer Mick Fleetwood (!) on vocals. It was only the second time he was lead vocalist on a Mac track, the other time being Lizard People, a B-side from 1990’s Behind The Mask album sessions. These Strange Times is much better and I like it. I’ve played it before on the show and it’s the only one on the album I really know or listen to, a slow-building track that among other things, name drops band founder Peter Green’s songs Man Of The World and The Green Manalishi (With The Two Prong Crown). Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were not on board for the album although Buckingham did backing vocals on one song, Nothing Without You. Those Mac stalwarts were replaced by country singer Bekka Bramlett (daughter of Delaney and Bonnie) and guitarists Dave Mason, of Traffic fame, and Billy Burnette. The album bombed, of course.

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

1. Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 5
2. Electric Light Orchestra, Roll Over Beethoven
3. Muddy Waters, The Blues Had A Baby And They Named It Rock & Roll
4. Joe Walsh, I Can Play That Rock & Roll
5. Chicago, Anyway You Want
6. Stanley Clarke, Rock ‘N Roll Jelly
7. Roger Waters, What God Wants, Part I
8. Flash And The Pan, Man In The Middle
9. Murray Head, One Night In Bangkok
10. Roxy Music, In Every Dream Home A Heartache (live, from Viva! Roxy Music)
11. The Butterfield Blues Band, Love Disease
12. Fleetwood Mac, Black Magic Woman
13. Arc Angels, Sent By Angels
14. Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Tightrope
15. Gov’t Mule (with Jimmy Vaughan), Burning Point
16. Deep Purple, Mistreated
17. Billy Cobham, Stratus
18. Genesis, The Knife (from Live, 1973 release)
19. Kansas, A Glimpse Of Home
20. The Byrds, Goin’ Back
21. The Rolling Stones, How Can I Stop (Wayne Shorter, RIP, on saxophone) 

    My track-by-track tales:

    1. Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 . . . I was sorting and shelving CDs and came across some items in my classical collection and figured, what the heck, let’s play some Ludwig. It’s not often I dip into the 18^th and 19^th centuries, after all, Beethoven’s lifespan being 1770-1827, with his music eternal. Not the full symphony but a five or so minute excerpt. And it makes for some fun as a setup for the next song. Subconsciously, I might also have been thinking of Beethoven thanks to a text conversation with a friend during which he jokingly inserted Walter Murphy into a chat about The Beatles. You had to be part of the conversation but suffice it to say it was favorable to the Fab Four. Time and space don’t permit other than to say it had to do with The Beatles’ acumen as a live band and people’s perception as to their ability to rock. They could, not only throughout their career – see the rooftop concert for instance – and, hmm, anyone ever hear of their Hamburg days? Or The Cavern Club? Etc. Anyway, Murphy’s Big Apple Band had the disco instrumental hit A Fifth Of Beethoven in 1976, then he kept doing that sort of thing with Mozart and other classical artists but people grew less and less interested as he went to the well too often. Murphy is still active with an extensive resume writing music for films and TV shows including, going way back, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on up through Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Family Guy, among many others.
       
    2. Electric Light Orchestra, Roll Over Beethoven . . . Full eight-minute version of ELO’s take on the Chuck Berry classic, including the opening nod to Beethoven’s 5th. A killer cut, appeared on ELO 2.
    3. Muddy Waters, The Blues Had A Baby And They Named It Rock & Roll . . . From Hard Again, one of three studio and one live albums guitarist Johnny Winter produced and played on near the end of Waters’ life and career. Hard Again in 1977 was followed by I’m Ready in 1978, Muddy ‘Mississippi’ Waters Live in 1979 and King Bee, Muddy’s final studio album in 1981. Also helping out in the series of albums were, among others, piano man Pinetop Perkins and James Cotton on harmonica. 
    4. Joe Walsh, I Can Play That Rock & Roll . . . In the liner notes to a compilation I own, Walsh said he was paying homage to The Rolling Stones with this track and that’s clearly evident with the Keith Richards-like guitar sound and opening riff. It’s from Walsh’s 1983 typically humorously-named album, You Bought It – You Name It. I’ll name it pretty good.
    5. Chicago, Anyway You Want . . . Kitchener, Ontario’s Charity Brown had a No. 6 Canadian hit with this Peter Cetera-penned song, sung by Cetera on Chicago VIII in 1975. I’ve lived in Kitchener for years now and Brown’s version has been something of an earworm since my teen years in Oakville, Ont. But I still prefer Chicago’s version from back when they still had the jazz-rock fusion and sometimes funky thing going to at least some extent, while guitarist Terry Kath was still alive. 
    6. Stanley Clarke, Rock ‘N Roll Jelly . . . From the eclectic bassist’s 1978 album Modern Man. It came to mind while watching a YouTube ‘rate the albums’ show that wasn’t about Clarke although he came up in the conversation the guys on the show were having. It’s a great up-tempo instrumental featuring Jeff Beck, who almost steals the spotlight on lead guitar but from what I’ve read, Clarke has been that sort of bandleader on his solo material, letting others shine. I first learned of and saw Clarke – most of whose vast body of work is in the jazz fusion idiom including his work with Chick Corea’s Return To Forever – when he was a member of The New Barbarians. That was the band featuring Rolling Stones guitarists Ron Wood and Keith Richards that toured the US to promote Wood’s Gimme Some Neck album. But they’re best known for opening for the Stones at the 1979 Oshawa, Ontario benefit concert that fulfilled one of the conditions of Richards’ sentence for possession of heroin. I was there and still amazed I managed to get tickets; there were only 10,000 to be had for the separate afternoon and evening concerts in the 5,000-seat hockey arena. My college buddy and I saw the afternoon show, tried to linger for the second show, we hid in a bathroom, but were found and booted out. Great shows, both the Barbarians and the Stones. The Barbarians set finishes, Keith Richards grabs an acoustic guitar, sits on a stool, stage dark aside from the spotlight. He starts strumming and then out comes Mick Jagger, all dressed in white and it’s suddenly the 1969 US tour again that yielded the live album Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out as Mick and Keith go into the Rev. Robert Wilkins blues cut Prodigal Son that appeared on the Beggars Banquet album. Then out come the rest of the Stones for Let It Rock and it’s on with a terrific and historic show. As I recall, Clarke later joined the Stones for the set closers Miss You and Jumpin’ Jack Flash.
    7. Roger Waters, What God Wants, Part I . . . Speaking of Jeff Beck helping out Stanley Clarke, here’s the late great guitarist again on a typically acerbic song from Waters’ 1992 album Amused To Death. The album title was inspired by Neil Postman’s 1985 book Amusing Ourselves To Death, which changed my life/way of thinking, at least in terms of the vacuous nature of celebrity culture. The book, whose genesis came from Postman’s appearance on a panel discussing George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, is subtitled Public Discourse In The Age of Show Business and remains relevant. The late Postman’s view was that the modern world was more a reflection of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where people are oppressed more by their addiction to amusement than oppression by the state, as in Orwell’s dystopia although both visions are valid. John Lennon arguably beat Postman to the punch by 15 years in his 1970 classic Working Class Hero where they ‘keep you doped with religion and sex and TV.’ But to perhaps correct Lennon and go back to Postman, it’s not necessarily ‘they’. It’s us. Bread and circuses, happily consumed.
    8. Flash And The Pan, Man In The Middle . . . Crazy where inspiration comes from. As often mentioned, lots comes from conversations, or something I see or hear or, in this case, buying a bottle of wine earlier this week. I happened upon the rack holding one of my regular selections, took the middle of the three bottles in the front row and the Flash And The Pan song popped into my head. Wonderful/amazing/crazy how the brain works. I suppose. Had I picked the bottle on the left, perhaps I’d be playing Paul McCartney and Wings’ Cafe On The Left Bank, or some such, and Traffic’s Roll Right Stones had I gone for the bottle on the right. Next time, perhaps. I’ll call it ‘the wine selection show.’
    9. Murray Head, One Night In Bangkok . . . The versatile actor/singer Murray Head went from his brilliance as Judas on the 1970 Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack to another impressive performance, rapping out the verses on this catchy hip-hop type tune from the Chess musical soundtrack in 1984. It was developed by renowned author/lyricist Tim Rice of The Lion King fame, and two members of ABBA. The Bangkok single was a worldwide smash hit, much bigger than the actual musical production which first drew my interest because I love the game of chess, arguably humankind’s greatest invention. The song is the only reason I ever bought the original vinyl album, which I lost or traded in along the way but I found the song again recently in a used rack, on a CD compilation of 1980s new wave hits. Yes, I could always access the song online but I still like owning physical copies. To quote The Who, I’m talking about my generation. And one never knows when some bean counter might decide to remove a song from online streaming circulation, same as happens with movies and TV shows. Purge at your listening peril, as I keep warning a friend. That’s you, Ted. 🙂
    10. Roxy Music, In Every Dream Home A Heartache (live, from Viva! Roxy Music) . . . Live take of a song about emptiness and inflatable dolls that first appeared on Roxy’s second studio album, 1973’s For Your Pleasure. Spooky, sinister, weird, great. Probably would get banned in today’s so-called cancel culture although I shouldn’t be so harsh – the song was used as recently as 2019 in the TV crime drama series Mindhunter. I’m not much of a TV show watcher outside of Star Trek and have never watched Mindhunter but the song seems a good choice for a series based on the FBI’s criminal profiling/serial killer unit.
        
    11. The Butterfield Blues Band, Love Disease . . . From 1969’s Keep On Moving album. It’s appropriately titled in that it continued the band’s move away from the straight blues of the early albums starting with the debut in 1965 to a more R & B/soul/horns-drenched approach as guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop eventually moved on. Good music, still, in my opinion despite waning interest from fans and critics – and the 1970 album Live, featuring the expanded lineup, is a fine listen. 
    12. Fleetwood Mac, Black Magic Woman . . . One of those originals, like Bob Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower reimagined by Jimi Hendrix, that relatively few people seem to have heard, at least in comparison to the more celebrated cover. Like many I, too, was introduced to Black Magic Woman by Santana’s version on the Abraxas album but as is usually the case, was rewarded by going back to the source material, from Fleetwood Mac’s blues band days with Peter Green. Same scenario for me with Dylan’s original. I can sincerely say that I have no preference among any of the four versions of the two songs, all excellent in their own ways. It could be argued that, because the famous covers are ubiquitous and overplayed, the originals are the more welcome listens. But that’s just my opinion.
    13. Arc Angels, Sent By Angels . . . From the lone, self-titled studio album released in 1992 by the blues rock outfit formed after Stevie Ray Vaughan died in a helicopter crash in 1990. It featured two members – drummer Chris Layton and bassist Tommy Shannon – from Vaughan’s band Double Trouble, plus guitarists/singers Doyle Bramhall II and Charlie Sexton. They’ve reformed sporadically for live shows over the years and as of 2022 were back again, minus Shannon, for live work. Based on the excellent lone studio release, new recorded work would be welcome.
        
    14. Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Tightrope . . . Up-tempo tune with typically great solos from SRV from 1989’s In Step, his last studio album with Double Trouble.
    15. Gov’t Mule (with Jimmy Vaughan), Burning Point . . . SRV’s brother and fellow guitarist Jimmy of The Fabulous Thunderbirds fame helps out the Mule on this one from the 2017 album Revolution Come . . . Revolution Go.
    16. Deep Purple, Mistreated . . . I played a live version of the title cut from 1974’s Burn album the other week when I did a live albums set. It prompted a show follower to mention how he wore the Burn studio album out back then. Me too. So, I decided to return to that record via this powerful, extended blues cut dominated by Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar and David Coverdale’s compelling vocals. 
    17. Billy Cobham, Stratus . . . Extended jazz fusion from drummer Cobham’s debut solo album, 1973’s Spectrum after he had made big contributions to such albums as Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew and work with John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, all part of a wide-ranging resume in jazz and rock. Cobham’s album featured future Deep Purple guitarist Tommy Bolin, who replaced Ritchie Blackmore when Blackmore quit Purple in 1975 to form Rainbow. Purple’s then-singer David Coverdale was a big fan of Spectrum and Bolin’s playing and recommended Bolin to his bandmates after Blackmore left. The result was Purple’s Come Taste The Band album, which divided critics, the fan base and even the band members due to its, in spots, funky and soulful approach with songs like one of my favorites, You Keep On Moving. Keyboardist Jon Lord was quoted as saying that while he liked the album, especially coming at it for a fresh listen years later, ‘in most people’s opinion, it’s not a Deep Purple album.’ As a big Purple fan, I disagree – it’s a great album that displays the band’s versatility and embracing of different musical forms and it’s gained in stature among critics, over time but in any event we all hear things differently. Some artists can’t win, really. If they branch out, as often happens when new members are integrated, they might lose some fans, while maybe gaining others. If they stay the same, they retain their core audience but are perhaps accused of not progressing. AC/DC, to name one band, doesn’t give a shit and their talent is doing essentially the same album multiple times while still sounding compelling and I sincerely mean that as a compliment. Longtime Purple singer Ian Gillan, who wasn’t involved, has echoed Lord’s remarks about whether Come Taste The Band is ‘real’ Purple. I find Gillan’s view interesting – and I’m not sure when he voiced it, his thoughts may have changed – in that the latter day Purple with guitarist Steve Morse and Gillan back at the vocal helm did some similarly interesting, more diverse material than ‘was allowed’ when the mercurial and somewhat controlling, albeit obviously brilliant Blackmore was in the band – which was always a source of his conflicts with Gillan.
        
    18. Genesis, The Knife (from Live, 1973 release) . . . I was going to play something from Genesis Live when I did my live albums show recently, but couldn’t fit it in, chose something else, whatever. So, here you go, a ferocious live take on the song that arguably eclipses the studio version from 1970s Trespass, after which guitarist Anthony Phillips and drummer John Mayhew moved on, replaced by Steve Hackett and Phil Collins, respectively. Those additions solidified the band’s so-called classic lineup – at least during the purely progressive rock period – that also included singer Peter Gabriel, guitarist/bassist Mike Rutherford and keyboardist Tony Banks. And, of course, The Knife forever reminds me of a drunken, fun ‘fight’ with an old friend over whether Genesis could ‘rock’. I’ve long since come to realize that they could.
        
    19. Kansas, A Glimpse Of Home . . . Not sure how to explain it other than the evolution of my ears, so to speak, but I’ve gotten more into progressive rock as I’ve aged and, in particular, more into arguably one of America’s best exponents of the genre, Kansas. For the longest time I knew and listened to essentially just three songs – Dust In The Wind, Carry On Wayward Son and Portrait (He Knew), so a bare-bones Kansas hits compilation was enough for me. Then I started digging deeper and have been rewarded. It’s not like they’re my favorite band, but there’s lots of great listening in their extensive catalog and they’re still at it, 50 years later, releasing new material and touring.
    20. The Byrds, Goin’ Back . . . Yet another from the vast songwriting catalogue of onetime married couple Carole King and Gerry Goffin. Covered by many, it caused division among The Byrds as David Crosby, soon to be fired by the band, thought it was lightweight. So they recorded it anyway and released it as a single, although it made it to just No. 89 in the US and didn’t chart in the UK. So maybe Crosby was right, although I like the ‘that’s life’ tune.
    21. The Rolling Stones, How Can I Stop (Wayne Shorter, RIP, on saxophone) . . . Lots of jazzy stuff in today’s show, reviewing the set. Not sure how that happens but one just goes with the flow. How Can I Stop is another of those slow, jazzy, bluesy tunes Keith Richards, perhaps belying his reputation as just a riff rocker, has been so adept at on Stones albums, probably harkening back to All About You from the Emotional Rescue album or even You Got The Silver from Let It Bleed. How Can I Stop was the last track on 1997’s Bridges To Babylon album. I was going to play a different Stones song, Moonlight Mile from Sticky Fingers which I’ll get to in a coming show but decided on How Can I Stop when news came of renowned jazz saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter’s death Thursday at age 89. He plays a wonderful solo on this Stones’ song. And what an amazing catalogue Shorter had, with Miles Davis, with Weather Report, Herbie Hancock, on his own, on various rock/pop albums including Santana, Joni Mitchell, Don Henley . . . rest in peace.

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

1. The Who, Getting In Tune
2. The Rolling Stones, Turd On The Run
3. Rory Gallagher, Moonchild
4. Billy Joel, Zanzibar
5. Warren Zevon, A Certain Girl
6. Elton John, Dirty Little Girl
7. Bob Dylan, Isis
8. Joe Cocker, Let’s Go Get Stoned (live, from Mad Dogs and Englishmen)
9. Supertramp, Sister Moonshine
10. Van Halen, Cabo Wabo
11. Alice Cooper, Blue Turk
12. Three Dog Night, One Man Band
13. Pink Floyd, Sheep
14. Drive-By Truckers, 3 Dimes Down
15. The Joe Perry Project, Discount Dogs
16. Aerosmith, Bone To Bone (Coney Island Whitefish Boy)
17. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Quick Change Artist
18. Long John Baldry, Conditional Discharge/Don’t Try To Lay No Boogie Woogie On The King Of Rock & Roll
19. John Mayall, Good Time Boogie (live, from Jazz/Blues Fusion)
20. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, 1983 . . . (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)
21. Them, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue

    My track-by-track tales:

    1. The Who, Getting In Tune . . . Not that this Who’s Next song isn’t a rocker, it is, although it’s light and shade, so to speak in terms of slow and fast, repeating, and I usually go with an overall faster, harder rocking tune to start things off, which is how I also like concerts I attend to open. But, by title this is an obvious opener and a rocker nevertheless. From Who’s Next, the Who album that like all such tour de force records could double as a hits compilation.
    2. The Rolling Stones, Turd On The Run . . . Not sure what to say about this one from Exile On Main St. aside from the fact I like it, always have, and it’s a glorious, propulsive, infectious noise describing what sounds to be a, er, shitty relationship.
    3. Rory Gallagher, Moonchild . . . I always find it hard to pick a Rory Gallagher song when I play him, same with his earlier band Taste, before he went solo. He’s just so consistently good on guitar, arrangements, songs. So I threw darts and hit on this typically good riff rocker, from his 1976 Calling Card album.
    4. Billy Joel, Zanzibar . . . A jazzy, almost calypso type track from Joel’s 1978 album 52^nd Street, the successful (a tough thing to do) follow-up to his massively successful breakthrough 1977 album The Stranger. The song, because apparently Joel figured he didn’t know enough about the place to write about it though he liked the name for a song title, is not about the Tanzanian island province off the African coast but about activities in a bar, fictional or otherwise, and the protagonist’s attempts to pick up a waitress. I suppose I relate in some way, having worked in a bar during my college days and seeing/participating in humanity acting as it will. Lots of sports references, too, including to baseball player Pete Rose, then an active star for the Cincinnati Reds before his banishment from the game due to gambling issues. The original lyrics said Rose was ‘a credit to the game’ but apparently Joel, in concert, has subsequently adjusted them to Rose never making the baseball hall of fame. And that’s a whole other topic.
    5. Warren Zevon, A Certain Girl . . . I played The Yardbirds’ version of this Allen Toussaint-penned track (credited under his pen name Naomi Neville) last September, which prompted one of my show followers in the USA to mention the Zevon cover. So, here it is, from his 1980 album Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School. It was a moderate hit single from that record, which did decently, commercially, as a follow-up to Zevon’s 1978 breakthrough record Excitable Boy. The thing with Zevon, though, is that all his albums are consistently good, even if they may sometimes lack the commercial immediacy of the songs on Excitable Boy. He was an amazing songwriter, sometimes requiring repeat listens as music paired with lyrics sunk in, but amazing nonetheless. That said, if I were forced to pick a Zevon ‘desert island’ disc, it would be Excitable Boy but I’d lobby whoever was forcing me to pick to allow me a second disc, even an EP, containing the songs A Certain Girl, Sentimental Hygiene, Boom Boom Mancini, Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song) and Genius. Probably The Envoy, too. At least.
    6. Elton John, Dirty Little Girl . . . It’s called a mondegreen, the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, often in song lyrics. A well-known example in rock/popular music is ‘scuse me while I kiss this guy’ instead of the real lyric ‘scuse me while I kiss the sky’ in Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze. I mention this because when I first heard Dirty Little Girl, without looking at the lyric sheet accompanying my younger brother’s copy of the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album, I thought Elton John was singing ‘bat shit’ instead of ‘I bet she . . . ‘ in the chorus. I still think of it as the ‘bat shit’ song. It’s a good one, regardless, although the possible mondegreen nature of it isn’t well known, if it’s known at all to anyone or anything but my ears, because Dirty Little Girl is a deep cut. Other fun examples:

       * “There’s a bathroom on the right’ instead of the real lyric “there’s a bad moon on the rise’ in Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising (although honestly I think ‘bad moon’ is pretty distinct and I never heard ‘bathroom’ until reading about it years ago).
       * ‘wrapped up like a douche’ which got great mileage in high school days, har har, eye rolls now, instead of ‘revved up like a deuce’ in Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s reworked lyrics of Bruce Springsteen’s original wording ‘cut loose like a deuce’ in Blinded By The Light.

       Apparently, Hendrix and CCR’s John Fogerty eventually took to singing the mondegreen versions of their songs, for fun, in concert. Interesting reading about mondegreens, actually, it covers many songs including the US national anthem, poems, etc. I recommend doing so.

    7. Bob Dylan, Isis . . . Some time back I played something from Dylan’s Desire album, One More Cup Of Coffee as I recall, and an old high school and college friend with whom I’ve wonderfully reconnected via the show regaled me with a tale of his, somewhat drunken, impromptu belting out of portions of Isis to a startled family gathering. I told him I wholeheartedly approved. As Dylan often introduced the song at live shows during the 1975 Rolling Thunder Review tour, ‘this is a song about marriage.’ Full of great lines, this one apparently quoted by my friend to his audience: “I came in from the east with sun in my eyes; I cursed her one time then I rode on ahead.’ I’ll maybe bore you with one more, one of my favorites along with the ‘cursed’ line, from the song: “The wind it was howlin’ and the snow was outrageous. We chopped through the night and we chopped through the dawn. When he died I was hopin’ it wasn’t contagious; but I made up my mind that I had to go on.” Death as something contagious. Ah, Dylan. If you ‘get’ him, you do. If you don’t, well, try harder. It doesn’t take much. Just listen to the man. And yes, he CAN sing. He’s the best singer of Bob Dylan tunes ever, because they are his and he’s best suited to sing them. If you don’ get it, again, try harder. You’ll be rewarded.
    8. Joe Cocker, Let’s Go Get Stoned (live, from Mad Dogs and Englishmen) . . . I love the Mad Dogs and Englishmen album. It’s loose, raw, raunchy, jazzy, bluesy, overpopulated with musicians and singers, hence somewhat out of control, which makes it great.
    9. Supertramp, Sister Moonshine . . . Cocker was actually talking more about booze, if you read the lyrics to Let’s Go Get Stoned and of course ‘stoned’ is also a term for getting drunk although likely less used today, with more a connotation towards drug use, than it was regarding drinking, as it was more so in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But in any event, Cocker’s rhapsodizing about boozing got me thinking of moonshine whiskey even though the Supertramp song isn’t about booze, but about light.
    10. Van Halen, Cabo Wabo . . . One of my favorite Van Hagar period songs, and I like both the David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar versions of Van Halen. This song, something of a rarity for VH given its 7-minute length, from the second Van Hagar album, OU812, is a paean to the Mexican town of Cabo San Lucas, which later inspired Hagar the astute businessman’s founding of Cabo Wabo Tequila. He later sold the brand to a big name distillery for $80M. I wish I was born with or taught that ‘making money’ sense.
    11. Alice Cooper, Blue Turk . . . Killer bass by Dennis Dunaway to this jazzy piece from the School’s Out album. So many great deep cuts like this in the original Alice Cooper band’s early catalog.
    12. Three Dog Night, One Man Band . . . Something of a ‘lesser’ hit for a band – it made ‘only’ No. 19 in the USA but No. 6 in Canada – that was amazingly dominant on the singles charts during the 1970s, particularly up until the mid-70s. Just ridiculous how many hits/great songs they had and I’m playing them because, when I did my live albums show last Saturday, I got feedback regarding a Three Dog Night Live album from a friend, an album I don’t have – Captured Live At The Forum – but am checking out and so far so great, but in any event another from the ‘songs inspired by conversation’ file.
    13. Pink Floyd, Sheep . . . Another ‘conversation-inspired’ song. Someone in the USA I’ve gotten to know a bit via Facebook, a follower of the show but we now often discuss many things, posted the song. I commented about how much I like the Animals album and so I decided to play Sheep even though, given the album has just five songs, three extended pieces and two short interludes, over time I’ve played it all and I don’t like repeating myself at least too often. But. . . As my friend mentioned, early incarnations of Sheep were known as Raving and Drooling and played live before the studio album was out, and worth looking into online or on various re-issues; Raving and Drooling being to my ears more stripped down, less orchestral, bass especially higher in the mix, it’s good stuff in its early, studio incarnations and on the released album itself.
    14. Drive-By Truckers, 3 Dimes Down . . . I was watching a rock show I like on YouTube the other day, a show in which they rate albums, discuss music, etc. I should get off my butt and do one. In any event…the topic of ‘just what does ‘classic rock’ mean anymore’ came up in terms of how now 1990s music is in some quarters considered to be so-called classic rock when at first that term applied to 1960s and 1970s rock acts. Those bands (Stones, Beatles, Zep, etc.) seem now to be categorized as ‘legacy’ acts as age moving on seems to prompt whoever ‘names’ these things to new nomenclature. Which would make acts that started in the 1950s like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry, among many others, what, precambrian acts? Good music is good music, it should be resistant to categorization and it is, actually, it’s just that we humans tend to need to put it into various boxes, which is understandable, it’s a means of keeping some semblance of order. In any event, after all that, Drive-By Truckers emerged in the mid-1990s. So, of the bands of that period, they may be my favorites although I’d separate them from grunge acts like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains etc. To me, the Truckers are just good music, maybe southern rock to some extent, I just like it, it knows no time period and could stand proudly in any era. As someone in a YouTube comment field said, ‘no bullshit, just music.’ Yes.
    15. The Joe Perry Project, Discount Dogs . . . Guitarist Joe Perry was a man somewhat in two bands at the point of his first Joe Perry Project album, 1980’s released Let The Music Do The Talking (also a song by the Perry Project and later redone by Aerosmith on the Done With Mirrors album). Perry formed his new band at the same time he was still in but soon to be departing Aerosmith, for which he co-wrote the next song in my list, from the Night In The Ruts album. As for Discount Dogs, it’s a funky rock track with Ralph Morman on lead vocals. Morman was in the Aerosmith circle and sold Perry on his value as a singer, and the rest is history although the association was brief as Morman was fired during the band’s first tour due to excessive boozing, according to web reports. Morman went on to sing in later editions of Savoy Brown but died in 2014 of an undisclosed illness.
    16. Aerosmith, Bone To Bone (Coney Island Whitefish Boy) . . . Perry co-wrote this one with Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler, great rocker from the Night In The Ruts album which, while the band was in tatters, remains one of my and many other Aerosmith fans’ favorites. It’s arguably the last of the early, raunchy, kick butt Aerosmith albums before new production techniques, outside writers and other such factors led to much greater commercial success but arguably a loss of the grittiness that made the band appealing in the first place.
    17. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Quick Change Artist . . . From Four Wheel Drive. It was a single but only in Canada, and yet another great BTO tune sung by bassist C.F. (Fred) Turner in his gritty style.
    18. Long John Baldry, Conditional Discharge/Don’t Try To Lay No Boogie Woogie On The King Of Rock & Roll . . . I love the spoken word intro. “Boo-gee woo-gee” . Reminds me of a Brit I knew late 1970s when I took a year off after high school to work and save to put myself through college. Reggae, largely via Eric Clapton’s cover of Bob Marley’s I Shot The Sherriff, was big as most classic rockers were embracing it and my Brit friend referred to it, with contempt, as ‘reggie”. You had to be there, perhaps.
    19. John Mayall, Good Time Boogie (live, from Jazz/Blues Fusion) . . . So anyway, as far as Boogie Woogie, or boo-gee woo-gee goes, take that, Long John, from another John of the blues and various and sundry other genres he chose to experiment in over the many years.
    20. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, 1983 . . . (A Merman I Should Turn To Be) . . .Extendend, brilliant, intoxicating space rock/sci fi/psychedelic, hard rock, studio tricks . . . the track has it all, reflecting Hendrix’s genius, from the Electric Ladyland album.
    21. Them, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue . . . I actually saw the Them Again album in a used rack yesterday. They had a horde of used Van Morrison stuff, almost bought the Them album as a completist, but I have this Bob Dylan cover from the Van-fronted Them on various compilations. In any event, a great song, regardless who does it but thank you, Bob Dylan.

All live albums show. My track-by-track tales follow this bare-bones list.

1. Deep Purple, Burn (from Made In Europe)
2. The Rolling Stones, Out Of Control (from No Security)
3. The Byrds, This Wheel’s On Fire (Live at the Fillmore February 1969)
4. Free, Fire and Water (Free Live)
5. George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Bottom Of The Sea (from Live, 1986)
6. Blue Oyster Cult, Kick Out The Jams (from Some Enchanted Evening)
7. Thin Lizzy, The Rocker (Live and Dangerous)
8. Black Sabbath, Neon Knights (Live Evil)
9. The Who, Shakin’ All Over (Live at Leeds)
10. David Bowie, Moonage Daydream (David Live)
11. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Crossroads (from One More From The Road)
12. The Beatles, She’s A Woman (Live At The Hollywood Bowl)
13. Pretenders, Boots Of Chinese Plastic (Live In London)
14. Concrete Blonde, Mercedes Benz (live, issued on hits compilation)
15. The J. Geils Band, Chimes (from Blow Your Face Out)
16. Ten Years After, I’m Going Home (at Woodstock)
17. The Allman Brothers Band, Mountain Jam (from Eat A Peach/Fillmore East)

    My track-by-track tales. 

    1. Deep Purple, Burn (from Made In Europe) . . . Made in Europe is not nearly as celebrated as Purple’s Made In Japan but it’s as terrific an album in my estimation and one I also played a lot – and still do – in high school and subsequent days. It’s the so-called Mk. III version of the band at work here, David Coverdale on lead vocals and Glenn Hughes on bass/vocals replacing singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover, still teamed up with guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, drummer Ian Paice and keyboardist Jon Lord. I’ve always loved the intro to this title tune from the Burn album. Noodling and doodling instrumentally and then, at approximately the 52-second mark of what will be a 7-minute rendition, Coverdale mouths a simple ‘rock and roll’ and the band kicks in in blistering fashion.
    2. The Rolling Stones, Out Of Control (from No Security) . . . One of my favorite latter-day tunes by the boys, a great live vehicle and a highlight of the No Security album which was a document of the Bridges To Babylon 1997 album tour but a live album, No Security, done in a more interesting and welcome way, at least to Stones’ deeper cuts aficionados in that it was comprised of mostly album tracks, not singles. Naturally, it sold poorly, relatively speaking. So what? At least in the Stones’ case it wasn’t as if their career depended on the record’s success or lack thereof. A great live album, latter day or otherwise.
    3. The Byrds, This Wheel’s On Fire (Live at the Fillmore February 1969) . . . From an album whose tracks laid in the vaults until being released in 2000. It features the great guitar playing of latter-day Byrds member Clarence White. The Byrds to me are a great and always fascinating example of a band that splintered, membership wise, as time passed yet always had the constant leadership of founder member Roger McGuinn involved and always released quality, yet also different, music influenced by lineup changes, whether in the original configuration that included David Crosby of Crosby, Stills and Nash and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young fame, the Gram Parsons country period, or the later Clarence White period which actually was long-serving, five albums worth, after he replaced Parsons following the Sweetheart Of The Rodeo album.
    4. Free, Fire and Water (Free Live) . . . Keeping in tune with the early ‘fire’ theme of the show.
    5. George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Bottom Of The Sea (from Live, 1986) . . . Another artist, along with as I often mention, The J. Geils Band (I’m playing them later) who are arguably best heard live. This is from Thorogood’s first live record.
    6. Blue Oyster Cult, Kick Out The Jams (from Some Enchanted Evening) . . . Kick-ass version of the kick-ass MC5 tune.
    7. Thin Lizzy, The Rocker (Live and Dangerous) . . . Like Judas Priest’s Unleashed In The East, which over the years has been jokingly derided as actually being Unleashed In The Studio due to overdubs and other fixes, Lizzy’s Live and Dangerous has been similarly accused of doctoring. But, in the end, so what, really. Not excusing it but especially given we’re in and long have been in an era where such fixing has been accepted, as have been backing studio tracks used in live concerts, etc. maybe much ado about relatively nothing? Milli Vanilli’s career was destroyed when they were found to be lip-synching yet nowadays nobody bats an eye at such things. Not saying it’s right, one could argue that going to a concert these days is, in many ways, virtual reality, but so be it. Live and Dangerous, like Unleashed In The East and many other such live albums, are great listens.
    8. Black Sabbath, Neon Knights (Live Evil) . . . Killer version of the opening cut to the first Black Sabbath album, 1980’s Heaven and Hell, with Ronnie James Dio on lead vocals replacing Ozzy Osbourne. It’s one of the albums that really got me deeper into hard rock/metal and for that I’ll always credit Gord, the pot-smoking DJ at the Oakville bar, The Riverside, at which I worked during my 1978-80 college days. Gord would play music between live band sets in the pub and he played the ever-loving shit out of five albums: Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell, AC/DC’s Highway To Hell and Back In Black, then just out, Ted Nugent’s Double Live Gonzo and Judas Priest’s British Steel. Thanks, Gord.
    9. The Who, Shakin’ All Over (Live at Leeds) . . . Cover of the Johnny Kidd & The Pirates classic which I played, original version, recently on a “old classic rock and roll’ show.
    10. David Bowie, Moonage Daydream (David Live) . . . Earl Slick whaling away on guitar, as opposed to the late great Mick Ronson who played on the Ziggy Stardust studio album. David Live was Slick’s first release with Bowie, leading to a long association that included the 1970s studio albums that followed, Young Americans, Station To Station and, in the new millenium, Heathen, Reality and The Next Day. Slick also played on John Lennon’s 1980 return to recording, Double Fantasy, and the posthumously-released Milk and Honey album among many other sessions plus solo work.
    11. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Crossroads (from One More From The Road) . . . The ‘Cream treatment’ of the Robert Johnson tune, from Skynyrd’s definitive, pre-plane crash, live album.
    12. The Beatles, She’s A Woman (Live At The Hollywood Bowl) . . . The energy, the fans screaming, is amazing on early Beatles’ live recordings. And this is a great one, redone, remastered, etc. for the 2016 CD release coinciding with director Ron Howard’s film Eight Days A Week: The Touring Years, a film well worth watching.
    13. Pretenders, Boots Of Chinese Plastic (Live In London) . . . Chinese plastic used for weather/surveillance/whatever balloons. Sorry, couldn’t resist. 🙂 My favorite and it’s arguably the best song on the band’s 2008 studio release Break Up The Concrete. The album did reasonably well on the charts, top 30 or better, depending on chart and there are so many these days including digital only. Interestingly, to me, I wonder whether the band might have had a crisis of confidence about the album. The version I bought and admit I was enticed by, was it turns out the UK version double disc that in addition to Break Up The Concrete included a best-of CD. In any event, a solid song done well live by Chrissie Hynde and friends.
    14. Concrete Blonde, Mercedes Benz (live, issued on hits compilation) . . . Singer Johnette Napolitano, and what a singer she is, channels her inner Janis Joplin on this cover, issued on the 1996 Concrete Blonde compilation Recollection.
    15. The J. Geils Band, Chimes (from Blow Your Face Out) . . . Spooky sort of tune. Geez these guys were great, particularly in their earlier days, before the big commerical succuss of songs like Centerfold from the Freeze Frame album. Good songs for sure, but the best Geils to me and many is the earlier Geils and in fact the later success divided the band. Lead singer/frontman Peter Wolf wanted to stick to the previous, less commercial rock/blues/soul/R & B foundation while the others wanted to continue to embrace pop and one can see, of course, being in favor of ever-increasing bank accounts. So, Wolf either quit or was asked to leave, moving on to a relatively successful solo career. J. Geils issued one more album, without him, it of course bombed and that was that, but for some later live reunions but no new studio work.
    16. Ten Years After, I’m Going Home (at Woodstock) . . . They’re so much more than this song but it remains the classic version, from the 1969 festival, that made Ten Years After a household name.
    17. The Allman Brothers Band, Mountain Jam (from Eat A Peach/Fillmore East) . . . Filling a request from a few weeks ago for this 33-minute track and, as discussed then, demonstrates that wonderful ability the Allmans had of being able to do extended pieces like this while maintaining the flow of a song and never being boring or tedious. This live version, recorded at Fillmore East in New York in 1971, did not appear on that original live album but rather on the combined studio/live album Eat A Peach a year later, although this version of Mountain Jam has appeared on later reworkings/expanded versions of the classic At Fillmore East live album.

     

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

1. The Kinks, Around The Dial
2. Golden Earring, Are You Receiving Me
3. Paul McCartney, Coming Up (live)
4. The Rolling Stones, Midnight Rambler (with Mick Taylor, from Grrr Live!)
5. Family, The Weaver’s Answer
6. James Gang, Take A Look Around
7. Jeff Beck, My Tiled White Floor
8. The Stooges, 1969
9. The Stooges, 1970
10. Deep Purple, Rat Bat Blue
11. Procol Harum, Bringing Home The Bacon
12. Judas Priest, Exciter
13. Black Sabbath, Sabbra Cadabra
14. Iron Maiden, Sign Of The Cross
15. John Lennon, Bring On The Lucie (Freda People)
16. Mountain, Nantucket Sleighride (To Owen Coffin)
17. Queen, Innuendo
18. Fleetwood Mac, Oh Well (Parts 1 & 2)
19. Jethro Tull, Back To The Family 

    My track-by-track tales:

    1. The Kinks, Around The Dial . . . Good rocker with telling lyrics about corporate radio, and this is from 1981 when commercial rock radio actually would play a deeper cut like this. It was the lead song on the Give The People What They Want album, issued during a commercial hot streak for The Kinks that started with 1979’s Low Budget album and continued through State of Confusion in 1983 with the hit single Come Dancing and to a lesser extent with 1984’s Word of Mouth and the Do It Again single, although I think the Dave Davies-penned Living On A Thin Line about the decline of England, the third single from that album, and a track I should return to at some point, is the best song on the record. But back to Around The Dial and its lyrics: “You always played the best records, you never followed any trend, FM, AM, where are you? You gotta be out there somewhere on the dial” . . . “Where did you go, Mr. DJ, did they take you off the air? Was it something you said to the corporation guys upstairs? . . . somehow I’m gonna find ya . . . keep on searchin’ around the dial.” Try independent radio, you’ll find ’em. 🙂
    2. Golden Earring, Are You Receiving Me . . . I’ve said this a million times so I won’t repeat myself, too much. Ha. As discussed with a fellow random customer in my favorite local record store the other week, Radar Love isn’t the only, maybe not the best thing that Golden Earring ever did. Nor is the song Twilight Zone, good as it is – and the original TV series, side point, WAS amazing – but the song Twilight Zone isn’t from the Moontan album, which is the topic at hand here. Heck, Radar Love might not even be the best song on Moontan, which is a wall-to-wall great trek through just five extended cuts, including this song, in its original North American release.
    3. Paul McCartney, Coming Up (live) . . . This is the first version of the McCartney II album single I heard and probably a good thing because this live version, from a show in Glasgow, Scotland and later also released on McCartney’s All The Best compilation, and as a single, easily in my opinion trumps the synth-laden, speeded up vocals sound of not only the 1980 studio version of Coming Up but the entire II album. And, given McCartney released the live version on a compilation, he apparently realized which one was better or, at least, which one listeners preferred. As for the studio album, I admire all McCartney’s done, his legacy is obviously assured, and appreciate he was experimenting on II but, as I recall the FM radio DJ saying after playing the studio version and a few other songs from the album upon its debut in 1980, back when commercial rock stations did such things: “I dunno, Paulie, I dunno.”
    4. The Rolling Stones, Midnight Rambler (with Mick Taylor, from Grrr Live!) . . . I’ve been playing the recently-released live album, from a 2012 show in Newark, NJ of late in the car and this classic tune happened to come on as I pulled in to get some wine for Saturday night’s midnight ramble, so . . . A great 12-minute version as the Stones welcomed back their former guitarist Taylor for selected songs on the tour. Originally on the Let It Bleed album, the definitive version of Rambler arguably remains the live version, when Taylor was in the band, from Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out! which documents the Stones’ 1969 tour, but this one is epic as well as are all renditions I’ve seen live and heard, Taylor contributing, or not. The cool thing at the reunion shows with Taylor, was how when the Stones took their final bows they included him as one of the principals in the band. Definitely an emotional moment for him, and the fans. And from all accounts, he still can’t fully explain why he left the band in 1974 other than maybe songwriting credits, drug use and the overall travelling circus of being a Rolling Stone. But he certainly, by body language, enjoyed playing with them again and the feeling was obviously mutual including from his replacement, Ronnie Wood, a longtime friend and sometime collaborator.
    5. Family, The Weaver’s Answer . . . Well, it’s a holiday Monday in Canada, designated as Family Day in five provinces including my home province of Ontario, so I had to play something from Family, I suppose. It’s their signature tune.
    6. James Gang, Take A Look Around . . . Somewhat psychedelic, to my ears anyway, track from the debut, Yer Album, 1969. Penned by singer/guitarist/band leader Joe Walsh who of course went on to solo success and as a member of the Eagles.
    7. Jeff Beck, My Tiled White Floor . . . This song demonstrates to me why Jeff Beck was deservedly acclaimed for his versatility and diversity, musically. It’s from 2015’s Live + album of a 2014 tour plus two studio cuts, this one being one of them. It features drummer/singer Veronica Bellino, from the American alternative metal band Life Of Agony. It’s interesting, though, I find, given how such collaborations are viewed as people seem to be pigeonholed. Mick Jagger did the Superheavy album in 2011, a hybrid of rock, reggae, electronic pop and soul, with collaborators including Eurthymics’ Dave Stewart, and was trashed for it. Keith Richards on the other hand will do reggae albums like Wingless Angels that few have heard and is praised for them because he’s seen as the soul of the Stones, and I like both main songwriters in the Stones. I didn’t care for Superheavy much, either, at first although I’ve warmed to that album because I tend to recognize that artists may want to step out of their comfort zones and Jagger does that to a greater extent than any individual Stone. And commercially speaking, Superheavy did better than most Jeff Beck albums.
    8. The Stooges, 1969 . . . From the punk influencer’s self-titled debut album in, well, 1969. Great, infectious song. It’s hilarious reading some old reviews of the album. The critics liked this then-new band, but apparently hated admitting it. Rolling Stone magazine’s critic termed it ‘loud, boring, tasteless, unimaginative and childish . . . but I kind of liked it.” Famed rock music critic Robert Cristgau called it ‘stupid rock at its best” but gave it a B +. Years later, like when punk/new wave broke big in the late 1970s, these guys were probably saying people were ripping off ‘classic’ Stooges. Critics are often idiots. Me aside, of course. If the music moves you, just enjoy it for crying out loud. To quote Frank Zappa: “Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk (or think, depending on source), for people who can’t read.” I still read about rock, though, and Zappa, who gave many interviews, was also criticizing himself one would think.
    9. The Stooges, 1970 . . . The sequel, I suppose, although I prefer 1969 the song but 1970, from Full House, is up there in terms of quality, ‘stupid rock’ as it may be.
    10. Deep Purple, Rat Bat Blue . . . This just popped into my head while driving around doing errands on Saturday. So . . . It’s from 1973’s Who Do We Think We Are which is a great album despite what critics and even some band members may think. Woman From Tokyo, Mary Long, this, Our Lady, c’mon, it’s great, even if the so-called Mk II version of the band was in tatters at the time and soon broke up, with David Coverdale (vocals) and Glenn Hughes (bass/vocals) coming in to replace singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover for 1974’s Burn album.
    11. Procol Harum, Bringing Home The Bacon . . . Up-tempo tune from 1973’s Grand Hotel album, after the departure of guitarist Robin Trower for solo success although Trower wasn’t an original band member and not involved in arguably the band’s best-known song, A Whiter Shade Of Pale. Trower was there for the debut album in 1967 which followed shortly after Pale became a hit. The debut album included Conquistador, which was later re-released in a live version and became a hit in 1972.
    12. Judas Priest, Exciter . . . Fall to your knees and repent if you please. ‘Nuff said for this classic.
    13. Black Sabbath, Sabbra Cadabra . . . From 1973’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Any time I play anything from the album I’m reminded of a poetry study segment from high school English class. We were assigned to provide poetry examples and one guy in class brings in the Sabbath album lyrics. It didn’t go over too well with the teacher, as I recall although I would have awarded points for creativity. The scenario is actually what prompted me to investigate the album.
    14. Iron Maiden, Sign Of The Cross . . . From the X Factor, the 1995 album that was the first of two with Blaze Bayley replacing Bruce Dickinson as Maiden’s lead singer. Good albums, in my view, including the second one, Virtual XI, although the fan base in general didn’t accept Bayley, as sales showed. Interestingly, though, Maiden still plays several Bayley-era tunes in its live sets, including this epic.
    15. John Lennon, Bring On The Lucie (Freda People) . . . All right boys, this is it, over the hill . . . the opening statement on this tune, from the Mind Games album.
    16. Mountain, Nantucket Sleighride (To Owen Coffin) . . . Title cut from Mountain’s 1971 album, about whaling. Owen Coffin was a seaman on a whaling ship rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820. Mississippi Queen gets most of the accolades as Mountain’s signature song and it’s warranted, but I have a tough time choosing between the two but of course they’re entirely different songs. Mississippi Queen is hooked by that hellacious riff while Nantucket Sleighride is more moody, mysterious and spooky. Like a whaling trip might be.
    17. Queen, Innuendo . . . Title cut from the 1991 album that was the last released in lead singer Freddie Mercury’s lifetime. And an excellent album it is, at least for fans who favor the earlier hard-rocking with progressive rock flourishes, like this track, of what Queen released until about 1980 after which their style changed.
    18. Fleetwood Mac, Oh Well (Parts 1 & 2) . . . It’s the way of compilations and I generally have the actual studio albums of bands I like, but it’s irritating that one never finds the full version of this amazing song, both parts, unless you happen to own or listen online to the fabulous Then Play On album. It’s the 1969 record that was the last in the band for founding member/guitarist Peter Green. And another album I got into thanks to the influence of my older brother.
    19. Jethro Tull, Back To The Family . . . And that’s a wrap for Family Day, with this family-oriented cut from the Stand Up album.

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

1. Bob Dylan, As I Went Out One Morning
2. The Rolling Stones w/John Mayer & Gary Clark, Jr., Going Down (from Grrr Live!)
3. The J. Geils Band, It Ain’t What You Do (It’s How You Do It)
4. Mott The Hoople, Ready For Love/After Lights
5. The Who, In A Hand Or A Face
6. The Black Keys, Sinister Kid
7. The Butterfield Blues Band, Last Hope’s Gone
8. Janis Joplin, Misery’n
9. U2, Some Days Are Better Than Others
10. Bryan Ferry, This Is Tomorrow
11. Santana, Hope You’re Feeling Better
12. The Tragically Hip, Bring It All Back
13. Joan Baez, Imagine
14. Murray McLauchlan, Old Man’s Song
15. Robert Palmer, Remember To Remember
16. Bruce Cockburn, You Get Bigger As You Go
17. Blackfoot, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme
18. The Beach Boys, The Trader
19. The Monkees, What Am I Doing Hangin’ Round?
20. John Mayall, Fly Tomorrow
21. Led Zeppelin, In The Light
22. Deep Purple, Soldier Of Fortune
23. Coverdale/Page, Over Now
24. Genesis, Los EndosMy track-by-track tales:
    1. Bob Dylan, As I Went Out One Morning . . . Appropriate by title opener for a morning show. From 1967’s John Wesley Harding, the first Bob Dylan studio album (as opposed to individual song) I truly remember, since it’s yet another that my older, by eight years, RIP brother brought home. He would have been age 16 then. I cite him a lot because of what he was – a big musical influence which we often discussed as we grew up: Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Deep Purple’s In Rock album . . . I never much got into Barry White, though, although I respect the material and, of course, voice.
    2. The Rolling Stones w/John Mayer & Gary Clark, Jr., Going Down (from Grrr Live!) . . . The Stones, Mayer and Clark kick butt on the Don Nix tune covered by many artists including Freddie King and Jeff Beck. Four guitarists – including the Stones’ duo of Ron Wood and Keith Richards – riffing and each taking a solo in this order: Mayer, Wood, Clark and Richards. I confess that, while I know Mayer is a successful artist I’m unfamliar with his work and the material I know is mellow, to me. So, I didn’t realize he could shred like he does here, with the Stones on this new release which covers a show the band did in 2012 in Newark, New Jersey. Mayer also guests, as effectively, on the Some Girls track Respectable on the DVD bonus portion of the CD-DVD set. The concert is excellent and reminds me how good the 50 and Counting tour of 2012-13 was – somewhat stripped down, not as horn-dominated, guitars mixed up front. I saw the 2013 Toronto show. And now they’re beyond 60 and counting, minus drummer Charlie Watts, alas. I’m a massive, ridiculously so, Stones fan but 2013 was my last show. I remember walking out of the then Air Canada Centre in Toronto thinking, Christ they were good tonight and they were, and wanting to leave it at that because as they age one never knows, and I often worried about, could they still ‘bring it’ and I didn’t want to risk seeing a poor performance. And they’re still bringing it, my eldest son saw them while on a business trip to Chicago in 2019 and we communicated, fabulously, throughout the set when he contacted me on Facebook saying he was there, and other friends saw them that same tour in the Toronto area and said they were amazing but, huge fan that I am, I’m leaving it at that after seeing them approaching 20 times since 1978.
    3. The J. Geils Band, It Ain’t What You Do (It’s How You Do It) . . . Manic, propulsive stuff from The Morning After album although I doubt anyone could be this energetic the morning after a night before. J. Geils I always maintain is best served and heard live, and I hold to that, but this is live-sounding. I can’t imagine how it must have sounded in live shows, if they played it but stands to reason would have been amazing. Interestingly, they named their second live album, Blow Your Face Out, after a lyric in the song. Appropriate.
    4. Mott The Hoople, Ready For Love/After Lights . . . From the All The Young Dudes album, whose David Bowie-penned hit single saved Mott The Hoople from oblivion as the band was on the verge of breaking up before the song broke them big. Ready For Love, with the After Lights instrumental coda, was written and sung by guitarist Mick Ralphs as Mott singer Ian Hunter didn’t have the necessary range. It later of course became a Bad Company tune, sung by one of the great voices of rock, Paul Rodgers, when Ralphs left Mott The Hoople to form Bad Co. Ralphs isn’t the singer Rodgers is, few people are, but his vocals lend a grit to the tune that casts it in a different light than the Bad Company version which is great in its own way.
    5. The Who, In A Hand Or A Face . . . Geez, you read some critics’ reviews of The Who By Numbers album and you’d think it was the worst album the band ever made. Fools! And not just because the album, a time and place one from high school, 1975, is one of my favorites. “Below par musically for an album closer’ this song is termed in one book I have. And what, praytell, oh great god critic, is a ‘par’ or ‘above par musically’ gauge for an album closer, if there is such a thing. Besides, in golf, below par is good so . . . Oh, the guy didn’t like the ‘repetitive three-chord riff’. Jesus H you know who! Rock is built on riffs! The riff makes the song and, for my money, there ain’t a bad one on the whole bloody record. OK, I’m better now. Phew.
    6. The Black Keys, Sinister Kid . . . I like The Black Key among relatively new, modern bands although of course by now they’ve been around for ages. For an aging classic rocker like me, they’re more than palatable, nice riffs, heavy (usually) sound from what I know and have. This one, from the Brothers album, is similar yet different in its hypnotic riff. Reminds me, somewhat, of the Stones’ Ventilator Blues from Exile On Main St. in how one instrument, in this case the drums as opposed to Ventilator’s guitar, essentially mines the same groove, along with the guitar to a lesser extent, throughout. And speaking of the Stones, I suppose I’m playing the Keys because they also appear on the Grrr Live album, teaming up the boys for a cover of Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love? But I decided to go with the more rousing guitar attack, in my opinion, on Going Down.
    7. The Butterfield Blues Band, Last Hope’s Gone . . . From 1968’s In My Own Dream album, continuing in the more soulful, horn-drenched direction Paul Butterfield took after his first two pretty much straight blues albums. A young saxophonist who went on to some renown, David Sanborn, appears on the album, his second of six studio and one live Butterfield album on which he played, starting with The Resurrection Of Pigboy Crabshaw, which preceded In My Own Dream.
    8. Janis Joplin, Misery’n . . . Outtake from the Cheap Thrills album sessions, first appeared officially on the Janis box set, 1993. What a voice. Obviously.
    9. U2, Some Days Are Better Than Others . . . I could be wrong but I predict an old pal of mine, Gerry, may like this even give it a thumb’s up. He was major into U2’s Zooropa album particularly, as I recall, the song Lemon. I think I prefer this one. But the whole album is great and while I wasn’t into it so much upon release, a weak followup in my mind to the amazing Achtung Baby, Zooropa has grown on me as time goes on, which is the beauty of music/albums of course. As Keith Richards of the Stones has said, albums and songs in some cases marinate over time so while not maybe hitting everyone immediately, eventually they hit and when they do . . .
    10. Bryan Ferry, This Is Tomorrow . . . Not sure anyone remembers this fact now, 46 (!!) years later but this was a hit single, at least in the UK, in 1977 upon release on the Roxy Music singer’s fourth solo studio album In Your Mind. It was the first Ferry solo album on which he wrote all the songs, no covers. Roxy’s guitarist Phil Manzanera guests on the album although it’s session man to many Chris Spedding with the fine guitar solo on the song.
    11. Santana, Hope You’re Feeling Better . . . Great song throughout but the opening just makes this tune from Santana’s second album, the brilliant Abraxas. Arguably, the song is better, or at least as good, for my money, as Santana’s cover of the Fleetwood Mac song Black Magic Woman which was the big hit single and rightly so. Abraxas is the first Santana I knew, age 11, from the 1970 Columbia (mail order) Record Club days with my older sister and brother. We weren’t in the club long, but long enough to get two more classics: Chicago’s second album (the one with 25 or 6 to 4 on it) and Blood, Sweat & Tears 3. Have I mentioned, yes I have, but here goes again, the poster that came with the original vinyl and my ‘with it’ (70s terminology?) mom, age 40 at the time, getting into it with her kids and using the poster art as pantomime material with which to play the game charades? You had to be there, I grant. But, fun loving memories.
    12. The Tragically Hip, Bring It All Back . . . While the late great singer Gord Dowie was alive, The Hip released 14 studio albums. I know they are worshipped in my country, Canada, but fact – OK, my opinion – is, their first seven albums up to and including Phantom Power in 1998 are excellent. After that, not so much and this is a fact, their sales and concert set lists show it. That said, they did what they did, and that’s to be respected because it’s there to hear for eternity, although people who hail them as Canada’s greatest ever band or artist (maybe to them and that’s fine) are in my opinion let’s just say not thinking clearly when one considers The Guess Who, Rush, BTO, April Wine, Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn, Murray McLauchlan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, etc. etc. even though the latter two arguably became almost American.All that said, this is a great song from the Hip’s great period, from the Road Apples album.
    13. Joan Baez, Imagine . . . All I can ever say about Joan Baez’s voice is that, to me, she’s that maybe cliché, but the voice of an angel. And here she is, on the John Lennon song.
    14. Murray McLauchlan, Old Man’s Song . . . Beautiful. Touching. Moving. For anyone who has been fortunate enough to have lived a life to anything middle age and beyond, this song may resonate. And I say ‘fortunate enough’ because not just via this song but sometimes for whatever reason out of the blue and while listening to this song in deciding upon it for the set, a guy named Russ Harness  comes to mind, perhaps because in this instance I was also doing some tidying and came across some old school yearbooks. He was an early high school friend of mine, fun and funny guy, smart, vibrant, then in the summer between grades 9 and 10 he contracted and then died of cancer alas at age 14, before his life even had a real chance to get going. He was denied relationships, whatever dreams he may have had . . . I just wrote that, re-read it, thought of removing it as maybe too self-indulgent or sentimental but no. It stays. It’s how I write, soul-baring sometimes. Anyway, I still have my faculties, I’m still pretty fit, work out, some things maybe don’t work as well at 63 as they did at 18 which I forever think of myself as and aim to maintain while knowing it’s impossible, particularly maybe given some vices, but I actually like aging and the perspective it brings.
    15. Robert Palmer, Remember To Remember . . . I’m a big fan of Palmer’s 1979 album Secrets, have mined it for many tracks over time, for the show. But I don’t think I’ve played this one yet. Like all of the album, hits and otherwise, it’s a winner in my view.
    16. Bruce Cockburn, You Get Bigger As You Go . . . From the brilliant Humans album, 1980. Not sure what else to say about it but it’s one of those albums where every song arguably could have been a single. And most of them are that well known, at least in Canada and perhaps elsewhere. That said, I recall living in a commune-type setup in Alberta in 1981-82 and a girl from Washington state who was part of our household had zero idea who Cockburn was until we Canadians introduced him to her. She liked his stuff and wondered why it wasn’t more well-known. We were cynically polite in response.
    17. Blackfoot, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme . . . Kick butt rocker from the Tomcattin’ album, 1980. Blackfoot was led by singer/guitarist Rickey Medlocke, who played drums in pre-studio album versions of Lynyryd Skynyrd then joined post-plane crash versions of Skynyrd, as a guitarist, and remains in the reconstituted band to this day.
    18. The Beach Boys, The Trader . . . From the 1973 album Holland. The Beach Boys did lots of interesting stuff, like this, after their early surfer hits period. It didn’t sell and arguably too bad as they became locked in, even to some band members, as a nostalgia act. All of it of course is now online and worth checking out if one is so inclined and not inclined to actually buy the physical albums.
    19. The Monkees, What Am I Doing Hangin’ Round? . . . Nice country tune sung (but not written) by Mike Nesmith, the most musically and otherwise talented of The Monkees who later became one of the pioneers (for better or worse) of music video production in addition to his own country music career and songwriting which included Monkees songs like Mary, Mary (also done by Paul Butterfield), You Just May Be The One, You Told Me and the spooky Daily Nightly.
    20. John Mayall, Fly Tomorrow . . . From the Blues From Laurel Canyon album in 1968, after the first breakup of The Bluesbreakers. Mick Taylor shines on guitar, after which he joined The Rolling Stones upon Mayall’s recommendation.
    21. Led Zeppelin, In The Light . . . An ‘eastern’ type track akin somewhat to the similarly epic and much more hyped Kashmir, both from the Physical Graffiti album. Apparently, Jimmy Page considers it his favorite from the record.
    22. Deep Purple, Soldier Of Fortune . . . One of my favorite Purple songs, a beautiful ballad from 1974’s Stormbringer, from Mk III version with David Coverdale on lead vocals, leading into Coverdale, many years later and . . .
    23. Coverdale/Page, Over Now . . . His collaboration for just the one album, and a great one in my opinion, with Zep’s Jimmy Page.
    24. Genesis, Los Endos . . . Instrumental track incorporating some songs, like Squonk, from the first post-Peter Gabriel album, the 1976 record A Trick Of The Tail. Interesting that so many fans and critics wondered whether Genesis could survive without Gabriel yet they went on to greater commercial triumphs without him and Trick was the album that arguably broke them to a wider audience when they were still a progressive rock band. I couldn’t fit this in this past Monday in my prog show. I already had Supper’s Ready by Genesis as my opener and thought of this as an obvious bookend closer, but couldn’t fit it in. So, here it is. Until Monday.