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

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

My track-by-track tales:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My track-by-track tales:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Howdy doody whoever receives this record.

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

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

Yours faithfully,

Mick Jagger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. The John Barry Orchestra, James Bond Theme
2. Johnny Rivers, Secret Agent Man
3. Shirley Bassey, Goldfinger
4. Pink Floyd, What Do You Want From Me
5. Can, Mushroom
6. Traffic, Tragic Magic (live, from On The Road)
7. Junkhouse, The Sky Is Falling
8. Fleetwood Mac, Worried Dream
9. George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Howlin’ For My Baby
10. Johnny Cash, Ragged Old Flag
11. Jefferson Airplane, Rock Me Baby, (live, from Bless Its Pointed Little Head)
12. T. Rex, The King Of The Mountain Cometh
13. Rory Gallagher, Cradle Rock (from The Best of Rory Gallagher At The BBC)
14. Thin Lizzy, Angel Of Death (live, from Life/Live)
15. Motorhead, Stone Dead Forever
16. Flash And The Pan, Up Against The Wall
17. Roxy Music, Like A Hurricane (live)
18. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Black Moon
19. Elvis Presley, Paralyzed
20. The Birds, No Good Without You Baby (early Ron Wood band, not to be confused with The Byrds)
21. The Rolling Stones, Gotta Get Away

My track-by-track tales:

1. The John Barry Orchestra, James Bond theme . . . I was filing CDs as part of my ongoing and not quite yet successful attempts at tidying my place and atop one pile – so let’s call this the top of the pile show because honestly that’s from where most of the songs I’m playing come – was a disc of Bond movie songs. So here we go, setting the tone for the early part of the show.

2. Johnny Rivers, Secret Agent Man . . . A hit for master of covers Rivers and I don’t often play hits but it fits the Bond theme of my first few songs.

3. Shirley Bassey, Goldfinger . . . My favorite Bond song, or maybe tied with Paul McCartney’s Live And Let Die, those are the two that really stick out to me, but I love Bassey’s passionate, expressive vocals. Bassey also sang the theme song to the Bond films Diamonds Are Forever and Moonraker – she is the only artist to do more than one Bond movie song – and covered The Beatles’ Something and The Fool On The Hill as well as other songs like If You Go Away. Hugely successful in the UK, the Welsh singer is still active at 87 and released a studio album as recently as 2020 in celebration of her 70 years in the industry.

4. Pink Floyd, What Do You Want From Me . . . Perhaps my favorite Floyd song from the post-Roger Waters era, from the 1994 album The Division Bell. Written by David Gilmour, keyboardist Richard Wright and Gilmour’s wife Polly Samson, an English writer who has contributed lyrics to the post-Waters Floyd albums and Gilmour’s solo work. It’s similar, to my ears, to the Gilmour track There’s No Way Out Of Here. That song, written by UK songwriter Ken Baker, appeared on Gilmour’s first, self-titled solo album in 1978.

5. Can, Mushroom . . . Hypnotic stuff from a band that often went out on various flights of sometimes impenetrable fancy yet on the flip side has a wealth of tighter, single-worthy (and this song was a single) tracks that in a that context still manage to convey the progressive elements of the band.

6. Traffic, Tragic Magic (live, from On The Road) . . . Intoxicating near nine-minute musical excursion from one of my favorite bands, flutes and sax and guitars and percussion all cooked up in that typical Traffic stew.

7. Junkhouse, The Sky Is Falling . . . From the debut Junkhouse album, Strays, released in 1993 and through which I quickly became a fan of all things Tom Wilson, a Canadian artist whose credits include the Florida Razors, Junkhouse, solo work, Blackie And The Rodeo Kings and Lee Harvey Osmond.

8. Fleetwood Mac, Worried Dream . . . An old work colleague and I were discussing early, Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac the other day so here we are. Worried Dream is a cover of a B.B. King-penned tune that appeared on King’s 1968 album Blues On Top Of Blues. The Fleetwood Mac version was released on the Green-era compilation The Original Fleetwood Mac which covers songs recorded in 1967 and 1968. The compilation came out in 1971, a year after Green left the group after the 1969 Then Play On album and a 1970 tour.

9. George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Howlin’ For My Baby . . . From the slow blues of early Fleetwood Mac to typical Thorogood raunch on a track written by Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf. It’s from Thorogood’s 1993 album Haircut which featured his hit Get A Haircut.

10. Johnny Cash, Ragged Old Flag . . . Title cut from Cash’s 1974 album, a spoken word tribute to patriotism and the American flag that was criticized and celebrated, depending on viewpoint. It was written by Cash during the time of the Watergate scandal which led to the resignation of America president Richard Nixon, who Cash had initially supported but apparently soured on due to the Vietnam War quagmire. Cash said he wrote it to “reaffirm faith in the country and the goodness of the American people.”

11. Jefferson Airplane, Rock Me Baby, (live, recorded October 1968 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, released on Bless Its Pointed Little Head, 1969) . . . The Airplane takes, er, flight on this eight-minute version of the blues standard popularized by B.B. King and Muddy Waters (as Rock Me) and covered by many. Both the King and Waters’ versions were based on the 1950 song Rockin’ and Rollin’ by Lil’ Son Jackson which itself was inspired by earlier blues songs, as is the case with many standards. The roots and branches of songs, well-known and otherwise, make for interesting reading.

12. T. Rex, The King Of The Mountain Cometh . . . That distinctive bouncy boogie, maybe repetitive but still compelling and unmistakenly the sound of T. Rex. It’s from the time of the hit album Electric Warrior, which was released in 1971 and was propelled to prominence by the hit single Get It On (Bang A Gong). The King Of The Mountain Cometh didn’t cometh into wide release until various compilations and expanded re-releases of Electric Warrior.

13. Rory Gallagher, Cradle Rock (from The Best of Rory Gallagher At The BBC) . . . A new release from the vaults, came out in October, with Gallagher on absolute fire on recordings done in studio for the 1970s BBC program Sounds Of The Seventies. That’s one disc of the 2-CD set, with the other featuring a BBC concert from 1979. It’s a terrific package and, if you really want to get serious, it’s also available as The BBC Collection – a 20 disc set that includes 18 CDs containing radio concerts and sessions from 1971 to 1986 and two Blu Ray discs of BBC TV concerts and studio performances from 1973 to 1984. I’m a big Gallagher fan and the spirit is willing but the wallet is weak as far as that comprehensive package goes although perhaps at some point and it may all wind up online; the 2-CD highlights package already is.

14. Thin Lizzy, Angel Of Death (live, from Life/Live) . . . Smokin’ version of the lead single from 1981’s Renegade album that was released on 1983’s live album which was criticized for not measuring up to Lizzy’s previous live epic, 1978’s Live And Dangerous, but what could? It’s still a great song and a great version featuring good riffing and soloing from perennial Lizzy guitarist Scott Gorham and hired gun John Sykes, later of the hair metal mid- to late 1980s version of Whitesnake.

15. Motorhead, Stone Dead Forever . . . Typically propulsive Motorhead yet at the same time strangely, maybe, for such a tune, melodic. It’s from the 1979 album Bomber, produced by former Traffic and Rolling Stones collaborator Jimmy Miller.

16. Flash And The Pan, Up Against The Wall . . . This one wasn’t originally on the planning radar for this show but I was in the car on Saturday evening, going out to get some grub; usually I play music but I turned the radio on to the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey game. The Leafs were in St. Louis, down late in a game they’d lose 4-2 and the play-by-play guy says “they’re up against the wall.” My thoughts immediately turned to this Flash And The Pan track from their 1982 album Headlines. Inspiration comes from anywhere, everywhere.

17. Roxy Music, Like A Hurricane (live) . . . I first heard this terrific cover of the Neil Young song on The High Road 4-song vinyl EP with its Roxy “Musique’ cover which I bought in early 1983. It later came out – along with the other three songs from the EP – on the Heart Still Beating live album released in 1990. The other three songs were Can’t Let Go, My Only Love and Roxy’s cover of John Lennon’s Jealous Guy.

18. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Black Moon . . . Almost industrial metallic, latter/later day ELP, somewhat uncharacteristic; maybe they were reaching, bereft of ideas so trying to get on a musical train, that’s essentially what the critics said. Whatever. A good song is a good song, no matter by whom and it’s all of course subjective. I dig this title cut from ELP’s 1992 release.

19. Elvis Presley, Paralyzed . . . Great boogie rockabilly, relatively unknown to those understandably owning, listening to or being familiar only with Elvis’s well-known hits. This one’s from his 1956 studio album simply titled Elvis, his second studio album, released in October 1956. I’ve always been one to, like many, being an Elvis compilation guy but in recent months, yes I’ve told this tale before, I was in my friendly neighborhood music store and lo and behold they had on CD a 4-disc, 8-album box set of Elvis’s early studio albums, and it cost me maybe $15. It’s about $50 at least on Amazon. I had to have it, got it, never a regret.

Presley was truly great and further to that, during Elvis’s time it was the practice that artists generally performed but didn’t write their own material; people like Bob Dylan and The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and Kinks later changed that. So, I’ll admit that in my younger days I somewhat dismissed Elvis, while enjoying his hit songs, due to his not writing songs but I came to realize and understand the circumstances under which he and others of his time operated. Yet even so, for all that, he could and did write albeit not extensively and beyond even that, any viewing on available video of him in studio sessions with his band reveals just how in charge musically he always was: he knew what he wanted musically, how to achieve it, and he did. Amazing artist.

20. The Birds, No Good Without You Baby . . . Not The Byrds but The Birds, an early band Ron Wood later of the Jeff Beck Group, Faces and The Rolling Stones, was a member of. A gritty, wonderfully dirty, raunchy version of a Marvin Gaye track from his 1965 album How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You which of course features that hit single title cut. The Birds version of No Good Without You Baby, depending on source including the 2-CD Wood anthology The Essential Crossexion, adds the word ‘baby’ to the song title and it’s in the lyrics although Gaye’s album lists it as simply No Good Without You. But that happens a lot, witness my earlier playing of Rock Me Baby by Jefferson Airplane, which B.B. King listed as Rock Me Baby while Muddy Waters did the same song, but titled it Rock Me. The Birds/Marvin Gaye song was written by William Stevenson, still around at age 87 and his name might not spring immediately to mind but he wrote or co-wrote many hits including Hitch Hike (covered in their early days by The Rolling Stones, among others) and most notably Dancing In The Street and Devil With The Blue Dress aka Devil With The Blue Dress On.

21. The Rolling Stones, Gotta Get Away . . . I gotta, gotta, gotta get away, to quote the song lyrics . . . time’s up for this show. I exit via this I think underappreciated Stones song, recorded in 1965. It was the B-side in the USA to As Tears Go By.

Two albums – The Who’s Quadrophenia, from 1973 and Billy Joel’s The Stranger, released in 1977. We’ll see, but I expect this will be my last album set for a while after six straight Saturdays, back to individual songs or some other theme next Saturday. My album commentaries are beneath each record’s track list.

The Who – Quadrophenia

1. I Am The Sea
2. The Real Me
3. Quadrophenia
4. Cut My Hair
5. The Punk And The Godfather
6. I’m One
7. The Dirty Jobs
8. Helpless Dancer
9. Is It In My Head?
10. I’ve Had Enough
11. 5:15
12. Sea And Sand
13. Drowned
14. Bell Boy
15. Doctor Jimmy
16. The Rock
17. Love Reign O’er Me

I agree with the allmusic review site’s assessment of Quadrophenia – which was about the British mod culture of the late 1950s into the 1960s that was at least part of the roots of The Who – that “the concept might ultimately have been too obscure and confusing for a mass audience.” Particularly if you didn’t grow up in the UK of that time.

But, as allmusic also says, and I concur, the album is full of great songs that can stand on their own, including the well-known and excellent singles 5:15, The Real Me and Love Reign O’er Me. And, also, to me, The Punk And The Godfather, The Dirty Jobs, Sea and Sand, Doctor Jimmy . . . so many, and so many of them propelled by Keith Moon’s propulsive rat-a-tat drumming.

The song 5:15 and its lyrics “out of my brain on the 5:15; out of my brain on the train” always resonates with me not only because I like the song but because, like the song narrator Jimmy, I, too, was out of my brain on a train although he had consumed lots of drugs, in my case it was drink.

Fall 1978, I had worked for a year to save money to pay my way through college, so at the place I worked friends and colleagues took me out for a mostly liquid lunch on my last day, where I got reasonably hammered such that I dozed off on the GO commuter train – and it quite likely was a 5:15 pm or so train – home from Toronto to Oakville.

Not sure why an attendant wouldn’t have woken me up at the Oakville stop, the end of the line going west (if you wanted to GO further west back then, you had to grab a connecting bus) but anyway when I finally woke from my slumber I looked out the train window and I was in Pickering – the eastern end of the line on the other side of Toronto. That sobered me up right quick as back we went, Pickering back to Toronto’s Union station and on to Oakville – a half-hour commute home on the train, thanks to me being out of my brain, becoming a 2.5 hour round-trip: Toronto-Oakville-Toronto-Pickering-Toronto-Oakville. Back and forth we go . . .

Billy Joel – The Stranger

1. Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)
2. The Stranger
3. Just The Way You Are
4. Scenes From An Italian Restaurant
5. Vienna
6. Only The Good Die Young
7. She’s Always A Woman
8. Get It Right The First Time
9. Everybody Has A Dream

A huge album for Billy Joel not only due to its massive success but it arguably saved his career. Joel had achieved success with his 1973 album Piano Man and its title track hit single, although the entire album is terrific and includes another of his classics, the epic Captain Jack. But his subsequent releases, Streetlife Serenade and, particularly, Turnstiles (despite the presence of the hit single Say Goodbye To Hollywood) saw a sharp decline in sales and chart positions such that Joel was at risk of being dropped by Columbia Records. Then came The Stranger, with singles like Just The Way You Are, Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song), Only The Good Die Young, She’s Always A Woman and the epic non-single classic Scenes From An Italian Restaurant and the rest is history. It’s one of those albums where every song is familiar including one of my favorites, the title track which was released as a single in Japan where it hit No. 2.