I go from mostly short and sweet with my Brian Wilson/Beach Boys tribute set last Saturday – 42 songs including the 13 from Wilson’s masterpiece album Pet Sounds – to just nine total songs this week: Lengthy progressive rock pieces bracketing a few shorter psychedelic soul funk rock cuts from Sly And The Family Stone in tribute to the passing of Sly Stone, two days before Wilson last week, both age 82. A genre-shifting set perhaps, but that’s how my mind sometimes works so here you go. My track tales follow the bare-bones list. This is my final show.

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1. Pink Floyd, Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part One)
2. The Alan Parsons Project, The Turn Of A Friendly Card (Suite) – The Turn Of A Friendly Card/Snake Eyes/The Ace Of Swords/Nothing Left To Lose/The Turn Of A Friendly Card (Part II)
3. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Tarkus (Eruption/Stones Of Years/Iconoclast/Mass/Manticore/Battlefield/Aquatarkus)
4. Sly & The Family Stone, Thank You For Talkin’ To Me, Africa
5. Sly & The Family Stone, Frisky
6. Sly & The Family Stone, Just Like A Baby
7. Sly & The Family Stone, I Want To Take You Higher
8. Yes, Shoot High Aim Low
9. Pink Floyd, Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part Two)

My track tales:

1. Pink Floyd, Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part One) . . . Lead track on 1975’s Wish You Were Here, part two of which closes that album as it will close my set.

2. The Alan Parsons Project, The Turn Of A Friendly Card (Suite) – The Turn Of A Friendly Card/Snake Eyes/The Ace Of Swords/Nothing Left To Lose/The Turn Of A Friendly Card (Part II) . . . Title track to the 1980 album, a near-17 minute suite blending pop accessibility with prog structure. The various pieces within the overall suite are distinct yet contribute thematically to the whole.

3. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Tarkus (Eruption/Stones Of Years/Iconoclast/Mass/Manticore/Battlefield/Aquatarkus) . . . A shade under 21 minutes of prog rock excess if one views it that way and finds the genre pretentious, which is fair comment. I get it and share that view when I’m in my raunch and roll phases which is the majority of the time. But, music is all about mood so to me right now it’s a shade under 21 minutes of prog rock perfection or at least magnificence, this title cut to ELP’s 1971 album. Besides which, any time one can listen to Greg Lake’s beautiful singing voice – which I first cottoned to via his performance on King Crimson’s 1969 debut album In The Court Of The Crimson King – is time well spent amid the overall epic.

4. Sly & The Family Stone, Thank You For Talkin’ To Me, Africa . . . Hypnotic, funky, rhythmic jam from 1971’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On album. A reimagined slower version of the band’s 1969 hit Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).

5. Sly & The Family Stone, Frisky . . . Another intoxicating track, this one from 1973’s Fresh album.

Alternate cover

6. Sly & The Family Stone, Just Like A Baby . . . Funky and soul-inflected which is what one would expect from the artist but I find it somewhat bluesy as well. Great groove, from There’s A Riot Goin’ On.

7. Sly & The Family Stone, I Want To Take You Higher . . . A well-known track, and a great one it is. It appears on various compilations but was actually a B-side to Stand in 1969.

8. Yes, Shoot High Aim Low . . . From 1987’s Big Generator album. Despite the somewhat sleek 1980s production from the 90125 album/Owner Of A Lonely Heart hit single version of Yes, Shoot High Aim Low – featuring guitarist Trevor Rabin instead of Yes perennial Steve Howe, who was in the supergroup Asia by then – is something of a throwback to the classic 1970s sound of earlier versions of the band. I had intended to play some early classic Yes, perhaps something like Close To The Edge but then I got tinkering with my trusty YesYears box set, from which I pulled Shoot High Aim Low. I don’t own Big Generator – well, I did once but traded it in – because I wasn’t into the 1980s production, but obviously a track I’d overlooked.

Big Generator was the followup studio album to 1983’s 90125 during a time when Yes had splintered into so many camps, starting with 1980’s Drama album, that it was difficult to keep track of who was in what group. The, er, drama began when members of The Buggles of Video Killed The Radio Star hit single fame entered the picture. Trevor Horn took over from Jon Anderson on lead vocals with Geoff Downes, later in Asia with Howe, on keyboards. But first, Downes replaced Rick Wakeman in Yes, with Wakeman later joining the Yes-ish band Anderson (drummer Bill) Bruford Wakeman Howe, all of whom had been Yes-men at one time or another.

As the actor Robert Shaw’s crime boss character in the 1973 award winning movie The Sting starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford was wont to say, ‘ya falla (follow)?’

Take your time catching up while I finish connecting the dots in the wacky world of Yes and associated lineups. Originally, the 90125 version of Yes, with Rabin, was going to be called Cinema but during the recording sessions, an invitation was extended to Jon Anderson to return as lead singer and so it became a Yes album – which included an instrumental called Cinema among its tracks.

Eventually, everyone kissed and made up for 1991’s Union album and tour of merged members, eight in all, followed by future splits in the extended family that continue to this day.

9. Pink Floyd, Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part Two) . . . We end where we began, Part Two of the Wish You Were Here track.

A tribute to Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, who died on Wednesday. I’m playing his magnum opus, the 1966 album Pet Sounds followed by some deeper Beach Boys tracks from their post-surfer hits days, then closing with a mixture of well-known hits and album tracks. Many of those, picked by Wilson himself, were packaged on The Beach Boys Classics selected by Brian Wilson, a diverse collection released in 2002. I also drew from Greatest Hits Volume Three: Best of the Brother Years 1970–1986.

I plan to get to some Sly and The Family Stone material on my Monday June 16 show, a week after Sly Stone‘s passing, like Wilson also at age 82. My commentary on Pet Sounds, the rest of The Beach Boys material and some personal memories triggered by Wilson’s passing follows the track listings.

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The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds

1. Wouldn’t It Be Nice
2. You Still Believe In Me
3. That’s Not Me
4. Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)
5. I’m Waiting For The Day
6. Let’s Go Away For A While
7. Sloop John B
8. God Only Knows
9. I Know There’s An Answer
10. Here Today
11. I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times
12. Pet Sounds
13. Caroline No
—————–
1. Add Some Music To Your Day
2. All Summer Long
3. The Warmth Of The Sun
4. In My Room
5. Busy Doin’ Nothin’
6. This Whole World
7. Heroes And Villains
8. We’re Together Again
9. Time To Get Alone
10. Marcella
11. Honkin’ Down The Highway
12. It’s O.K.
13. Good Timin’
14. Goin’ On
15. Do It Again
16. I Get Around
17. Rock And Roll Music (Chuck Berry cover)
18. California Girls
19. Do You Wanna Dance
20. Help Me Rhonda
21. Surfer Girl
22. Surfin’ Safari
23. Surfin’ USA
24. Good Vibrations
25. Fun, Fun, Fun
26. ‘Til I Die
27. Shut Down
28. Surf’s Up
29. Sail On, Sailor

My track tales/musical memories:

My formative musical listening years were shaped in large measure by my two older siblings in our family of five kids, me being the middle child ahead of two younger brothers. In their mid- to late teens at the time, my older brother and sister were experiencing the explosion of rock and pop music and culture, things like 1967’s Summer Of Love, at that age when one’s eyes and ears are truly opening and so I was fortunate to bask in the reflected glow of the great music to which they helped introduce me.

My older brother by eight years opened my ears to artists like Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull. My sister, four years older, turned me on to The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Beach Boys which my older brother also liked but my sister played more often while he tended to lean towards heavier material. So, I got the best of both worlds.

I remember, age 5, seeing The Beatles and the Stones on The Ed Sullivan Show within months of each other in 1964 and hearing some of their early songs. But my sister was the one who truly introduced me to their records via the Stones compilation albums Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass) and Flowers plus Beatles studio albums Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club and, a bit later, Abbey Road. She never did own The Beatles (best known as The White Album) that I recall, silly sis, 🙂 but I heard it first via a friend and later bought it myself. Somehow, amid various moves and family members now spread throughout North America, I wound up in possession of and still have her original vinyl release of Abbey Road. It’s now somewhat unique in that it does not list the hidden track Her Majesty on the cover as subsequent re-releases do.

All of which in a roundabout down memory lane sort of way brings us to Pet Sounds which my sister also owned and is definitely tied to The Beatles. All artists influence each other and from what I’ve read, Brian Wilson was inspired at least in part by 1965’s Rubber Soul in creating Pet Sounds, out in 1966, which then inspired The Beatles, particularly Paul McCartney, to respond with Sgt. Pepper, released in 1967.

“The biggest influence on Sgt. Pepper was Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys,” McCartney was quoted as saying in a 1980 interview as related in the 1994 book of album-by-album/song analysis The Complete Guide To The Music Of The Beatles. “That album just flipped me. When I heard it, I thought ‘Oh dear, this is the album of all time. What the hell are we going to do?’ My ideas took off from that standard.”

Yet Pepper is/was a much more instantly accessible listen, at least for me and perhaps others in comparison to Pet Sounds. I instantly liked Wouldn’t It Be Nice and the traditional Caribbean cover Sloop John B but the rest of it, including the brilliant God Only Knows, took me a bit longer. But, like any great art, once you ‘get it’ it’s embedded forever. Such is the lasting and influential legacy of Wilson’s wonderful work, an album he considered a solo record.

It started a move away from the surfer hits that had sustained the Beach Boys to that point and made them stars and a consistent presence on the singles and album charts. The decline, at least commercially but I’d maintain definitely not musically, then set in where their albums sold progressively less while it could be argued their music advanced in many ways or, at least, took different, interesting directions. Yet while their commercial fortunes faded on home shores in America, Beach Boys albums from Pet Sounds forward consistently sold better in the UK and elsewhere than in the USA. That is, until the 1976 album 15 Big Ones that, driven by their top 5 cover of Chuck Berry’s Rock And Roll Music, made No. 8 on the US album charts but only No. 31 in the UK.

The Beach Boys later had a worldwide No. 1 hit with 1988’s Kokomo which Brian Wilson played no part in and while perhaps a guilty pleasure, yeah it’s catchy but it’s also latter-day Chicago-level schlock to me.

I’m closing things out with one of my favorite Beach Boys tracks, their top-50 1973 hit Sail On, Sailor which I think appropriate as Wilson sails off into the sunset. He co-wrote the song, one he said he didn’t like, yet he selected it for the aforementioned compilation The Beach Boys Classics selected by Brian Wilson, saying in the liner notes “I love how this song rocks.” And it does. It’s sung by Blondie Chaplin, briefly a member of The Beach Boys who starting in 1997 spent more than a decade as a touring musician with The Rolling Stones.

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

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1. The Rolling Stones, Out Of Control (live, from No Security)
2. The Stooges, No Fun
3. Jethro Tull, Hymn 43
4. Deep Purple, Lady Double Dealer
5. Black Sabbath, Turn Up The Night
6. Fight, Into The Pit
7. Budgie, Hot As A Docker’s Armpit
8. Steppenwolf, Hippo Stomp
9. Led Zeppelin, Heartbreaker (live, from How The West Was Won)
10. Genesis, Dodo/Lurker
11. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Couldn’t Stand The Weather
12. April Wine, Electric Jewels
13. The Who, Now I’m A Farmer
14. The Flying Burrito Brothers, Wild Horses
15. Blood, Sweat & Tears, Mean Ole World (live)
16. The Allman Brothers Band, I’m Gonna Move To The Outskirts Of Town (from Live At Ludlow Garage, 1970)

My track-by-track tales:

1. The Rolling Stones, Out Of Control (live, from No Security) . . . A prime example of a song truly coming, er, alive in a concert setting. Inspired by and somewhat derivative, particularly the bass line, of The Temptations Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone, Out Of Control was one of the highlights of the 1997 Stones’ album Bridges To Babylon and compelling enough in its 4:43 track time studio version. That’s about the time when this propulsive eight-minute live version from the Babylon tour truly takes off with the guitar assault – including terrific wah wah from Ronnie Wood – kicking in and building to a crescendo, Mick Jagger’s wailing harmonica adding to the mix when he’s not verbally egging the band on. To me, Out Of Control is something of a latter-day Midnight Rambler (from 1969’s Let It Bleed album) if one draws comparisons between live and studio versions. Both are compelling tracks regardless but truly take off live, evidenced by the concert rendition of Midnight Rambler from Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out!, widely considered the definitive version.

2. The Stooges, No Fun . . . Rollicking raunch from the garage rock greats’ self-titled debut album, released in 1969. Down and dirty droning, gritty guitar from Ron Asheton coupled with Iggy Pop’s tossed-off, drawling vocal delivery. Great, influential stuff by the proto-punk pioneers.

3. Jethro Tull, Hymn 43 . . . From Aqualung, Tull’s 1971 album and one of their best rockers complete with caustic commentary – as is the whole album – on organized religion. ‘If Jesus saves, well, he better save himself from the gory glory seekers who use his name in death.’

4. Deep Purple, Lady Double Dealer . . . A good demonstration of bassist Glenn Hughes adding, with his ‘oh baby’ break, to David Coverdale’s lead vocals on this charging rocker from Stormbringer. It was the Mark III version of Deep Purple’s second album and second one, after Burn, released in 1974. The Mark III lineup: Ritchie Blackmore (guitar), Ian Paice (drums), Jon Lord (keyboards), Coverdale (lead vocals), Hughes (bass, vocals). Deep Purple is now at Mark IX – Ian Gillan (long since back on lead vocals), Roger Glover (bass), Paice (drums), Don Airey (keyboards) and Simon McBride (guitar).

5. Black Sabbath, Turn Up The Night . . . A hot rocker from the 1981 Mob Rules album, the second featuring Ronnie James Dio on lead vocals, replacing Ozzy Osbourne. It’s something to me of a companion piece to Neon Knights from Heaven And Hell, the 1980 album that marked Dio’s debut with Sabbath. Both are kick-butt rockers, both lead off their respective albums, with each record also featuring similar epics in Children Of The Sea from Heaven And Hell and The Sign Of The Southern Cross on Mob Rules. Similar but different, all of them superb.

6. Fight, Into The Pit . . . From War Of Words, the debut Fight album released in 1993 after lead singer Rob Halford left Judas Priest. He was replaced by Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens for the studio albums Jugulator (1997) and Demolition (2001) and two live records. Halford returned for a reunion tour I saw in 2004 followed by the 2005 studio album Angel Of Retribution and subsequent Priest releases to the present day. Into The Pit is a screaming shredder in line with the speed metal of Painkiller, the 1990 album that was Halford’s last with Priest before he temporarily moved on.

7. Budgie, Hot As A Docker’s Armpit . . . What a title and what a riff. A stop-start rocker from the influential if not supremely commercially successful Welsh metal mavens. Budgie has been cited by Metallica, Megadeth and Iron Maiden, among others, as being an important influence with Metallica covering Breadfan and Crash Course In Brain Surgery. Docker’s Armpit is from the 1972 album Squawk with cover art of a dive-bombing fighter jet budgie by Roger Dean. Dean is likely best known for his Yes album covers but did several for Budgie as well as Uriah Heep and Asia.

8. Steppenwolf, Hippo Stomp . . . Swampy groove from Steppenwolf 7, released in 1970. The album was so named due to its being the band’s seventh overall to that point, counting two live albums.

9. Led Zeppelin, Heartbreaker (live, from How The West Was Won) . . . Slightly speeded up, as live music can tend to be, version of the Led Zeppelin II track. This raucous version was released on the 2003 triple-CD How The West Was Won, culled from a pair of 1972 California concerts in Los Angeles and nearby Long Beach.

10. Genesis, Dodo/Lurker . . . I like the driving nature of this one, similar in that way to the title track from the album from whence it came, 1981’s Abacab. The Phil Collins-fronted Genesis was well down the path of accessible, commercial hit-making by then but I thought still nicely retained and combined elements of their early progressive rock sound.

11. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Couldn’t Stand The Weather . . . Can’t do much about the weather I suppose but nevertheless I’ve been uncharacteristically bitching about our largely lousy, rainy for the most part spring in southern Ontario. But, to quote the Vulcan elder T’Pau in the Star Trek original series episode Amok Time, ‘the air is the air’ when Dr. McCoy complains to her that Captain Kirk doesn’t have a chance in a forced fight with Mr. Spock due to the heat and thinner air on Vulcan. The weather is the weather. Inspiration comes from everywhere, hence this title track to SRV’s 1984 album.

12. April Wine, Electric Jewels . . . I can never get enough of this atmospheric title track from the 1973 album. From prog to hard rock to ballad and back again, all within six minutes.

13. The Who, Now I’m A Farmer . . . Ah, that unique rat-a-tat just on the edge of losing control drumming of Keith Moon, but just a fun romp overall. Issued on an album of outtakes and such compiled by Who bassist John Entwistle, appropriately titled Odds & Sods, that filled a gap between proper studio albums when released in 1974. It did the job nicely, hitting No. 10 in the UK and 15 in the USA. Originally a 10-track release, it was expanded to a 23-song CD in 1998 which is appropriate in that it was originally conceived as a double album given the volume of material Entwistle said was available in the vaults.

14. The Flying Burrito Brothers, Wild Horses . . . One of those songs that was released by someone else before the band for which it is famous put it out. The country-rocking Burritos, led by Gram Parsons who was particularly friendly with and an influence on Keith Richards, released the Richards-Mick Jagger-penned piece on their second album, 1970’s Burrito Deluxe.

15. Blood, Sweat & Tears, Mean Ole World (live) . . . Not quite rock, not quite blues, not quite jazz, just BS & T. Recorded in 1975, the song appeared on In Concert which was released only in Europe and Japan. It was re-released worldwide in 1991 under the album title Live and Improvised.

16. The Allman Brothers Band, I’m Gonna Move To The Outskirts Of Town (from Live At Ludlow Garage, 1970) . . . Extended slow to mid-tempo how I like my blues. It was recorded in April 1970 at the Cincinnati venue Ludlow Garage featuring the original lineup of Gregg (vocals, organ) and Duane (guitar) Allman, Dickey Betts (guitar), Berry Oakley (bass), Butch Trucks (drums, percussion) and Jai Johanny (aka Jaimoe) Johanson. The song first came out officially on the Dreams box set in 1989 and then on Live At Ludlow Garage, released in 1990. The entire Ludlow set has since been added to expanded re-releases of the second Allmans studio album Idlewild South which originally came out in September 1970.