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

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1. The Allman Brothers Band, Instrumental Illness
2. Paul McCartney/Wings, Big Barn Red
3. Paul McCartney/Wings, Medley (Hold Me Tight/Lazy Dynamite/Hands Of Love/Power Cut)
4. Alvin Lee, I Want You (She’s So Heavy)
5. Elton John, Where To Now, St. Peter?
6. Tom Jones, The Young New Mexican Puppeteer
7. Bob Dylan, Ballad Of A Thin Man
8. The Dirty Mac, Yer Blues (from The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus)
9. The Rolling Stones, Prodigal Son
10. Rev. Robert Wilkins, That’s No Way To Get Along (1928 version, re-recorded by Wilkins during the 1960s as The Prodigal Son)
11. Atomic Rooster, Broken Wings
12. Faces (I Know) I’m Losing You (live at the BBC 1971, taken from Five Guys Walk Into A Bar box set)
13. Rush, Cygnus X-1
14. Rush, Cyngus X-1 Book II

1. The Allman Brothers Band, Instrumental Illness . . . From the 2003 studio album Hittin’ The Note. It’s the last original recorded work by the band and the first and only Allmans’ album to not include original guitarist Dickey Betts. He was dismissed in 2000 in what became a difficult divorce, including lawsuits, stemming from other band members’ concerns over Betts’ alcohol and substance abuse. Betts and Gregg Allman did reconcile before Allman’s death in 2017, with Betts passing away in 2024 at age 80.

Replacing Betts on Hittin’ The Note, including on this extended jazz-rock fusion instrumental featuring terrific guitar interplay, was Derek Trucks, nephew of Allmans’ drummer Butch Trucks and also a member of the Tedeschi Trucks Band with his wife Susan Tedeschi. Derek Trucks continued the tradition of the Allmans’ two-guitar attack dating to the original duo of Betts and Duane Allman. Trucks teamed with Warren Haynes, who was originally brought into the Allmans in the late 1980s from Betts’ solo band in yet another example of the various branches of musical family trees. It’s a terrific song, and album, leaving the Allmans, who continued touring until 2014, to exit studio work hittin’ a high note.

2. Paul McCartney/Wings, Big Barn Red . . . The first of two tracks from McCartney and Wings’ 1973 album Red Rose Speedway. I was inspired to play it via a text last week from a friend out of the blue, as he and I tend to in a fun way via random thoughts do. He simply said “isn’t Red Rose Speedway a terrifically underrated album?” to which I admitted that while I own the album and have pretty much all of McCartney’s material, I’ve never – beyond the hit single My Love – got into it much. The album is overshadowed by McCartney’s next two, Band On The Run and Venus And Mars. So, his text prompted me to play the song he suggested I listen to and here is, Big Barn Red. It’s a, I would say, quirky, bouncy kind of tune, great playing, kinda loose, kinda tight, kinda inconsequential on the surface yet consequential if that makes sense.

3. Paul McCartney/Wings, Medley (Hold Me Tight/Lazy Dynamite/Hands Of Love/Power Cut) . . . Another one from Red Rose Speedway which I mentioned to my friend during our text conversation as one from the album I definitely was familiar with. Some have likened it to the Abbey Road medley and while I don’t think it’s on that level – what could be, or maybe I just haven’t listened to it enough – it’s still pretty good. Of particular note to me is the Hands Of Love part, a jaunty juxtaposition within the overall offering and featuring some stinging guitar work by, presumably, Henry McCulloch who is listed as lead guitarist on the album although Macca can and does play pretty much every instrument. Power Cut, it’s been suggested by some, should have been extracted as a single and it, along with the three other parts of the medley, are available separately on YouTube. Red Rose Speedway was originally intended as a double album and in 2018 was re-issued in that form as part of the Paul McCartney Archive Collection.

4. Alvin Lee, I Want You (She’s So Heavy) . . . I often speak of the interconnected threads in music, as earlier in the set with The Allman Brothers Band, Dickey Betts, Derek and Butch Trucks, Warren Haynes (who also formed the formidable entity in itself Gov’t Mule). Probably I go overboard with it while understanding that in any field of endeavour there will be cross-pollination and collaboration of creativity. Still, I find it fascinating while also recognizing that many of the threads connecting bands and/or artists who might admire/respect each other from afar, were you to put them together in an attempt to form a band, it might not work for long. Which is why ‘supergroups’ like Cream, Blind Faith etc. didn’t last long although others like, say, Bad Company which is often categorized as a supergroup, did. So, it obviously depends on whatever chemistry may or may not exist.

In any case, on my April 14/25 show I played Alvin Lee’s slow blues The Bluest Blues, a terrific cut featuring his Beatle friend George Harrison on slide guitar, from Lee’s Nineteen Ninety-Four album released that year. Lee, the former Ten Years After frontman/guitarist, and Harrison were great pals, lived in the same neighborhood for at least some time and as Lee related in various album liner notes, he’d encourage Harrison to drop by and make music. The Bluest Blues was one result and another was their pairing on Lee’s cover of the John Lennon-penned Beatles tune I Want You (She’s So Heavy). It’s also from Nineteen Ninety-Four and is a terrific reinterpretation while holding true to the original on Abbey Road. Lennon deliberately and brilliantly abruptly chopped off the ending on the Abbey Road album where Lee lets it fade albeit after a descending crescendo of sound, each effective in their own way.

Also interesting to me is how Harrison’s playing, juxtaposed against that of an acknowledged virtuoso like Lee, becomes somehow more compelling in that environment vis-a-vis his great work within The Beatles who, amazing as they were, didn’t feature a Lee or a Hendrix etc. type individual player because they were always about the song, which is what ultimately resonates. And as Lee said in those various liner notes, he wanted Harrison’s slide, not just anyone’s slide, but George’s. He loved Harrison’s sound, he got it, and we, thankfully, have it to listen to on some of Lee’s solo tracks.

5. Elton John, Where To Now, St. Peter? . . . Another track, my favorite probably on the 1970 album Tumbleweed Connection, that was actually on my list of possible plays for this show but I settled on something from that album again via the text talk with my friend. He had just picked up Tumbleweed Connection (expanded re-released version no less) for bargain-basement prices at a thrift store. He’s as much a music fan as me so I was surprised he had to pick it up, me presuming he must have owned it already (which turns out he did, on vinyl but he went for the cheapie expanded CD, too). As I said to him, no huge hits but a great album as Elton – and lyrics collaborator Bernie Taupin – was starting to truly bloom both creatively and commercially.
After the lovely piano intro in comes guitar and we’re off. An interesting and compelling arrangement that builds upon itself.

6. Tom Jones, The Young New Mexican Puppeteer . . . A total outlier, perhaps as here we have Tom Jones. I’ve never played him before and faithful show followers may be thinking WTF although I do very much like his biggest hits like It’s Not Unusual and She’s A Lady. Good songs are good songs, regardless. Anyway, playing this one came about while shelving CDs and up came Tom Jones Gold, a two-disc compilation containing this track. It always reminds me of my (RIP) parents therefore I will never get rid of it although I can always easily call it up online. They loved the song, danced to it and so it conjures up fond memories. And it leads into a bunch of ‘Jones’-related material. Me and my music ‘threads’ thing again.

7. Bob Dylan, Ballad Of A Thin Man . . . Tom Jones to Mr. Jones to, you’ll see, Lennon referencing Dylan mentioning Mr. Jones. What a devastating rip job, a lacerating track, so many interpretations of it including a takedown of clueless bourgeois types trying to decode the then counterculture. ‘Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones? From Dylan’s 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited.

8. The Dirty Mac, Yer Blues (from The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus) . . . After finally seeing the film and listening to the album upon their initial official release in 1996, I’ve never understood why the Stones held back, or supposedly did, release of The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus based on their view that they had been upstaged by The Who with its version of A Quick One While He’s Away. A good song, I guess, I’ve never gotten into and that’s not due to me comparing The Who to the Stones. I just don’t see what’s so great about A Quick One, studio version or the live Rock And Roll Circus take. The Who, one of my favorite bands, have countless other better songs.

Anyway granted I’m a big fan and if they were ‘off’ on the show I’d say so but I thought the Stones were excellent so, whatever. As for Yer Blues and The Dirty Mac, this is The Beatles track from The White Album as done by John Lennon and Eric Clapton on guitars, drummer Mitch Mitchell from the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Keith Richards of the Stones on bass. Interestingly, perhaps, my elder son, a musician himself, is a huge Beatles (and Stones) fan; he told me once he preferred this arguably rawer, heavier, unpolished yet compellingly unvarnished version to The Beatles’ White Album version. I like them both.

9. The Rolling Stones, Prodigal Son . . . A Stones’ involvement on the previous tune (Richards) brings me to this skeletal, reverential blues cover from around the same time as the Circus show. It appeared on the Beggars Banquet album, released in 1968.

10. Rev. Robert Wilkins, That’s No Way To Get Along ((1928 version, re-recorded by Wilkins during the 1960s as The Prodigal Son) . . . And here’s the original, in a slow, spoken-sung style. Almost more sermon than song that gave the Stones something to build on and also revealed the depth of their blues knowledge and appreciation, which then fueled my own. Again, as Keith Richards has said, the best thing an artist can do is ‘pass it on’.

11. Atomic Rooster, Broken Wings . . . A few weeks ago on the show I played John Mayall’s beautiful original from his 1967 album The Blues Alone and mentioned that Atomic Rooster had, maybe uncharacteristically, covered it and promised to play it at some point soon. Here it is, from the band’s self-titled 1970 debut album. More operatic and ‘prog’ even ‘doomy’ in Rooster’s style perhaps but a great homage to the original. A worthwhile listen.

12. Faces, (I Know) I’m Losing You (live at the BBC 1971, taken from the box set Five Guys Walk Into A Bar . . . ) . . . Absolutely killer version of this tune made famous by The Temptations that Faces forntman Rod Stewart also did, with Faces backing during his dual career period, on his 1971 studio album Every Picture Tells A Story.

13. Rush, Cygnus X-1 . . .Total genre change but I’ve been meaning to get the epic 2-fer of Cygnus X-1 and Cygnus X-1 Book II in. It’s all of a piece, part I from A Farewell To Kings, the 1977 album that truly got me into Rush and arguably my favorite to this day, and Part II from the next album, 1978’s Hemispheres. Part I closed A Farewell To Kings and Part II, lead cut on Hemispheres, continued the cerebral/philosophical story.

14. Rush, Cyngus X-1, Book II . . . And that’s the end of the story, for this set.

A two-album play: Joe Jackson’s 1980 release Beat Crazy and London Calling by The Clash, from 1979. My thoughts on each album run below that record’s song list.

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Joe Jackson – Beat Crazy

1. Beat Crazy
2. One To One
3. In Every Dream Home (A Nightmare)
4. The Evil Eye
5. Mad At You
6. Crime Don’t Pay
7. Someone Up There
8. Battleground
9. Biology
10. Pretty Boys
11. Fit

I’m a huge Joe Jackson fan and, as I probably too often repeat, follow him and his muse wherever it takes him and me along with it which has meant punk rock/new wave, reggae, ska, big band, classical, you name it. Yet for whatever reason, it took me a bit to get into his 1980 release Beat Crazy. I bought it, automatic purchase of something by a preferred artist when it came out, listened to it, liked it, liked the driving, musically jagged title cut (sung by bassist Graham Maby) but that was sort of it and I shelved the album for a time. Not sure why, perhaps there were other more immediate albums I was more interested in then.

But once I truly dug back into Beat Crazy, wow. Jackson was still in his early career ‘angry young man’ new wave phase at the time, before the shift first into the jazz/swing covers album Jumpin’ Jive in 1981 then into what’s been described as the ‘sophisti-pop’ of the 1982 album Night And Day which featured the hit single Steppin’ Out. But by Beat Crazy Jackson was already clearly evolving, incorporating new sounds like ska and I found a new maturity or seriousness in his songwriting. It was a darker if (likely due to its darkness) more poorly commercially performing album than his straight ahead debut Look Sharp! and its followup I’m The Man. Those were both socially conscious with biting commentary too, but also ‘party’ records featuring obvious hits like Is She Really Going Out With Him? and I’m The Man.

Beat Crazy made you think. JJ addressed, in the title cut, youth attitudes/culture of the day wrapped in allusions to the Cold War via the lyric “and if the Russians ever come they’ll all be beating bongo drums”perfectly in sync with the music. Then there’s the stirring In Every Dream Home (A Nightmare) tale of relationships including the ‘who is she, really?’ look at a high-class prostitute, the blurred morality of Crime Don’t Pay – “I got a nice suit, I got a nice car, it’s been a nice day, don’t tell me that crime don’t pay” to the racism of ‘black niggers and white niggers’ in Battleground to the superficiality of Pretty Boys to the gender identity issues of Fit. A tremendous album, ahead of its time perhaps, although ‘ahead of its time’ is arguably a cliche phrase, given that it happened at that time so it’s obviously of its time.

The Clash – London Calling

1. London Calling
2. Brand New Cadillac
3. Jimmy Jazz
4. Hateful
5. Rudie Can’t Fail
6. Spanish Bombs
7. The Right Profile
8. Lost In The Supermarket
9. Clampdown
10. The Guns Of Brixton
11. Wrong ‘Em Boyo
12. Death Or Glory
13. Koka Kola
14. The Card Cheat
15. Lover’s Rock
16. Four Horsemen
17. I’m Not Down
18. Revolution Rock
19. Train In Vain (Stand By Me) (hidden track on original vinyl double album)

London Calling is so full of great songs it’s ridiculous. In choosing this 1979 release to play and revisiting it after a long time between listens – although like all great albums I can pretty much play it in my head – the depth in terms of the quality and variety of music is amazing. The Clash were, as I recall a sticker on the album wrap suggesting, ‘the only band that matters’ at least at the time and I agreed and embraced them, totally. They rivalled my forever favorites, The Rolling Stones, as my favorite band at that time.

There’s the title cut with the line ‘phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust’ which I on first listen and generally took to be about the quick rise and fall of the Bay City Rollers of the 1970s, although their song Saturday Night was a pretty good guilty pleasure. Others have legitimately suggested it’s a reference to what The Clash was seeing as the decline, already, within just a few years, of punk rock as a movement. Or something of a companion to the band’s earlier song 1977 which contained the lyric “No Elvis, Beatles or The Rolling Stones in 1977”. Even as The Clash appropriated, as an homage, the artwork of Elvis’s 1956 debut album for the London Calling cover . . .

By any interpretation, a great song and opener.

Then comes Brand New Cadillac, the Vince Taylor cover spiced up with the immortal not in the original lyrics interjection ‘Jesus Christ, where’d you get that Cadillac!’ which just ‘makes’ the song . . . Train In Vain (Stand By Me) the early single and a ‘hidden track’ to end the original album . . . beyond that . . . the reggae of Revolution Rock, Spanish Bombs evoking the Spanish Civil War but updated by incorporating contemporary issues . . . Lost In The Supermarket’s tale of suburban disillusionment and rampant consumerism . . . the ‘what are we gonna do now?’ call to arms of Clampdown . . . The Right Profile with another couple of stirring screams in the chorus ‘that’s Montgomery Clift honey!’ and ‘but I prefer alcohol!!” And, to me the (literally) killer cut, The Guns Of Brixton with that intoxicating introductory bass line followed by the defiant opening lines ‘When they kick at your front door how you gonna come, with your hands on your head or on the trigger of your gun . . . when the law break in how you gonna go? Shot down on the pavement or waiting in death row’ . . .
The excellence is in the maybe not grammatically perfect yet perfectly imperfect lyrics. It’s maybe ‘wrong’, as great art often is, but sounds right, better, it just works. Akin, for just one example, to Smoke On The Water by Deep Purple where the lyrics are so much better – and probably aid in the singing tempo – as released: ‘some stupid (not some stupid idiot, just ‘some stupid’) with a flare gun burned the place to the ground’ and ‘The Rolling truck Stones thing just outside, making our music there’; putting ‘truck’ in between Rolling and Stones takes it from just another lyric mentioning the Stones’ mobile recording studio into a memorable line.

Crazy good album, London Calling. I have friends who swear by the earlier Clash stuff, the raucous debut punk rock album and all that and I get it, I like the earlier material too. But some tend to dismiss London Calling as a sellout for commercial gain. I disagree. First off, one wants to sell records, no? Otherwise, it’s like saying you’ll work for free. Noble maybe, but you have to eat and maintain roof overhead. Further, London Calling is still topical, still political, if that’s what one wants from The Clash, but it’s wrapped in more accessible songs. If that’s ‘selling out’ then I’m all for it because few are going to listen to your lyrics if the musicality of the songs themselves doesn’t first draw you in. And London Calling achieves that. Easily one of the greatest albums of all time.

So Old It’s New three-album play, a singer-songwriter set featuring three classic, seminal albums: Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water from 1970, Carole King’s Tapestry from 1971 and John Wesley Harding by Bob Dylan, released in 1967. My thoughts on each album appear under that record’s song list. No show on my usual Monday night; I’m preempted for the station’s coverage of the Canadian federal election.

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Simon and Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water

1. Bridge Over Troubled Water
2. El Condor Pasa (If I Could)
3. Cecilia
4. Keep The Customer Satisfied
5. So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright
6. The Boxer
7. Baby Driver
8. The Only Living Boy In New York
9. Why Don’t You Write Me
10. Bye Bye Love
11. Song For The Asking

Personal memories of this album go back to when I was in Grade 7 in the school year 1970-71 and part of the school choir as per our compulsory music curriculum. If memory serves it was a Christmas assembly but in any case it was a public performance in front of family, friends and anyone who wanted to drop by and we closed the evening with the title track, Bridge Over Troubled Water. I remember our 5-foot nothing, or less, music teacher with her pitch pipe, endlessly – and sometimes annoyingly 🙂 such was her pursuit of perfection – drilling us for what she hoped for and intended to be a peak performance. And it was. We nailed it on the night, complete with all the transitional vocal harmonies amid the various voices – sopranos, altos, tenors (me, then) and basses. She was so proud of us, Miss Lee was her name as I recall and we of her particularly as a lesson in dedication, focus and persistence.

Later that year I remember smiling at a school dance as she slow-danced with her boyfriend, easily a foot and a half taller than she was, while I took the last slow dance with a friend and classmate named Cecilia, the title of one of the tracks, albeit an uptempo and excellent tune on Bridge Over Troubled Water. I was so naive then in relationships I had no idea a ‘last dance’ might represent something of significance. Nothing ever ensued between Cecilia and me, due to streaming of students based on where we lived she went to a different high school, but she does come to mind in a fun way when I hear the song. Part of it might also be that she was of Spanish background and in 1970 my family had just returned from four years living in Peru, a formative, defining time for me, so she perhaps resonated as somewhat representative of that experience.

Further re the album itself there is the classic song The Boxer with that distinctive ‘cheeuuh’ if I can ‘write’ a sound, one achieved by drummer Hal Blaine via a heavily reverbed snare drum. Blaine, according to analyses, I’m no drummer, pounded the snare drum hard while recording, and the reverberation of the sound in a hallway near an elevator shaft created the desired effect. Overall, just a great album musically and lyrically.

Carole King – Tapestry

1. I Feel The Earth Move
2. So Far Away
3. It’s Too Late
4. Home Again
5. Beautiful
6. Way Over Yonder
7. You’ve Got A Friend
8. Where You Lead
9. Will You Love Me Tomorrow?
10. Smackwater Jack
11. Tapestry
12. (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman

Simply one of the greatest albums ever. Not sure what else to say about it or what could be said though much has been written and is easily available. It’s all in the music and lyrics. A greatest hits album, essentially, a must-have/listen. A true telling of Carole King though, I think can be furthered by looking at the 2-CD Essential Carole King. Four of the songs on it – I Feel The Earth Move, So Far Away, It’s Too Late and You’ve Got A Friend – come from Tapestry along with other quality King material. But the compilation is nicely split by the two discs – one of her as ‘The Singer’, the other as ‘The Songwriter’, often with then-husband Gerry Goffin, on such songs as Pleasant Valley Sunday by The Monkees and The Loco-Motion by Little Eva and also done by Grand Funk Railroad. Tied as a companion to Tapestry, it’s terrific stuff.

Bob Dylan – John Wesley Harding

1. John Wesley Harding
2. As I Went Out One Morning
3. I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine
4. All Along The Watchtower
5. The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest
6. Drifter’s Escape
7. Dear Landlord
8. I Am A Lonesome Hobo
9. I Pity The Poor Immigrant
10. The Wicked Messenger
11. Down Along The Cove
12. I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight

A notable album for among other songs, the one from which the hard rock/metal band Judas Priest took its name, The Ballad Of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest, plus other great tracks like my favorites As I Went Out One Morning and Dylan’s original All Along The Watchtower. Sounds like sacrilege to some, probably, but I truly prefer Dylan’s original – maybe better expressed it’s a tie – to the more famous Jimi Hendrix cover version which Dylan himself later started attempting to do, in concert, in Hendrix style. In my view he needn’t have. Dylan’s version is classic if not by now as well remembered or recognized but to me it’s a matter of lyrics and delivery. As great as the Hendrix version is, the lyrical impact is lost amid the amazing playing relative to how it comes out in Dylan’s original. And it was a mutual admiration society; Hendrix also famously and brilliantly covered Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival including that wonderful interaction with an audience member “yeah I know I missed a verse, don’t worry” as Jimi played on.