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

So Old It’s New show archive

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1. Pretenders, Tattooed Love Boys
2. Graham Parker, Devil’s Sidewalk
3. The Police, Shadows In The Rain
4. Midnight Oil, The Last Of The Diggers
5. Chuck Berry, Jaguar and Thunderbird
6. Golden Earring, She Flies On Strange Wings (from Live, 1977)
7. Rod Stewart, You’re My Girl (I Don’t Want To Discuss It)
8. (Long) John Baldry, Let’s Burn Down The Cornfield
9. Gordon Lightfoot, Mister Rock Of Ages
10. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Wrote A Song For Everyone
11. Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, It Ain’t Nothin’ To Me
12. Paul Rodgers, Standing Around Crying
13. The Kinks, Celluloid Heroes
14. Johnny Winter, Stray Cat Blues
15. The Rolling Stones, Midnight Rambler (live, from Ladies & Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones)
16. Kansas, The Absence Of Presence
17. Led Zeppelin, For Your Life
18. Cream, Rollin’ And Tumblin’ (from Live Cream)

My track-by-track tales:

1. Pretenders, Tattooed Love Boys . . . . A staccato-type song walking a tightope between chaos and control, from the band’s self-titled debut album released in January, 1980. A soundscape that teeters on the edge of a cliff, seemingly, as if the song is always at risk of falling apart but it doesn’t and that’s what makes it compelling. Then, this example of compact fury just ends, boom. And you wish it was longer than just three minutes. But on the flip side, leave ’em wanting more . . .

2. Graham Parker, Devil’s Sidewalk . . . Nice descending guitar riff intro on this one, perhaps my favorite song – though it’s tough to pick – on the 1980 album The Up Escalator. A hit single that could have been, in my book although it wasn’t released as such. Stupefaction and Endless Night, the latter featuring Parker fan Bruce Springsteen on backing vocals, are likely the best-known songs on what I think is a consistent record that tends to get short shrift from critics who don’t like Jimmy Iovine‘s supposedly too slick production. Iovine had previously worked as an engineer on Springsteen’s Born To Run and Darkness On The Edge of Town albums, John Lennon’s Walls and Bridges and produced Patti Smith’s Easter and Tom Petty’s Damn The Torpedoes. A sterling resume, but there’s no pleasing some people although obviously it’s a matter of personal preference and taste. Perhaps it’s because it’s the Parker album I first heard front to back thanks to radio play which prompted me to purchase it, after which I went back in his catalogue. But to me The Up Escalator maintained his early, angry young man phase of consistency and is as good as its more acclaimed predecessor, Squeezing Out Sparks.

3. The Police, Shadows In The Rain . . . A hypnotic, brooding piece from the 1980 album Zenyatta Mondatta. Another example of why, while compilations serve a purpose, depending how deeply one wants to dig into particular artists, individual albums tell the full tale.

4. Midnight Oil, The Last Of The Diggers . . . From The Real Thing, a mostly live, mostly acoustic album, released in 2000 that featured Oils’ hits plus four new studio recordings including the title track and this mid-tempo rocker.

5. Chuck Berry, Jaguar and Thunderbird . . . Short, just under two minutes, punchy rocker with rockabilly and, some have suggested, rap – before rap was a recognized genre – elements in a Bo Diddley-ish approach. The music fits the subject matter of a race down the road, police in pursuit. A non-album single issued in 1960, it didn’t dent the charts but has appeared on various Berry compilation albums.

6. Golden Earring, She Flies On Strange Wings (from Live, released in 1977) . . . From short and sweet with Chuck Berry to long and involved with Golden Earring, a multifaceted song, hard rock in spots, mellow in others. Progressive hard rock, in short. It appeared in studio form on the band’s 1971 album Seven Tears.

7. Rod Stewart, You’re My Girl (I Don’t Want To Discuss It) . . . A funky, stop-start rocker from Gasoline Alley, released in 1970. It was Stewart’s second solo album during the amazing 1969-74 period when he was maintaining parallel careers, fronting Faces while also using many of that band’s members, particularly guitarist Ron Wood, on his solo stuff.

8. (Long) John Baldry, Let’s Burn Down The Cornfield . . . A more up-tempo treatment of Randy Newman’s rootsy, swampy version on his 1970 album 12 Songs. It came out on Baldry’s June 1971 album It Ain’t Easy which was co-produced by Rod Stewart and Elton John. John – under his birth name Reginald Dwight – was in the band Bluesology with Baldry during the 1960s. Stewart and John each produced a side of the original vinyl album with Let’s Burn Down The Cornfield produced by John and featuring guitarist Caleb Quaye and drummer Roger Pope. They were working with John at the time and played on his Madman Across The Water album, released in November 1971. The ubiquitous guitarist Ron Wood was among the Stewart associates who played on the Stewart-produced tracks including the title song and Don’t Try To Lay No Boogie Woogie On The King Of Rock & Roll.

9. Gordon Lightfoot, Mister Rock Of Ages . . . Beautiful song, thoughtful lyrics but it’s Lightfoot, what else would one expect? From the 1980 album Dream Street Rose.

10. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Wrote A Song For Everyone . . . From Green River, the middle of three – count ’em, 3! – albums released by CCR that year. It was bracketed by Bayou Country and Willy And The Poor Boys, all of consistently high quality. CCR singles from 1969 spread over the three albums: Proud Mary, Born On The Bayou, Bad Moon Rising, Lodi, Green River, Commotion, Down On The Corner, Fortunate Son. Eight singles, five of which – Proud Mary, Bad Moon Rising, Green River, Down On The Corner and Fortunate Son – made either No. 2 or 3 on the North American charts with Bad Moon Rising hitting No. 1 in the UK. A remarkable run by a remarkable band.

11. Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, It Ain’t Nothin’ To Me . . . Nice intro bass line from Dave Stewart of Eurythmics, who co-wrote with Petty this horn-drenched song with a cool call-and-response hook using the song title. From the 1985 album Southern Accents which, aside from the hit single Don’t Come Around Here No More took some time to embed itself with me but long since has. Definitely a keeper.

12. Paul Rodgers, Standing Around Crying . . . David Gilmour on guitar, from Rodgers’ 1993 album Muddy Water Blues – A Tribute To Muddy Waters that featured an all-star cast of guitarists in addition to Pink Floyd’s Gilmour. Others on the album: Jeff Beck, Buddy Guy, Brian May (Queen), Steve Miller, Gary Moore, Trevor Rabin (Yes), Richie Sambora (Bon Jovi), Neil Schon (Santana, Journey), Brian Setzer (Stray Cats, The Brian Setzer Orchestra), Slash (Guns N’ Roses, Slash’s Snakepit, Velvet Revolver, etc.).

13. The Kinks, Celluloid Heroes . . . From the 1972 studio album Everybody’s In Show-Biz . . . I played Supersonic Rocket Ship from the album some weeks ago and mentioned Celluloid Heroes being a single that to me, amazingly, did not chart that I’ve played before and would play again. So here you go. Fantastic song, musically and lyrically, with Kinks’ writer Ray Davies name-checking actors Greta Garbo, Rudolph Valentino, Bela Lugosi, Bette Davis, George Sanders, Marilyn Monroe and Mickey Rooney. Kinks’ guitarist Dave Davies, often at odds with his brother, was quoted as saying it’s ‘one of my favorite songs ever, by anybody.’ I agree. Strange to me that it wasn’t more successful commercially but there’s maybe no accounting for time, place and taste but it is a well-known track to Kinks’ fans and appears on various compilations.

14. Johnny Winter, Stray Cat Blues . . . Winter’s cover, from his 1974 album Saints And Sinners, of the ribald Rolling Stones song originally on Beggars Banquet. Winter, however, more closely follows the slower, bluesier arrangement the Stones used on Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out!, the 1970 live album document of their 1969 tour although the boys have returned to the original approach when they’ve played the song on recent tours. All versions – Winter’s included which shouldn’t be surprising as he was a great interpreter of others’ material – are excellent. Winter also covered, at various times, the Stones songs Let It Bleed and Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and Like A Rolling Stone.

15. The Rolling Stones, Midnight Rambler (live, from Ladies & Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones) . . . The Let It Bleed studio album song whose arguably definitive version remains the concert cut from Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out! The Ladies & Gentlemen take was recorded on the Stones’ 1972 tour promoting their then-current Exile On Main St. album and first saw limited official release in 1974 on the film document of that voyage. I still own bootleg copies of both movie and album although I’ve since bought the official releases which came out on DVD and Blu-ray in 2010 and on CD in 2017.

16. Kansas, The Absence Of Presence . . . . From the raunchy rock of The Rolling Stones to the prog-rock title cut of Kansas’ 2020 album. To quote the allmusic review site, ‘Kansas’ popularity is based on the canny balance of meaty prog and radio-friendly melodic rock’ and I agree. A typically epic tune from a band whose beautiful 1977 hit Dust In The Wind is actually something of an outlier in their oeuvre. Plus, I like the title, Absence of Presence, and the album cover and it gives me an opportunity to set up . . .

17. Led Zeppelin, For Your Life . . . Kansas, we do have Presence . . . or did, from the 1976 album Presence on this unconventionally compelling song driven by its stop-start riff.

18. Cream, Rollin’ And Tumblin’ (live) . . . Back to a Muddy Waters’ tune in this manic mostly just instrumental interplay Cream interpretation to close the show as I roll and tumble off the stage and outta here, so to speak. Jack Bruce sings, yes, but in many ways just ‘mouths’ sounds but it all works, very well. Recorded March 7, 1968 at the Fillmore West, San Francisco and released on Live Cream, June 1970. It’s also available online and on the 2-CD Cream Gold compilation which is split into studio and live recordings.

So Old It’s New set featuring two albums released in 1989 – Steel Wheels by The Rolling Stones and Neil Young’s Freedom. Why 1989? Well, I was dipping into a book about the Berlin Wall, which fell in 1989 so, the way my mind works, one thing led to another, the year 1989 stuck and on with the show.

It was an interesting year musically with lots of great or at least solid ‘comeback’ albums, at least by critical assessments, released by so-called classic rock artists as the Stones and Young but also Eric Clapton (Journeyman), Bob Dylan (Oh Mercy), Lou Reed (New York), among others so this may be installment one in a short series of Saturday morning shows. But, who knows where I’ll go next? My thoughts on each album appear at the bottom of this post.

The Rolling Stones – Steel Wheels

1. Sad Sad Sad
2. Mixed Emotions
3. Terrifying
4. Hold On To Your Hat
5. Hearts For Sale
6. Blinded By Love
7. Rock And A Hard Place
8. Can’t Be Seen
9. Almost Hear You Sigh
10. Continental Drift
11. Break The Spell
12. Slipping Away

Neil Young – Freedom

1. Rockin’ In The Free World (acoustic)
2. Crime In The City (Sixty To Zero Part I)
3. Don’t Cry
4. Hangin’ On A Limb
5. Eldorado
6. The Ways Of Love
7. Someday
8. On Broadway
9. Wrecking Ball
10. No More
11. Too Far Gone
12. Rockin’ In The Free World (electric)

My thoughts on Steel Wheels:

As the narrative goes, Steel Wheels was a reunion album by an apparently broken band that was in tatters or not even existing given what’s been termed “World War Three” as chief Stones’ songwriters Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were at odds in the mid-1980s thanks in part to Richards’ emergence from a decade-or more long dalliance with booze and drugs.

What’s maybe weird is, while I knew via reports of the Stones’ internal dynamics around this time, I as a fan didn’t make much if anything of it. They’d released an album (the under-appreciated in my book Dirty Work, 1986) and were working on the next one which came out as Steel Wheels. Three years between albums, by that time, didn’t seem like a lot even to those of us who grew up on an album (or 2 in Elton John’s case via his then-contract) a year by most artists.

But to the gossipers among the citizenry who seize on things . . . As the story goes, Richards was now at least relatively clean and coherent and seeking to reassert more influence in group activities beyond merely playing guitar. Jagger, meanwhile, who had essentially been the lone man at the tiller since the 1970s for the most part, certainly in a business sense, and become used to full leadership, bristled at his old friend’s desire to more fully direct Stones’ activities.

This was exacerbated by Jagger’s pursuit of a solo career which annoyed all of the band but mostly Richards. Keith famously said he’d ‘slit his throat’ if Jagger toured without the Stones and Mick did, with the brilliant Jeff Beck on guitar and survived, slitless. I have a couple bootlegs of those shows and they’re good but I must say don’t really have that ‘Stones’ sound, which maybe Mick didn’t want. They missed the Richards’ raunch which the technically obviously brilliant Beck didn’t arguably best provide but again, maybe that’s what Jagger wanted. Yet if you’re going to play Stones tunes . . .

What truly annoyed Richards primarily and the rest of the Stones was that Jagger largely built his tour on a Stones set list. Jagger had refused a Stones tour after the 1986 album Dirty Work yet subsequently goes on the road playing . . . mostly Stones tunes. I like and admire both guys, but I think Keith and the others had a point.

At any rate, Keith crowed, lyrically, once he decided, eff it, I’ll do my own album. Out came Talk Is Cheap in 1988. Keef’s critically-acclaimed as the best Stones albeit not exactly Stones release since whenever (although lagging way behind Jaggers’ solo album sales). Talk Is Cheap contained the song You Don’t Move Me including the lyric passage ‘Now you wanna roll the dice you already crapped out twice’ in reference to Jagger’s solo albums She’s The Boss and Primitive Cool which, certainly sales wise, actually did well on the charts and by far better than any Richards’ solo release. But the musical point was made, the boys buried the hatchet and Steel Wheels was the result. Listened to objectively without any baggage of who the Stones have been, it’s quite the great album including the nice touch of Continental Drift, a compelling, intoxicating track which via the use of the Master Musicians of Joujouka paid homage to founding Stones’ member Brian Jones and his work with that musical assemblage in 1968. The Stones used excerpts from Continental Drift as intro music on the Steel Wheels tour.

Overall, beyond the studio album itself Steel Wheels and its supporting tour opened a new phase in the career of The Rolling Stones in terms of their massive tours, huge stages and so on. It was now a tight, arguably scripted show, full of backup musicians and singers live band, a revue, almost. Not to all tastes yet still undeniably The Rolling Stones who at various times – the stripped down No Security Tour, the Stripped album and concerts from the 1990s, the 2013 killer unvarnished show I saw in Toronto among many of mine starting with the raunchily ragged resounding 1978 Some Girls tour stop in Buffalo with the Stones – were at their rawest.

I mentioned earlier in this ramble how Steel Wheels was seen as a return to form from the 1986 album Dirty Work which to me is groupthink at work. Say something often enough and people apparently believe it, even if they haven’t read or listened to whatever it is the media shapers are talking about.

Yes, I’m a huge Stones fan thus will arguably find merit in whatever they do but I immediately liked Dirty Work, despite reviews few of which I actually read before buying the album because the Stones were always just an automatic buy for me.

I do distinctly recall Peter Goddard, then a respected music writer at the Toronto Star, calling it an ‘angry’ and great album. Goddard didn’t expound on it very much as I recall, just reviewed the songs and the album overall, so can’t be sure if he meant the ‘anger’ in terms of the aggression in the music – which is what I took from his review, simply musically – or the anger that then existed between Stones’ songwriting principals Jagger and Richards as imposing itself on the music, as most other critics suggested.

Whatever. All in all it maybe proves another point, that being: just listen to the record and make one’s own judgement. Often, and obviously, the less you read in terms of critics’ reviews, certainly at least before consuming a book or listening to an album the more you come to things unvarnished and uninfluenced and thus make your own judgments although it can be interesting reading other viewpoints but, I’d submit, only after you’ve read or listened and formed your own opinion.

And my thoughts on Neil Young’s Freedom:

Best track on this album to me is Crime In The City, which I’ve played independently on the show. Just a brilliant story song, lengthy at nearly nine minutes but well worth the trip. Just a terrific album all of it, a combination of all Young does/has done well, acoustic tunes, rock, hard rock, everything Geffen was expecting when that record company signed Young earlier in the 1980s but were met with a shift in Young’s creative muse, resulting in albums like Trans and its Kraftwrerk-like electronic sounds, the rockabilly of Everybody’s Rockin’ and the pure country of Old Ways. Geffen was appalled, sued Young as being un-Young like, he counter sued in the name of artistic independence and a settlement was quickly reached.

In the meantime Young returned to his former longtime home Reprise Records and in 1988 released a quality jump blues album This Note’s For You which also led to some legal issues. It was first sold as Neil Young and The Bluenotes. But after a lawsuit from Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes original R & B band dating to the 1950s, Young had to change the album labelling from Neil Young & The Bluenotes to just Neil Young . . . I have both versions. Not sure if the one with ‘Bluenotes’ on the cover is rare or worth anything, just as I have the original Rolling Stones vinyl album cover of Some Girls which later, due to threatened lawsuits by various movie stars depicted on the cover, was amended to ‘under reconstruction’. The Stones one I’d submit probably is worth more, if it’s worth anything but I probably stupidly completely reduced any value it might have via me putting my initials on it for organizational purposes during a move. But, actually, I’m happy to still own it as well as the original Neil Young album cover.

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

So Old It’s New show archive

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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.