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

1. John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Cold Turkey
2. The Marshall Tucker Band, Ramblin’
3. Nazareth, Kentucky Fried Blues
4. The Monks Bad Habits
5. The Monkees No Time
6. Warren Zevon, Boom Boom Mancini
7. The Rolling Stones, Long Long While
8. Neil Young, Birds
9. AC/DC, Let’s Get It Up
10. Peter Frampton, While My Guitar Gently Weeps
11. Cat Stevens, Foreigner Suite
12. Steely Dan, Two Against Nature
13. John Lee Hooker, John L’s House Rent Boogie/One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer
14. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Lend A Helpin’ Hand
15. Funkadelic, Wars Of Armaggedon
16. Bruce Springsteen, Drive All Night

My track-by-track tales:

1. John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Cold Turkey . . . Nothing to do with Thanksgiving, of course, it’s a harrowing track about withdrawal from addiction, specifically in this case heroin addiction, but I figured I’d play something turkey-related on this Canadian Thanksgiving Monday/weekend and this is the first song that occurred to me. Plus, well, I like it. Apologies if it may be in poor taste but hey, lighten up, maybe Lennon was really writing about turkey leftovers in the fridge. 🙂

Released in October of 1969 under the moniker of the Plastic Ono Band, it features Beatle Ringo on drums, Eric Clapton on guitar and longtime Beatles’ associate Klaus Voorman, who designed the cover art for the Revolver album and played on a total of 10 solo albums spread amongst Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison, on bass. It was the first single Lennon ever released under his sole songwriting credit. He had released Give Peace A Chance earlier that year while still, as he was when Cold Turkey came out, with The Beatles but Give Peace A Chance was at first credited as a Lennon-McCartney tune, later changed to just Lennon. According to The Love You Make, one of the 67 million books available on The Beatles, Lennon offered Cold Turkey as a possible Beatles single but Paul McCartney took one listen and said no, to which, according to the book, Lennon replied “well, bugger you” and released it as a Plastic Ono Band song. A great song, regardless.

2. The Marshall Tucker Band, Ramblin’ . . . Five minutes and seven seconds worth of southern fried boogie from the band likely best known for their hit single Can’t You See which, like Ramblin’, was released on the group’s self-titled debut album in 1973.

3. Nazareth, Kentucky Fried Blues . . . Pulsating dirty, bluesy jam from the Expect No Mercy album, 1977.

4. The Monks Bad Habits . . . Title cut from the 1979 album which yielded the hit single, at least in the UK, Nice Legs Shame About Her Face which ascended to No. 19. But that was only one of many catchy songs on an album that achieved its greatest success in Canada where Drugs In My Pocket was a top 20 hit while songs like Johnny B. Rotten, especially, and Love In Stereo and Ain’t Gettin’ Any got significant airplay. One of my college days/daze albums/memories.

5. The Monkees No Time . . . Always liked this short and sweet rocker, Micky Dolenz on lead vocals, from the time my older sister brought home the Headquarters album, released in 1967.

6. Warren Zevon, Boom Boom Mancini . . . I seem to be playing a fair bit of Zevon of late, he came up again because I was watching some old boxing matches over the weekend and Ray (Boom Boom) Mancini was involved in one of the bouts I came across. From Zevon’s 1987 album Sentimental Hygiene, with members of R.E.M. – drummer Bill Berry, guitarist Peter Buck and bassist Mike Mills – providing instrumental backup on most of the tunes.

7. The Rolling Stones, Long Long While . . . A nice ballad B-side to Paint It Black in the UK. A rare occasion at that time, 1966, when the Stones, who had been writing songs like Under My Thumb as putdowns of women, took the opposite approach with lyrics like “I was so wrong girl and you were right.” Yet in North America, the B-side to Paint It Black was Stupid Girl, which also appeared on both the UK and North American versions of the Aftemath album. Long Long While first came out on an album in 1972 on the More Hot Rocks (Big Hits & Fazed Cookies) compilation and 1989’s The Singles Collection – The London Years which features every Stones single and accompanying B-side during the band’s time with Decca Records in the UK and its North American cousin London Records.

8. Neil Young, Birds . . . Beautiful ballad from Young’s 1970 album After The Goldrush, a song covered by Linda Ronstadt on her self-titled third solo album, released in 1972.

9. AC/DC Let’s Get It Up . . . A genre switch from the beautiful ballads to AC/DC’s ‘filth’, as described by lead singer Brian Johnson of the track released on the followup to Back In Black, 1981’s For Those About To Rock We Salute You album which I’d been playing in the car, so the CD was handy and here it is. “Filth, pure filth. We’re a filthy band,” Johnson told UK publication Kerrang! Filthy good, I say.

10. Peter Frampton, While My Guitar Gently Weeps . . . As someone on YouTube commented, Frampton honors George Harrison with his take on The Beatles’ classic. Frampton’s seven-minute version of what was originally a shade under five-minute tune appeared on his 2003 album Now.

11. Cat Stevens, Foreigner Suite . . . Imagine, you’re to that point largely known for tight hit singles like Moonshadow, Peace Train, Wild World and Morning Has Broken and then . . . you lead off your next album, 1973’s Foreigner, with an 18-plus minute epic that was the whole of side one of the original vinyl, perhaps risking alienating those who might not cotton to lengthy songs, at least before they listen to it. Once you tune in, it’s a wonderful trip through changing tempos, always interesting, never boring, even leaves you wishing it wouldn’t end. Truly a sweet suite.

12. Steely Dan, Two Against Nature . . . Funky, jazzy title cut from Steely Dan’s 2000 album release that marked Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s first full album collaboration since 1980’s Gaucho. In between, the duo had reunited for a tour in the early 1990s that resulted in the 1995 live album Alive In America.

13. John Lee Hooker, John L’s House Rent Boogie/One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer . . . Two separate Hooker tunes, House Rent Boogie from 1950 and One Bourbon from 1966 that I’m weaving together, as George Thorogood did, simply calling the combined song One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer on his self-titled 1977 debut album. Hooker wrote House Rent Boogie and is credited as writing One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer on most compilations and its parent studio album, The Real Folk Blues. The song, originally written by American bluesman Rudy Toombs as One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer, was recorded and released by R & B singer Amos Milburn in 1953. Hooker revised it, adapted and added some lyrics and dialogue, in short, Hookerized it, in the words of biographer Charles Shaar Murray in his book Boogie Man: The Adventures of John Lee Hooker In The American Twentieth Century. Then Thorogood Thorogoodized it further. Toombs is credited as the writer on the 1991 Hooker compilation The Ultimate Collection 1948-1990.

14. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Lend A Helpin’ Hand . . . Fiery up tempo track recorded in 1971 at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Alabama with an early version of Skynyrd that included Rickey Medlocke, since 1996 one of the reconstituted post-plane crash band’s guitarists, on drums. The song was originally released on the compilation Skynyrd’s First And . . . Last which came out in 1978, a year after the tragedy, by which time Medlocke had long since left to front Blackfoot, which he had helped form in 1969. Skynyrd’s First And . . . Last was expanded and reissued in 1998 as Skynyrd’s First: The Complete Muscle Shoals Album. It’s a nice package that includes original versions of well-known songs like Free Bird, Gimme Three Steps, I Ain’t The One and others that were recorded a year or two before Skynyrd’s 1973 debut album, plus other previously-unreleased songs, some featuring Medlocke on lead vocals instead of Ronnie Van Zant.

15. Funkadelic, Wars Of Armaggedon . . . Extended funk rock guitar workout featuring the late great Eddie Hazel, from 1970’s Maggot Brain, the title cut of which is also a Hazel showcase but I’ve played it before, relatively recently, so decided to go in another direction this time. The whole album is worthwhile listening.

16. Bruce Springsteen, Drive All Night . . . A lengthy lament to lost love with a typically great saxophone solo from The Big Man, Clarence Clemons. From The River album, 1980.

A 3-album replay: The Doors’ 1971 record L.A. Woman, Bad Company’s Desolation Angels from 1979 and The Beatles’ 1964 album A Hard Day’s Night (UK version). My album commentaries are below each record’s track list.

The Doors – L.A. Woman

1. The Changeling
2. Love Her Madly
3. Been Down So Long
4. Cars Hiss By My Window
5. L.A. Woman
6. L’America
7. Hyacinth House
8. Crawling King Snake
9. The Wasp (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)
10. Riders On The Storm

L.A. Woman is probably my favorite Doors record although the 1967 self-titled debut album, with Break On Through (To The Other Side), Light My Fire, Back Door Man and The End on it, is right up there but while I like all the band’s work, L.A. Woman is one I most consistently listen to straight through. From the opening cut The Changeling, the classic title track placed, intentionally or not, smack in the middle of the 10-song album, anchoring the record, to the closing, brooding Riders On The Storm. I just like the dark, bluesy vibe that is enhanced by, some critics have suggested, Jim Morrison’s worn-out, rough hewn vocals – but that’s what makes them, and the album, great. It was the last Doors album to feature Morrison on lead vocals, during his lifetime, as he died two months after its release. The title track, brilliant vocal and propulsive band performance, always sticks in my mind and often reminds me of an old high school and college friend and football teammate who would, impromptu, often break into song. L.A. Woman, with its evocative opening line “Well I just got into town about an hour ago, took a look around see which way the wind blow. . .” was one of them.

So was The Rolling Stones’ If You Really Want To Be My Friend, from the It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll album, which back then confirmed to me that, ‘this is a guy worth knowing; he actually, like me, knows Stones’ deep cuts’. As for the present day, that memory made me think of playing the Stones’ album but it wouldn’t fit into this 3-album play in my 2-hour slot and I didn’t want to play just two albums and fill the rest with random tracks, as the three albums I’m playing fit the slot perfectly. So, perhaps next time, or soon, for It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll, in whole or in part.

Bad Company – Desolation Angels

1. Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy
2. Crazy Circles
3. Gone, Gone, Gone
4. Evil Wind
5. Early In The Morning
6. Lonely For Your Love
7. Oh, Atlanta
8. Take The Time
9. Rhythm Machine
10. She Brings Me Love

Desolation Angels is the fifth of six studio albums by the original Bad Company, with Paul Rodgers on lead vocals. The less said about the later Brian Howe (RIP) lead singer version – aside from, I’ll grant you, the song Holy Water, title cut from Howe-fronted 1990 album – the better. But I’ll say a lot, anyway. The Howe period, from 1986 to 1992, was actually quite commercially successful but there’s no accounting for why and how millions of people apparently like that overproduced post-Terry Kath Chicago, or Foreigner’s sappy period, type schlock. And I like a fair bit of early Foreigner, the rocking stuff. But then, acts like Bon Jovi, with that same annoying (to me) sound, are hugely successful, too. It’s all subjective to personal taste, of course and I mean no harm by it, enjoy what you enjoy, of course, as will I, just having a little fun.

I remember when Bad Company – which still did feature original members Mick Ralphs on guitar and Simon Kirke on drums – reconvened with Howe, who had fronted Ted Nugent’s band for a time, on lead vocals, telling a work colleague who replied “no Paul Rodgers, no Bad Company.” Hey, I agree, was just advising in case you might be interested. In fairness, apparently the record company insisted to Ralphs and Kirke that the new project still be called Bad Company, as it’s arguably easier to sell (or tarnish?) a known brand name. Later on, Bad Company replaced Howe with Rodgers sound-alike Robert Hart for the 1995 album Company Of Strangers which I truly do like – because it sounds like Paul Rodgers singing and also isn’t buried under the Howe-era production murk – and have played on the show on occasion and will again. Rodgers did later rejoin Bad Co. for some tours and live albums, as well as the excellent 1999 2-CD The ‘Original’ Bad Co. Anthology which featured four new studio tracks and led to a reunion tour.
All that self-indulgent verbosity to bring us back to Desolation Angels which, propelled by the hit single Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy, did good business for Bad Co. As it should have, because, while fans and critics, from what I’ve seen, tend to lean to the first two albums as being Bad Company’s best, I think the band, with Rodgers, released consistently solid front-to-back albums and Desolation Angels is another of them. I find merit every song on it, Crazy Circles probably being my second favorite, after Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy.

The Beatles – A Hard Day’s Night

1. A Hard Day’s Night
2. I Should Have Known Better
3. If I Fell
4. I’m Happy Just To Dance With You
5. And I Love Her
6. Tell Me Why
7. Can’t Buy Me Love
8. Any Time At All
9. I’ll Cry Instead
10. Things We Said Today
11. When I Get Home
12. You Can’t Do That
13. I’ll Be Back

A Hard Day’s Night was the third studio album and first that was all band-penned, no cover tunes, all songs written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It’s the first and only Beatles album that featured songs from that musical partnership and none from their bandmates George Harrison and Ringo Starr. It is, however, a Lennon-dominated album given that he lead-composed and/or sang on 10 of the 13 tracks but that’s not to take away from McCartney’s contributions like And I Love Her and Things We Said Today. A remarkable record, in any event, not only for its excellent songs – essentially it could be a greatest hits album – but particularly given the time pressures under which it was produced by this remarkable band. The Beatles had just returned from their first U.S. appearances, then had to write and record songs for the film, and more to fill out the album, while shooting the movie. As the saying goes, if you want something done, ask a busy person. There are, as often happened in the early days of British Invasion bands, two versions of the record. There’s the UK release, which I’m playing, whose first seven songs – side one of the original vinyl – were used in the film A Hard Day’s Night. And the U.S./North American album – subtitled Original Motion Picture Soundtrack – which spreads the songs used in the film over the original vinyl’s two sides, interspersed with record producer George Martin’s orchestral contributions.

My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list that includes a mini-Kris Kristofferson set in tribute to the singer-songwriter who died last week at age 88.

1. Cream, Those Were The Days
2. Blind Faith, Sea Of Joy
3. Led Zeppelin, The Ocean
4. Marianne Faithfull, House Of The Rising Sun
5. The Rolling Stones, Get Close
6. Simon and Garfunkel, Baby Driver
7. Traveling Wilburys, Tweeter And The Monkey Man
8. Bob Dylan, It’s Alright Ma, (I’m Only Bleeding) live, from Before The Flood
9. The Band, Endless Highway, live, from Before The Flood
10. Kris Kristofferson, The Law Is For Protection Of The People
11. Kris Kristofferson, Just the Other Side Of Nowhere
12. Kris Kristofferson, The Junkie and the Juicehead, Minus Me
13. Kris Kristofferson, The Silver Tongued Devil And I
14. Kris Kristofferson, If You Don’t Like Hank Williams
15. Hank Williams, Weary Blues From Waitin’
16. Cheap Trick, Need Your Love (live) from At Budokan
17. Kiss/Ace Frehley, Rocket Ride
18. Alice Cooper, Killer
19. Traffic, Roll Right Stones

My track-by-track tales:

1. Cream, Those Were The Days . . . Short, sweet, seven seconds under three minutes, like a lot of Cream songs as they were often two different bands, the studio band of shorter stuff and the live band with lots of extended workouts of their material, as evidenced on the album from which this track comes, the 1968 release Wheels Of Fire. It was a two-disc set split between studio and live cuts. Those Were The Days was a studio recording yet, within its three minutes, displays all the elements that this “three guys who made a hell of a lot of noise” band as an old friend once described them, could bring to bear. The three guys making a fine musical noise of course being guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist/primary singer Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker.

2. Blind Faith, Sea Of Joy . . . Speaking of Clapton and Baker, they soon – along with Traffic’s Steve Winwood and Family’s Rick Grech – formed another supergroup, Blind Faith, after the breakup of Cream. The one studio release is brilliant, yet another of those albums I will forever thank my late older brother for turning me on to, what a musical influence he was as I often cite him as being. RIP, brother Robert.

3. Led Zeppelin, The Ocean . . . Sticking with the water/sea/ocean motif, here’s Zep, dan dan dun dun dun (my word approximation of the opening riff), singing in the sunshine (that’s the opening lyric) . . . and on we go, from the 1973 album Houses Of The Holy.

4. Marianne Faithfull, House Of The Rising Sun . . . Haunting 1964 version of this perennial, made most famous by The Animals but it’s a traditional tune, authorship unknown although web searches well worth doing simply due to the fascinating stories involved around the song. It’s been covered, of course, by countless artists including Bob Dylan on his self-titled debut album, released in 1962. It’s interesting for me, re Faithfull, being a major Rolling Stones fan and therefore of course knowing about her via her 1960s relationship with Mick Jagger, and I knew she had recorded and released music during the 1960s, including covers of some Stones tunes like As Tears Go By, and that she had co-written Sister Morphine from the 1971 album Sticky Fingers. Then she largely faded from view before re-emerging in the public consciousness via her brilliant 1979 ‘comeback’ album Broken English. But it was as if she was an entirely different artist, having gone through and still not totally recovered from various addictions, her singing voice by 1979 entirely different than during the 1960s, having become cigarette-and-booze addled yet as a result compelling on that remarkable album. A great singer/artist, regardless the time period.

5. The Rolling Stones, Get Close . . . Elton John helps out the boys on this typically Stones-ish groover from the 2023 album Hackney Diamonds. Great album, universally and rightly praised, and apparently they recorded enough tunes for a followup as band members have confirmed, in various interviews, so let’s go, boys, release another studio set, soon, don’t wait 18 years like last time, between new original material releases. Amazing that band principals Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are 81 and 80 now, Richards turns 81 a week before Christmas, and still going strong. The music seems to keep them alive and spry and brings always to me to mind the great Tom Petty lyric ‘you never slow down you never get old’ from his song Mary Jane’s Last Dance although, sadly, Petty only made it to age 66. Heck, I’m 65, still going strong, work out, honestly feel pretty much how I’ve always felt but who knows what’s around the next corner so here’s hoping, and Petty was found to have had various drug issues, mostly to do with a serious hip injury and subsequent treatments.

6. Simon and Garfunkel, Baby Driver . . . Cool little ditty, always loved it, from the 1970 album Bridge Over Troubled Water, the title cut of which was a massive hit, No. 1 single pretty much throughout planet Earth but the album itself is so good in terms of depth that it’s not just singles like the title cut or The Boxer or Cecilia, the other official singles (more on an actual Cecilia, from a personal point of view, in a minute) but essentially every song on the record is a worthy listen.

The song Bridge Over Troubled Water always brings me back to Grade 8. We had a school choir. Can’t recall if we all had to be in it, but anyway I wound up in it, alto voice section, my voice wasn’t yet deep enough for bass, and I remember, we were going to sing the song for a school assembly for whatever function and we rehearsed the absolute shit out of it for weeks, and when the night came, parents in the audience, we nailed it.

Shortly after comes the Grade 8 graduation dance and Cecilia, a girl in my Grade 7 and 8 classes. And I had spent 1967-70 in Peru where my father was working at the time so I knew something of Spanish culture but whatever, I had never ‘hit’ on Cecilia my classmate, lovely girl, but somehow or other wound up slow dancing with her that night, but not being aware enough in relationships at that point, that that last dance slow dance might signify something. Which it might have. Who knows what she might have been thinking. A fun what if. 🙂

7. Traveling Wilburys, Tweeter And The Monkey Man . . . I remember this song striking me when the first Wilburys album came out in 1988 featuring Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and George Harrison. Two years later they did a good but less commercially successful second album, cheekily titled Vol. 3, after the passing of Orbison. He died of a heart attack at age 52, two months after the release of Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1. Both albums are full of good songs but because I’m a big Dylan fan, this is the song that initially hit me. The hard-rocking Canadian band Headstones, love ’em, soon enough did a raucous cover version of Tweeter, which became a hit for them. Both versions are worthy excursions in their own ways.

8. Bob Dylan, It’s Alright Ma, (I’m Only Bleeding) live, from Before The Flood . . . An angry, fiery version of the song which first saw studio release on Dylan’s 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. At the time of release, via its perhaps most renowned line among so many: “But even the president of the United State sometimes must have to stand naked” it could easily have been seen as a diatribe against then US President Lyndon B. Johnson, embroiled in the Vietnam War. By the time of the 1974 Dylan tour with The Band, that lyrical passage took on different resonance given the Watergate scandal which a few months later, in August 1974, ended in the resignation of President Richard Nixon. The 1974 Dylan/The Band tour, beyond the original excellent Before The Flood album, has within the last month been re-released in an expanded 27-CD, 431-track collection from the entire tour. Major Dylan fan that I am, I’ll wait until I can afford it (it’s only about $200 but still) because for one thing, there’s lots of duplication in set lists through the tour and, I’m hoping, as with Dylan’s ongoing Bootleg series, perhaps a 2-CD distillation of it all will be released. But if not, all good; I have Before The Flood, had it since it came out, an excellent live album by Dylan/The Band.

9. The Band, Endless Highway, live, from Before The Flood . . . From that same album, The Band on its own as was Dylan on his own on the previous track although on Before The Flood and through the tour, the artists collaborated as well, with The Band backing Dylan, as they had in the early days, on several songs. A web search of the Before The Flood album will inform as to who played what, when, on the released album.

10. Kris Kristofferson, The Law Is For Protection Of The People . . . From his first, self-titled album, released in 1970. It’s the first of a few tracks, as promised last week and I did play one, Blame It On The Stones, on last Saturday’s show, as a teaser, in honor of and tribute to the amazing songwriter we lost last week at age 88. He truly had a way with words, and what a compelling, forceful voice that could move people. This is the first of several in my mini-KK tribute that I drew from his first album, Kristofferson. Always/often lyrics that rightly call into question the authority of ‘the authorities’, in his subversive manner. Great stuff.

11. Kris Kristofferson, Just the Other Side Of Nowhere . . . Another from his first album, typically heartfelt, relatable lyrics.

12. Kris Kristofferson, The Junkie and the Juicehead, Minus Me . . . Funky type of tune, from 1970, didn’t see official release, as far as I am aware, until a re-released expanded version of his debut album.

13. Kris Kristofferson, The Silver Tongued Devil And I . . . Another of those hurtin’ type tunes from KK, lots of booze-etc fuelled lyrics which reflected a lifestyle Kristofferson eventually kicked. Title cut from his 1971 album.

14. Kris Kristofferson, If You Don’t Like Hank Williams . . . “Honey, you can kiss my ass.” From the 1976 release Surreal Thing wherein KK name drops the great Williams along with many others like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, Waylon Jennings, the Allman Brothers, Linda Ronstadt and The Rolling Stones, again, dating back to Blame It On The Stones, apparently a band he truly adnired and cared about.

15. Hank Williams, Weary Blues From Waitin’ . . . Speaking of Hank Williams . . . A song he originally recorded in 1951, eventually released in September 1953, nine months after Williams died, at age 29, on New Year’s Day of that year. A typical Williams hurtin’ tune:

“Through tears I watch young lovers
As they go strolling by
For all the things that might have been
God forgive me if I cry.”

16. Cheap Trick, Need Your Love (live) from At Budokan . . . A slow-building groove that eventually takes off into hard riff rock during its near-nine minute voyage.

17. Kiss/Ace Frehley, Rocket Ride . . . Good rocker, a double entendre lyrically about space travel and sex. It was one of five new at the time studio tracks that were slapped onto the vinyl side four of the initial release of Kiss Alive II, which came out in 1977. I’m not much of a Kiss fan, but this is a case of not necessarily liking a band, but liking a particular song in this case one written and sung by the band’s lead guitarist. And I always seem to think of Kiss when I play Cheap Trick, largely because I saw them on tour together at the old Pontiac Silverdome, outside Detroit, in 1979. Cheap Trick was big at the time thanks to the hit live album At Budokan. A college buddy of mine and I missed their Toronto show but caught them about a week later in Michigan. Unbeknownst to us, until we picked up a Detroit newspaper, this is pre-internet days, was that Cheap Trick was opening for Kiss as a ‘special guest’ on the Kiss tour. So, I saw, by accident, Kiss’s typically over the top hilarious but good performance, preceded by Cheap Trick’s solid show. One of my younger brothers was the big Kiss fan in the family but never managed to see them live.

18. Alice Cooper, Killer . . . Deep, dark, spooky, early Alice, the title cut from the 1971 album that yielded the singles Under My Wheels and Be My Lover. A year later came the album School’s Out with the title track hit single, in 1973 Billion Dollar Babies, and superstardom.

19. Traffic, Roll Right Stones . . . Typically intoxicating Traffic, to me, anyway, that lovely percussive rhythm that permeates so many of their tracks, particularly on extended pieces like this near-14 minute epic from the 1973 album Shoot Out At The Fantasy Factory.

A two-album show starting with the amazing journey, to quote one of the song titles, that is the rock opera Tommy, released by The Who in 1969, followed by Between The Buttons (UK version), released by The Rolling Stones in 1967.

In between, a one-song bridge, Blame It On The Stones, leading into the Stones album, from the late great Kris Kristofferson, who died at age 88 last week. I’ll play a few more Kristofferson tunes on Monday night’s show, 8-10 pm ET, Oct. 7.

My album commentaries are below each record’s track list and the Kristofferson tune.

The Who – Tommy

1. Overture
2. It’s A Boy
3. 1921
4. Amazing Journey
5. Sparks
6. Eyesight To The Blind (The Hawker)
7. Christmas
8. Cousin Kevin
9. The Acid Queen
10. Underture
11. Do You Think It’s Alright?
12. Fiddle About
13. Pinball Wizard
14. There’s A Doctor
15. Go To The Mirror!
16. Tommy Can You Hear Me?
17. Smash The Mirror
18. Sensation
19. Miracle Cure
20. Sally Simpson
21. I’m Free
22. Welcome
23. Tommy’s Holiday Camp
24. We’re Not Gonna Take It/See Me Feel Me/Listening To You

Tommy is arguably best digested in one go, which is natural in that it was designed as an opera/concept album. But – as in the case of, say, Money being pulled as a single from Pink Floyd’s concept The Dark Side Of The Moon – singles like Pinball Wizard and I’m Free were released from Tommy and, in Pinball Wizard’s case at least, landed on various Who compilations. So the album’s songs – The Acid Queen for me is another – can be appreciated outside the context of the larger work. It might just be me but in listening to the full piece for the first time in a while, I was reminded how many of the songs – 1921, Christmas, Cousin Kevin, Go To The Mirror!, Sally Simpson, Welcome among them – are perhaps not immediately recognizable by title but are instantly familiar, to anyone knowing the album, once the first notes of the tunes are heard. And of course there’s the interconnectivity of offerings like Overture, Underture and Sparks, although they are separated by other songs, with segments of them also sprinkled elsewhere within the album, all culminating in the epic We’re Not Gonna Take It/See Me, Feel Me/Listening To You suite that closes the album and The Who took to epic proportions live, particularly in the perhaps definitive version performed by the band at Woodstock. A remarkable record.

Kris Kristofferson, Blame It On The Stones

Lead track, from his 1970 debut album Kristofferson, a song written in defence of The Rolling Stones, who had just come out of the late 1969 chaos of the infamous Altamont concert, it references their 1966 drug-themed single Mother’s Little Helper and adult angst at the supposed antics and or ‘threat’ of younger generations. “Kids today’, in other words, when adults saying such things obviously forget they were once ‘kids today’. As Keith Richards once opined about what he considered the absurdity of the then to the Stones ‘elder’ establishment, particularly in home country of England, being worried about whatever damage a rock band could do, specifically discussing when he and Mick Jagger were briefly jailed after a 1967 drug bust:

“A country that’s been running a thousand years worried about two herberts running around? Do me a favor. That’s when you realize how fragile our little society is.” Herbert: (from The Lexicon of British slang) UK slang for a foolish person or used as a mild form of abuse. Normally prefixed by “spotty,” e.g. “Will ya look at that spotty Herbert!”

That and more such pearls of Keef wisdom are available in two books I recommend: Stone Me: The Wit and Wisdom of Keith Richards, compiled by Mark Blake and What Would Keith Richards Do? Daily Affirmations From A Rock ‘n’ Roll Survivor, by Jessica Pallington West.

As for Kristofferson, his debut album, beyond the Stones-related song, also included many of his perennials – Help Me Make It Through The Night, Casey’s Last Ride, Sunday Mornin’ Coming Down and of course his own version of his Me And Bobby McGee, which Janis Joplin took, posthumously, to No. 1 on her 1971 album Pearl, released in January of ’71, three months after her death. Kristofferson’s debut album, under its original title, was a commercial failure but after the success of the Joplin cover, was retitled Me And Bobby McGee in 1971 and – showing the power and name recognition of a hit single, cover version or otherwise – reached No. 10 on the country music charts and No. 43 on Billboard’s top 100.

The Rolling Stones – Between The Buttons (UK album track listing)

1. Yesterday’s Papers
2. My Obsession
3. Back Street Girl
4. Connection
5. She Smiled Sweetly
6. Cool, Calm & Collected
7. All Sold Out
8. Please Go Home
9. Who’s Been Sleeping Here?
10. Complicated
11. Miss Amanda Jones
12. Something Happened To Me Yesterday

I’ve never understood the noted English music journalist Roy Carr’s dismissal of this album. I respect Carr, who passed away in 2018, and music is of course subjective to everyone’s ears and tastes but when he – in his 1976 book The Rolling Stones: An Illustrated Record dismissed it as “a bunch of vaudevillian Kinks’ outtakes” I can only say:

1. Why criticize The Kinks, one of the greatest-ever bands?
2. Carr, you’re full of crap. Between The Buttons is a great, creative, inventive album. Amazing stuff like the beautiful She Smiled Sweetly and Backstreet Girl, the latter of which, along with the Bo Diddley-influenced rocker Please Go Home I first cottoned to via my older sister’s Flowers compilation. I’m fully on board with the so-called Big Four studio albums of Rolling Stones lore, those being, in order, the run from Beggars Banquet (1968) to Let It Bleed (1969), Sticky Fingers (1971) and Exile On Main St. (1972) but the band released loads of amazing material, not just hit singles like Satisfaction but deeper cuts as on Between The Buttons, throughout the earlier 1960s Brian Jones era. To each one’s own, obviously, in terms of liking or appreciating, but when one considers that all of it is part of the Stones’ output, throughout the now 60-plus years they’ve been around, the breadth and depth of what they’ve released is mind-boggling.

As mentioned atop the set list program, I’m playing the UK version of Between The Buttons. As was the practice, at least back then, in the UK singles were usually not placed on albums. There wasn’t conformity on track listings on UK and US album releases until 1968 for bands like the Stones and The Beatles. The US/North American version of Between The Buttons thus featured the hit singles Let’s Spend The Night Together and Ruby Tuesday.

I had my show set up before I learned of the passing of singer/songwriter/actor Kris Kristofferson, so I’ll pay tribute to him either on my Saturday morning show Oct. 5 and/or next Monday night, Oct. 7/24. My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. Frank Zappa, The Torture Never Stops
2. Genesis, Squonk
3. Yes, Awaken
4. Rush, The Camera Eye
5. Santana, Blue Skies
6. Queen, Brighton Rock
7. Spirit, Mechanical World
8. Peter Frampton, The Lodger
9. Spooky Tooth, Lost In My Dream
10. U2, Volcano
11. Love, Stay Away
12. Tony Joe White, They Caught The Devil And Put Him In Jail In Eudora, Arkansas
13. Social Distortion, I Was Wrong
14. The Rolling Stones, I Don’t Know Why aka Don’t Know Why I Love You
15. Stevie Wonder, Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away
16. The Doors, When The Music’s Over

My track-by-track tales:

1. Frank Zappa, The Torture Never Stops . . . Near 10-minute piece from Zappa’s 1976 record Zoot Allures. As described by the allmusic review site, the album is a masterpiece of mostly dark, slow, sleazy rock exemplified by this track’s “suggestive lyrics, crawling riffs, searing solos, and female screams of pain”. It also is my tongue-in-cheek warning, for anyone who isn’t into extended, in particular prog-ish pieces, that you face ‘torture’ for the first hour of my set. Five songs to start including 15-plus minutes of Yes, 11 of Rush before we get to nine minutes of not prog but typically intoxicating Santana rhythmic adventures from the excellent 2019 release Africa Speaks.

2. Genesis, Squonk . . . One of my favorite Genesis tracks, from A Trick Of The Tail, the 1976 album that was the first for the band after the departure of lead singer Peter Gabriel. As often happens in such situations with such a key departure, people wondered whether the band would survive. But, as happened with similar occurences with AC/DC (the death of Bon Scott, replaced by Brian Johnson) and Van Halen (the departure of David Lee Roth, replaced by Sammy Hagar), the band persevered and went on to more triumphs although in all cases, probably least so with AC/DC, the music inevitably changed but while perhaps losing some fans, the band gained others.

In the case of Genesis, the music stayed largely progressive for a few albums: Wind and Wuthering, And Then There Were Three and Duke which, in order, followed A Trick Of The Tail – before going full-blown commercial with the 1981 album Abacab, which I quite like. But by then even Gabriel himself, in his solo career, had also and in fact even earlier than Genesis adapted his music to the changing nature of the market where, arguably, full-blown prog rock was relegated to the relative margins. As Phil Collins, who took over lead vocals from Gabriel in Genesis once remarked, Genesis likely would not have survived had the band not embraced a more commercial approach. It’s just the degree to which they did that arguably alienated some of the fan base, like me, for instance. I mean, Invisible Touch, the song? Ugh. Yet, loads of people liked it, massive hit, as was the parent album.

While I always knew of Genesis, it wasn’t until they had the commercial single hit Follow You, Follow Me from And Then There Were Three that I started to fully embrace them, then went back to the Gabriel period and forward with them. My first year of college, journalism school, 1978, playing football, I go to a post-game party with teammates and first song that greets us as we walk into the house that was the site of the gathering is Good Times Roll by The Cars, then someone changes the album on the stereo to A Trick Of The Tail and I’m having a beer with a senior teammate and I, the freshman to college, the team and to Genesis, mention to him that I’d just truly discovered Genesis via Follow You, Follow Me and the album And Then There Were Three. He shakes his head, the knowing vet schooling the rookie, tells me And Then There Were Three is ok, but holds up the album cover of A Trick Of The Tail he had grabbed from near the turntable and says “this is the one.” Thank you, Greg Colbeck, great defensive end, great guy, cool Fu Manchu mustache, heavy machinery equipment school, wherever you may now be.

3. Yes, Awaken . . . Fifteen-plus (15:28 to be exact) minutes of epic, prog-rock excellent excess. Enjoy, or not. I do. All the elements are there, heavy rock in spots, quiet introspection in others, all brilliantly played by master musicians. From the 1977 album Going For The One.

4. Rush, The Camera Eye . . . Instrumental intro builds into a driving, 11-minute excursion from 1981’s Moving Pictures album which yielded the hit single Tom Sawyer and well-known tracks such as Red Barchetta, Limelight and YYZ (the code for Toronto’s Pearson International Airport).

5. Santana, Blue Skies . . . A brew of beautiful sound in that typical Santana smorgasbord, harkening back to the early days on this late career triumph from 2019’s Africa Speaks album. Rivetting vocals from Carlos Santana’s song co-writers Buika, a Spanish singer, and English a capella, jazz, soul and gospel singer Laura Mvula in an extended piece that starts slow until Santana goes off on a guitar shredding trip 4:42 in before the song settles back in to the denouement.

6. Queen, Brighton Rock . . . Hard rock opener to 1974’s Sheer Heart Attack album, which featured the hit Killer Queen but did not include the song Sheer Heart Attack, a furious fast one which was originally intended as the obvious title track but was unfinished and didn’t appear until three albums later, on 1977’s News Of The World. A similar situation happened with the Led Zeppelin song Houses Of The Holy. It was recorded as the title track to the 1973 album but was held back to the next album, 1975’s Physical Graffiti, as the band decided it didn’t with with the rest of the material on Houses Of The Holy.

7. Spirit, Mechanical World . . . Dark, brooding, stop-start hypnotic psychedelic stuff from Spirit’s self-titled debut album in 1968. The album also featured the instrumental Taurus, which became the subject of a lawsuit as, to many ears, Led Zeppelin, often embroiled in plagiarism problems and who had opened for Spirit on Zep’s first North American tour, ripped off the intro to Taurus for the intro to Stairway To Heaven. However, Zeppelin won the case. Suffice it to say there’s lots of interesting reading about it, easily available online.

8. Peter Frampton, The Lodger . . . Many people know, and were introduced to, Frampton’s solo stuff via the former Humble Pie guitarist/singer/songwriter’s 1976 live album Frampton Comes Alive! Count me among those people. But the great songs on that album, in almost all cases, obviously came from previously recorded studio versions from Frampton’s solo career, and they’re worth investigating. Most of them – material from the massively successful live album like It’s A Plain Shame, Lines On My Face, I’ll Give You Money, Baby (Somethin’s Happening) and All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side) – were on his earlier studio albums Wind Of Change, Frampton’s Camel, Somethin’s Happening and Frampton. The Lodger, however, a nice track from Frampton’s 1972 solo debut Wind Of Change, was not on Frampton Comes Alive! Also available on the Frampton compilation Shine On, it featured Ringo Starr on drums and early 1970s Rolling Stones’ horn-playing sideman both in studio and on tour, Jim Price.

9. Spooky Tooth, Lost In My Dream . . . Haunting, atmospheric track from Spooky Two. People sometimes talk about the so-called sophomore slump in terms of albums and there are such cases, The Cars’ Candy-O comes to mind, among many. Candy-O actually outsold the Cars’ self-titled debut, obviously largely because the first album established the band and interest was high in what the band would do next. But while it’s very good, let’s be honest, Candy-O is not as good and if forced to pick one Cars album I’d suggest the pick would be the debut album which, like Elvis Costello’s My Aim Is True, for instance, is essentially a greatest hits album. Back to Spooky Tooth: A great track, Lost In My Dream also served as the title to an excellent 2-CD anthology of Spooky Tooth’s work. The band featured Gary Wright, later of Dream Weaver album and song, and Love Is Alive (the song, from the Dream Weaver album) solo fame and also, in later versions of Spooky Tooth, Mick Jones who went on to form Foreigner.

10. U2, Volcano . . . I have loads of CDs, yeah I’m old fashioned, to quote The Who, talkin’ ’bout my generation . . . but I also do a radio show and you can’t always rely on online sources because uploads come and go, or artists or record companies don’t permit them. So, it’s good to have the physical copies in hand. Anyway, I was going to purge some of my U2, particularly the big hit albums like The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby which I realized I had years ago burned onto CDs, with my own bonus cuts. So I’m thinking, why am I keeping the actual studio CDs, I mean, the liner notes and lyrics are nice to have but . . . I want money, that’s what I want! to quote that famous song.

But, surprisingly to me, no place that gives money for used physical music wants anything to do with these hit U2 albums. Not right now, anyway. Why? Well, as was explained to me, so many copies of those records were sold, so as they’ve been returned as formats and listening habits changed, most stores as a result have a glut of them. Fair enough, and understandable. At any rate, the whole ‘let’s see if I can get cash for these” scenario re U2 also involved their later stuff but I figured, give those albums another listen, maybe there’s something actually worth keeping there. And, blow me down, there is! Like this track, propulsive, addictive bass line for one thing, from U2’s 2014 Songs Of Innocence album. It’s the album that U2 had just sort of appear on iTunes downloads to people’s phones and other devices, which ticked lots of people off, including many musicians who thought, why are you just giving music away, you are enabling that practice. Lots of available reading on that topic, I won’t further indulge it here.

Bottom line, I went back and re-listened to latter day U2, and I’m keeping all of it. Great bands, think what one might want to think of them, but they are great for a reason: Most are incapable of doing bad work, no matter at what stage they’re at in their careers. Volcano, and its parent album, yet another example.

11. Love, Stay Away . . . A diatribe about and lament to lost love, from a Love album that could be seen as an Arthur Lee, Love’s leader and creative force, solo album, originally recorded in 1973. It featured a new version of Love, an all-black band, where the original Love had been integrated but Lee wanted to try different musicians and explore a funky direction also by that point influenced by the music of his by then late friend Jimi Hendrix. What became the album Black Beauty was issued on a label, Buffalo Records, that went out of business so, aside from bootlegs, the album didn’t see widespread light of day until 2014 via the reissue label High Moon. An album worth investigating, as is all of Arthur Lee and Love’s work.

12. Tony Joe White, They Caught The Devil And Put Him In Jail In Eudora, Arkansas . . . Irresistible title, irresistible swamp rock song by the late Louisiana-born artist best known for Polk Salad Annie, which was covered by Elvis Presley. Eudora is located in the southeastern tip of Arkansas, right by the border with Mississippi. Population, as of last reported, 2010 census, 2,269. That’s down 550 from 2000. Maybe the devil escaped and has something to do with the drop off.

13. Social Distortion, I Was Wrong . . . Arguably the California punk band’s lone mainstream hit, my favorite Social Distortion song, from the 1996 album White Light, White Heat, White Trash by which I was introduced to them. Lots of great stuff from the band, including a cover of Ring Of Fire, made famous by Johnny Cash.

14. The Rolling Stones, I Don’t Know Why aka Don’t Know Why I Love You . . . A Stevie Wonder cover from the Let It Bleed sessions with new guitarist Mick Taylor in place of Brian Jones, who had been in serious decline due to substance abuse and was fired by the band. This song was, apparently, recorded the night news came that Jones had died. It has appeared on the ridiculously rich musically Singles Collection: The London Years and on the 1975 Metamorphosis compilation released by former Stones’ manager Allen Klein on his ABKCO Records. Klein’s company – which had gained the rights to the Stones’ Decca/London Records catalog while the Stones had by then launched their own label, Rolling Stones Records featuring the iconic lips and tongue logo – was dredging the vaults for various unauthorized by the Stones yet successful compilation releases like Hot Rocks 1964-71 and its followup, More Hot Rocks (Big Hits and Fazed Cookies) which features deeper cuts.

15. Stevie Wonder, Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away . . . Here’s Wonder himself, from his 1974 album Fulfillingness’ First Finale. Always relevant if sadly not always followed lyrics – essentially summarizing live and let live, walk a mile and the golden rule.

16. The Doors, When The Music’s Over . . . And so it is, for another show. From the Strange Days album, the band’s second, a 1967 release and their that year. The self-titled first album came out in January, Strange Days in September.

Three albums from what at the time was often described as a group of angry young men – that being Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson and Graham Parker in their early, breakthrough years of the late 1970s when new wave and punk rock broke big.

First up is Elvis Costello’s debut My Aim Is True from 1977 followed by Joe Jackson’s first album, 1979’s Look Sharp! and Graham Parker’s 1979 album Squeezing Out Sparks. Rounding out the two-hour slot are three of my favorite songs from Parker’s 1980 album The Up Escalator.

Elvis Costello – My Aim Is True

1. Welcome To The Working Week
2. Miracle Man
3. No Dancing
4. Blame It On Cain
5. Alison
6. Sneaky Feelings
7. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes
8. Less Than Zero
9. Mystery Dance
10. Pay It Back
11. I’m Not Angry
12. Waiting For The End Of The World
13. Watching The Detectives

Joe Jackson – Look Sharp!

1. One More Time
2. Sunday Papers
3. Is She Really Going Out With Him?
4. Happy Loving Couples
5. Throw It Away
6. Baby Stick Around
7. Look Sharp!
8. Fools In Love
9. (Do The) Instant Mash
10. Pretty Girls
11. Got The Time

Graham Parker and The Rumour – Squeezing Out Sparks

1. Discovering Japan
2. Local Girls
3. Nobody Hurts You
4. You Can’t Be Too Strong
5. Passion Is No Ordinary Word
6. Saturday Nite Is Dead
7. Love Gets You Twisted
8. Protection
9. Waiting For The UFOs
10. Don’t Get Excited

Graham Parker extras, a few favorites from The Up Escalator album

1. Devil’s Sidewalk
2. Stupefaction
3. Endless Night