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

1. New Barbarians (Ron Wood, Keith Richards and friends), Am I Grooving You (live)
2. John Mayall, Gimme Some Of That Gumbo
3. Robin Trower, Victims Of The Fury
4. UFO, Queen Of The Deep
5. Pat Benatar, My Clone Sleeps Alone
6. Budgie, Parents
7. Dio, Don’t Talk To Strangers
8. Black Sabbath, End Of The Beginning
9. Bad Company, Evil Wind
10. Jeff Beck, Let Me Love You
11. ZZ Top, Snappy Kakkie
12. Stevie Wonder, Another Star
13. Joe Jackson, Blaze Of Glory
14. Jethro Tull, Occasional Demons
15. Little Feat, I Do What The Telephone Tells Me To Do
16. Santana, Every Step Of The Way (live, from Lotus)

My track-by-track tales:

1. New Barbarians (Ron Wood, Keith Richards and famous musician friends), Am I Grooving You (live) . . . A song I first heard on Wood’s debut solo record, 1974’s I’ve Got My Own Album To Do, first recorded in 1967 by American soul singer Freddie Scott. The New Barbarians were comprised of Wood, Richards, saxophonist and Rolling Stones session player/touring member Bobby Keys, renowned bassist Stanley Clarke, keyboardist Ian McLagan of Faces fame, who also played with the Stones on their 1978 tour of the United States, and drummer Joseph (Ziggy/Zigaboo) Modeliste of funk band The Meters. They toured the US in 1979 in support of Wood’s then new album Gimme Some Neck. They also stopped in Oshawa, Ontario for the Keith Richards/New Barbarians/Rolling Stones show I still can barely believe I somehow managed to get tickets to, proceeds to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB). It was Richards’ sentence for his 1978 conviction on drug charges resulting from an arrest in Toronto in 1977 around the time the Stones were in the city leading up to their famous club shows at the El Mocambo. That resulted in one vinyl side of the live album Love You Live and, more recently, a full-blown (and mind-blowing) 2-CD release of the shows, El Mocambo 1977, issued in 2022.

This live version is from New Barbarians: Live In Maryland – Buried Alive, a document of the tour that was released in a 2-CD package in 2006. Am I Grooving You was c0-written by Bert Berns (aka Bert Russell; he was born Bert Russell Berns) and Jeff Barry, hitmakers extraordinaire with a long list they either wrote or co-wrote with others. From Berns: Twist and Shout, Piece Of My Heart, Here Comes The Night, Hang On Sloopy, Cry To Me and Everybody Needs Somebody To Love. From Barry: Do Wah Diddy Diddy, Da Doo Ron Ron, River Deep-Mountain High, Leader Of The Pack, Sugar Sugar and I Honestly Love You. Berns wasn’t with us long. He had a history of cardiac trouble after his heart was damaged by a childhood bout with rheumatic fever and died of heart failure in 1967, age 38. He was the subject of the 2016 film Bang! The Bert Berns Story.

2. John Mayall, Gimme Some Of That Gumbo . . . Now age 90, the blues legend announced his retirement from touring in 2021, but left open the possibility of doing shows close to his California home. He’s released new studio albums, consistently, every two or three years, the most recent being The Sun Is Shining Down in 2022. This funky, bluesy number, featuring some fine lead guitar work from Rocky Athas, no longer in the band but who was with Mayall when I saw him at the 2011 Kitchener Blues Festival, is from the 2016 album Talk About That.

3. Robin Trower, Victims Of The Fury . . . Spooky title track from Trower’s 1980 album, the last to feature the guitarist’s classic trio of himself, bassist/soulful singer James Dewar and drummer Bill Lordan.

4. UFO, Queen Of The Deep . . . From 1974’s Phenomenon album, the third UFO album and first to feature guitarist Michael Schenker as the band moved to a more straightforward hard rock sound from their earlier space rock, psychedelic approach.

5. Pat Benatar, My Clone Sleeps Alone . . . From her first, and still for my money best album, the 1979 debut release In The Heat Of The Night. Benatar hit it really big a year later with the Hit Me With Your Best Shot single from the Crimes Of Passion album, a good record, but I still prefer the first one.

6. Budgie, Parents . . . And we enter the hard rock/metal portion of the show with this 10-minute piece from the Welsh band that never achieved widespread commercial success but was influential. Among Budgie’s disciples are Iron Maiden and Metallica, who covered Breadfan, a hellacious riff rocker I’ve played before on the show, on the Garage, Inc. covers album.

7. Dio, Don’t Talk To Strangers . . . The late Ronnie James Dio was a fantastic singer and while I like his work with his namesake band, I prefer his stuff fronting Rainbow and Black Sabbath during the time he was with those groups. Perhaps it’s because, while Dio the band had lots of fine guitarists, in Rainbow and Sabbath, Dio the singer was working with all-time great guitarist/songwriters Ritchie Blackmore and Tony Iommi. Still, as mentioned I do like Dio the band and this is a good song if you’re into hard rock/metal, from a solid record, Dio’s debut release, 1983’s Holy Diver.

8. Black Sabbath, End Of The Beginning . . . Speaking of Sabbath, a doom metal track from 13, the final studio album by the group, released in 2013 which, according to bassist Geezer Butler, is part of the reason for the album title, apparently suggested by singer Ozzy Osbourne. Also according to Butler, the band was being pressured by the record company for a 13-song album but in the end just eight songs made the standard edition although my deluxe 2-CD version has 11 tracks. The original lineup – Ozzy, Butler, guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward – had previously reunited for a concert that resulted in the 1998 live album Reuion, which featured two new studio songs including the hit single Psycho Man. But 13 wasn’t a full reunion as Ward did not participate, citing contractual issues. Brad Wilk of Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave fame handled the drumsticks in Ward’s place.

The song title reminds me of Winston Churchill’s famous line, one of my favorites of his many, after the British victory over the Germans at El Alamein in North Africa in November, 1942 as the tide of World War II turned in favor of the Allies: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” What an orator Churchill was.

9. Bad Company, Evil Wind . . . Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy was the big hit on the 1979 album Desolation Angels, and it’s a good one along with the other single, Gone Gone Gone, but the release is full of great songs, this being one of them. “That was full of Paul’s (singer Rodgers) tumbleweed across the plains imagery,” drummer Simon Kirke is quoted as saying in the liner notes booklet to The “Original” Bad Company Anthology. “I think Paul was a cowboy or one of those bounty hunters in another life.”

10. Jeff Beck, Let Me Love You . . . The Truth is, the album from which this comes is ridiculously good.

11. ZZ Top, Snappy Kakkie . . . If you played this funky groove tune to casual, hits-oriented listeners and asked them to identify the band, I wonder whether they could. And it’s OK if they couldn’t. We’re all into what we’re into, as deeply as we want to be. But that’s what of course makes great bands and albums and shows the value of listening to deep cuts. From the Tejas album, 1976.

12. Stevie Wonder, Another Star . . . I was spinning Wonder’s Songs In The Key Of Life the other day and was ‘oh yeah’ on this one, remembering it, having not heard it in a while. I’m playing the full 8:28 album version, which was cut down to five minutes and change for single release. The Latin-influenced exercise in rhythm was the fourth of five singles released from the album. I Wish, Isn’t She Lovely, Sir Duke and As were the others. Another Star made No. 32 on the US Billboard chart, No. 29 in the UK, No. 51 in Canada and No. 2 on Billboard’s dance/disco list.

13. Joe Jackson, Blaze Of Glory . . . Title track to JJ’s 1989 album. Despite being full of good songs, like this one, it had just one single that charted to any great degree. That was Nineteen Forever, which made the top 20 in the USA. Another good one, Down To London, managed to make, wait for it, No. 126 in Australia, despite much critical acclaim both for the song and album. No wonder Jackson was disappointed; he thought the record represented some of his finest work and I agree, but then I’m a huge fan.

14. Jethro Tull, Occasional Demons . . . Good rocker from the 1993 release Catfish Rising, one of my favorite later period (30 years ago now!) Tull albums.

15. Little Feat, I Do What The Telephone Tells Me To Do . . . Prescient, perhaps, given the ubiquity of people and their (smart)phones although this song, from 2003’s latter-day Kickin’ It At The Barn album, is more about actually calling on a phone or waiting for it to ring than, say, walking, head down and oblivious, texting or scrolling and risking bumping into people or something worse, say at a crosswalk. “Head’s up!” I have been known to say, sometimes to a ‘thank you’ response, other times drawing a dirty look. Anyway . . . Little Feat is still around, with original member and keyboard player Bill Payne still in the band as are longtime stalwarts Sam Clayton (congas, percussion, vocals) and bassist Kenny Gradney, both of whom have been in the lineup since 1972. And they’ve just released a new album. It’s called Sam’s Place, Clayton does most of the singing and is well-suited to the mostly blues covers like Got My Mojo Working and Long Distance Call, which features Bonnie Raitt on co-lead vocals with Clayton.

16. Santana, Every Step Of The Way (live, from Lotus) . . . Intoxicating instrumental that saw studio release as a nine-minute cut on 1972’s Caravanserai, whose 10 tracks included seven instrumentals as Santana moved in a jazz fusion direction. The Lotus version runs 11 minutes, 30 seconds featuring typically fiery fretwork from Carlos Santana along with the usual Santana band brew of bongos, congas and maracas.

An all R.E.M. set list, inspired by one of my show’s followers who had posted to Facebook R.E.M.’s song Low, a hypnotic favorite of mine from the band’s Out Of Time album. As a result, we got discussing the band and, since I’ve of late been doing themed shows for my Saturday programmed sets, live albums for the last four weeks, he suggested that at some point I might do an R.E.M. playlist.

So, here it is, mostly deeper cuts from throughout the band’s career as they went from an alternative ‘college radio’ band to worldwide mainstream success to, in their later days as a trio after the retirement of drummer Bill Berry 1997, declining sales and chart success in North America but solid sales and high chart placings for both albums and singles in the UK.

Berry, incidentally, became a farmer in the band’s home state of Georgia and did some sporadic music work before returning to the industry in 2022 as part of the Georgia band The Bad Ends, who released an album in 2023. I was always aware of R.E.M. but didn’t get into them until they hit the mainstream with the single The One I Love from 1987’s Document album. As tends to happen if one likes what one is hearing, I went back, and forward with them on each subsequent release. The band amicably called it a day in 2011 but not before assembling the terrific 2-CD compilation Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011.

Here’s the set list, with source album information.

1. Begin The Begin . . . From Lifes Rich Pageant album, 1986
2. The Wake-Up Bomb . . . New Adventures in Hi-Fi, 1996
3. A Month Of Saturdays . . . unreleased until issued on Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011, 2011.
4. Living Well Is The Best Revenge . . . Accelerate, 2008
5. Alligator Aviator Autopilot Antimatter . . . Collapse Into Now, 2011
6. Low . . . Out Of Time, 1991
7. Bad Day . . . first issued in 2003 as a single from In Time: The Best Of R.E.M. 1988-2003, later also on the Part Lies . . . compilation, 2011.
8. Talk About The Passion . . . Murmur, 1983
9. Gardening At Night . . . Chronic Town EP, 1982
10. Supernatural Superserious . . . Accelerate, 2008
11. We All Go Back To Where We Belong . . . unreleased until issued on Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011, 2011.
12. The Great Beyond . . . Man On The Moon movie soundtrack, 1999
13. New Test Leper . . . New Adventures In Hi-Fi, 1996
14. Country Feedback . . . Out Of Time, 1991
15. Finest Worksong . . . Document, 1987
16. Driver 8 . . . Fables Of The Reconstruction, 1985
17. Lotus . . . Up, 1998
18. How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us . . . New Adventures In Hi-Fi, 1996
19. I Took Your Name . . . Monster, 1994
20. Tongue . . . Monster, 1994
21. Fall On Me . . . Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986
22. Sitting Still . . . Murmur, 1983
23. Imitation Of Life . . . Reveal, 2001
24. King Of Comedy . . . Monster, 1994
25. Uberlin . . . Collapse Into Now, 2011
26. Star 69 . . . Monster, 1994
27. Hallelujah . . . unreleased until issued on Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011, 2011.
28. Radio Song . . . Out Of Time, 1991
29. (Don’t Go Back To) Rockville . . . Reckoning, 1984

An all-Canadian artists set for Canada Day. My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. Neil Young and Crazy Horse, T-Bone
2. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, I Think You Better Slow Down/Slow Down Boogie
3. The Guess Who, Coming Down Off The Money Bag/Song Of The Dog
4. Colin James, National Steel
5. Danko Jones, Bounce
6. Trooper, 3 Dressed Up As A 9
7. Gordon Lightfoot, That Same Old Obsession
8. Alannah Myles, Hurry Make Love
9. Tom Wilson, Sex etc . . .
10. Joni Mitchell, Sex Kills
11. Kim Mitchell, Love Ties
12. The Tragically Hip, Killing Time
13. Pat Travers, Killer
14. Rush, Something For Nothing (live, from All The World’s A Stage)
15. April Wine, Juvenile Delinquent (from Live At The El Mocambo)
16. Tom Cochrane, Willie Dixon Said
17. David Wilcox, On A Roll
18. Headstones, Cut
19. Bruce Cockburn, Burn
20. Big Sugar, Joe Louis/Judgment Day
21. Murray McLauchlan, Out Past The Timberline

My track-by-track tales:

1. Neil Young and Crazy Horse, T-Bone . . . Best lyrics ever 🙂 ; certainly easy to remember, on this bruising tune from 1981’s Re·ac·tor record. I was in northern Alberta, starting my journalism career where more of the jobs were at the time after graduating from college in Ontario, when the album came out and I remember a friend of mine raving about the song in part because of the sheer ballsiness of putting out a nine-plus minute tune whose lyrics are: Got mashed potatoes, ain’t got no T-Bone. Seven words, or eight if you count T-Bone as two words, repeated amid the guitar riffology. It actually works, and never ceases to make me smile.

2. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, I Think You Better Slow Down/Slow Down Boogie . . . Another nine-minute rocker, this one originally recorded during the sessions for BTO’s self-titled 1973 debut album, although it didn’t survive the final cut for that record. The song first saw official light of day on CD – and that’s when I first heard it though I followed BTO through the 1970s – with the release of the 2-disc Bachman-Turner Overdrive: The Anthology in 1993. That compilation was released as part of Polygram Records’ Chronicles series which has also, among other releases, compiled material by Free, Roy Buchanan and The Fillmore Concerts by The Allman Brothers Band, all of which I also own and are of high quality. The Allmans reissue is a 2-disc expanded release of songs, some in alternate form from different shows, from the Fillmore East concerts in New York City on March 12-13 in 1971 that initially resulted in the classic live album At Fillmore East, with some of the recordings later winding up on the live portions of the Allmans’ Eat A Peach album and the later deluxe expanded release of At Fillmore East.

So, there’s just a little history for you, for what it’s worth, as I started digging into it and finding it fascinating in terms of the tentacles of massive corporations. Polygram has long since been absorbed by Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest music company and one of the ‘big three’ along with Sony Music Group and Warner Music Group. Universal – which has ties to and shares a logo with Universal Pictures the movie company – has musical roots going back to the American branch of the UK’s Decca Records, which became MCA Records and also released material on the London Records imprint in North America. Decca Records, of course, is infamous for turning down The Beatles, with Decca executives saying they felt ‘guitar groups are on the way out’ and “The Beatles have no future in show business.” Decca soon corrected its error, at least in some measure, by signing The Rolling Stones, reportedly at least in part on the recommendation of Beatle George Harrison, who had by then become a fan of the Stones.

3. The Guess Who, Coming Down Off The Money Bag/Song Of The Dog . . . I’ve always loved this toe-tapping bluesy, country-ish, rockabilly-ish ditty from the band’s Share The Land album. It was the first album after Randy Bachman left the group. Guitarists Kurt Winter and Greg Leskiw – who sings this tune he co-wrote with usual lead singer Burton Cummings – replaced Bachman and the band kept on rolling while Bachman formed Brave Belt, which morphed into BTO.

4. Colin James, National Steel . . . Fabulous acoustic blues title cut from James’s 1997 mostly covers album of classic blues tunes like Muddy Waters’ Rollin’ Stone, Taj Mahal’s Going Up To The Country and Bukka White’s Fixin’ To Die. Yet, National Steel, which James co-wrote with Canadian musicians/songwriters Daryl Burgess and Christopher Ward, proves his blues bonafides alongside the legendary best.

5. Danko Jones, Bounce . . . Appropriately titled tune from the Toronto rock trio, named after its leader Danko Jones, from their 2001 album I’m Alive And On Fire. Indeed.

6. Trooper, 3 Dressed Up As A 9 . . . Yeah, this is a for the very most part deep cuts show and I know it was a single, and a sort of hit, in addition to being the leadoff cut on Trooper’s 1979 studio album Flying Colors. But, as I always say, I do play occasional singles I, or listeners, may not have heard in a while. That applies to this tune, for me.

I don’t own any actual original studio albums by Trooper but I was rifling through CDs in prepping this show and came across a ‘Green Series’ (environmentally correct cardboard packaging) Trooper compilation released in 2008 that I picked up at a used CD shop somewhere along the way and 3 Dressed Up As A 9 is on it. It’s also on another Trooper comp I don’t own, a 2010 release called Hits From 10 Albums but, perhaps surprisingly, it ISN’T on that Trooper compilation I also own and seems ubiquitous in most Canadian homes, 1979’s now 6-time platinum compilation Hot Shots. 80,000 units is platinum in Canada; platinum is 1 million in the USA so it’s the usual approximate multiply by 10 for population difference. What’s interesting about Hot Shots is how The Boys In The Bright White Sports Car became a hit single off that compilation, in a slightly different re-recorded version of a song that wasn’t released as a single in its original form on the 1976 studio album Two For The Show. I really can’t discern the difference between the versions and don’t know for sure, can’t find definitive information, but presume it’s a different master for single release as compared to the studio album.

7. Gordon Lightfoot, That Same Old Obsession . . . So I had my set list all done on Saturday night for tonight’s Canada Day show and when I got up Sunday morning I realized, I have no Gordon Lightfoot in it. I also realized that as far as The Guess Who and Canada goes, I perhaps should have played their tune Maple Fudge but, frankly, the Guess Who tune I played, Coming Down Off The Money Bag, I much prefer and I’m just playing Canadian artists, for the most part there’s no deeper meaning to the set list.

Still, as for overlooking Lightfoot in a Canadian artists’ show? That’s sacrilege! Or, it means, there’s loads of quality Canadian artists to choose from, and there indeed are, successful in Canada and abroad to varying degrees but to not include Lightfoot in such a show would be, well, yes, sacrilegious. So, I updated the list and here we go. A beautiful lament of lost love, released as a single on Lightfoot’s 1972 album Old Dan’s Records. It did well on what I would describe as ‘refined’ charts; that is, refined or distilled down to things like the ‘bubbling under hot 100″ or ‘adult contemporary” charts, where the song was top 5 or better in a selective situation but on the main charts like Billboard in the US and even in Canada, this single sort of stiffed. It’s even described as not making much of an impact, as a single, in the liner notes to a Lightfoot collection of his singles and B-sides I own. That said, it’s Gordon Lightfoot. It’s great.

8. Alannah Myles, Hurry Make Love . . . From her self-titled first album that was overwhelmed by the success of the hit single Black Velvet; in fact Myles’ whole career could be said to have been overwhelmed by that song. She’s so much more, her first album overall is terrific as is her second, Rockinghorse in particular the title cut. This is from the debut album, short, sweet, sexy.

9. Tom Wilson, Sex etc . . . Anyone who’s ever followed my show over the years knows the high regard in which I hold Tom Wilson. Amazing artist, whether it be with his early band The Florida Razors which I admit I must delve more deeply into but what I know I like, but certainly since then Junkhouse, which introduced me to Wilson, then his solo stuff, his work with musical friends Colin Linden and Stephen Fearing in Blackie and The Rodeo Kings, and his cleverly-titled project Lee Harvey Osmond which also features members of Canadian acts Cowboy Junkies and Skydiggers. This hypnotic track – and being a Stones fan I obviously love the lyrical nod to the Stones’ live album Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out! – is from Wilson’s 2001 solo album Planet Love.

10. Joni Mitchell, Sex Kills . . . I have a few actual studio albums by Joni Mitchell, the classic Blue among them, but for the most part with certain artists, she being one of them, I tend to be a compilation guy. There’s only so much money to spend, if one is still actually spending on music and I’m still into physical copies, generational I suppose but so be it. But, that said, she did a brilliant thing, I thought, in 1996 when she released two compilations on the same day, October 29. One was called Hits and had everything one would expect from an artists’ hits compilation; in Joni’s case such songs as Big Yellow Taxi, Free Man In Paris, Help Me, etc. But the other compilation, Misses, deep cuts, chosen by Mitchell herself, represented her more obscure to most listeners stuff and forays beyond commerciality. It was, and remains, deeply rewarding and thus served as incentive to at least investigate some of her studio albums from which Misses tracks were drawn, that may not have received their just due. They should. This track is one of them, from her 1994 release Turbulent Indigo which actually won a Grammy Award as best pop album.

11. Kim Mitchell, Love Ties . . . I don’t play Max Webster or Kim Mitchell much because, I’ll admit, I’ve never really gone beyond the hits so, doing a deep cuts show, I naturally am limiting myself with regard to Max and Kim. However, I do have a couple Kim Mitchell studio albums, which I bought years ago because I hate it when compilations are released with remixed songs and such happened with a Kim Mitchell compilation I bought ages ago. I can’t remember what song it was that was shortened or remixed to a sound I didn’t like, thus making the song something I didn’t know or ‘hear’ as I remembered it, but in any event it prompted me to buy the actual 1984 release Akimbo Alogo. That’s the one with two of Mitchell’s biggest hits, Go For Soda and Lager and Ale but it also features this funky, electronica-type tune. Really good, to my ears, different from what one might ‘expect’ of Max Webster/Kim Mitchell, at least based on commercial rock radio play, but that’s the beauty of studio albums that obviously go beyond the hits to show the depth of the artists’ talent and experimentation.

12. The Tragically Hip, Killing Time . . . I love the darkness of this song, the vocals, all of it. From the first Hip EP, 1987, self-titled, a shade under 30 minutes, before most people knew who the Hip was in advance of what became their breakthrough full album release, 1989’s Up To Here featuring Blow At High Dough, New Orleans Is Sinking and so on. I didn’t know who they were. I got into them via Up To Here when I read in a now long defunct Canadian rock magazine that they were Stones-ish so I decided to check them out. I liked what I heard so then I went back to the EP, and forward with them as subsequent albums were released.

13. Pat Travers, Killer . . . From an album that bombed, pretty much, the Hot Shot release of 1984 (interestingly a similar title to the Trooper compilation I touched on earlier) by which time Travers had long since faded from the heights of the 1970s with such albums as Crash and Burn and its title cut along with Snortin’ Whiskey and the rest of that period. But this one, albeit a tad overproduced with maybe too much of that annoying to my ears almost hair metal 80s sound, nevertheless kicks butt. I saw Travers at the Kitchener Bluesfest some years back, great show.

14. Rush, Something For Nothing (live, from All The World’s A Stage) . . . Interesting maybe only to me but I’ve always thought of this as a pretty well-known song and likely a single, although it actually wasn’t a single while appearing on Rush’s 2112 album released in 1976. It did gets lots of radio play on the great FM stations of the day that played hits, full albums, album sides, whatever struck their fancy in the days before marketing mavens decided playing Stairway To Heaven five times an hour was the way to go – an annoyance that prompted me to do my show. Anyway, this is a version from Rush’s first live album, recorded at Toronto’s Massey Hall.

15. April Wine, Juvenile Delinquent (from Live At The El Mocambo) . . . A song that, to my knowledge and research, April Wine never did a studio version of but played at the El Mocambo when they opened for The Rolling Stones’ famous 1977 club shows there and which resulted in tracks for both April Wine’s live album and Love You Live by the Stones. One of my favorites from that April Wine live disc, it was writtten by American/Canadian artist/songwriter Bob Segarini who established a life in Canada, the Toronto area, after moving from California. I slow danced to it with a college girlfriend as Segarini played it at one of the regular concert pub nights the school held.

16. Tom Cochrane, Willie Dixon Said . . . Bluesy cut, as it should be if you’re using Willie Dixon’s name in a song title, from Cochrane’s 1999 album xray sierra. Yes, the album title is in lower case letters.

17. David Wilcox, On A Roll . . . How does one describe that incessant riff and the sort of descending riff that envelops it? Just listen, I suppose; words can’t do it justice.

18. Headstones, Cut . . . These guys are, generally, so dark, devious and delicious, right from the first album, titled Picture of Health with a cover of someone doing something unhealthy, lighting a cigarette. Not advocating smoking, I don’t smoke, but I like the cheeky cover, and the raunchy rock Headstones provide.

19. Bruce Cockburn, Burn . . . Early Cockburn, a minor hit from his 1975 album Joy Will Find A Way.

20. Big Sugar, Joe Louis/Judgment Day . . . Compelling reggae rock, this near 9-minute cut from Big Sugar’s 1996 album Hemi-Vision which featured the Canadian hit singles Diggin’ A Hole and If I Had My Way.

21. Murray McLauchlan, Out Past The Timberline . . . From McLauchlan’s 1983 album Timberline which I recently discovered has been released on CD after being out of print for years. I first cottoned to the song via a superb 2-CD MM collection Songs From The Street, released in 2007. I’d never heard the song before that although I knew MM’s hits. And it’s now definitely among my favorites of his many great tunes. Not to maybe overrate it, but it could be our national anthem if only because of the lyrics throughout but especially this passage that always hits me, near the end: “Oh Canada, ain’t no Cabinet man in the Rideau Club at election time . . . Canada is somewhere out there (which he’s described, so-called ordinary hard working salt of the earth people, throughout the song) … out past the timberline.” Beautiful, musically and lyrically.

Fourth, and for now final, in my series of Saturday morning live album replay shows. I’m starting with Rod Stewart/Faces Live Coast To Coast: Overture and Beginners, released in 1974; playing it at the suggestion of a friend. Also on the menu is The J. Geils Band which I think is best served live as evidenced by the group’s 1972 release “Live” Full House. And, to fill out the two-hour slot, some of my favorite tracks from another of Geils’ fine live albums, the appropriately titled 1976 record Blow Your Face Out. That album features lead singer Peter Wolf’s famous impromptu rap that introduces the song Musta Got Lost.

Rod Stewart/Faces Live Coast To Coast: Overture and Beginners

1. It’s All Over Now
2. Cut Across Shorty
3. Too Bad/Every Picture Tells A Story
4. Angel
5. Stay With Me
6. I Wish It Would Rain
7. I’d Rather Go Blind
8. Borstal Boys/Amazing Grace
9. Jealous Guy

The J. Geils Band – “Live’ Full House

1. First I Look At The Purse
2. Homework
3. Pack Fair And Square
4. Whammer Jammer
5. Hard Drivin’ Man
6. Serves You Right To Suffer
7. Cruisin’ For A Love
8. Looking For A Love

The J. Geils Band – from Blow Your Face Out

1. (Ain’t Nuthin’ But A) Houseparty
2. Musta Got Lost
3. Love-Itis
4. Detroit Breakdown
5. Chimes