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

1. Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane, April Fool
2. Deep Purple, You Fool No One
3. Steely Dan, Only A Fool Would Say That
4. The Rolling Stones, Just Your Fool
5. Shirley Bassey, The Fool On The Hill
6. Robin Trower, The Fool And Me
7. Buddy Holly, Fool’s Paradise
8. Joe Jackson, Fool
9. Johnny Winter, Be Careful With A Fool
10. Jerry Lee Lewis, Fools Like Me
11. Van Halen, Fools
12. Aretha Franklin, Chain Of Fools
13. UFO, You Don’t Fool Me
14. Elvis Costello & The Attractions, You Little Fool
15. Bobbie Gentry, Find ‘Em, Fool ‘Em And Forget About ‘Em
16. Thin Lizzy, Fools Gold
17. Little Village, Fool Who Knows
18. Nazareth, Fool About You
19. Rod Stewart, Fool For You
20. Gene Clark, Life’s Greatest Fool
21. Gary Moore, Only Fool In Town
22. Family, No Mule’s Fool
23. Gov’t Mule, Towering Fool
24. Groundhogs, Still A Fool
25. Buddy Guy, Who’s Been Foolin’ You
26. Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Fool
27. Pretenders, Fools Must Die
28. Peter Green, A Fool No More

    My track-by-track tales:

    1. Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane, April Fool . . . Beautiful song, written and sung by Lane, of Faces fame, on the amazing album he and Townshend collaborated on, released in September 1977 and featuring such musical luminaries as Charlie Watts, Eric Clapton and John Entwistle on various tracks. Instant buy for me back then, being a Who and Faces fan. Endlessly rewarding.
       
    2. Deep Purple, You Fool No One . . . Boogie rock tune with typically great drumming from Ian Paice. It’s from 1974’s Burn, the first album with David Coverdale (lead vocals) and Glenn Hughes (bass/vocals) replacing Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, respectively. Well, Hughes replaced Glover on bass. Glover never sang.
       
    3. Steely Dan, Only A Fool Would Say That . . . I just played Steely Dan (King Of The World) on Monday in my ‘songs from 1973’ show but unless it’s my favorites the Stones, I try to mix things up and don’t often play the same artist again so quickly. But, believe it or not, I hadn’t thought of an April Fool’s-themed show, likely because I usually don’t like doing the obvious, until maybe Tuesday of this past week. That’s when I thought, I wonder if I can come up with enough songs, particularly deep cuts, with ‘fool’ or ‘foolish’ etc. in the title to fill my two-hour slot. Silly me. It turned out it was far easier than I envisioned; I had about four hours worth of songs in the system before I called a halt to the exercise and started shaving things down to fit the show. Anyway, the first song that came to mind in all of this was this one, from Steely Dan’s debut, Can’t Buy A Thrill, the first in a long line of consistently top-notch songs and albums from Messrs. Walter Becker (RIP) and Donald Fagen and their cast of collaborators over the years.
       
    4. The Rolling Stones, Just Your Fool . . . Little Walter tune, with Mick Jagger proving Keith Richards’ contention that when Jagger plays harmonica, he’s at his best. It’s from Blue & Lonesome, the Stones’ 2016 blues covers album that remains their last full studio release since 2005’s A Bigger Bang. There’s long been talk of a new album of original material and the band was apparently working on one when the sessions took the blues direction that resulted in Blue & Lonesome. But nothing new and original has been heard from the Stones since A Bigger Bang other than occasional new songs/singles like Doom and Gloom and One More Shot, on the 2012 compilation Grrr! or more recently, the pandemic-themed single Living In A Ghost Town, in 2020.
       
    5. Shirley Bassey, The Fool On The Hill . . . I first became aware of Welsh singer Bassey’s powerful voice via Goldfinger, to me the best of her three James Bond movie theme credits. The others are Diamonds Are Forever and Moonraker. Her cover of this Beatles song made No. 48 on the UK charts in 1971. The Fool On The Hill was also nicely done by American artist Bobbie Gentry, who I’m playing, albeit a different song, later in the set.
       
    6. Robin Trower, The Fool And Me . . . From 1974’s Bridge Of Sighs, Trower’s second solo album after he left Procol Harum to team with singer/bassist James Dewar and drummers Reg Isidore and later Bill Lordan for a fine run of albums into the early 1980s.
       
    7. Buddy Holly, Fool’s Paradise . . . Rockabilly-type tune I pulled from a 50-song, double disc compilation of Holly’s I own. It’s all quality stuff, too, his big hits and the deeper cuts. All of that highly influential output and he was just 22 when he died in a 1959 plane crash along with Ritchie Valens and “The Big Bopper” J.P. Richardson, the tragedy later immortalized in Don MacLean’s song American Pie as ‘the day the music died’.
       
    8. Joe Jackson, Fool . . . I suppose the obvious thing to do would be to play Jackson’s well-known Fools In Love from his 1979 debut album Look Sharp! And I did consider it. But . . . that’s just what you’d be expecting. So I went with Fool, the title cut to the eclectic JJ’s most recent studio album, released in 2019. It’s rock, it’s jazz, it’s funk, it’s great. No matter where Jackson’s travelled musically – new wave, rock, reggae/ska, big band, jazz, classical – I’ve always followed, never been disappointed.
       
    9. Johnny Winter, Be Careful With A Fool . . . A typical guitar on fire cover of a blues tune, this one a B.B. King-penned number that appeared on Winter’s self-titled second album, released in 1969.
       
    10. Jerry Lee Lewis, Fools Like Me . . . Known for his wild rock and roll playing and shows, The Killer could also deliver aching tunes like this one, apparently a favorite of John Lennon’s.
        
    11. Van Halen, Fools . . . David Lee Roth does his best Janis Joplin vocalization impersonation before all hell breaks loose on this one from 1980’s Women And Children First album. A commenter on YouTube describes it as ‘tribal boogie.” Well put.
        
    12. Aretha Franklin, Chain Of Fools . . . Interesting, perhaps, when you haven’t listened to something in a long time. Sounds crazy, I realize but, somehow, the title and the tune didn’t connect for me at first when I was looking at the track list to an Aretha album I own. Then, hmm, it has Fools in the title, that might work, so I put it on and, bingo, immediately, oh, right, THAT one. Idiot (me). What a song, what a voice, what a performer the Queen of Soul was. A deserved No. 1 R & B and No. 2 pop hit for her in 1967.
        
    13. UFO, You Don’t Fool Me . . . Terrific rhythmic track featuring the usual guitar fireworks from Michael Schenker. It’s from the band’s Obsession album, released in 1978.
        
    14. Elvis Costello & The Attractions, You Little Fool . . . The first single from Costello’s 1982 critically acclaimed album Imperial Bedroom. I didn’t ‘get’ the record at first but as with some if not many good albums, sometimes it takes a while. It’s full of good songs – Beyond Belief, Shabby Doll I’ve always liked, Almost Blue and the second single and to me the album’s best cut, Man Out Of Time. However neither Man Out Of Time or You Little Fool cracked the top 50 in the UK, Costello’s home turf. Geoff Emerick, known for his sound engineer work with The Beatles on Revolver, Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road, produced the album.
        
    15. Bobbie Gentry, Find ‘Em, Fool ‘Em And Forget About ‘Em . . . Soul country, I suppose one would describe this one from the Ode To Billie Joe singer, one of the first American women to compose and produce her own material. She had 11 chart hits, including Billie Joe, the 1967 No. 1 that propelled her to stardom. Some years ago I was listening to Ode To Billie Joe, amazing song of course, and decided to dig deeper into Gentry’s work. I’ve been reaping the rewards ever since. One of those music mysteries, too. She was active until April, 1982 when she left the industry and essentially disappeared off the face of the earth after appearing at a country music awards show. She’d just had enough, apparently, which I find kinda cool. I’m done, see ya. She’d be 80 now, with various reports having her living in a gated community near Memphis, Tennessee. Or Los Angeles, depending on one’s source. She was once briefly married to casino magnate Bill Harrah and later to Jim Stafford, known for the 1970s hits Spiders & Snakes and the double entendre My Girl Bill.
        
    16. Thin Lizzy, Fools Gold . . . Do a show using the word ‘fool’ in the song titles and you realize how may songs, unsurprisingly I suppose, titled Fool’s Gold are out there, using apostrophes or, in Thin Lizzy’s case, not. Lizzy is, apparently, like AC/DC: off the top of my head AC/DC’s Razors Edge album and song, no punctuation, come to mind. Also up for consideration in the final analysis were Graham Parker’s Fool’s Gold (apostrophe) and the full near 10-minute version of Fools Gold (no apostrophe) by The Stone Roses. I rolled dice in a three-band round-robin tournament and Thin Lizzy won with its tale of the Irish Famine from the 1976 album Johnny The Fox. A final point on punctuation: Next show might be a grammar gig where I’ll play Frank Zappa’s album and song Apostrophe (‘). Actually, no. Not yet, anyway. I have another idea in mind for Monday’s set.
        
    17. Little Village, Fool Who Knows . . . From the one and only album, released in 1992, by the supergroup of Ry Cooder, John Hiatt, Nick Lowe and everyone’s session drummer Jim Keltner. The foursome had originally worked together on Hiatt’s 1987 album Bring The Family. Hiatt did most of the singing on Little Village but Fool Who Knows was written and sung by Lowe.
        
    18. Nazareth, Fool About You . . . Country-ish tune from the band’s second album, 1972’s Exercises. I’ve heard the song, and the album in general, referred to as uncharacteristic of Nazareth and I suppose that’s true, given that, besides the ballad Love Hurts, the band is arguably best known as a hard rock outfit. But deeper investigation of the discography reveals Nazareth as a diverse band that tried various styles, with often mixed results. But at least they didn’t sit still.
        
    19. Rod Stewart, Fool For You . . . Terrific ballad, written by Stewart, from his blockbuster 1976 album A Night On The Town that yielded the No. 1 hit Tonight’s The Night. Fool For You wasn’t a single, but easily could have been.
        
    20. Gene Clark, Life’s Greatest Fool . . . From the former Byrds-man’s fourth solo album, No Other, released in 1974. My favorite song on the album is the title cut, which I’ve played before, but the record, despite being front-to-back solid, was a critical and commercial failure upon release. Yet many of the same critics who at first derided it now refer to it as a lost masterpiece, which it is. But, I get it. Sometimes, as I mentioned earlier in my blurb about Elvis Costello’s Imperial Bedroom, albums take a few listens to sink in. Often, those wind up becoming your favorites – Exile On Main St. by The Rolling Stones is one of those, for me and if push came to shove it would be my desert island disc. But music journalists don’t always have that luxury, deadline for the review is tomorrow, or in our web world, right now, so instant and often flawed judgments can result.
        
    21. Gary Moore, Only Fool In Town . . . Guitar shredding from sometime metallic man Moore on this one from After Hours, his 1992 blues rock followup to his hit album and single Still Got The Blues two years earlier.
        
    22. Family, No Mule’s Fool . . . A folk rocker from a band that dabbled in progressive rock, psychedelia and jazz. It was released in the UK as a standalone single and later wound up on North American pressings of the 1970 album A Song For Me.
        
    23. Gov’t Mule, Towering Fool . . . Dark, bluesy tune from the band’s second album, Dose, released in 1998.
        
    24. Groundhogs, Still A Fool . . . Cover of the Muddy Waters song, from the British blues/rock band’s 1968 debut album, Scratching The Surface.
        
    25. Buddy Guy, Who’s Been Foolin’ You . . . Speaking of Muddy Waters, Buddy sounds just like Muddy, to my ears, on this cut from Guy’s excellent 2001 album Sweet Tea. The record is named for the Oxford, Mississippi studio in which it was recorded.
        
    26. Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Fool . . . Extended (12-minute) spooky, psychedelic piece from the San Francisco band’s self-titled 1968 debut album. I love the sort of barking, or ripping, guitar sound around the five-minute mark, but the whole thing is a trip.
        
    27. Pretenders, Fools Must Die . . . Kick butt, short but oh so sweet tune from 2002’s Loose Screw album. Few people seem to talk about it much, but it’s a terrific record I’ve mined before. Full of good songs – this one, Lie To Me, Complex Person, Kinda Nice, I Like It, Walk Like A Panther . . . worth checking out.
        
    28. Peter Green, A Fool No More . . . Long, slow, beautiful blues from the Fleetwood Mac founder’s 1979 album In The Skies.

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

1. David Bowie, Let’s Spend The Night Together
2. Bruce Springsteen, Spirit In The Night
3. Dr. John, Such A Night
4. Can, Moonshake
5. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Give It Time
6. The Who, Doctor Jimmy
7. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Poison Whiskey
8. Led Zeppelin, The Ocean
9. Alice Cooper, Raped And Freezin’
10. Thin Lizzy, The Hero And The Madman
11. Steely Dan, King Of The World
12. Queen, Great King Rat
13. Black Sabbath, Sabbra Cadabra
14. King Crimson, Larks’ Tongues In Aspic Part 1
15. Genesis, Firth Of Fifth
16. Tom Waits, Ol’ 55
17. Stevie Wonder, Too High
18. The Doobie Brothers, Clear As The Driven Snow
19. Frank Zappa, Montana
20. Little Feat, Roll Um Easy
21. Roxy Music, Editions Of You
22. Elton John, High Flying Bird
23. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Still . . . You Turn Me On
24. The Allman Brothers Band, Come And Go Blues 

    My track-by-track tales:

1. David Bowie, Let’s Spend The Night Together . . . One show can lead into another. I was going to play Bowie’s Aladdin Sane album last Saturday when I played Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon and The Rolling Stones’ Goats Head Soup. The original premise was 50-year-old albums, ie released in 1973 but then came the tie-in with Toronto band Zuffalo, which is playing Dark Side, and their own stuff, on April 29 at Rhythm and Brews in Cambridge so out went Aladdin Sane, in came some Zuffalo. 

   Speaking of Zuffalo, they are having a ticket giveaway for their upcoming show which is sponsored by Radio Waterloo. For details, email gary@radiowaterloo.caAfter last Saturday’s album replay show, I still had 1973 on the brain so the result is tonight’s full slate of songs from that year including Bowie’s manic cover of this Stones’ tune. It appeared on Aladdin Sane, presaging Bowie’s full-blown covers album, Pin-Ups, that he hastily did to satisfy his record company’s demand for another album in 1973, to further cash in on Bowie’s commercial ascendance. Perhaps because he had already covered the Stones on Aladdin Sane, there were no Stones covers on the Pin-Ups album which included songs written or made famous by, among others, Them (Here Comes The Night), The Who (I Can’t Explain and Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere), The Kinks (Where Have All The Good Times Gone), Pink Floyd (See Emily Play) and Bruce Springsteen (Growin’ Up).

2. Bruce Springsteen, Spirit In The Night . . . Speaking of Springsteen, and cover tunes . . . I played Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s version of this Springsteen tune, from his 1973 debut album Greetings From Asbury Park NJ a few weeks ago so I figured I’d go with the original today. The Earth Band had even greater success with another song from Springsteen’s debut, Blinded By The Light. It’s interesting how prolific artists were back then, just a different time. Generally it was an album a year but sometimes two and in 1969, Creedence Clearwater Revival released three LPs, all of them – Bayou Country, Green River and Willy and the Poor Boys – among the band’s best. But back to 1973. Bowie released the two I’ve mentioned, one albeit a covers album. Springsteen’s debut was his first of two that year with The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle coming out in November after his debut in January. Later in the set I’m playing Elton John, who was on a 2-albums per year schedule for the first half of the 1970s.

3. Dr. John, Such A Night . . . The hit single Right Place Wrong Time took the doctor’s In The Right Place album to his highest-ever placing, No. 24 on Billboard. Such A Night got its own share of exposure when Dr. John performed it at The Band’s The Last Waltz concert, which became a film and live album, and the song appears on various Dr. John compilations.

4. Can, Moonshake . . . A somewhat rare, short but definitely catchy, propulsive track by the Krautrock progressive/experimetal band. From The Future Days album. It was released as a single and if you’re not into some of Can’s ‘weirder’ stuff, I’d recommend the more palatable The Singles compilation. The 1990s British experimental rock band Moonshake took its name from Can’s song. 
5. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Give It Time . . . I was going to play Welcome Home from BTO II, which is a terrific musical voyage into hard rock combined with jazz and perhaps I should have, regardless. But maybe it should have been an instrumental because, while he’s a great songwriter and guitarist, I find Randy Bachman’s vocals wimpy and somewhat embarrassing. He should scream more, as he does, at least he’s credited as lead vocalist, in the chorus to Welcome Home although it sounds to me like C.F. (Fred) Turner does that part. Yes, I know, Bachman sang the hits Takin’ Care Of Business and You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet, and they work, but still. He’s not a good singer. So, here’s bass player Turner, clearly the best vocalist in the group, growling his way through this down and dirty ditty. 
6. The Who, Doctor Jimmy . . . A tour de force from Quadrophenia, eight and one-half minutes of classic, angry, full-force Who.

7. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Poison Whiskey . . . From the wall-to-wall great debut, Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-erd, which contained such well-known songs among the band’s output as Free Bird, Gimme Three Steps, Simple Man and Tuesday’s Gone, but also excellent deeper cuts like Poison Whiskey. While their first album wasn’t released until 1973, Skynyrd, under different names, had been around in various forms since 1964 including as My Backyard, featuring future stalwarts Ronnie Van Zant on lead vocals and guitarists Gary Rossington and Allen Collins. There’s really no such thing as overnight success, as most band histories show. 
8. Led Zeppelin, The Ocean . . . My biggest concern with playing something from Zep’s Houses Of The Holy album is having YouTube or Facebook, when I put the song clip on my page, remove it due to the album cover featuring children. It’s happened before but usually takes some time before it does. And I do understand it to some degree, given some of Zeppelin’s history or alleged history with youth. We’ll see how it goes. I’ve had The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers ‘zipper’ cover removed before. Interestingly, Hipgnosis was nominated for a Grammy Award for Houses Of The Holy in the best album package category, now known as the best recording package, for ‘quality visual look’ of an album.

9. Alice Cooper, Raped And Freezin’ . . . From Billion Dollar Babies, an album that is essentially a greatest hits record. Even the deeper cuts, like this one, are familiar to most people who grew up with the record. As often mentioned, it was seemingly on permanent play in my early high school days on our cafeteria juke box.

10. Thin Lizzy, The Hero And The Madman . . . A spoken word, hard rock, prog rock, tempo changing guitar showcase, all in six minutes from the early Lizzy album Vagabonds Of The Western World. 
11. Steely Dan, King Of The World . . . Pop/rock/jazz with a funky hook, from Countdown To Ecstasy, Steely Dan’s second album. A masterpiece, really, but such is the case with so much of Steely Dan’s material. Steely Dan has been described as slick and, being a raunch and roller at heart, I don’t usually like slick. To me, it tends to mean overdone production, like a lot of 1980s stuff where some decent songs are probably hiding somewhere in the synthetic syrup. Yet I like Steely Dan a lot. Perhaps noted music critic Robert Christgau put it best in Christgau’s Record Guide: Rock Albums Of The Seventies. Steely Dan, he wrote about Countdown To Ecstasy but it could apply to all their stuff, has achieved a ‘deceptively agreeable studio slickness.” 
12. Queen, Great King Rat . . . Queen, in all their prog/operatic/hard rock glory, from the self-titled debut. Eleven years later they were going Radio Ga Ga on The Works album. Catchy, yes, evolution of an artist, yes, more commercially successful, yes, tongue in cheek, probably, but, er, hmm. 
13. Black Sabbath, Sabbra Cadabra . . . A hard rock proggish piece from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, with Yes virtuoso Rick Wakeman making a guest appearance on piano and synthesizers.

14. King Crimson, Larks’ Tongues In Aspic Part I . . . Epic up and down, back and forth between mellow and aggressive title track from the Larks’ album. That first slow buildup to the heavy crescendo around the 4:45 mark of the 13-minute-plus instrumental gets me every time, just waiting for it to go over the cliff you know you can’t avoid if you keep listening. And who wants to stop listening to this brilliance? Guitarist/leader Robert Fripp has been the lone constant Crimson force in the band’s long history and Larks’ Tongues In Aspic is actually a multi-album suite amid ever-changing lineups, which is a feat in itself in terms of maintaining a vision. It started with Parts I and II on the original album. Then came Part III, 11 years later on 1984’s Three Of A Perfect Pair, followed by Part IV on the 2000 album The Construkction of Light and Part V, known as Level Five and/or Larks’ Tongues In Aspic Part V, on The Power To Believe record in 2003. Space doesn’t permit, but lots of interesting reading – and listening – on it. 
15. Genesis, Firth Of Fifth . . . Tony Banks with the beautiful piano intro to a song he masterminded but was originally rejected by the band when he submitted it for consideration for the Foxtrot album. He reworked it and it made the grade for the subsequent album, Selling England By The Pound. One of the classic tracks of Genesis’s truly progressive rock period, it also features singer Peter Gabriel on flute and a sterling guitar solo from Steve Hackett. 
16. Tom Waits, Ol’ 55 . . . From Waits’s first album, Closing Time. The Eagles covered it on their On The Border album in 1974 and it was the B-side to that record’s third single, Best Of My Love. Waits disliked the Eagles’ version, at least according to a quote reproduced by Wikipedia from a 1975 interview where Waits called the Eagles’ take on his song ‘a little antiseptic.” Apparently, about a year later, Waits went further, slamming the Eagles in general. “I don’t like the Eagles. They’re about as exciting as watching paint dry. Their albums are good for keeping the dust off your turntable and that’s about it.” 

    Ouch. I like the Eagles well enough, actually have all their albums, but I also understand Waits’s view. Live, for instance, at least while Glenn Frey was still with us, from what I’ve heard – evidenced by their 1980 live album and I’m not sure how much ‘fixing’ or overdubbing might have been done in production – the Eagles were almost too true to their studio albums. They didn’t stretch out, so to speak, as many if not most bands do when playing live. But from what I’ve read, that’s what Frey, a commanding force within the band along with Don Henley, wanted and presumably so do the fans attending the shows. That’s another discussion, of course. The artists that sometimes extend, even maybe rearrange their songs live can argue, as Joe Jackson, for one, has argued, that if you want the studio versions, listen to the studio albums. But it’s understandable if some if not many fans are disappointed after paying good money for a show, only to hear a favorite song they came to hear, drastically rearranged. But you also have to know your artist and how they tend to do things, and I think most fans do understand – or learn to appreciate – what to expect. As for Waits, I imagine he made at least decent royalties from the Eagles’ version of Ol’ 55, as he no doubt has from any number of covers of his songs that became bigger hits for others, Rod Stewart’s version of Downtown Train coming to mind.

1. 17. Stevie Wonder, Too High . . . Funky tune from the Innervisions album, could easily have been a single but Wonder was like Elton John at the time – his deep cuts were as compelling. And Wonder already had four hit singles from Innervisions, the chart placing depending on country: Higher Ground, Living For The City, Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing and He’s Misstra Know-It-All. 
   18. The Doobie Brothers, Clear As The Driven Snow . . . Wonderful, mostly acoustic track written and sung by guitarist Patrick Simmons, a founding and lone, constant member of the band throughout its long history. This one’s from The Captain and Me, the album that gave us Long Train Runnin’ and China Grove. 
   19. Frank Zappa, Montana . . . Wherein our man Frank moves to Montana to grow a crop of dental floss and become a tycoon of that industry. Tina Turner and The Ikettes, the backing singers for Ike & Tina Turner, help out on vocals. 
   20. Little Feat, Roll Um Easy . . . Next time I do a 1973-themed show I think I’ll just play the entire Dixie Chicken album. It’s that good. Linda Ronstadt covered Roll Um Easy on her Prisoner In Disguise album in 1975, with Little Feat’s Lowell George, the song’s author, playing slide guitar. I’m a big Ronstadt fan and she was a great interpreter, but I prefer Little Feat’s spare, acoustic original version. But it’s nice to have them both. 
   21. Roxy Music, Editions Of You . . . Early, brilliant, edgy Roxy, from the second album, For Your Pleasure. It is that, indeed. 
   22. Elton John, High Flying Bird . . . One of my favorite Elton John songs and a lovely way to close his Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player album. I played it years ago on the show to good reaction, and why not? It’s a terrific tune, apparently one of EJ’s favorites as well. So, while I don’t like to repeat myself or, at least, try to wait a long time between replays, now’s the time. 
   23. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Still . . . You Turn Me On . . . Beautiful piece and one of ELP’s most well-known. Yet the Greg Lake-penned tune wasn’t a single from Brain Salad Surgery as the band didn’t think it was representative of the album or the band’s manic dynamic sound. Somewhat strange, considering ELP albums are peppered with similar songs like Lucky Man, From The Beginning, C’Est La Vie and Lend Your Love To Me Tonight – all Lake compositions. “We’ve had success with Greg’s ballads,” drummer Carl Palmer says in the liner notes to the 1996 reissue of Brain Salad Surgery. “Without those, we probably wouldn’t have sold the amount of records that we have. The problem was, when we had something which was a commercial hit, it wasn’t dark. We had love songs that were hits, so it was a rather diverse situation. People were always waiting for the next (such ballad).”

       Not sure what the concern was. Dedicated ELP fans knew the band was about both the ‘dark’ and Lake’s ‘light’ ballads and such songs were hardly his only contribution. Casual listeners would likely buy a compilation featuring those ballads, anyway – and maybe get turned on to whatever extended, ‘dark’ pieces were also included.

        

   24. The Allman Brothers Band, Come And Go Blues . . . From Brothers and Sisters, the band’s biggest commercial success thanks to the No. 2 single Ramblin’ Man, written and sung by guitarist Dickey Betts. Come and Go Blues, written by Gregg Allman, was the B-side to the album’s second single, a 4-minute version of Betts’s seven-plus minute instrumental piece Jessica. 

       Looking up at the play list, what an amazing year 1973 was for music and obviously there’s lots I couldn’ fit in my 2-hour slot. But that could easily be said for any of the so-called classic rock years that started in the 1960s with the British Invasion, Bob Dylan and so on, through the 1970s which is generally the source period and/or artists, for my show. Old bands/artists, old tracks, old bands/artists, their new stuff, if they’re still alive, kicking and releasing new material has always been my mantra for So Old It’s New. Some years back, I started into a year-by-year series of shows, or segments within my shows, starting in 1964. But I only got to 1966, as I recall, before losing focus and straying into whatever else moved me at the time. So, a year-by-year series is worth revisiting, even sporadically, but at least somewhat consistently, particularly since I now have two shows per week, Mondays and Saturdays. We’ll see how it goes. So many ideas, so much great music, so little time.

My bare-bones set list follows this intro to Saturday’s album replay show that includes Toronto  band Zuffalo, which will be performing in Cambridge, ON on Saturday, April 29.

Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon was released on March 1, 1973 and I’ve been planning to play the full album in honor of that milestone. I’m doing so, along with another 50th anniversary album, Goats Head Soup by The Rolling Stones, on So Old It’s New airing 7-9 am ET tomorrow, Saturday, March 25.

In a serendipitous confluence of events, CKMS 102.7 FM Radio Waterloo is sponsoring a concert by Toronto band Zuffalo at Rhythm and Brews Brewing Company in Cambridge at 9 pm on Saturday April 29. Zuffalo will, in addition to their fine original work, be playing The Dark Side Of The Moon album in its entirety. So, the station asked me if I might point to the Zuffalo show which I will be doing in addition to playing some of the excellent to my ears songs from their most recent album, Birdbrain. Birdbrain was recorded in 2021 in Waterloo Region, at ‘The Barn’ in Baden, outside Kitchener. Full details on Zuffalo at the band’s website, zuffalo.ca . . . Tickets for the show are $20 in advance until Monday, March 27 after which they go up to $30 advance and more at the door.

Zuffalo will also be holding a ticket giveaway via Radio Waterloo. For details, email gary@radiowaterloo.ca

While Zuffalo is covering Pink Floyd, they’re anything but a covers band. They describe their sound as “groovy psychedelic rock with folk and pop-based melodies”. To my classic rock upbringing ears I also hear elements of The Allman Brothers Band, Bob Welch-era Fleetwood Mac of the Future Games album period and some Jefferson Airplane in extended pieces like the eight-minute track Open Eyes. Yet for all those influences Zuffalo remains unique to themselves with an infectious groove to all their tunes that prompted me to listen to their album straight through, several times, upon receipt.

Besides Birdbrain, the band has an earlier album and an EP, all available online and/or in physical copies, via the website.

Saturday’s bare-bones set list, followed by my track-by-track tales:

Pink Floyd: The Dark Side Of The Moon

1. Speak To Me/Breathe In The Air
2. On The Run
3. Time
4. The Great Gig In The Sky
5. Money
6. Us And Them
7. Any Colour You Like
8. Brain Damage
9. Eclipse

Zuffalo: BirdBrain (6 of the 9 songs on the album)

10. Open Eyes
11. Birdman
12. On A Windmill
13. In Another Time
14. Can You Run Out?
15. Big Man

The Rolling Stones: Goats Head Soup

16. Dancing With Mr. D

17. 100 Years Ago

18. Coming Down Again

19. Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)

20. Angie

21. Silver Train

22. Hide Your Love

23. Winter

24. Can You Hear The Music

25. Star Star (aka Starf***er)

My thoughts and track-by-track tales:

Pink Floyd: The Dark Side Of The Moon

As I mentioned last week when I played the Faces’ live version of I’d Rather Go Blind, made famous by Etta James, I’ve been going through albums I own that I haven’t played in ages, so songs from them, or in today’s case the full albums, will likely wind up in my set lists for some time to come. That’s typically somewhat the case anyway, because I play what I like and if the audience does, wonderful. But sometimes I find that, and perhaps it’s common, for my show or just listening pleasure, that one becomes so familiar with classic albums that we of a certain age have been listening to for decades that we don’t play them all that much anymore because we know them so well and can ‘hear’ them in our heads without actually putting them on a turntable, in a CD player or calling them up online. And that’s good in many ways because it may mean we’re exploring new music, or, at least, new music by our longtime favorite bands, if they’re still around and releasing material.

All of which is probably a too long-winded way of saying that I hadn’t listened to The Dark Side Of The Moon from start to finish in a long time, until this week when the idea for this show developed. Yet 50 years on, the album has lost none of its power, perhaps in different ways, because obviously I experience the music and hear the lyrics with a different sensibility born of life experience at age 63 soon to be 64 than I did when I first heard it, upon initial release, at soon to be age 14.

And of course there are fun memories – like my older brother startling me one morning in our shared bedroom by cranking the song Time’s chiming clocks to 11 to ruin my Saturday morning sleep-in. Or, years later, living on my own while attending college, having a ‘recreational drug experimentation’ session with friends and having one of them – who had been doing the crawl stroke on my carpet – plead “no, no, please, not THAT!’ when I suggested putting Dark Side on the stereo. We took a vote, on went Dark Side, the ‘swimmer’ survived the lunatic then in his head.

I listened to the album front to back this week in two versions, the original studio work from 1973 and a 1974 concert version where Pink Floyd played the album in its entirety live at The Empire Pool, Wembley, London. That show was previously unreleased but came out on a 2011 bonus CD, part of an expanded re-release. I’m not going to go into my usual track-by-tales for Dark Side. Most people know the album and besides, like many if not most Pink Floyd albums, while the individual songs are fine to be heard in isolation, it’s best to take it in one, near-45 minute experience.

1. Speak To Me/Breathe In The Air
2. On The Run
3. Time
4. The Great Gig In The Sky . . .
5. Money
6. Us And Them
7. Any Colour You Like
8. Brain Damage
9. Eclipse

Zuffalo: BirdBrain (I’m playing six of the nine tunes on the album)

10. Open Eyes . . . A heavy guitar riff starts things off before the song settles into a nice groove that reminded me, on first listen, of some Jefferson Airplane.
    
11. Birdman . . . A funky, psychedelic tune with some nice wah-wah guitar from Sean Steele.
    
12. On A Windmill . . . This one reminds me a bit of Bob Welch-era Fleetwood Mac, circa 1971’s Future Games album, and also The Allman Brothers Band. But, while influenced by various sources and genres, Zuffalo definitely has its own sound.
    
13. In Another Time . . . Singer/keyboardist Kim Manning doesn’t sing every song for the band, sharing vocals with bass player Mikey Vukovich, but she shines on this short up-tempo pop-rock ditty.
    
14. Can You Run Out?. . . Infectious single from the album. This band is tight.
    
15. Big Man . . . Another song that, on first listen, reminded me of some Fleetwood Mac, mostly the middle, and often overlooked, period with Bob Welch on lead guitar. Manning is a strong singer and when I saw her listed among the band personnel, and viewed and heard some live stuff from the group on YouTube, I immediately could ‘hear’ her doing the immortal ‘wordless vocals’ of Clare Torry on The Dark Side Of The Moon song The Great Gig In The Sky when Zuffalo plays the Pink Floyd album on April 29 in Cambridge.

The Rolling Stones: Goats Head Soup

Goats Head Soup was and maybe still is considered a disappointment after 1972’s Exile On Main St. although people, including the critics who initally trashed it, seem to forget that the double vinyl LP Exile was considered a bloated mess when it was released. Repeat listens, of course, long ago revealed Exile to be among the best, if not THE best Stones album of all and I’d say it’s my favorite although as always I defer to my mantra of the best song/artist/album ever is the one you’re listening to right now, if you like it. And whenever I listen to Goats Head Soup, I like it. Always have.

16. Dancing With Mr. D . . . I played this recently on the show, independent of an album replay. A sort of poor cousin sequel to Sympathy For The Devil, it’s also an interesting album opener in that usually, the Stones start things off with a rocker as opposed to this somewhat slow yet compelling tune.

17. 100 Years Ago . . . One of my favorite Stones’ songs, great wah-wah guitar from Mick Taylor, could easily have been a hit single in my opinion but the album was overwhelmed by Angie. 100 Years Ago is the first song I ever played on my show, many years ago now. I figured it fit my So Old It’s New show title and theme.

18. Coming Down Again . . . One of those Keith Richards on lead vocals ballads that goes contrary to the widespread perception of him as the ultimate riff rocker (which he may be) and presages the ballads and other interesting slower songs he would write and sing on later Stones’ albums. Things like All About You from 1980’s Emotional Rescue and, in particular, late 1980s and beyond material like Sleep Tonight from the Dirty Work album, Slipping Away from Steel Wheels, Thru and Thru from Voodoo Lounge and Thief In The Night and How Can I Stop from Bridges To Babylon.

19. Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker) . . . I could never understand how this made only No. 14 on the charts. Not a bad chart placing, of course, top 20, but, well, what a riff and song. But it was the second single after . . .

20. Angie . . . This massive hit ballad. Typically great, subtle drumming from Charlie Watts, without whom the song wouldn’t be the same. I’ve always loved his cymbals throughout and that little tap-tap-tap at the 3:45 mark of the 4:32-length song. Nicely done. Keith Richards’ assessment of the song in a book I have but couldn’t find, so you’ll have to trust my good memory: “People bought that (song) who normally wouldn’t go near us with a barge pole.” True, perhaps, but that’s also forgetting such previous great Stones’ ballads as Lady Jane and Wild Horses, among others.

21. Silver Train . . . A song the Stones gave to Johnny Winter, who released it first. Some people suggest Winter’s version is better. I love Johnny Winter and his version but, please.

22. Hide Your Love . . . From another book on the Stones I have: “Had Bill Wyman written it, the song probably wouldn’t have got a look-in”. Funny, but dunno about that. I kinda like it, “fumbling staccato piano-playing ‘n all,” as the book’s author goes on to say. But hey, I’m a Stones freak so my judgments may be somewhat flawed.

23. Winter . . . A beautiful Mick Taylor-Mick Jagger collaboration, Keith Richards doesn’t play on the song but it nevertheless went into the books as a Jagger-Richards song credit, likely adding to Taylor’s frustration within the band and leading, depending on what one reads or believes, to his eventual departure. On the other hand, Taylor, while obviously an amazing guitarist and I loved his period in the band, subsequently proved that’s all he was, not a songwriter. So, did he thrive because of the Stones company he was keeping, or did they thrive because of him, or was it, likely, just a great version of a band which, after all, had many hits during the 1960s before Taylor came on board?

24. Can You Hear The Music . . . A psychedelic sort of atmospheric piece, to me it’s always been a twin with Hide Your Love.

25. Star Star (aka Starf***er) . . . Keith Richards, with help from Mick Taylor, goes full Chuck Berry on this controversial rocker about groupies, retitled to Star Star to satisfy the record company’s concerns.

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

1. Artimus Pyle Band, Makes More Rock
2. Rush, Here Again
3. David Bowie, The Width Of A Circle
4. 54-40, She-La
5. Max Webster, Oh War!
6. Jimi Hendrix, Machine Gun (live, from Band of Gypsys)
7. Chris Whitley, Narcotic Prayer
8. Argent, Dance In The Smoke
9. Teenage Head, Somethin’ Else
10. Eagles, Teenage Jail
11. Van Halen, Beautiful Girls
12. The Rolling Stones, So Young
13. Martha and The Muffins/M + M, Several Styles Of Blonde Girls Dancing
14. Alvin Lee, Rock & Roll Girls
15. J.J. Cale, City Girls
16. The Who, Cry If You Want
17. Wishbone Ash, Errors Of My Way
18. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, F*!#in’ Up
19. Deep Purple, This Time Around/Owed to ‘G’
20. Faces, I’d Rather Go Blind (live)
21. The Moody Blues, Veteran Cosmic Rocker
22. Rory Gallagher, A Million Miles Away 

    My track-by-track tales:

    1. Artimus Pyle Band, Makes More Rock . . . A leftover, of sorts, from my recent tribute show to the late Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington. I pulled some Rossington Collins Band stuff for that tribute from a fine compilation album, Lynyrd Skynyrd Solo Flytes, I bought eons ago. It’s heavy on the Rossington Collins Band – which was the most prolific of the splinter groups that formed a few years after the 1977 plane crash that claimed several members of Skynyrd – but has some other stuff including this rocker by Skynyrd drummer Pyle’s subsequent band.
       
    2. Rush, Here Again . . . Bluesy rock cut from Rush’s self-titled debut album in 1974. Heavily influenced by such bands as Led Zeppelin and Cream, the first album became something of an outlier in Rush’s discography once Neil Peart replaced John Rutsey on drums and became the prime lyricist for the second album, Fly By Night, as the band adopted a more progressive hard rock persona.
       
    3. David Bowie, The Width Of A Circle . . . I’ve played this before, long ago now, but it came up in an article I was reading about Bowie deep cuts and I thought, I’ve been all over that, so here it is, again. From the 1970 album The Man Who Sold The World. A memorable extended piece merging blues rock/hard rock almost metal, and progressive rock.
       
    4. 54-40, She-La . . . From 1992’s Dear Dear album, probably the record that got me into 54-40, as much as I’m into them which really isn’t all that much although I saw them live in 2004 with a then-girlfriend who wanted to see them. Excellent show. 54-40’s She-La, not to be confused with the different but equally fine Aerosmith song Shela from the Done With Mirrors album, made No. 38 on the Canadian singles charts.
       
    5. Max Webster, Oh War! . . . From Max’s 1977 album High Class In Borrowed Shoes. It was not released as a single but is a well-known song, at least in Canada. Nice borrowed shoes on the band members, too, on the album’s cover photo. Definitely 1970s fashion and not knocking it; I grew up then.
       
    6. Jimi Hendrix, Machine Gun (live, from Band of Gypsys) . . . The rat-a-tat guitar attack protest song against the Vietnam War and conflict in general, recorded as 1969 passed into 1970 at the Hendrix shows at the Fillmore East, New York City.
       
    7. Chris Whitley, Narcotic Prayer . . . Whitley went somewhat grunge (the big thing at the time via bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden etc) on his second album, 1995’s Din Of Ecstasy, an appropriate title given it’s a noisy departure from the brilliance of his roots rock, bluesy debut Living With The Law. But, while one wonders why an artist of Whitley’s calibre would feel a need to follow trends, I like it. Whitley was an amazing artist – deep, sometimes dark, a bare his soul human being sadly lost to us to lung cancer in 2005 at age 45.
       
    8. Argent, Dance In The Smoke . . . The progressive rock band Argent, led by former Zombie Rod Argent, is best known for the hit Hold Your Head up and for God Gave Rock and Roll To You (covered by Kiss), but is so much more, evidenced by this cut and many others. Worth checking out, if you haven’t.
       
    9. Teenage Head, Somethin’ Else . . . The Canadian punk/new wave rockers with their treatment of the Eddie Cochran hit. It appeared on the great Frantic City album, 1980.
       
    10. Eagles, Teenage Jail . . . I’ve always liked this brooding track from The Long Run, an album that always seems to get short shrift from critics and even the band, which was fraying at that point, but to me it’s every bit as good as its predecessor, Hotel California.
        
    11. Van Halen, Beautiful Girls . . . I don’t deliberately play singles, as this is (supposed to be) a deep cuts show, although I’ve been known to dredge up the occasional single not heard in ages. So this maybe fits although poor research on my part, I simply forgot it was a single. It was the second single from Van Halen II, didn’t chart anywhere but the US where it made No. 84, so, deep cut it is, in my book. Even better was its B-side, D.O.A., one of my favorite Van Halen songs, but I’ve played that one likely too much.
        
    12. The Rolling Stones, So Young . . . A rocker recorded during the Some Girls album sessions, it first appeared – outside of bootlegs – as the B-side, in various countries including Canada as I have it on the CD single, of Love Is Strong from the Voodoo Lounge album in 1994. It has since resurfaced on the expanded re-release of Some Girls.
        
    13. Martha and The Muffins/M + M, Several Styles Of Blonde Girls Dancing . . . Second of a few songs with ‘Girls’ in the title, the result of me calling up Van Halen’s Beautiful Girls in the station’s computer system. These things happen, and often good things result, especially when you get what I think are fun, jarring changes in the show flow from rock to new wave, via this cut from The Muffins. For a few years in the mid-1980s the band changed its name to M + M after some lineup changes fostered by disputes and subsequent departures. M + M never really ‘took’ though, as lead singer Martha Johnson acknowledged. “Our legacy was Martha and The Muffins.” Best known for their 1980 hit Echo Beach, the Muffins are still around, having released a studio album as recently as 2010. There were apparently plans for a new album in 2022 but I’ve not seen nor heard of it, not that I care that much about the band anymore. But I was into them during the Echo Beach period and up to Danseparc, the 1983 album from which I pulled Several Styles Of Blonde Girls Dancing.
        
    14. Alvin Lee, Rock & Roll Girls . . . A rockabilly tune from the late Ten Years After leader’s 2004 solo album, In Tennessee. It’s not only a good album – I’m a big fan of TYA and Lee’s solo work – but it’s notable for the presence of Elvis Presley’s noted guitarist Scotty Moore in Lee’s band.
        
    15. J.J. Cale, City Girls . . . From the forever dependable late great Cale’s 1982 album Grasshopper. Dependable in the sense that, like AC/DC in my opinion, you know just what you’re getting with J.J. Cale but his genius was his ability to do seemingly the same thing every song and album, yet be different enough each time out as to always be compelling and worth a listen.
        
    16. The Who, Cry If You Want . . . A leftover from my recent good songs on bad albums show. I played Eminence Front from It’s Hard, and that’s clearly the best song on that 1982 record but Cry If You Want, to me, is second with little other competition. Nice drumming by Kenney Jones.
        
    17. Wishbone Ash, Errors Of My Way . . . An old friend of mine with whom I’ve reconnected via the show told me some back that I’ve turned him on to the hard progressive rock of Wishbone Ash. I love that about music. This one’s from their self-titled debut in 1970.
        
    18. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, F*!#in’ Up . . . Good rocker from the appropriately titled Ragged Glory album, released in 1990. Canadian stalwarts Junkhouse later covered it, live only, and put a version of it on a compilation album.
        
    19. Deep Purple, This Time Around/Owed to ‘G’ . . . Funky stuff from Come Taste The Band, the one and only album the band did with guitarist Tommy Bolin, who replaced the departed-to-form Rainbow Ritchie Blackmore. This is the type of song, co-written and sung by bass player Glenn Hughes before the instrumental coda by keyboardist Jon Lord, that critics – and even some band members – cite when they deride the record as not really being a Deep Purple album. I’m tired of that what I consider nonsense. I’m a huge Purple fan and have loved the album since it came out in 1975. It’s as nonsensical – and lazy – as saying the Stones’ Some Girls is a disco album because the biggest hit was Miss You, a total outlier on that album but a wisely chosen single to cash in on a genre that was hot at the time, 1978. Come Taste The Band has lots of rockers and bluesy rockers like the opening cut Comin’ Home, Lady Luck, Drifter, Gettin’ Tighter . . . Were I in the band I’d be proud to have it as a Deep Purple album because it reflects the group’s myriad abilities in terms of styles. So why am I playing this funky track? Well, for stated reasons plus I considered it as a song for my recent ‘good songs on bad albums’ show but I decided it’s only a ‘bad’ album to the aforementioned nonsensical and lazy critics. So I went with a truly shitty Purple album, the Joe Lynn Turner (yecchh)-sung Slaves and Masters, from 1990, with only King Of Dreams, the song I played, worth listening to.
        
    20. Faces, I’d Rather Go Blind (live) . . . I’ve been digging out albums in my collection I haven’t played in ages over the last week or so and it’s been a fun trip, and much of what I revisit will likely be making its way into future shows. This one’s the live version of the song made famous by Etta James, which Rod Stewart covered (to her thumb’s up) on his 1972 album Never A Dull Moment. It was released during the 1969-74 period of superb Stewart stuff when he was maintaining parallel careers of solo work while still in Faces, most members of whom backed him on his solo albums. This live version is from Rod Stewart/Faces Live: Coast To Coast Overture and Beginners, released in 1973. The live cut is a shade over two minutes longer, at 6:04, than the studio version which allows guitarist Ronnie Wood room for a terrific extended solo. And, as with all Stewart/Faces stuff at the time, the liner notes on the album are worth the price of admission. To wit, in naming the personnel:
        * Rod (he’s in hospital ‘cos he fell off his wallet) Stewart – throat
        * Ian (he’s got so many teeth, when he smiles it looks like his tongue’s playing the piano) McLagan – keyboards, what throat?
        * Ron (I’m not saying he’s dull, but his favorite color is light grey) Wood – guitar, some throat!
        * Kenney (I’m not saying he’s unlucky, but when he was young he had a wooden horse that died) Jones – drums.
        * Tetsu (I’m not saying he’s thin, but he wants his job back as a dipstick) Yamauchi – bass and trombone.“Let nothing be said against: Pimm’s No. 1, with lemonade and assorted fruit; Courvoisier, Teacher’s, Coors, and vino, as these implements are the mainstay of our melodic frolics.”

        Etc.
        Ah, Faces, sex, drugs, booze and shambolic down and dirty rock and roll.

    21. The Moody Blues, Veteran Cosmic Rocker . . . From Long Distance Voyager, a big hit comeback of sorts album from the Moodies in 1981. I was visiting my parents in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time, my dad had just taken a job there and I recall how the Moodies, Kim Carnes with Bette Davis Eyes and Blue Oyster Cult with Burnin’ For You were dominating radio airplay at the time. So I always think of San Francisco when I play or hear any of those songs.
        
    22. Rory Gallagher, A Million Miles Away . . . For a buddy of mine who has yet to get off his butt and buy, at minimum, a Rory compilation, at my recommendation which he asked for but has not acted upon. You try to help people . . .  

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

1. Ringo Starr, It Don’t Come Easy (live, from The Concert for Bangladesh)
2. Paul McCartney/Wings, Morse Moose And The Grey Goose
3. John Lennon, Gimme Some Truth
4. John Lennon, How Do You Sleep?
5. Paul McCartney/Wings, Let Me Roll It
6. George Harrison, Isn’t It A Pity
7. John Lennon, I Found Out
8. Paul McCartney, The Song We Were Singing
9. Ringo Starr, No No Song
10. Ringo Starr, Husbands and Wives
11. John Lennon, Crippled Inside
12. Paul McCartney/Wings, Beware My Love (live, from Wings Over America)
13. George Harrison, I’d Have You Anytime
14. Ringo Starr, Oh, My My
15. John Lennon, I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama
16. Paul McCartney, Ain’t No Sunshine (live, from Unplugged: The Official Bootleg)
17. George Harrison, Beware Of Darkness
18. Paul McCartney/Wings, Picasso’s Last Words (Drink To Me)
19. Ringo Starr, I’m The Greatest
20. John Lennon, Out The Blue
21. George Harrison, It’s What You Value
22. Ringo Starr, Snookeroo
23. John Lennon, Steel And Glass
24. George Harrison, Blow Away
25. John Lennon, Meat City
26. Paul McCartney/Wings, Cafe On The Left Bank
27. George Harrison, Tired Of Midnight Blue
28. Paul McCartney/Wings, Go Now (live, from Wings Over America) 

    My track-by-track tales:

    1. Ringo Starr, It Don’t Come Easy (live, from The Concert for Bangladesh) . . . Live version of one of Ringo’s biggest hits, the 1971 single he wrote with help from George Harrison, although only Ringo is credited.

       Depending on what you hear or read, though, Harrison may have written the song outright – and there are versions of him singing it available online – and just gave it to Ringo out of the goodness of his heart, although in liner notes to a compilation I have, Ringo says he was proud of himself for the line “got to pay your dues if you want to play the blues’.

       Anyway, all of the now former Beatles were helping each other out on their respective solo work in the immediate aftermath of the breakup and for a few years after – aside from the fact everyone was pissed at Paul McCartney so nobody helped him. Not, arguably, that McCartney really needed it, amazing talent that he remains although his solo work until Band On The Run was somewhat spotty. And, all four Beatles wound up together, sort of, albeit never in the same studio all at the same time, as they helped out on the ‘Ringo’ studio album released in 1973.

        

       Meantime, back to It Don’t Come Easy. Harrison produced the studio single and plays guitar on it as well as the Bangladesh live version from Harrison’s all-star fundraiser, also in 1971 – a precursor to such later events as Live Aid and Live 8.Interesting reading about Ringo while I was putting this show together. I always aim for deep cuts and was encouraged by a friend about some but frankly, aside from a few songs including one from the Goodnight Vienna album I’m playing later in the set, I admit I’m not as familiar as I could be with Ringo’s stuff beyond the mid-1970s, and beyond the hits. Which may be a common issue except to extreme die-hards like my friend, a credit to him.

       To quote from The Rough Guide series book (an excellent series about various bands/artists) on The Beatles, in their solo work section: “Most listeners have got the measure of Ringo’s talent by now. No matter how competently made his records are – and he manages to attract some considerable talent to come and help out – they are still Ringo records. And (key point here, my thought) other than a blip of commercial credibility in the early to mid-1970s, the public has voted with their feet and stayed away in their millions. Which is a shame in a way, because they’re (the albums) not bad, but it’s also understandable because they’re not that good, either.”

       My sentiments, exactly. Most fans of bands/artists do try to travel with them, try hard to like their stuff but at certain points, you might abandon them.

    2. Paul McCartney/Wings, Morse Moose And The Grey Goose . . . I played this ages ago, to great acclaim (at least from one friend). It’s  McCartney unleashed, in a fun, great way, if you ask me, on this extended rocker from the London Town album, 1978. It’s the type of track people who criticize him for being soft, or not creative, for not taking chances, ought to listen to if they haven’t heard it. It’s not as if it’s unconventional by any measure, certainly not if you have any appreciation for McCartney’s deeper cuts. In some ways I’d equate it to Uncle Albert/
       Admiral Halsey in terms of being multiple songs in one. Yet unlike that song, which appears on McCartney compilations hence is known to the masses, Morse Moose remains somewhat (unfairly) obscure. But, happily obscure in that it’s not overplayed, or played much at all.  
    3. John Lennon, Gimme Some Truth . . . Angry John, from the Imagine album.
       
    4. John Lennon, How Do You Sleep? . . . Angrier John, from Imagine, his famous rip job on Paul McCartney. Brilliantly done, actually, and I could not choose between the two guys/have no favorite as far as the brilliant music they did together, and apart.
       
    5. Paul McCartney/Wings, Let Me Roll It . . . Many thought this song, from the Band On The Run album, was McCartney’s response to Lennon but nobody will ever likely truly know except for McCartney himself, who has said it was simply about smoking pot. Besides, he had other songs previous to this – Too Many People for one – about Lennon, which probably prompted How Do You Sleep? As listeners/fans, we all benefited.
       
    6. George Harrison, Isn’t It A Pity . . . Harrison’s great full-fledged debut album All Things Must Pass was his, largely, unleashing of songs, like this one, that The Beatles had apparently rejected but which he could finally put on a solo album, post-breakup. Originally written in 1966, the song has also come to be seen as a reflection on the band’s breakup. It was the B-side to Harrison’s smash single My Sweet Lord.
       
    7. John Lennon, I Found Out . . . Down and dirty stuff and as always from Lennon lyrically potent, from his first proper solo album, 1970’s Plastic Ono Band. I didn’t realize this until looking up the song but the Red Hot Chili Peppers covered it. Decent, not as good, too drone-like/lazy sounding if you ask me.
    8. Paul McCartney, The Song We Were Singing . . . Lead cut from McCartney’s 1997 album Flaming Pie which yielded the (to me) memorable single The World Tonight. The Song We Were Singing wasn’t among the three singles released from the album, but could easily have been. I’d suggest the lyrics could be about The Beatles, all those years later – it always came back to the songs they were singing, despite their various issues, until they could no longer overcome them.
       
    9. Ringo Starr, No No Song . . . Hoyt Axton wrote so many great songs, many of which rock/pop artists turned into hits, like Steppewolf with one of my favorties of theirs, Snowblind Friend, and this one from Ringo.
       
    10. Ringo Starr, Husbands and Wives . . . A Roger Miller tune, from Ringo’s Goodnight Vienna album. “The angry words spoke in haste, such a waste of two lives, it’s my belief pride is the chief cause in the decline in the number of husbands and wives.’
        
    11. John Lennon, Crippled Inside . . . Another good one from the Imagine album but forever it’s been the title cut and nothing else on radio, which is why radio outside of (I’m biased) independent radio no longer really exists in a commercial sense, musically.
        
    12. Paul McCartney/Wings, Beware My Love (live, from Wings Over America) . . . I wrestled over which version to play, the studio cut from Wings At The Speed Of Sound or this live one but settled on the more, let’s say aggressive, live version from Wings Over America, a terrific tour document.
        
    13. George Harrison, I’d Have You Anytime . . . Beautiful song, co-written with Bob Dylan ad with Eric Clapton on lead guitar. It was the opening cut on All Things Must Pass. There’s extensive literature available on how the song came about, space does not permit but worth looking up.
        
    14. Ringo Starr, Oh, My My . . . A No. 5 US pop hit for Ringo, released in 1973, charted in 1974. As mentioned earlier in my drawing from the Rough Guide to The Beatles book, Ringo (like, it comes to mind, Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones) always had many musician friends of great repute ready and willing to lend a helping hand on his albums/songs. On this one, we have Billy Preston on keyboards, longtime Beatles’ associate (especially on solo stuff) Klaus Voorman on bass, drummer Jim Keltner, horn player Jim, uh, really, Horn (also on many 70s Stones’ albums) along with backup singers Martha Reeves of The Vandellas and Merry Clayton, she of the immortal contribution to the Stones’ Gimme Shelter.
        
    15. John Lennon, I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama . . . One of my favorites from Imagine. It’s suggested, in a book I have, that Lennon’s sentiments were not so well expressed on the song, terming it “a feverish, semi-coherent rant’. If so, maybe that’s why it’s good. Maybe someone not wanting to be a soldier sent off to die for the misguided policies of politicians and militarists, or not wanting to be a conformist in any way to what society seems to expect, might rant feverishly. Critics. Eye rolls.
        
    16. Paul McCartney, Ain’t No Sunshine (live, from Unplugged: The Official Bootleg) . . . A great cover version from a great live album issued in 1993 when ‘unplugged’ albums were a ‘thing’, of the Bill Withers smash hit. Hamish Stuart of McCartney’s band handles lead vocals while Macca drums on the track. The album is a mixture of McCartney/Beatles/covers. Great stuff.
        
    17. George Harrison, Beware Of Darkness . . . What a ridiculously good album All Things Must Pass is. Yet another example here.
    18. Paul McCartney/Wings, Picasso’s Last Words (Drink To Me) . . . The genesis of the song results, apparently, from a meeting a vacationing McCartney had with actors Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen on the set of the movie Papillon. McCartney dined with Hoffman, who challenged him to write a song about ‘anything’ if presented with ‘anything’ to write about. What Hoffman presented was a magazine featuring the death of Picasso and his last words and, presto, “he’s doing it’ Hoffman raved to his wife about McCartney’s innate creativity.
        
    19. Ringo Starr, I’m The Greatest . . . A John Lennon-penned tune, from the ‘Ringo’ album, 1973. See previous thoughts on solo Beatles helping out solo Beatles on their solo albums, post-breakup. So, why didn’t they just stay together, one might wonder. It’s fine, long ago reality, we got some great music out of it, regardless.
        
    20. John Lennon, Out The Blue . . . From the Mind Games album, one of the many songs Lennon wrote in tribute to Yoko Ono, during a period when they were separated, which prompted some of Lennon’s best work and their eventual reconciliation.
        
    21. George Harrison, It’s What You Value . . . From 33 1/3, released in 1976. It was the album’s fourth single, lyrically – “someone’s driving a 450 . . . ” a reference to Harrison paying drummer Jim Keltner with a Mercedes 450 SL, apparently at Keltner’s request, in lieu of money for Keltner’s playing on Harrison’s 1974 Dark Horse album tour.
        
    22. Ringo Starr, Snookeroo . . . Another hit from Ringo’s Goodnight Vienna album, this one written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Like many Ringo songs/hits, almost as interesting as the song is who plays on it. In this case it’s: Robbie Robertson of The Band on guitar. Elton John, piano. James Newton Howard of Elton’s band and later to become a renowned movie score writer (Pretty Woman, Space Jam, The Fugitive, The Dark Knight, etc.) and award winner, on synthesizer. The aformentioned Klaus Voorman and Jim Keltner on bass and drums, respectively and Bobby Keys of Rolling Stones fame on horns.
        
    23. John Lennon, Steel And Glass . . . Lennon, to read some books or magazine articles, dismissed 1974’s Walls and Bridges album as the work of an uninspired soul in the midst of a separation from the love of his life, during his infamous year-long ‘lost weekend’ of partying and other debauchery while apart from Yoko Ono. Maybe he said it for Yoko’s benefit. And maybe he should have stayed away because I think it’s a great album, as do many. But, pain is often great inspiration for creativity.
        
    24. George Harrison, Blow Away . . . The hit single from Harrison’s self-titled 1979 album, marking something of a comeback for him at the time. It did better business in North American than on Harrison’s home turf the UK, though. It was No. 7 and 16 in Canada and the US, respectively, but only No. 51 in the UK. I remember when the album came out, liked the single, never bought the album, had the single on compilations only until fairly recently when I bought the album on CD for a buck or two at a flea market.
        
    25. John Lennon, Meat City . . . Always liked this aggressive boogie funky noise from the Mind Games album. Lennon was often at his best when he just flat-out rocked.
        
    26. Paul McCartney/Wings, Cafe On The Left Bank . . . From the London Town album, 1978. Good tune, always liked it, I suppose I’m playing it because I mentioned it recently when talking about the maybe weird ways in which songs I play come to mind. The example was me choosing Flash And The Pan’s Man In The Middle because I picked the middle of three wine bottles at the store, prompting me to speculate that I’d have played Cafe On The Left Bank had I picked the bottle on the left. I’ve been back to the liquor store at least once since, still haven’t picked a bottle on the left. And I’m left-handed. Right, that’s enough. Next!
        
    27. George Harrison, Tired Of Midnight Blue . . . From 1975’s Extra Texture, easily one of the standout cuts on that album in my opinion. Leon Russell, who had been part of Harrison’s Concert For Bangladesh in 1971, contributes on piano.
        
    28. Paul McCartney/Wings, Go Now (live, from Wings Over America) . . . A song made famous to pop/rock listeners via The Moody Blues version released in 1964 and sung by Denny Laine who reprised it with Wings on the tour that yielded the triple live album released in late 1976. The song was originally done, also in 1964, by R & B/soul singer Bessie Banks, and a great version that one is, too.