1. The Electric Flag, Groovin’ Is Easy . . . From the 1968 debut studio album A Long Time Comin’, which came out after the band had already appeared at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.  It’s the one and only studio record Electric Flag co-founder Mike Bloomfield appeared on, before the mercurial guitarist of Butterfield Blues Band and Bob Dylan session work fame departed. The band, which also featured co-founding drummer Buddy Miles of solo, Santana and Hendrix’ Band of Gypsys fame, went on for a couple more studio albums before calling it quits.

2. Eric Burdon & War, Paint It Black Medley (Black on Black in Black/Paint It Black I/Laurel & Hardy/Pintelo Negro II/P.C./Blackbird/Paint It Black III) . . . How I like my covers, a total reinterpretation of the Rolling Stones’ classic into a 13-minute soul funk rock epic.

3. Keith Richards, Locked Away . . . Soulful ballad from Richards’ great 1988 solo debut album, Talk Is Cheap.

4. Rush, Hope/The Main Monkey Business/Malignant Narcissism (instrumentals) . . . I strung together the three instrumentals from Rush’s 2007 album Snakes and Arrows. They don’t appear consecutively on the album. A different genre but as with, say, The Allman Brothers, Rush’s instrumentals are great songs all on their own. Hope is a wonderful solo acoustic guitar piece by Alex Lifeson followed by the two full-band instrumentals.

5. Gillan and Glover, I Can’t Dance To That . . . One of the rockier tunes from the Deep Purple singer and bass player’s 1988 collaboration, Accidentally On Purpose. Dr. John helps out on piano on the album.

6. David Wilcox, Cactus . . . Will there be cigarettes in heaven? Great opening line to this tune by the Canadian music veteran. And I don’t even smoke.

7. Screaming Trees, Nearly Lost You . . . Well, alas, we did lose former Screaming Trees lead singer Mark Lanegan last week at just 57. To my knowledge he had been clean for some years but had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. Lanegan also had a solo career and appeared on several Queens of The Stone Age albums. I’ve played it before, relatively recently but to me, it’s Screaming Trees’ best song. So here it is again.

8. Procol Harum, Long Gone Geek . .. In tribute to another popular music loss, Procol’s lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Gary Brooker, who also died this past week, age 76.

9. Sass Jordan, Leaving Trunk . . . The Sleepy John Estes blues classic, also covered by the likes of Taj Mahal. Jordan did it for her fine 2020 blues covers album, Rebel Moon Blues.

10. Quicksilver Messenger Service, I Hear You Knockin’ (It’s Too Late) . . . Great bluesy tune that arguably inexplicably didn’t make the cut for the band’s self-titled debut album in 1968.
    
11. John Mellencamp, Another Sunny Day 12/25 . . . From 1994’s Dance Naked album, around the time Mellencamp’s sales started to decline as, arguably, his creativity further blossomed.

12. Duke Robillard, Don’t Bother Trying To Steal Her Love . . . From the Roomful of Blues band founder and former Fabulous Thunderbirds’ guitarist’s 2019 album Ear Worms. I pulled it from a great Stony Plain Records freebie promo compilation I happened upon in my friendly neighborhood record store recently. One of several coming up in the set from that fine collection.

13. Sue Foley, The Ice Queen . . . From that same Stony Plain compilation, the title cut from the Ottawa blues guitarist/singer’s 2018 album.

14. Donovan, Season Of The Witch . . . So many people have covered this, including Vanilla Fudge and the Super Session album boys (Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield, Stephen Stills). This is the original by Donovan, although his sometime collaborator Shawn Phillips has also claimed authorship.

15. Steve Strongman, Tired Of Talkin’ . . . Title cut from the Canadian guitarist/singer/songwriter’s 2019 album and the last song in tonight’s set pulled from the Stony Plain Records compilation.
    
16. The Beatles, Think For Yourself . . . Kick-butt George Harrison-penned tune from what I increasingly as time goes on have come to think of as arguably The Beatles’ finest album, or certainly way up there, Rubber Soul. Of course, there’s so many good ones it’s impossible to choose, but of late it’s the Beatles’ album I have been spinning the most. It’s one of the first non-compilation albums I ever heard, my older sister bringing it home back when it was released. In any event, interesting reading about the track, what with the two bass guitar parts, including one played by Paul McCartney through a fuzz box, which gives the tune its distinct sound.

17. The Hourglass (precursor to The Allman Brothers Band), B.B. King Medley (Sweet Little Angel/It’s My Own Fault/How Blue Can You Get?) . . . I perhaps cheated a bit for the next few songs. I’ve pulled them all from one of two fine Duane Allman anthologies I have that feature his work with myriad artists including of course the Allmans and their early bands, like The Hourglass, which featured Duane with Gregg on lead vocals.

18. Wilson Pickett, Hey Jude . . . Duane Allman does the lead guitar honors on Pickett’s Beatles’ cover.

19. Aretha Franklin, The Weight . . . Duane Allman again, on Aretha’s soulful interpretation of The Band tune.

20. Duane Allman, Goin’ Down Slow . . . A song that shows that Duane could easily have been a lead singer, too. Allman Brothers late great bassist Berry Oakley also appears on the track.

21. Wishbone Ash, Time Was . . . Perfect prog track, arguably. Starts slow, then the twin guitar attack of Andy Powell and Ted Turner kicks in as the tempo speeds up. Another one of those long songs, nearly 10 minutes, that doesn’t seem so.

22. Supertramp, Better Days . . . From the first album, Brother Where You Bound from 1985, that the band did after the departure of Rodger Hodgson, leaving Rick Davies in full command. It’s a good album musically, albeit dated lyrically in many of its 1980s references to people, places and circumstances of the still-ongoing Cold War. To me, the album is harder edged and harkens back to the glory days of Crime of The Century, Crisis What Crisis and Even In The Quietest Moments that preceded the commercial but to me somewhat overly pop-oriented monster that was Breakfast In America which was tailored for the US market. Things got worse with Breakfast’s followup, . . . Famous Last Words, a bland pop album which signified the split between Hodgson, who wanted to maintain that direction and Davies, who wanted a return to the more progressive rock approach of the pre-Breakfast albums.

    I’ll admit that, while I have it, band loyalty I guess, I don’t really know Famous Last Words, the lead single It’s Raining Again (yecch) having turned me off immediately. Maybe I should try again, and I will. In fact I just pulled it up online but it’s a struggle, folks. And I’m not down on Breakfast In America, either. Decent enough album and I saw that tour, amazing but of course it wasn’t just that album’s songs they played. But when people say it’s Supertramp’s best, to each their own but, er, no. Sales don’t necessarily reflect quality or creativity and I suppose a lot of it is how so many of Breakfast’s songs were played to death on radio. I remember at one point with Breakfast thinking, people are crapping all over the Bee Gees for their falsetto vocals on their disco stuff. Yet the yecch “take a look at my girlfriend’ opening salvo of the title cut to Breakfast In America was OK? Honestly, what a candy-ass song and vocal. I mean, this was the same band that did School, Bloody Well Right and so on? I suppose that was my emergence, at age 20, into critical thinking. The three albums that preceded Breakfast easily eclipse it musically. So there. And on that note, see you next week.

1. Fleetwood Mac, Before The Beginning . . . Then Play On, the 1969 album that was Peter Green’s swan song with the band he founded, is likely my favorite by the group. I love blues which were the foundation of Green’s version of the band, but Then Play On had a broader stylistic scope, dabbling in blues rock, folk rock and psychedelia. This Green-penned and sung track is a good example. Not that I ever need reminding of the album but I was prompted to play it by a review list last week on allmusic.com of Mac releases that people who know the band only from the Buckingham-Nicks commercial monster period might not be aware of. And, it’s also worth checking out the band’s middle period, up until 1974 and also mentioned by allmusic, when guitarist-songwriter Bob Welch was a member. It’s a great period I’ve mined before on the show and will again.

2. Sly and The Family Stone, Family Affair . . . A No. 1 hit single in 1971. I normally don’t play singles on this deep cuts show but figured it fit, in terms of the title at least. The lyrics, not so much.

3. Family, See Through Windows . . . I just had to get a song in by the band Family. So diverse, Family’s blend of various styles – hard rock, jazz rock, psychedelia – into a stirring stew. Among the members was Ric Grech on bass, violin and cello and he appears at the end of tonight’s set, as a member of Blind Faith. This one’s from Family’s 1968 debut album, Music In A Doll’s House, which prompted a name change for a record The Beatles were working on at the time. The fabs had planned to call their record A Doll’s House but when Family’s album came out in July, The Beatles changed their title to simply The Beatles for the album which has long since become better known as the White Album. It wasn’t released until November of 1968.

4. Genesis, The Return Of The Giant Hogweed . . . I’ve been trying to get this in for a while but it didn’t fit the tone of the last few shows. Not sure it really does now, but in terms of title it fits a pattern as you’ll see as we move along. Besides, sometimes I’ll play songs that fit a musical theme, other times I like to mix things up, sometimes drastically, like a ballad followed by a metal tune. Not doing that so much tonight though. Deliberately over the top lyrics about the invasive – and dangerous if you’re not careful with its toxic sap – species giant hogweed presented in typical early Genesis progressive style. From Nursery Cryme, 1971. It was the band’s third album and first to feature drummer/vocalist Phil Collins and guitarist Steve Hackett along with lead singer Peter Gabriel, bassist/guitarist Mike Rutherford and keyboard player Tony Banks – the classic lineup of the group’s full-blown progressive rock period.

5. Bruce Springsteen, Jungleland . . . From hogweed to the jungle, get it? OK, that’s enough of that nonsense with song titles. Maybe. Great tune/lyrics from Born To Run. If a nearly 10-minute song can be too short, this may well be an example.

6. Jethro Tull, Hunt By Numbers . . . Now, if you listen to the lyrics, a cat is going hunting, maybe in the jungle. Remember, I did say ‘maybe’ with the title stuff. Last one, though. Promise. Good riff-rocker, interesting subject matter, from 1999’s j-tull dot com album, which I’ve been revisiting lately. It received lukewarm to poor reviews from critics but isn’t that generally the case with latter-day albums by veteran bands, with rare exceptions – like the mostly positive reviews Tull’s new album, The Zealot Gene, is deservedly getting. I played a track from the new one a few weeks back and will get back to it at some point as that release grows on me with repeated plays. As for j-tull dot com, it’s typically diverse Tull and I’ve always liked it, but I’m a big fan of all the band’s work – even to an extent their 1984 electronic, synth-laden release Under Wraps. The j-tull dot com (that’s how the title was written) record also stirs fond memories of the tour, my elder son’s first exposure, at age 12, to Tull live in July, 2000 at Hamilton Place. It was a great show, including Hunt By Numbers in the set. We saw the next three tours together, the last in 2007 at Massey Hall in Toronto. Just two years before that, we attended a fantastic 27-song Tull performance at Massey but sadly, Ian Anderson’s voice was pretty much totally shot, at least for live purposes, by 2007 at the same venue. It was still a good show, but my son and I agreed that it was over for us as far as live Tull was concerned.

7. Gov’t Mule, Helter Skelter (live) . . . Smokin’ live version of the Beatles’ track, from the Mule’s Bald Boy album. Just kidding and more on that in a bit. Actually, it’s from a sprawling 3-CD live album called Mulennium the group recorded as 1999 became 2000, at the Roxy Theatre in Atlanta, Ga. While I like the Mule’s original material, the Allman Brothers offshoot led by guitarist/vocalist Warren Haynes does terrific covers of classic rock tunes so I burned my own CD of them some years ago. Among the tracks, besides this one – King Crimson’s 21^st Century Schizoid Man, Humble Pie’s 30 Days In The Hole, Steppenwolf’s Don’t Step On The Grass, Sam, Free’s Mr. Big, Deep Purple’s Maybe I’m A Leo. The list is long, so I’ll have to do my own Vol. II, and beyond, at some point. The band has also done two separate live covers albums dedicated, respectively, to Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones: Dark Side Of The Mule and Stoned Side Of The Mule. The Stones’ covers album was a limited, vinyl-only release, to my knowledge, for a recent Record Store Day although it’s all available online, at least on YouTube.

8. David Bowie, All The Madmen . . . If you’re doing a deep cuts show, Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World album from 1970 (1971 in the UK) is a surefire place to go for material. Brilliant record. No huge commercial hits, not even the title cut which went somewhat unnoticed until Lulu covered it for a No. 3 UK hit in 1974 on a version produced by Bowie and guitarist Mick Ronson. Nirvana covered it and it was released on their acclaimed 1994 MTV Unplugged album.

9. Robin Trower, A Tale Untold . . . Starts out kinda funky, uptempo, with typically great guitar by Trower and vocals by the late great James Dewar before transitioning into a slow blues for the last minute or so of the five and a half minute song.

10. Hawkwind, Magnu . . . Epic space rock from 1975’s Warrior On The Edge Of Time album. It was bassist Lemmy’s last album with Hawkwind. He was fired on the eve of the record’s release after an arrest for drug possession. Then came Motorhead.

11. Glenn Hughes, Into The Void . . . Not the Black Sabbath song, although a then messed-up on drugs and booze Hughes was briefly in Sabbath during a turbulent revolving door lineup period in that band’s history, the mid- to late 1980s after singer Ronnie James Dio departed. This one’s from the former Trapeze and Deep Purple bassist/singer’s 1994 album, From Now On. A touch overproduced for my taste, but a good song, nevertheless.

12. Blackmore’s Night, Village On The Sand . . . Celtic-type tune from former Deep Purple and (when the band is active) Rainbow guitarist Ritchie Blackmore’s now longtime folk rock/medieval rock project with his lead singer/multi-instrumentalist wife Candice Night.

13. Carole King, Way Over Yonder . . . This is a deep cuts show but to me there really isn’t a deep cut on Tapestry, one of the greatest albums ever, by anyone. All the songs are well known but we’ll call this a deep cut since it wasn’t one of the singles from the record.

14. Bobbie Gentry, Okolona River Bottom Band . . . She’s known for the great Ode To Billie Joe. But as I say probably every time I play her, Gentry, who retired at age 40 in 1982 and by choice virtually disappeared from view, is far more than just that one song, a No. 1 hit in 1967. Also a guitarist, she was a trailblazer, among the first female artists, in the United States at least, to write and produce her own material. Like this song, featuring her versatile vocals, in this case taking a sultry, raunchy approach. Gentry, now 79, is living in a gated community in Tennessee. But nobody knows for sure. That makes her forever cool, to me.

15. The Band, The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show . . . Great shared vocals by Rick Danko and Levon Helm on this jaunty tune from Stage Fright.

16. Chicken Shack, I’d Rather Go Blind . . . A song co-written and made famous by Etta James and covered by many including Rod Stewart, this version features Christine Perfect (later McVie) of future Fleetwood Mac fame on lead vocals during her brief period, 1968-69, with the British blues band.

17. The Rolling Stones, Stray Cat Blues (live, from Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out!) . . . A slower, bluesier arrangement than the rocking, raunchy studio version on Beggars Banquet. Equally excellent.

18. Pat Travers Band, Is This Love . . . A buddy of mine suggested I think Jamaica for this week, implying reggae. I said if you want reggae, get your own show and stop trying to influence mine. Then mentioned I had played Peter Tosh recently so, so there. Kidding around, bud! About the ‘get your own show’ part. I love reggae. Actually I do appreciate suggestions, at least of genres, because they trigger the thought process and I did tell him it was a worthy one. Maybe a reggae show soon, or a segment of one. The risk with a full themed show – although my recent blues show went over big – is that you might lose listeners who might not be into a full genre-based show. And the station does have reggae shows. All of which is a roundabout way of saying I did think Jamaica – Canadian rocker Travers covered this Bob Marley tune on his 1980 Crash and Burn album. A nice version, too.

19. Steve Miller Band, Jackson-Kent Blues . . . Amazing song in my opinion, both musically and lyrically, about the Kent State and Jackson State shootings of students by the National Guard (Kent) and state police in 1970. Great wah wah guitar, for one thing. It was released on Miller’s 1970 album, Number 5, still a few years before the band transitioned from their early (and terrific) more psychedelic sound to the more melodic rock and pop that brought big commercial success with songs like The Joker and the Fly Like An Eagle and Book of Dreams albums. For those not up on early Miller, it’s worth checking out.

20. The J. Geils Band, Night Time . . . Cover of a tune by 1960s New York City band The Strangeloves. It appeared on Geils’ 1980 album, Love Stinks. Interesting creation, The Strangeloves, well worth reading about. They were a three-man songwriting and production team comprised of Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer who wrote such hits as My Boyfriend’s Back by American girl group The Angels. They then decided to form a foreign beat group, pretending to be a band of Australian brothers raised on a sheep farm, complete with fictional backstory. Trouble arose when they got successful enough to tour, which they did but were much more comfortable being in the background, writing and doing studio work. So they hired a group of musicians to play on the road while they continued writing. Somewhat the reverse of The Monkees who, at least at first, wrote very little of their own material. Highly recommended reading, about The Strangeloves. All three members are still around, having made a major mark on the music industry including co-founding Sire Records and working with such artists as Blondie, Eric Burdon & War and Marshall Crenshaw.

21. Blind Faith, Do What You Like . . . I love the one and only Blind Faith album, introduced to me by my older, late brother so many years ago. But I hadn’t played this near-16 minute album-closing epic in ages. Silly me. The reason was, while I always liked the groove for the majority of the tune, I recalled a long drum solo by Ginger Baker. And you know how it can be, say, in a concert, with drum solos. Or any solos, the self-indulgent ones where everything comes to a stop as an artist the audience knows can play has to show us that he or she can, indeed, play. I rarely, for instance, listen to the 16-minute live version of Cream’s Toad on the Wheels of Fire album, with of course Baker drumming. Lots of people love it, Baker was a great drummer, but I much prefer the five-minute version on Cream’s debut album, Fresh Cream where it’s more of an actual song.That’s why I like The Allman Brothers; they’re a so-called jam band but their solos are always incorporated nicely into the song, so they don’t come across as interminable and a good excuse for a bathroom or beer break. I like Santana a lot but I remember seeing the band ages ago in Toronto and sheesh, first Santana himself takes a solo, or maybe it was the drummer but then the bass player got into it, too. Three extended odes to excess, back to back to back. I was there with my then-wife but a friend of mine, also a big Santana fan, and I the next day at work compared notes on the show, which was otherwise great. I asked him what he thought of the solos, knowing he’s a guitarist fanatic. “Oh, I went to the bathroom during that,” he said. But maybe he was referring to the bass or drum solos.

    Anyway, off on another tangent I just went. All,in a ridiculously roundabout way, to stress that my memory of this great Blind Faith tune was faulty. Baker’s drum solo is only about four minutes long, from the nine-minute mark to 12:51 and, Allmans-like, it fits perfectly as part of the hypnotic, extended piece. The rest of the band – guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist Ric Grech of Family fame and singer Steve Winwood – rejoin the parade at 12:51, making this the epitome of an extended supergroup track. I’ll never stop after track five of the six-song album again.

I wasn’t going to do a Valentine’s Day-themed show – because I abhor cliches/never like doing what anyone might be expecting. But I was going to dip into it a bit, as maybe an admittedly juvenile joke, and start the show with Zappa’s Dinah Moe Humm followed by The Who’s Trick of the Light, about an encounter with a hooker. Then, lo and behold as I was into show prep on Saturday evening, a friend and show supporter texted me and asked what I might be playing specific to Valentine’s Day. He knows my nature but I did mention to him my Zappa and Who plans, after which he requested The Beatles’ Run For Your Life. That set us off on a  tangent after his Beatles’ suggestion prompted me to think of The Rolling Stones’ Stupid Girl. He then mentioned that a work colleague of his has a playlist he calls Psycho Love Songs. Just having fun. In any event, I wound up going on a quite different path for tonight’s show than my original plans. The result is not so much a Valentine’s Day show but a show whose song titles and lyrics reflect the human condition in the ongoing ups and downs of relationships.

1. Goddo, Cock On . . . The title of this tune, featuring great guitar work from Gino Scarpelli, dates to Greg Godovitz’s days in Fludd. That band wanted to title its second album Cock On, with the group dressed as flashers in trenchcoats on the cover, but it didn’t, er, fly with their record company. Subsequent companies that distributed Goddo’s work weren’t as skittish. I would never have seen Goddo live if it weren’t for a wonderful reunion I had about seven years ago with two brothers with whom I grew up as we spent some of our childhood years together in Peru, where our parents were working from the late 1960s to early 1970s. Hadn’t seen the boys in, by that time, nearly 50 years but we had earlier reconnected via social media, discovered a shared love for music, settled on our reunion get-together being a rock show, and Goddo came through for us at a great show in Cambridge, Ontario.

1. 2. Frank Zappa, Dinah Moe Humm . . . Yeah, well. The lyrics tell the tale.

1. 3. The Firm, Satisfaction Guaranteed . . . Nice tune, was a single, from the short-lived Firm featuring Zep’s Jimmy Page and Free/Bad Company’s voice of all rock voices, Paul Rodgers. Chris Slade, best known for drumming on several AC/DC albums including the big seller The Razors Edge (yes, Razors, AC/DC doesn’t believe in much punctuation) that brought us Thunderstruck, was behind the kit for The Firm. Bassist to the stars Tony Franklin held down the bottom end.

1. 4. Electric Light Orchestra, Little Town Flirt . . . ELO leader Jeff Lynne’s tribute to Del Shannon’s hit. It was played around with on the sessions for ELO’s 1979 Discovery album but never finished and released until the 2001 CD re-issue of the album, which featured the hits Don’t Bring Me Down, Shine A Little Love and Confusion.

1. 5. The Who, Trick Of The Light . . . John Entwistle’s adventure with a prostitute or, at least, his thoughts on what that might be like. Killer track, loud, aggressive, one of my favorite Who songs from one of my favorite Who albums, Who Are You, the final one with Keith Moon on drums.

1. 6. The Rolling Stones, Stupid Girl . . . Typical early Stones put down of women. From Aftermath, 1966. Mick Jagger must have just been in an argument with his girl at the time, Chrissie Shrimpton. Shrimpton, a model and actrress, was apparently embarrassed by this song and the similar tone of several tracks on the album, which she figured, with reason, many people associated with her relationship with Jagger. The couple broke up the same year.

1. 7. Bob Dylan, Idiot Wind (The Bootleg Series Vol. 14 version) . . . Spare, acoustic treatment of what, as the song progresses, goes from a diatribe to shared guilt at the breaking up of a relationship. From ‘you’re an idiot, babe’ to ‘we’re idiots, babe”. Originally released on the Blood On The Tracks album with more instrumentation, there are many versions of this on the various Dylan bootleg series albums. This one’s from More Blood, More Tracks, No. 14. Blood On The Tracks is often considered and reviewed as autobiographical in terms of Dylan’s relationship with his then-wife Sara. Yet he has said his life is not the source material. It makes for interesting reading and analysis of the album. In any event, Blood On The Tracks, and to a slightly lesser extent the follow-up, Desire, particularly in the song Sara, are raw treatments of the emotions of relationships that would resonate with anyone, just brilliant stuff. Pain is, maybe sadly, good for art.

1. 8. The Beatles, Run For Your Life . . . John Lennon apparently regretted this song, it might be autobiographical, he wasn’t always the nicest individual. Yet musically, I’ve always liked it, despite many critics dismissing it. It was one of the songs that always stood out to me when my older sister brought Rubber Soul home, and played it to death.

1. 9. Robert Palmer, In Walks Love Again . . . From Secrets, the album that got me into Palmer via the hits Bad Case Of Loving You (Doctor Doctor) and, especially for me, Jealous, great riff tune from a great album, top to bottom.

1. 10. Robert Plant, Dance With You Tonight . . . Lovely ballad of love and loss from his most recent studio album, Carry Fire, 2017.

1. 11. King Crimson, Three Of A Perfect Pair . . . Not necessarily about a threesome, I don’t think. Telling lyrics, though, from the third in the set of albums Crimson did upon their return to recording after seven years away, with a new lineup, starting with 1981’s Discipline. Other albums in the threesome are Beat, 1982, and this one, 1984. I’m not alone in calling it the Talking Heads-sound alike version of Crimson although who influenced who, given Crimson’s pedigree, who can say?

1. 12. The Guess Who, Silver Bird . . . Outtake, with typically beautiful vocals by Burton Cummings, from the Canned Wheat sessions but not released, or at least added, to the album until an expanded re-release in 2000. The track also appeared on a bonus disc on an expanded re-release of the American Woman album.

1. 13. The Animals, A Girl Named Sandoz . . . This was going to be in my set tonight regardless of Valentine’s Day or a ‘relationship’ set so, while it fits the theme, it’s a ‘survivor’ of my original plan, which also included some prog like early Genesis. But as I went along with the theme, that stuff (Genesis, etc.) just didn’t fit. Next week, perhaps. In any event, what a brilliant, heavy, psychedelic, whatever you want to call it, track by The Animals.

1. 14. Iron Butterfly, Possession . . . Same with this one, like the Animals track preceding it, was in my original set before ‘the text’ from my buddy set the show off in another direction. Said it before but these guys were so much more than In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. It’s almost menacing stuff, the sound, to me, including Doug Ingle’s vocals. Deep and dark. Short, sweet or not so sweet, and to the point lyrics. One verse, that’s it. “When a man has a woman and he doesn’t really love her, why does he turn inside, when she starts to love another . . . it’s possession (repeated).”

1. 15. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Dirty Pool . . . Typical ‘I been done wrong’ lyrics to this great slow blues original from SRV’s debut album, Texas Flood.

1. 16. Parliament, All Your Goodies Are Gone . . . I love Parliament, and Funkadelic, too. George Clinton is a genius. Haven’t played anything from his collective in a while. Here we are.

1. 17. Joe Jackson, We Can’t Live Together . . . JJ”s lyrics, on this cut from his 1986 Big World album arguably accurately sum up lots of relationships.

1. 18. Bobby “Blue” Bland, Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City . . . I feel as if I’ve played this beauty fairly recently, too recently, but it fit the show. Whitesnake did a cover I really like, during their early, bluesier period shortly after Deep Purple broke up in 1976 and final (at the time) leader singer David Coverdale formed Whitesnake, eventually incorporating former Purple mates Ian Paice (drums) and Jon Lord (keyboards) into his new band.

1. 19. Stevie Wonder, Blame It On The Sun . . . Beautiful ballad, touching lyrics of love lost, from Talking Book, which gave us the hit Superstition.

1. 20. Leonard Cohen, The Guests . . . Genius, really, from this late Canadian icon. Great song, great lyrics, great delivery.

1. 21. Paul Butterfield’s Better Days, Take Your Pleasure Where You Find It . . . I realized, after I did my blues show last week, that I had not played any Paul Butterfield, a blues icon I admire. I have before of course and in any event, I played 29 songs which of course left out countless others which is why I intend to revisit the blues show soon. And I do include blues throughout my sets, because that’s of course the roots of the classic rock I play. This one, from Butterfield’s later band, Better Days, isn’t necessarily blues, though. It’s a funky cool workout from the second Better Days album, It All Comes Back.

1. 22. Love, Always See Your Face . . . Despite my natural misgivings about cliches, I could not do a show, on Valentine’s Day, without playing a song by a band named Love, which I planned to do regardless. I love Love, terrific band led by the immortal Arthur Lee. Love never sold a lot but so influential and beyond that, just great to listen to. They, to me, are one of those bands that, when one gets deeper into music, sees an album like Forever Changes which to that point one has not heard, acclaimed as one of the greatest albums in history to which the initial response might be, then why have I not heard it? Well, because it didn’t get played much, for whatever reason. But then you listen to it, and all of the band’s stuff, and you are blown away in fact my favorite Love song if I had to pick one from so many, and which I’ve played on the show before, Signed D.C. , about drug addiction, isn’t even on Forever Changes. It’s on the self-titled debut album. Always See Your Face is from the band’s fourth album, Four Sail, by which time the group was already splintering in terms of membership from the core original band led by Lee that had produced the first three albums.

1. 23. Van Morrison, Warm Love (live, from It’s Too Late To Stop Now) . . . A hit single of some note originally on the Hard Nose The Highway studio album, this is the live version from Van The Man’s terrific 1974 live album It’s Too Late To Stop Now. Either version is terrific, the live one might be, as live versions can be, slightly more up-tempo; I just happened to pick the concert version.

1. 24. Mountain, Back Where I Belong . . . Hard rocker from Mountain’s Avalanche album.

1. 25. The Doors, You Make Me Real . . . Smokin’ track from Morrison Hotel. This one goes out to my old, and renewed acquaintance, high school and college friend 4C (names changed to protect the innocent but it’s his cool nomenclature). A cool guy I’ve known since 1972 (!!) with whom I’ve reconnected via a shared deep love of music. 4C discovered my show at some point and the rest is now not so much history but happening. And through it all I’ve discovered he loves the Doors, likely more than me although I love ’em, and particularly it seems the Morrison Hotel album from which I drew this wonderful track. Only problem with it is it’s too short!

1. 26. Elton John, It Ain’t Gonna Be Easy . . . Long, slow blues, always been my favorite song from 1978’s A Single Man album and another one I feel as if I’ve played too recently but it fits the show theme so . . . A Single Man album was interesting in that EJ had parted ways with lyricist/collaborator Bernie Taupin, entering into a working relationship with lyricist Gary Osborne for several albums, as EJ’s commercial fortunes faded. To my ears, EJ still had this one good album left in him, particularly this track and others like Part Time Love, the single, and Big Dipper. Then, arguably, he went off the rails, at least to my taste.

1. 27. John Mayall (featuring Buddy Guy), I Could Cry . . . Guy shares vocals with Mayall – and is directly referenced in the somewhat adjusted lyrics – on this tune from Mayall’s 1993 album Wake Up Call. The original song was written by longtime Guy collaborator and blues legend Junior Wells. Amazing guitar solo but what else would one expect from Buddy Guy. That said, there’s a terrific live version of this song available on YouTube, with Mayall, featuring Coco Montoya, then in the Bluesbreakers and who later went solo, matching Guy’s brilliance.

1. 28. Ian Hunter, We Gotta Get Out Of Here . . . From Ian Hunter’s 1980 live album, Welcome To The Club. Always credited as a live version, sure sounds like a studio add-on to me and always has. In any case, backup singer/foil Ellen Foley, who was Meat Loaf’s foil on Paradise By The Dashboard Light, just makes the track with her rant near the end.“Oh please I don’t want to go home yet. Come on, can’t you do anything I want to do? . . . What are we gonna do? Go home and watch the (pregnant pause) Super Bowl? (well, yes, actually). Re-runs of the Muhammad Ali, uh, Marlene Dietrich fight?” The uh, plus the pairing of Ali and actress Dietrich, just makes the line. Too funny, worth checking out the whole verse, and the song. And now I’m outta here because as I write this Sunday evening, I actually am going to go watch the Super Bowl.

1. Buddy Guy, Damn Right, I’ve Got The Blues . . . Title cut from the 1991 album that brought Buddy Guy back to mainstream prominence. He had not released a studio album for nine years to that point. Little Feat drummer Richie Hayward was in the core band on the record, which also featured guest spots on assorted tracks by guitarists Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler. The album was the start of a three-album best contemporary blues album Grammy Award streak for Guy, with his next two albums, Feels Like Rain (title cut written by John Hiatt) and Slippin’ In earning Grammy laurels.

2. Albert King, I’ll Play The Blues For You, Parts 1 & 2 . . . Soulful blues brilliance by one of the three Kings of the blues, the others of course B.B. and Freddie. They weren’t related, in fact Albert’s birth surname was Nelson and Freddie’s was Christian, though he later took the King surname of his mother. But, as B.B. was quoted as saying, about Albert and could be applied to Freddie, “he’s not my brother by blood, but he is my brother in blues.” But Albert is the only King I’m playing tonight. Just didn’t fit the others in and besides, I’ve enjoyed putting this blues show together so much there will be more, perhaps as soon as next week.

3. Alvin Lee, The Bluest Blues . . . Most of tonight’s show is comprised of cuts from many of the fathers and mothers of the blues from which the inspiration of so many classic rockers came. But I’ve thrown a few from those classic rockers into the set, including this beautiful slow blues from Lee, the late leader of Ten Years After who by 1994 had – aside from a 1989 reunion album of the original band – long since gone solo. This one features Lee’s good friend George Harrison, from some band you may have heard of, on slide guitar. The two met in a pub in the early 1970s, Harrison offered Lee the song So Sad, which appeared on Harrison’s Dark Horse album, Lee used it on one of his records and so began several collaborations between the two artists.

4. Blind Willie Johnson, Dark Was The Night Cold Was The Ground . . . Speaking of the bluest blues, this is truly deep blues stuff. Spooky gospel blues, written and recorded by Johnson in 1927. I’ve always loved this tune, just the title alone is cool, and somewhat menacing, to me. Throw in vocals that are essentially just humming and moaning, more vocalizations than articulated words, and, well, it’s great. So good that it’s one of 27 samples of music on the Voyager Golden Record, sent into space, as a sort of time capsule, in 1977 on Voyager space probes. The music, sounds and images were selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth to any intelligent extraterrestrial life that might encounter them. Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode represents rock and roll among the classical works by the likes of Bach and Mozart featured on the sounds sent to space.

5. Muddy Waters, Rollin’ Stone . . . The song that gave my favorite band their name, which leads into an original, and recent, blues tune of The Rolling Stones’ own plus a run of originals of blues songs the Stones, among others, covered. And that’s the beauty of music, isn’t it? It’s arguably the greatest gift humanity has given itself, and it keeps on giving. I can say without reservation that my calmest, most carefree moments come while listening to music I love including putting this show together every week. It speaks to a point made by Keith Richards of the Stones; that being that the greatest legacy a musician – and I would add music aficionados – can have is that they ‘passed it on.” Muddy took from his roots, passed it on to the Stones and so many others, and here we are, enriched forever by it.

6. The Rolling Stones, Back Of My Hand . . . Mick Jagger is thought of, generally and obviously, as a singer, but as Keith Richards has said, the pure Mick Jagger comes out when he plays harmonica. And he’s become a decent guitarist, too, including his nice slide work on top of his harp playing on this original blues track from 2005’s A Bigger Bang album. It’s the most recent album of original material by the boys, who did release the excellent blues covers album Blue and Lonesome in 2016. Who knows what will happen in the wake of Charlie Watts’ death; the band has always spoken since A Bigger Bang of having lots of material in the can, being worked on, etc. which was actually the genesis for Blue and Lonesome, where they as usual warmed up for a new release by playing old blues tracks until they realized, heck, this is great, let’s release this. As a big fan, I’d love to see them polish up the various tracks they’ve apparently been working on over the years, with Watts drumming, and finally release the long-promised new studio album of originals. I’d also be up for them continuing with studio work with Steve Jordan on the drum kit. Jordan, of course, is an accomplished musician and songwriter who came to widespread prominence playing in Richards’ X-Pensive Winos solo band both live and on studio record, and filled in admirably for Watts, to great reviews, on the most recent Stones’ tour. So, we’ll see, obviously.

    

7. Rev. Robert Wilkins, Prodigal Son . . . Ten minutes of hypnotic brilliance. The Stones covered it, in truncated form on the Beggars Banquet album. The Stones also played it on their 1969 American tour, just Keith Richards and Mick Jagger would come out, Richards strumming on a stool and Jagger singing, as an acoustic blues interlude. My own great memory of the Stones playing Prodigal Son live was the 1979 Keith Richards benefit for the blind concert in Oshawa, Ontario, his sentence/penance for the 1977 heroin drug bust in Toronto during the time the Stones appeared at the El Mocambo and were recording tracks that eventually appeared on Love You Live. Anyway, Keith and Ron Wood’s New Barbarians band had completed their opening set, the lights went down, except for a spotlight, back out came Richards on an acoustic and then out of the dark came Jagger, all dressed in white, and the dynamic duo broke into Prodigal Son. Great entrance, and then all hell broke loose, on came the rest of the Stones with Chuck Berry’s Let It Rock and on we rocked in the afternoon show. My buddy and I tried to stay for the evening reprise, hid in an arena bathroom, but security found and tossed us.

8. Robert Johnson, Stop Breaking Down Blues . . . Covered by many, Stones rocked it up on Exile On Main St. Back in ’72, just 13, it drew me to Robert Johnson.

9. Mississippi Fred McDowell, You Gotta Move . . . The great thing about bands you like, to me, is digging back into their influences – again, the ‘passed it on’ thing to which Keith Richards refers. It’s how I got into blues, and tracks like this, first heard by me on the Stones’ Sticky Fingers. But as much as I love the Stones, when I listen to the originals, Mick Jagger’s thoughts on Slim Harpo’s I’m A King Bee come to mind, although I have a tough time picking versions, if pressed. “What’s the point of listening to us doing “I’m A King Bee’ when you can hear Slim Harpo do it?” Agreed, Mick. BUT, you guys did it, and tunes like You Gotta Move, and it took many of us back to the originals and hence deeper into the blues greats’ catalogs, to endless reward. It’s actually what often perplexed the Stones and other British Invasion bands like The Beatles, Who and Kinks; that in many respects all they were doing was bringing American music to Americans who already had it, but didn’t apparently appreciate it.

10. Slim Harpo, Shake Your Hips . . . Speaking of Slim Harpo, not I’m A King Bee but another one the Stones covered for Exile On Main Street. Charlie Watts’s drumming is ridiculous. It’s not just the backbeat; to me it’s the little touches now and then that sound like someone hitting an empty pop can, plastic pail or garbage can or whatever, just the occasional single stroke. Pop! Brilliant. Yeah, sorry; I’m talking more about the Stones than Slim Harpo. Well, my excuse is that among my sources for tonight’s show is an excellent double CD compilation, curated by the Stones, from 2018. It’s called Confessin’ The Blues, features artwork by Ron Wood, and is excellent as an overall blues collection.

11. Howlin’ Wolf, Little Baby . . . The Stones covered this one on 1995’s Stripped, their excellent semi-acoustic let’s sort of do an unplugged album which was all the rage in the early to mid-1990s. But, we’re the Stones so we’ll do it our way with studio and live cuts including some plugged-in material.

12. Jimmy Reed, Little Rain . . . Great slow blues from Reed, somewhat uncharacteristic to me from other material I know from him. It’s another I plucked from the CD curated by the Stones and one they covered for the Blue and Lonesome album.

13. Son Seals, Telephone Angel . . . A modern electric blues guitarist/singer, he definitely led the stereotypical life of the blues. Shot in the jaw by his wife, requiring reconstructive surgery, lost part of his left leg due to diabetes complications, lost his belongings in a house fire while away on tour . . . He died in 2004 at age 62 of complications from diabetes. But he left us much enduring work, like this tune from his 1976 release, Midnight Son, acknowledged by many as his best album.

14. Bob Dylan, Blind Willie McTell . . . When this Infidels album outtake from 1983 came out on Dylan’s Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3 in 1991, fans and critics alike were amazed and perplexed all at once. How could he have held this back from release at the time? Well, that’s Dylan. Just a brilliant song, with spiritual overtones, like much of Dylan’s work, both musically and lyrically.

15. Blind Willie McTell, Statesboro Blues . . . And here’s Blind Willie himself, singing those blues as nobody else could or can, on a song The Allman Brothers later took to the masses via their live version on At Fillmore East.

16. Hound Dog Taylor & The Houserockers, Taylor’s Rock . . . Blistering instrumental featuring Taylor’s great guitar playing, from the longtime bluesman’s first studio album, Hound Dog Taylor and The Houserockers, which came out in 1971 after many unrecorded years on the road.

17. John Lee Hooker, It Serves You Right To Suffer . . . Spooky Hooker tune, the title cut from his 1966 album. The J. Geils Band later recorded an extended near-10 minute version on their great Live Full House album.

18. Bo Diddley, Crawdad . . . B-side to Diddley’s Walkin’ and Talkin’ single in 1960; typical of the propulsive Diddley sound. I like it better than the A-side.

19. Robert Nighthawk & His Flames Of Rhythm, Maxwell Street Medley . . . Nighthawk taught Muddy Waters and our next player, Earl Hooker, slide guitar but never achieved the commercial success of, particularly, Waters. And Nighthawk was influential beyond those two greats; B.B. King adapted parts of this tune for his own Sweet Little Angel.

20. Earl Hooker, Wah Wah Blues . . . Speaking of Earl Hooker . . . A great wah wah guitar instrumental from 1968.

21. Koko Taylor, I’m A Woman . . . Taylor’s adapted lyrics answer, from a female perspective, to Bo Diddley’s I’m A Man and Muddy Waters’ Mannish Boy. Terrific stuff, from her appropriately titled 1978 release, The Earthshaker.

22. Willie Mae “Big Mama’ Thornton, Hound Dog . . . Yes, the Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller-penned tune that Elvis Presley made famous. But it was a No. 1 hit for Thornton on the R & B charts for seven of the 14 weeks it spent on that list in 1953. Elvis did his more rocked-up version in 1956. Great versions, both.

23. Zu Zu Bollin, Why Don’t You Eat Where You Slept Last Night . . . Up tempo jazzy blues recorded in 1952 by the somewhat obscure Bollin that I dug up from a great series of blues compilations I own, a multi-volume set called Blues Masters: The Essential Blues Collection. Bollin, a Texas bluesman, worked with such arguably better-known talents as Duke Robillard and Percy Mayfield.

24. Johnny Copeland, Down On Bending Knees . . . Fun relationship-oriented stuff from Copeland, a T-Bone Walker disciple.

25. Dinah Washington, Baby, Get Lost . . . Speaking of relationships, Dinah ain’t taking no shit, here. “I got so many men they’re standing in line’ she sings. No kidding. She was married seven (!) times. Or six, depending on your source. All in 39 years on the planet, a life cut short due to hard living, booze and pills she took to battle insomnia, apparently. Her last husband was 1950s and 60s football great Dick (Night Train) Lane. A sad loss of a wonderful, expressive voice.

26. Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mojo Hand . . . Great up-tempo title cut from the Texas guitarist-songwriter’s 1962 album.

27. Bessie Smith, Me & My Gin . . . You listen to these old blues tracks and so much of it is so mind-blowing; one can hear the obvious influences on the artists, especially the white blues rock/rock and rollers, that followed. Sight unseen, I hear Janis Joplin in Smith’s terrific raw vocals, and Joplin indeed credited Smith as an influence.

28. Little Walter, I Got To Go . . . A giant of blues harmonica, a major influence on so many, including Mick Jagger. The Rolling Stones covered it, one of four Little Walter (born Marion Walter Jacobs)-penned tunes, on their 2016 album Blue and Lonesome.

29. Lead Belly, Good Night, Irene . . . So many versions of this standard, including several by Lead Belly (Huddie William Ledbetter) himself. This is the 2:38-length version I pulled from The Essential Recordings. And on that note, good night until next week.

1. Creedence Clearwater Revival, It Came Out Of The Sky . . . Satirical Chuck Berry-type rock and roller about what happens when a UFO falls on an Illinois farmer’s land. It was a single in some countries but is largely considered a CCR deep cut. It appeared on the band’s third album release – Willy and The Poor Boys – in one year (!!), 1969, just three months after their previous album, Green River, which came out eight months after Bayou Country. CCR lore has it that bandleader John Fogerty pushed the group to continue releasing albums as quickly as possible as he feared the band would be forgotten if they didn’t appear in the charts. This caused friction with the other band members, who chafed at the workload and figured it wiser to spread things out.

2. Gov’t Mule, Revolution Come, Revolution Go . . . Eight-minute title cut, with a nice groove, from the Mule’s most recent studio album, released in 2017. Gov’t Mule is an Allman Brothers Band offshoot that started in 1994, which sounds funny now since the Warren Haynes-led band has become a much-lauded entity in itself, having released 10 studio albums and a long list of live albums.

3. Warren Zevon, Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song) . . . A tune that I’d say accurately sums up the role and perhaps plight of enforcers in hockey, particularly up to the time of the song’s release on Zevon’s 2002 album My Ride’s Here. The lyrics were co-written with former sports journalist turned acclaimed author (Tuesdays With Morrie, etc.) and multi-media talent Mitch Albom. David Letterman, a big Zevon fan who had the late great on his show many times, does the ‘hit somebody!’ backing vocals on the track.

4. Ian Thomas, Painted Ladies . . . Mine is a deep cuts show but I’m not so rigid as to ignore an occasional single, especially one that is now nearly 50 years old! This one came up in the station computer system while, as often happens, I was looking for something else – which often leads to welcome finds. Great song, most of us of a certain vintage know and remember it well. It was a No. 4 Canadian hit for Thomas in 1973. It made No. 34 on the US charts.

5. Bruce Springsteen, Johnny 99 . . . I was discussing Springsteen’s sometimes harrowing Nebraska album with a friend some time back. I thought I had played this. But I think I just thought about playing it, because I didn’t, my searches show. Now I am. Good tune, lyrics, album – an essential Springsteen release.

6. The Guess Who, Of A Dropping Pin . . . Jaunty track was the first single from 1969’s Canned Wheat album but barely scraped into the top 100 (No. 98) in Canada. Laughing/Undun, a two-sided single, the big hits off the album although they preceded the full record. Space does not permit but it makes interesting reading: suffice it to say Canned Wheat has an interesting history. The band and the record company haggled over which studio best served the band’s sound, the result being that the Laughing/Undun release was surreptitiously recorded in The Guess Who’s preferred studio while the rest of the record was done elsewhere. No Time, which appears on Canned Wheat, was later re-recorded for the American Woman album and that version became a hit single.

7. Drive-By Truckers, Zip City . . . I don’t know a lot by the Drive-By Truckers but what I do, I like, like this mid-tempo tune. The band has cool album covers, too.

8. Ronnie Wood & Bo Diddley, Who Do You Love (from Live at The Ritz) . . . Extended blitz through the Diddley classic, from the live album Rolling Stone Wood did with Mr. Elias McDaniel, aka Bo, or maybe it’s Bo aka Elias, in 1987 in New York. The album was released in 1988.

9. The Who, How Can You Do It Alone . . . A song about masturbation. A good one, too, the song I mean. It’s from the first post-Keith Moon Who album, Face Dances, with Kenney Jones on drums, from 1981. Despite what some critics say about the post-Moon work, it’s a good album, perhaps leaning towards being a Pete Townshend solo record, but I’ve always liked it.

10. Metallica, Low Man’s Lyric . . . Bluesy tune from 1997’s Reload album. Metallica took heat from some of their fan base for ‘selling out’ starting arguably with 1991’s Black Album and those criticisms got stronger with the Load (1996) and Reload albums which had a more mainstream sound, certainly for the most part different from the band’s previous thrash leanings. But I agree with a fan’s thoughts on it, via a YouTube comments field. “Metallica took a big chance that would see them look and sound different. Songs such as this were risky but the lyrics to their more accessible songs still had a sharp edge to them and were meaningful. This song is an example.”

11. Rush, The Way The Wind Blows . . . Beautiful latter-day tune featuring Alex Lifeson’s hypnotic guitar riff, and the late great Neil Peart’s typically fine drumming, from 2007’s Snakes & Arrows album. Peart named it as his favorite track on the record, from a drumming, and listening, perspective.

12. Spooky Tooth, The Mirror . . . Gary Wright of Dream Weaver and Love Is Alive fame was in Spooky Tooth. So, later and on this tune, was Mick Jones, of Foreigner fame. Great band, could rock, often with a pinch of blues, go psychedelic and prog-ish, just one of those perhaps somewhat under the radar British bands that, to use a British expression, I’ve always fancied.

13. U2, Silver and Gold . . . Perhaps the best-known version of this pulsating track is the live version from Rattle and Hum. This is the studio version, about a minute shorter and equally good. It was the B-side to the Joshua Tree’s Where The Streets Have No Name single.

14. John Mayall, Got To Find A Better Way . . . The mantra for my show, one of my catch phrases, has long been: So old it’s new – old bands, old tracks, old bands, their new stuff if they’re still around, alive and kicking. As Mayall is, at age 88 currently on what he’s announced will finally be his last tour. In any event, this is a typically fine, self-penned cut from Mayall’s freshly-released new album, The Sun Is Shining Down, which came out this past Friday, Jan. 28.

15. Jethro Tull, Where Did Saturday Go? . . . Another new one, from old friends. Ian Anderson has been releasing albums under his own name for about 20 years now but has revived the Tull moniker for a new album, The Zealot Game, which also came out this past Friday. “At last, the new collection of songs you have not really been waiting for,” Anderson quips in his typically witty album liner notes. In many ways, Anderson’s recent work is interchangeable as Tull because in so many respects he has long BEEN Tull, and his solo work has featured current Tull band members. So, one wonders what the difference is, really. Maybe it’s all done for tax reasons for Anderson’s myriad companies, always listed on his work as The Ian Anderson Group of Companies Ltd. But what do I know? I’m just a huge Tull/Anderson fan, musically, even though his sometimes snotty supercilious arrogance in interviews can rub me the wrong way. But hey, leader types can tend to be that way; they have a vision and they’re going to pursue it how they so choose. Anyway, a typical acoustic-type Tull track, this one, and one listen in, a fine addition to the extensive Tull/Anderson album catalog.

16. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Gypsy Eyes . . . From Electric Ladyland, an album featuring well-known Hendrix tracks like Crosstown Traffic, Voodoo Child (Slight Return) and of course his immortal reinvention of Bob Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower. Gypsy Eyes is another of the more conventional songs on the album amid some of the interesting experimentation or simple jamming exhibited elsewhere in extended workouts like Voodoo Chile and 1983 . . . (A Merman I Should Turn To Be).

17. Bob Dylan, I and I . . . “Been so long since a strange woman has slept in my bed . . . Look how sweet she sleeps . . . Think I’ll go out and go for a walk. Not much happenin’ here, nothin’ ever does. Besides, if she wakes up now, she’ll just want me to talk; I got nothing to say, especially about whatever was.” Dylan, arguably nailing relationships, or potential ones.

18. Santana, Taboo . . . Said it many times, while I like most Santana, the first three albums remain for me the zenith of the band’s work. As evidence, I offer this intoxicating piece from the third album.

19. Roxy Music, Both Ends Burning . . . A song in the vein of Roxy’s edgier, early work, although the same 1975 Siren album featured their breakthrough, more conventional hit, Love Is The Drug. Oh, and that’s Roxy singer/songwriter Bryan Ferry’s then-girlfriend Jerry Hall, soon to be stolen by Mick Jagger, crawling on the album cover, which also got let’s say somewhat duller as Roxy Music became more mainstream.

20. The Beatles, Happiness Is A Warm Gun . . . One of my all-time favorite Beatles’ tunes. “She’s well-acquainted with the touch of a velvet hand like a lizard on a window pane…” then shortly after into that great wahhhaaawaaa guitar in what is about three or four songs in one – the intro, I need a fix, Mother Superior, happiness is a warm gun – all with great lyrics, all in two minutes, 44 seconds. Brilliance.

21. The Allman Brothers Band, Seven Turns . . . Title cut, and a beauty written by guitarist Dickey Betts, from the band’s 1990 album.

22. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Tuesday’s Gone . . . Another beauty, from another great southern rock band.

23. The Rolling Stones, Gotta Get Away . . . Short, sweet and terrific early Stones and in some ways a precursor to their later what I call ‘effortlessly and confidently casual’ tunes such as Tumbling Dice, Torn and Frayed and many others. And on that note, getting away until next week.