All progressive rock show, 2 hours, 6 (!) songs, all clocking in at 20-minutes plus except for King Crimson’s Epitaph which comes in a shade under a paltry 9 minutes. 🙂 I at first thought to myself, am I being lazy with such a long-song show? Then I got listening to the songs in advance and it reminded me how much I like them all. I’m a raunch and roller at heart, a sometime metalhead but now and then, I like my prog.

1. Genesis, Supper’s Ready
2. Pink Floyd, Shine On You Crazy Diamond (full song, appeared on Wish You Were Here album as first and last song on the album, divided into parts I to V and VI to IX)
3. Yes, Close To The Edge
4. Rush, 2112
5. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Tarkus
6. King Crimson, Epitaph

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

1. Lighthouse, One Fine Morning
2. Eric Clapton, Early In The Morning (live, from Just One Night)
3. Grateful Dead, Morning Dew
4. Chicago, At The Sunrise
5. The Rolling Stones, Hang Fire
6. McKenna Mendelson Mainline, One Way Ticket
7. McKenna Mendelson Mainline, Bad Women
8. McKenna Mendelson Mainline, Mainline
9. Screaming Trees, Alice Said
10. Elton John, All The Girls Love Alice
11. Bob Dylan, Sweetheart Like You
12. Queen, Sweet Lady
13. Gov’t Mule, Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City
14. The Allman Brothers Band, Nobody Knows
15. Fu Manchu, Missing Link
16. Stray, All In Your Mind
17. Metallica, Mama Said
18. Bad Company, Man Needs Woman
19. The Beatles, I Should Have Known Better
20. Frank Zappa, My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama
21. Peter Frampton, I Want To Go To The Sun (from Frampton Comes Alive!)

    My track-by-track tales:

    1. Lighthouse, One Fine Morning . . . A logical one to start an early morning show with, in fact my first four offerings are in that vein, particularly because after a pile of grey days here in the home base of southern Ontario, we’re forecast to finally see the sun – for two consecutive days – this weekend, starting Saturday. As for Lighthouse, yes, this is one of their hits so why play it on what is a deep cuts show? Well, to be honest, I don’t like any Lighthouse deep cuts or at least haven’t found any I like; all their best stuff was their hits. Secondly, I’ve always reserved the right to play singles you haven’t heard in a long time. And when’s the last time you heard this?
    2. Eric Clapton, Early In The Morning (live, from Just One Night) . . . I had a eureka moment in my favorite local independent record store the other day. I was flipping through the used CD racks and voila! Up came Clapton’s live album Just One Night, from 1980. I had it ages ago on vinyl, lost it in the mists of time and it’s fairly rare, at least I’ve never been able to find it again. Even the very knowledgeable store staff said they were amazed when it came in for used sale as they hadn’t seen it since pretty much ever. I presume it’s out of print although I did see it on Amazon and some time ago put it in my cart as it’s apparently been re-released/remastered, although I’ve never actually pushed it from the cart to purchase point. And now I won’t have to. Perhaps a subconscious thing, somehow knowing that eureka moment would happen.

        

    3. Grateful Dead, Morning Dew . . . I was just watching one of my favorite ‘rate albums/bands etc.’ shows on YouTube and since Baby Please Don’t Go came up on one of the albums they were discussing, the hosts were joking about how they have an imaginary “no more Baby Please Don’t Go and Morning Dew covers, please’ sign atop their studio. So just to tick them off I’m playing yet another cover of Morning Dew. Actually, I had it in the lineup before I saw the show, but anyway. Great tune, an anti-nuke war song written by Canadian folk singer/songwriter Bonnie Dobson that I think is impossible for any band to screw up. I’ve never played the Dead’s version, was on their debut album, although I’d rate it, as a cover, behind the Jeff Beck Group’s version from Truth and Nazareth’s, from their debut album. Robert Plant also did a nice version.
    4. Chicago, At The Sunrise . . . I won’t yet again get into how much I love the first three Chicago albums. This is from Chicago III.
    5. The Rolling Stones, Hang Fire . . . I played No Use In Crying from Tattoo You last Saturday and mentioned that I prefer side 2 of the original vinyl, the slow side from which No Use In Crying comes. But that doesn’t mean I dislike the fast side, especially this tune. I do think, however, to use a phrase from my favorite high school history teacher, that the second verse lyrics would be better if they said not “you know marrying money is a full time job I don’t need the aggravation I’m a lazy slob” but ‘you know earning money is a full time job…” And I ‘get’ what they’re saying, and marriage can be an aggravation, lol, but I would have gone with ‘earning’ especially when the opening verse is: “In the sweet old country where I come from nobody ever works nothing ever gets done.”
    6. McKenna Mendelson Mainline, One Way Ticket . . . Mendelson Joe/Joe Mendelson (he went by both names at various times but in later years was Mendelson Joe, from all I’ve read) died at age 78 on Tuesday, by his own choice, using MAID (Medical Assistance In Dying as he had, he wrote in an end of life statement, had enough after suffering from Parkinson’s for several years. So, a mini-tribute set from the Stink album, which I was joking with a friend on Facebook about, that every Canadian home seems to have a copy. I also have the band’s Blues album but I couldn’t find my copy as I’m in the process of, finally, reshelving my CDs which have tended to be all over the place because I’ve been too lazy to put them back on the shelves (I know, sounds silly and it is) after using them for my shows. So, we’re going with exclusively the Stink album which, after all, is MMM’s best-known work. At least in Canada. Joe would probably appreciate the humor of opening a tribute mini-set with a song called One Way Ticket.
    7. McKenna Mendelson Mainline, Bad Women . . . Further re Joe . . . I first cottoned to him via his being an inveterate letters to the editor writer to the Toronto Star newspaper when I was in high school during the 1970s. And that’s where I saw him, via his ‘signature’, go from Joe Mendelson to Mendelson Joe and back again, several times, often wondering by which name he’d choose to go, next time.
    8. McKenna Mendelson Mainline, Mainline . . . And further re my CD shelving. I’m almost done and I actually put the CDs I’m using back in their slots. I will be thus disciplined henceforth. Great album, Stink, by the way.
    9. Screaming Trees, Alice Said . . . From the Seattle grungers, led by the late great Mark Lanegan, who later went solo. Similar sounding to their arguably best-known track, which was on the Singles movie soundtrack, Nearly Lost You. Perhaps why I like it so much.
    10. Elton John, All The Girls Love Alice . . . Like all the greats, Elton John’s classic albums – in this case Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – are full of deep cuts that other bands/artists would sell their souls to have as singles.
    11. Bob Dylan, Sweetheart Like You . . . Speaking of great deep cuts, and the thing is with the great artists, even their deep cuts become well known, certainly at least to their fans . . . Great lyrics, including a maybe obvious but bang on segment channeling the 1775 statement by Samuel Johnson: “They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings; steal a little and they throw you in jail; steal a lot and they make you king.”
    12. Queen, Sweet Lady . . . How good is an album, A Night At The Opera, when its big hit, the great but overplayed Bohemian Rhapsody, is in the end just another of the great cuts on the record?
    13. Gov’t Mule, Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City . . . Lovely, great song written in 1974 by Michael Price and Dan Walsh. I first heard it via Whitesnake’s version, during the early, bluesier Whitesnake period, then went back to the version that Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland took to No. 9 on the soul singles chart. Covered by so many artists, Gov’t Mule’s take on it appeared on their 2021 album of covers and original material, Heavy Load Blues.
    14. The Allman Brothers Band, Nobody Knows . . Gov’t Mule is led by guitarist/singer/songwriter/producer Warren Haynes, among the busiest men in show business, including stints as a key member in latter-day versions of the Allmans. So, here is Haynes and the rest of the boys with an epic from 1991’s Shades Of Two Worlds release.

         

    15. Fu Manchu, Missing Link . . . I remember years ago walking into a used CD store and a band that sounded very much to me like Black Sabbath was playing. It was Fu Manchu, from the In Search Of . . . album. Impulse buy, and my intro to so-called stoner rock.
    16. Stray, All In Your Mind . . . Epic, prog/hard rock from a band I got into via the first of three outstanding compilations titled I’m A Freak Baby. The (so far) three, 3-CD compilations issued over the last few years are a journey worth taking through, as the subtitle of the compilation suggests, the British prog and hard rock underground scene from 1968 to 1973.
    17. Metallica, Mama Said . . . Third single from the Load album, a country blues song that likely threw most thrash metal-oriented Metallica fans even more than the rest of the album did. One either ‘travels’ with a band in whatever direction they take, or one doesn’t. I did. Great song and, as Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich was quoted as saying: “The minute you stop exploring, just sit down and (expletive) die.” Great track. Great music is great music, whoever does it, Metallica or The Monkees. Speaking of which, haven’t played The Monkees lately. Soon, again.
    18. Bad Company, Man Needs Woman . . . Notice a pattern to the song titles? Just having fun, as always, although it’s somewhat coincidental, really, just playing good music. This one’s from the Burnin’ Sky album, 1977.
    19. The Beatles, I Should Have Known Better . . . From A Hard Day’s Night, the B-side to the title cut.
    20. Frank Zappa, My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama . . . From Weasels Ripped My Flesh, hilarious album cover from a funny, brilliant man. Great song, too, nice riff/guitar playing.
    21. Peter Frampton, I Want To Go To The Sun (from Frampton Comes Alive!) . . . It’s amazing how one album can change one’s life. Frampton goes into it as a well-known, relatively successful and respected artist and former member of Humble Pie with four solo albums under his belt and comes out of it a superstar with one of the best-selling live albums, and albums period, of all time. Deservedly so.

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

1. Emerson, Lake & Powell, The Score
2. Thin Lizzy, Angel Of Death
3. Black Sabbath, Master Of Insanity
4. Can, Mother Sky
5. Ramones, She Talks To Rainbows
6. Curtis Mayfield, (Don’t Worry) If There’s A Hell Below We’re All Going To Go
7. The Clash, Straight To Hell (extended version)
8. The Rolling Stones, Dancing With Mr. D
9. Spooky Tooth, Hell Or High Water
10. Meat Loaf, Objects In The Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are
11. Genesis, Fly On A Windshield
12. Dire Straits, The Bug
13. Gary Moore, Enough Of The Blues
14. Eric Burdon & The Animals, White Houses
15. Steely Dan, Don’t Take Me Alive
16. The Beatles, When I’m Sixty-Four
17. Paul McCartney/Wings, Mull of Kintyre
18. Joe Jackson, The In Crowd/Down To London (live)
19. Traffic, Shouldn’t Have Took More Than You Gave (live)
20. Talking Heads, The Overload 

    My track-by-track tales:

    1. Emerson, Lake & Powell, The Score . . . It’s 1984 and Keith Emerson and Greg Lake want to do another Emerson, Lake & Palmer album. But drummer Carl Palmer can’t do it, as he’s contractually committed to the band Asia. So, they audition various drummers who don’t work out and wind up approaching Emerson’s longtime friend Cozy Powell, drummer in many bands including various permutations of Rainbow and Black Sabbath. The band members said it was just coincidental that they wound up with another drummer whose surname began with ‘P’, enabling them to maintain the moniker ELP. They did joke that they approached Phil ‘Pollins’ and Ringo ‘Parr’ to fill the spot. As for the music on the self-titled album that came out in 1986, it’s, well, just like Emerson, Lake & Palmer, including this epic.
    2. Thin Lizzy, Angel Of Death . . . From the Renegade album, 1981. Hard rock with elements of prog, to my ears. Iron Maiden, still in its infancy at the time, must have been listening to the ‘galloping’ nature of the song, which has always been a feature of Iron Maiden’s music.
    3. Black Sabbath, Master Of Insanity . . . A song from Sabbath’s 1982 Dehumanizer album was top of mind because last Saturday I played a Dio (band) track, Strange Highways, which is very metallic and prompted me to mention the similarity to the heavy sound of Sabbath’s album two years previous, which Ronnie James Dio did lead vocals on.
    4. Can, Mother Sky . . . Edited, six-and-a-half minute version of the original 14-minute epic from the Soundtracks album. I pulled this from the Cananthology compilation which, years ago, got me into the Kraut/experimental rockers. Propulsive track that I don’t think loses any power in its truncated form.
    5. Ramones, She Talks To Rainbows . . . From the last Ramones studio record, 1995’s Adios Amigos! I’ve never been a major Ramones fan, I like them, have lots of their stuff and recognize their obvious influence but much of their material sounds the same if you ask me, which I realize isn’t a novel opinion. Yet this song seems more polished to my ears, almost non-Ramones like, and yes I know the Ramones are not about ‘polish’. Nevertheless, that’s how I feel about this cut, and maybe why I like it.
    6. Curtis Mayfield, (Don’t Worry) If There’s A Hell Below We’re All Going To Go . . . Great tune about race relations, musically and lyrically, from 1970.
    7. The Clash, Straight To Hell (extended version) . . . By almost two minutes, of the track from the Combat Rock album. Intoxicating, in any form. The song was originally intended for the album in this six seconds short of seven minutes version, but when Combat Rock was edited down from a proposed double album to a single vinyl record, the song was pared down. The extended version was released on the 1991 3-CD box set Clash On Broadway which I never owned until a couple years ago when I picked it up for, amazingly, about $10 at a flea market.
    8. The Rolling Stones, Dancing With Mr. D . . . Some fans and critics consider this opener to 1973’s Goats Head Soup album to be a sequel to Sympathy For The Devil, and since the subject matter about the prince of darkness is similar, albeit more obvious (hence losing the power of Sympathy) I suppose it is. I just like the song, even though I can appreciate some critics’ view of it as rather languid. But I like everything the Stones do. It is interesting that it was the lead cut on the album. Usually, the Stones open their records with a rocker, which is interesting in that Mr. D was the B-side to Goats Head Soup’s second single, Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker), a kick-butt tune that arguably would have been a better album opener.
    9. Spooky Tooth, Hell Or High Water . . . Good rocker from 1974’s The Mirror album featuring some nice guitar from Mick Jones, who went on to form Foreigner. Another stalwart in Spooky Tooth was singer/keyboardist Gary Wright, who went on to solo success via The Dream Weaver album and its title cut single, along with Love Is Alive.
    10. Meat Loaf, Objects In The Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are . . . Fun title but actually a dark, sad song from Bat Out Of Hell II (Back Into Hell). Another in the fine tradition of Meat Loaf epics. The only Meat Loaf albums I’ve ever liked are the first two Bat albums. The third one wasn’t as good, nor is the rest of his stuff, to me. That said, Meat Loaf was great live, I’ve got a couple DVDs of his, the first from his first tour, the second is called 3 Bats Live, recorded in London, Ontario in 2007. Great stuff.
    11. Genesis, Fly On A Windshield . . . The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway album has come up in a couple discussions with friends of late, so I figured I’d play something from it. But more so, I’m playing this particular song to set up the next one.
    12. Dire Straits, The Bug . . . See what I mean? Genesis talks about a fly on the windshield and then Dire Straits takes it to the obvious conclusion on their up tempo rockabilly type tune from the On Every Street album, the last before leader Mark Knopfler went solo.
    13. Gary Moore, Enough Of The Blues . . . Gary Moore broke big into the mainstream with the title cut hit single from 1990s Still Got The Blues album. Outside of that he was a diverse artist, dabbling in metal, hard rock both solo and with Thin Lizzy, he did a Peter Green tribute album, Blues For Greeny and even a dance pop album, 1999’s A Different Beat. He came Back To The Blues with his 2001 album, from which I pulled this song.
    14. Eric Burdon & The Animals, White Houses . . . Fairly well known song and a great one, from Burdon and friends’ psychedelic period, yet it made just No. 46 in Canada and No. 67 in the US upon release in 1968.
    15. Steely Dan, Don’t Take Me Alive . . . Nice guitar by Larry Carleton on this one from The Royal Scam album. In addition to his own solo work, Carleton has played on countless albums including ones by Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, Johnny Rivers, Wayne Newton, Barbra Streisand, Leo Sayer and The Partridge Family (!) just to name a few.
    16. The Beatles, When I’m Sixty-Four . . . One of my good pals is turning 64 today, and requested this. Actually, he turned 64 yesterday, since he’s currently on the other side of the date line down under cruising around Oceania. But it’s still Feb. 6 here so . . .
    17. Paul McCartney/Wings, Mull of Kintyre . . . I don’t usually play big hits on this deep cuts show but for whatever reason, this song popped into my head on Saturday while out for my walk. So, I figured I’d play it. Plus, it affords me the chance to share a memory. College days, getting polluted in a pub after school one afternoon/evening. We wind up yakking with an older guy, a Brit, also at least half in the bag, who starts rhapsodizing about the greatness of McCartney and, in particular, Mull of Kintyre. We couldn’t – and still can’t – help but agree.
    18. Joe Jackson, The In Crowd/Down To London (live) . . . From JJ’s 2000 Live album Summer In The City: Live In New York wherein he effectively merges an instrumental intro of The In Crowd written by Billy Page, made famous by Dobie Gray and later covered by The Mamas and The Papas and Bryan Ferry, with his own Down To London.
    19. Traffic, Shouldn’t Have Took More Than You Gave (live) . . . A Dave Mason-penned tune from the live album Welcome To The Canteen. It’s a Traffic album, yet as originally released the name Traffic was nowhere to be found – it was instead credited to the musicians, including Mason, Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood and Ric Grech who played on it. Later re-releases included the name Traffic, or at least the band’s familiar logo. My CD copy just has the logo on the inner sleeve and on the actual CD it says ‘Steve Winwood – Welcome To The Canteen’. Hmm. Anyway, good album, some extended versions of Traffic songs like Dear Mr. Fantasy and Winwood’s earlier band, the Spencer Davis Group’s Gimme Some Lovin’, and this song.
    20. Talking Heads, The Overload . . . During my college days, when the Heads’ album Remain In Light came out and I was dabbling in drugs, you know, just college fun experimentation although not making light of what can ensue, one of my younger brothers said this dirge-like tune was perfect for me. Probably true, at the time. But I was just a weekend sort of stoner, never overdid it, played varsity football, worked in a pub (bad influence), worked out, got good grades. What of it?

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

1. Cry Of Love, Too Cold In The Winter
2. Muddy Waters, Nine Below Zero (from Muddy ‘Mississippi’ Waters Live)
3. Bob Dylan, Cold Irons Bound
4. Tom Wilson, What A Bummer
5. Tom Waits, Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen)
6. Ian Gillan Band, Clear Air Turbulence
7. Dio, Strange Highways
8. Warhorse, Back In Time
9. Rainbow, Black Sheep Of The Family
10. Whitesnake, Ain’t Gonna Cry No More
11. The Rolling Stones, No Use In Crying
12. Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band, Take A Chance
13. David Gilmour, No Way
14. David Wilcox, On A Roll
15. The Band, Acadian Driftwood
16. Alvin Lee, I Want You (She’s So Heavy) (with George Harrison on slide guitar)
17. Derek and The Dominos, Let It Rain (from Live at The Fillmore)
18. Johnny Winter, It’s All Over Now (from Captured Live!)

    My track-by-track tales:

    1. Cry Of Love, Too Cold In The Winter . . . We’re in a cold snap, forecast to last a couple days here in southern Ontario so I figured this would be a logical opener. Cry Of Love is one of those bands that, to me, could or should have been bigger. Free-like in terms of their sound, they did have a No. 1 Billboard single with Peace Pipe in 1993 and Too Cold In The Winter, which I prefer, made No. 13. But after touring in support of their debut album, Brother, which featured both songs, frontman Kelly Holland quit, saying he could no longer handle the rigors of the road. They replaced him with current Warrant singer Robert Mason and while they didn’t go hair metal like Warrant, staying pretty much with their original sound, they broke up after their one much less successful album with him, 1997’s Diamonds & Debris. Guitarist Audley Freed later spent some time in The Black Crowes and bassist Robert Kearns has been in latter day versions of Lynyrd Skynyrd.
    2. Muddy Waters, Nine Below Zero (from Muddy ‘Mississippi’ Waters Live) . . . Culled from the live album that resulted from Muddy’s late 1970s tour with Johnny Winter, who produced and played on Waters’ studio albums Hard Again, I’m Ready and King Bee.
    3. Bob Dylan, Cold Irons Bound . . . I’m in a Dylan phase, specifically his great 1997 album Time Out of Mind, because his latest official bootleg series, Volume 17, titled Fragments and dedicated to that album, was released last week.
    4. Tom Wilson, What A Bummer . . . I’m always into Tom Wilson and whatever he puts his musical mind to, whether it be Junkhouse, solo stuff like this, his work in Blackie and The Rodeo Kings with Colin Linden and Stephen Fearing, or Lee Harvey Osmond.
    5. Tom Waits, Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen) . . . Waltzing Matilda . . . You have to listen to the song, a great tune based on Waits’s own experience. It’s worth reading how the song came about.
    6. Ian Gillan Band, Clear Air Turbulence . . . Genre change from Waits as we go into a Deep Purple and related offshoot segment via the title cut to the Purple singer’s late 1970s jazz/progressive rock group’s 1977 album. Gillan has a deserved reputation as a hard rock singer but deeper investigation of his catalog reveals a diverse artist, and some of that has found its way into new Deep Purple music, to great effect in my view, since founding guitarist Ritchie Blackmore left the band in the mid-1990s. I like Blackmore of course, but he was arguably rigid in terms of the direction he wanted Purple to maintain. Elements of Clear Air Turbulence I think can be heard in a Purple song I played recently, Vavoom: Ted The Mechanic, which was on the first album, Purpendicular, that guitarist Steve Morse played on upon replacing Blackmore in 1996.

        

    7. Dio, Strange Highways . . . Ronnie James Dio was never in Deep Purple but he was in Rainbow, which Ritchie Blackmore formed after leaving Purple (the first time) in 1975. Highways is the title cut from Dio’s 1994 album that was released after the version of Black Sabbath that Dio fronted broke up (for the second time) after 1992’s Dehumanizer album. Strange Highways, like Dehumanizer, is a very metallic album and by that I mean not only is it heavy but, given the production, it actually sounds like pieces of metal hitting each other. I like it. The title cut itself reminds me of earlier Sabbath-with-Dio songs like Children of the Sea from Heaven and Hell and Sign Of The Southern Cross from Mob Rules – slow, quiet beginnings then exploding into hard rock/metal.
    8. Warhorse, Back In Time . . . Warhorse was a short-lived hard rock/progressive rock band, recording two albums between 1970 and ’72. It was formed by original Purple bass player Nick Simper. Among the early members of the band was keyboardist Rick Wakeman of Yes and solo fame, although he left before the group released any albums. This epic was likely the group’s finest song, appaering on the 1972 album Red Sea.

        

    9. Rainbow, Black Sheep Of The Family . . . A cover of the rocker by the British progressive band Quatermass that played some part in Blackmore’s leaving to form Rainbow. During the sessions for Purple’s 1974 album Stormbringer, the story goes, Blackmore wanted to record it but the other members of the group didn’t want to have cover songs on the album. So, Blackmore recorded it with members of the band Elf, which featured Ronnie James Dio, and Elf morphed into the first version of Rainbow. Black Sheep appeared on the first Rainbow album, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, after which the mercurial Blackmore dumped everyone but Dio and brought in such luminaries as drummer Cozy Powell for the next album, the masterpiece Rainbow Rising.
    10. Whitesnake, Ain’t Gonna Cry No More . . . One of my favorite songs from my preferred version of Whitesnake – the early, hard rock/blues rock version of the David Coverdale-fronted bnad that formed as one of the various splinter groups, like Rainbow and Ian Gillan’s various bands that resulted when Deep Purple eventually bit the dust for the first time, during the 1970s. This is from the 1980 album Ready An’ Willing, a record notable in that three of the six band members – Coverdale, drummer Ian Paice and keyboardist Jon Lord – were Deep Purple alumni.

         

    11. The Rolling Stones, No Use In Crying . . . From Tattoo You’s ‘slow’ side of the original vinyl release, all ballads as opposed to the ‘fast’ side 1 that featured such rockers as the big hit single Start Me Up. Aside from Slave, on side 1, I’ve always preferred the ballad side – No Use In Crying, Worried About You, Tops, Heaven and Waiting On A Friend. There’s a verse in the song, about a relationship breakup, where Mick Jagger sings ‘standing at the station and gazing down the track, there ain’t no train coming baby, I ain’t never coming back.’ I remember reading a review of the album when it came out, 1981, and the reviewer taking the ‘never coming back’ line to mean Jagger was calling it quits and the Stones were done. Hmm. They’re still going and obviously will continue until they can’t.
    12. Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band, Take A Chance . . . A Facebook friend posted this random question the other day: “Anyone still enjoy listening to Bob Seger?” Lots of yes replies, including mine, but then I still listen to most of the stuff I did during the 1960s and ’70s, which of course is the heart of my show. So, the question reminded me that I haven’t played Seger too recently, so here he is. It’s from Seger’s 1991 album The Fire Inside which actually signalled the start of a decline in his commercial fortunes. The up tempo tune was a single and did make No. 10 in the US but seemingly is somewhat overlooked; it’s not on any of Seger’s compilations. I much prefer it to the album’s higher-placing single, The Real Love.
    13. David Gilmour, No Way . . . A great bluesy one, lyrically and musically, from Gilmour’s self-titled debut album in 1978.
    14. David Wilcox, On A Roll . . . Typically fine Wilcox from the Breakfast At The Circus album. He doesn’t often play it live that I’ve seen or researched – Layin’ Pipe is the Breakfast song that gets most of the attention – but it’s a good one.
    15. The Band, Acadian Driftwood . . . Beautiful track, with historical resonance, about the expulsion of the Acadian people from their homes and land during the French and Indian War between France and Great Britain in their North American colonies, just before the American Revolution.
    16. Alvin Lee, I Want You (She’s So Heavy) (with George Harrison on slide guitar) . . . Cover of The Beatles’ tune from Abbey Road, one of my favorites on that record. Lee’s cover appeared on the Nineteen Ninety Four album, released in, wait for it, 1994 by the former Ten Years After leader and guitarist. The album was titled I Hear You Rockin’ in the US. Lee and Harrison were great pals, lived near each other for a time and, according to Lee’s liner notes, Harrison was happy to help out when asked. “I used to call him up and say ‘any chance of a bit of slide guitar?’ and he’d say ‘I’ll be right over.’ “He was great like that.” The two also collaborated on the beautiful The Bluest Blues, from the same 1994 album. I’ve played it before on the show, and likely will again.
    17. Derek and The Dominos, Let It Rain (from Live at The Fillmore) . . . A shade under 20-minute tour de force, never boring, Eric Clapton unleashed on guitar, a just right in length drum solo by Jim Gordon and then back to the main melody. Nicely done.
    18. Johnny Winter, It’s All Over Now (from Captured Live!) . . . Winter to me is similar to the J. Geils Band in that he’s arguably heard best in a live setting, whether that be actually live (as I saw him once at the Kitchener Blues Festival) or on live albums. Yet another example here as he shreds his way through the Bobby and Shirley Womack-penned classic.

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

1. Ted Nugent, Wang Dang Sweet Poontang (live, from Double Live Gonzo! including classic intro “anybody wants to get mellow you can turn around and get the F out of here”)
2. The Rolling Stones, If You Can’t Rock Me/Get Off Of My Cloud, (live, from Love You Live)
3. UFO, Rock Bottom (live, from Strangers In The Night)
4. Led Zeppelin, Heartbreaker/Living Loving Maid (She’s Just A Woman)
5. Elton John, Street Kids
6. Chicago, Hideaway
7. Robin Trower, Day Of The Eagle
8. Budgie, Breaking All The House Rules
9. Iron Maiden, Holy Smoke
10. Deep Purple, Flight Of The Rat
11. Black Sabbath, Falling Off The Edge Of The World
12. AC/DC, Nervous Shakedown
13. Trapeze, Black Cloud
14. Headstones, The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald
15. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Spirit(s) In The Night
16. Gene Clark, No Other
17. Eagles, King Of Hollywood
18. John Mayall, Broken Wings
19. Television, Marquee Moon

My track-by-track tales:

1. Ted Nugent, Wang Dang Sweet Poontang (live, from Double Live Gonzo! including classic intro “anybody wants to get mellow you can turn around and get the F out of here”) . . . as we begin a mostly hard rocking set.

2. The Rolling Stones, If You Can’t Rock Me/Get Off Of My Cloud, (live, from Love You Live) . . . In those pre-internet days when you had no real chance to preview stuff and bought it sight unseen and unheard, and not having seen the 1975-76 tour, I remember being thrown a bit, upon buying the Love You Live album, at the re-arrangement of Get Off Of My Cloud tacked on to the rousing version of If You Can’t Rock Me, but quickly grew to love it as much as the original. My older sister did see the Toronto show in 1975 (I didn’t see my first Stones show until 1978 in Buffalo) so she could have warned me, but she’s not as anal and particular about music so I’ll forgive her. 🙂 The Stones have since played Cloud on various tours, in the original arrangement. I love the song – actually heard them rehearsing it at sound check as my older son and I walked around Toronto’s Rogers Centre before the Stones’ 2002 Licks tour show although they didn’t play it that night – and was happy to see/hear them open with it in 2013 in Toronto.

3. UFO, Rock Bottom (live, from Strangers In The Night) . . . Epic 12-minute shredder courtesy guitarist Michael Schenker and friends, from the band’s classic live album.

4. Led Zeppelin, Heartbreaker/Living Loving Maid (She’s Just A Woman) . . . I remember my older brother, huge musical influence, bringing home Led Zep II when it came out. We were living in Peru at the time as my father was working there, hence in those days a bit out of touch as to what was happening back home. My older brother and sister were back in Canada in high school and it was always neat when they brought back new stuff, particularly music. Anyway, so big brother brings Zep home and it was mind-blowing to we who to that point had been listening to early Stones and Beatles. Zep was SO heavy in comparison, to us, then. To the point that mom, presaging the mom in Frank Zappa’s song Joe’s Garage, told my brother to ‘turn it down!” But mom later grew to like it, she was very cool. As was dad, who knocked me out when John Lennon was shot and dad said “this is madness!” To that point, I would have bet that dad knew not who John Lennon was. The foolishness of youth.

5. Elton John, Street Kids . . . I’ve mentioned it before but the Rock of the Westies album is definitely one of those time and place things for me. It was one of just three albums – the others being Beatles and Stones compilations – in our high school weight room. So, my football teammates and I played them incessantly while working out. Sometimes I wonder if I’d have gotten into the Elton album so much otherwise. Probably, as I’m a fan of his 1970s stuff, but it’s a wonderful memory and a special album to me. I still ‘see’ the guys in my mind when I listen to any of the songs from it. I still don’t care so much for the single, Island Girl, obviously a well-constructed song with obvious commercial appeal, but the rest of it, EJ rocking out, makes it one of my favorite records of his.

6. Chicago, Hideaway . . . I’m a huge fan of Chicago’s first three albums, when they were an innovative jazz-rock fusion outfit and while I have all of the albums from the guitarist Terry Kath era and like them, I tend to focus on the first three records and then the big hits from the rest of the catalog from that period. But, a few years ago, a friend of mine reminded me of this great rocker from Chicago VIII and I played it on the show then. Here it is again.

7. Robin Trower, Day Of The Eagle . . . Speaking of great guitarists like Kath, here’s Trower, from the Bridge of Sighs album. This track is why you buy, or listen to, full studio albums. Amazingly, it’s not on any Trower compilations, to my knowledge.

8. Budgie, Breaking All The House Rules . . . As someone commented on YouTube about this song, more great riffs in one song than many bands manage on an entire album. Budgie never made it really big in a commercial sense but the hard-rocking Welsh group was influential. Metallica swears by them and has covered several of their tunes.

9. Iron Maiden, Holy Smoke . . . I like a lot of Iron Maiden, like this rocker (as if they do much else and that’s great) but I only listen to their studio stuff. I had a live album once, but I quickly got sick of frontman Bruce Dickinson urging the crowd to ‘scream for me (insert city/venue).” It’s as bad as Ozzy Osbourne live albums with his incessant “clap your effing hands!” etc. But I do like both artists, really I do.

10. Deep Purple, Flight Of The Rat . . . I really don’t know what to say anymore about this song, the In Rock album, or Deep Purple in general aside from I love ’em, every incarnation (OK, the one album, Slaves and Masters, they did with Joe Lynn Turner singing, not so much, aside from the song King of Dreams). What a kick-butt tune this is.

11. Black Sabbath, Falling Off The Edge Of The World . . . Starts slow but you just know it’s coming as the tension builds . . . and at about 1:30 in, it starts, then all hell breaks loose at 2:06 with yet another monumental Tony Iommi riff from his apparently bottomless basket, soon to be joined by the incomparable vocals of Ronnie James Dio. From the Mob Rules album.

     

12. AC/DC, Nervous Shakedown . . . 1983’s Flick of the Switch, the third album with Brian Johnson having replaced the dear departed Bon Scott, didn’t do nearly as well commercially as Back in Black and For Those About To Rock, mainly because it had no huge hit singles although the title cut did reasonably well and this track was a No. 35 hit in the UK. I just love the how would one describe it, descending sort of chorus? AC/DC didn’t really have another big hit album, in terms of universal appeal, until Thunderstruck and other hits carried The Razors Edge to such status in 1990. But the intervening albums, Flick of the Switch, Fly On The Wall, Who Made Who (a soundtrack to Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive movie) and Blow Up Your Video are full of great tracks like this one, Sink The Pink, Shake Your Foundations, Who Made Who, Heatseeker and others, just to name the singles alone.

13. Trapeze, Black Cloud . . . Terrific band, Trapeze, from which emerged bass player/singer Glenn Hughes, later of course to join Deep Purple, drive Ritchie Blackmore nuts with his more funky approach which I liked actually – see my earlier thoughts on every incarnation of Purple. But look on the bright side. Had Blackmore not gotten pissed off – which I never really understood, it was essentially his band, why if he didn’t like the direction didn’t he put his foot down? Anyway, had Blackmore not up and left, maybe we’d not have had the band Rainbow. So from ‘bad’ can always come good.

     

14. Headstones, The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald . . . Rocked up version of the Gordon Lightfoot classic, a song that never fails to bring a tear to my eye. I’ve never been a fan of music videos, to me they’re like when a movie is made from a novel and then re-releases of the book have an actor on the cover. It’s why I read the book first; I like to have a picture in my mind of the characters. Same with songs, I don’t want them interpreted for me via video although I respect it’s the artist’s interpretation. However, I will say that the Headstones video of this song, I do like, lead singer Hugh Dillon for the most part just singing, on a frozen lake and then into a performance video of the band playing.

15. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Spirit(s) In The Night . . . Terrific cover of the Bruce Springsteen-penned tune. Mann’s band also had a big hit, of course, with their cover of what had been a relatively obscure Springsteen tune, Blinded By The Light. Spirit In The Night was Springsteen’s original title but in some markets the Earth Band version was released as Spirits In The Night.

16. Gene Clark, No Other . . . Classic title cut from the Byrd-man’s 1974 album. Inexplicably, the record was savaged by critics and was not promoted by the record company, ensuring commercial failure. Later, of course, retrospective reviews praised it, and deservedly so. Critics (cue the eye rolls).

17. Eagles, King Of Hollywood . . . I’ve said it many times before. The Long Run, which tends to be dismissed by critics (and even Eagles band members) as inferior to its predecessor Hotel California, is that album’s equal in my opinion. Yeah, the band may have been fragmenting and so on at that point but some of the deep cuts, like this one, are dark, introspective and great art. Rolling Stone magazine liked it and I agree with the mag’s review: “Overall, The Long Run is a synthesis of previous macabre Eagles motifs, with cynical new insights that are underlined by slashing rock and roll . . . it is a bitter, wrathful, difficult record, full of piss and vinegar and poisoned expectations.” That’s why I like it.

18. John Mayall, Broken Wings . . . One of my favorite Mayall songs, from his The Blues Alone album, 1967. Sad, and beautiful.

19. Television, Marquee Moon . . . Another musician death. Tom Verlaine, Television leader, guitarist and frontman, died Saturday at age 73. As previously mentioned, it took me forever to ‘get’ the Marquee Moon album which may be strange given I was into new wave, punk and so on at the time, 1977, the record was released. But, I missed it, somehow although I owned it, perhaps as a ‘necessary’ or ‘influential’ album we music aficionados tend to have, just to have because they’re deemed important. And they are. Anyway, it wasn’t until a few years ago that I ‘got’ the record and, in particular, its title cut. I was in a used CD store and a song was playing, Marquee Moon it turned out. I liked it, as never before. It just hit me that day, for whatever reason. Interesting how that sort of thing happens.

My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list, after my preamble about the inspiration behind the set list.

The first half of the set is inspired by a documentary I watched this week – Under The Volcano, about AIR Studio on the volcanic Caribbean island of Montserrat. The first 12 songs I’m playing appeared on albums I own that were recorded there, in whole or in part. The result is an amalgam of artists, genres and styles.

AIR (Associated Independent Recordings) was established by the late Sir George Martin, best known as The Beatles’ longtime producer, and several other leading British producers. They opened a studio in London in 1970, adding Montserrat in 1979. The island studio flourished under the then-dormant Soufriere Hills volcano until 1989 when it was damaged not by an eruption but by Hurricane Hugo in September of that year, shortly after The Rolling Stones finished recording their Steel Wheels album.

The volcano emerged out of dormancy and became active in 1995 and has continued to erupt since although it’s been, apparently, relatively quiet for the last 10 years. The volcanic activity led the government of the island, a British Overseas Territory, to establish an exclusion zone in the area of volcanic activity, splitting the island in two.

Here’s the bare-bones set list:

1. Jimmy Buffett, Volcano
2. Mike + The Mechanics, Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)
3. The Police, Demolition Man
4. The Rolling Stones, Hearts For Sale
5. Paul McCartney, Ballroom Dancing
6. Gillan and Glover, I Can’t Dance To That
7. Dire Straits, Ride Across The River
8. Black Sabbath, The Shining
9. Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe, Birthright
10. Nazareth, Boys In The Band
11. Rush, Middletown Dreams
12. Status Quo, The Wanderer
13. Free, Catch A Train
14. Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Last Rebel
15. Johnny Winter, Rollin’ ‘Cross The Country
16. Patti Smith Group, (Privilege) Set Me Free
17. Blue Cheer, Saturday Freedom
18. Bruce Springsteen, The Price You Pay
19. The Smashing Pumpkins, Zero
20. Marianne Faithfull, Truth Bitter Truth
21. Rod Stewart (If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want To Be Right
22. The J. Geils Band, Wreckage
23. Neil Young, No More
24. Fairport Convention, Farewell Farewell 

    And my track-by-track tales:

    1. Jimmy Buffett, Volcano . . . Buffett’s tongue in cheek title track take on recording under the gun, so to speak, on Montserrat for his 1979 album. The island’s volcano, then dormant, started erupting again in 1995, six years after AIR Studio was damaged by Hurricane Hugo. 
    2. Mike + The Mechanics, Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground) . . . I pulled this from the 3-CD Genesis compilation R-Kive which features Genesis band and solo work by Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett and Mike Rutherford. I wouldn’t own any Banks or Rutherford solo stuff otherwise. Silent Running, a hit single, was sung by Paul Carrack, well known for the Ace hit How Long and Squeeze’s Tempted. The (On Dangerous Ground) part was added to the song’s title when it became part of the movie Choke Canyon – which was called On Dangerous Ground outside the USA. To quote Robert Shaw’s character in the 1973 movie The Sting, ‘ya falla (follow)?’. I do actually, although I never saw Choke Canyon, as either Choke Canyon or On Dangerous Ground. I did, however, see The Sting, as I date myself. Great, fun flick, featuring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, along with Shaw. Fifty – 50 – years ago!
    3. The Police, Demolition Man . . . From 1981’s Ghost In The Machine album. The Police originally gave the Sting-penned song to Grace Jones, didn’t like what she did with it for her 1981 Nightclubbing album, so did their own version for later that year on Ghost In The Machine. I prefer The Police song but don’t mind Jones’s version. It’s an electronic/dance take and I like her vocals/singing style. The Police version is more straight rock. Great fun, regardless, if a quote about it from Police guitarist Andy Summers, via Wikipedia, is accurate: “It’s a very simple song. We all listened to the Grace Jones version and thought ‘shit, we can do it much better than that.’ It was a one-take job. To me, our version is more ballsy, which is what you’d expect from Grace Jones.”
    4. The Rolling Stones, Hearts For Sale . . . Triple guitar attack on this deep cut from Steel Wheels. Mick Jagger’s distorted riff (yup, him, not Keith Richards) starts the track and continues, for the most part, until various Jagger harmonica breaks four minutes into the tune while Richards and Ronnie Wood, who adds a fine solo, maintain the rhythm along with, of course, the so-called (by Richards) engine room of drummer Charlie Watts and bassist Bill Wyman.
    5. Paul McCartney, Ballroom Dancing . . . One of those infectious tunes McCartney can seemingly toss off without even thinking. But then, that’s why he’s McCartney with his innate sense of melody and hooks. Could easily have been a single, I think, from 1982’s Tug of War album, from which his duet with Stevie Wonder, Ebony and Ivory, became a No. 1 hit. The other hit single was Take It Away, with Ringo Starr on drums. The album was produced by George Martin.
    6. Gillan and Glover, I Can’t Dance To That . . . Up-tempo tune, one of the more rock-oriented ones on the quite diverse and interesting Accidentally On Purpose album released by the Deep Purple duo of singer Ian Gillan and bass player Roger Glover in 1988.
    7. Dire Straits, Ride Across The River . . . You can actually feel as if you are riding down a river, probably in the jungle, listening to this one. From the commercial monster, and deservedly so, Brothers In Arms album, one of the first albums recorded on a digital tape machine, in 1985.
    8. Black Sabbath, The Shining . . . From 1987’s The Eternal Idol, with Tony Martin on lead vocals for the first of five studio albums he recorded with the band between 1987 and 1995. It came during a period of time during which only guitarist Tony Iommi remained a constant original member amid a cast of seeming thousands, including original bassist Geezer Butler who was in and out while Iommi kept the brand going while producing those five, to me, very good and underappreciated albums. But then, I’m a big Sabbath fan and not one of those who say things like ‘no Ozzy (or Ronnie James Dio), no Sabbath’. No Iommi, no Sabbath, to that I’ll agree.
    9. Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe, Birthright . . . Fleetwood Mac’s original leader, from the blues band days, later formed a band called Peter Green’s Splinter Group but that splinter group had nothing on Yes. Space doesn’t permit the full story but suffice it to say that the convoluted Yes saga makes for interesting reading, if one is so inclined. It’s led to competing versions of Yes, legal issues regarding the name, and various spinoff bands. So, in 1989 you had what many would consider ‘classic’ 1970s Yes members – singer Jon Anderson, drummer Bill Bruford, keyboardist Rick Wakeman and guitarist Steve Howe – coming out with their one and only album under that name. It sounds like, what else, 1970s Yes. That’s because Anderson wanted to return to progressive rock, having had enough of the pop-rock direction Yes had taken, with guitarist Trevor Rabin at the helm, for massive hits like Owner Of A Lonely Heart that Anderson did sing. Birthright is an appropriately haunting song about British nuclear tests during the 1950s and resulting radioactive waste left on aboriginal lands in Australia, for which compensation was eventually paid. As for Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe, there was to be a second album but that morphed into Union, Yes’s 1991 album featuring various members of both factions, including original/constant Yes bass player Chris Squire, who died in 2015. The Union album resulted from a meeting in Los Angeles between Anderson and Rabin, who originally were working on separate albums by the respective camps but decided to merge them. What tangled webs are weaved.
    10. Nazareth, Boys In The Band . . . Abrasive, urgent, fast track from 1982’s 2XS album.
    11. Rush, Middletown Dreams . . . Like many who like Rush, perhaps, I’m not a big fan of the so-called keyboard or synthesizer era that is most pronounced, certainly in terms of production, on the trilogy of albums – Grace Under Pressure, Power Windows and Hold Your Fire – between 1984 and 1987. I have them, but don’t listen to them much although I do like hits like The Big Money, from Power Windows. That’s the album I pulled Middletown Dreams from. I hadn’t heard the song in ages but it was a nice rediscovery, some good guitar from Alex Lifeson but the song is compelling, to me, thanks to the propulsive percussion of the late great drummer Neil Peart.
    12. Status Quo, The Wanderer . . . Cover of the 1961 Dion hit. Quo’s version made No. 7 in the UK and No. 3 in Ireland in 1984, and was included on the expanded 2006 re-release of their 1983 album Back To Back. And with that, so ends the Montserrat AIR Studio segment of the show.
    13. Free, Catch A Train . . . Haven’t played Free in a while. I just picked a random track, but probably not so random given how my brain works as I realized it fits with The Wanderer, who is catching a train, setting me off on another of my song title connections.
    14. Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Last Rebel . . . Bluesy ballad, title cut from the 1993 album and among my favorites from the post-plane crash versions of the band.
    15. Johnny Winter, Rollin’ ‘Cross The Country . . . Johnny raunches and rolls with a tune written by brother Edgar, who plays organ on the track and on many more songs on Johnny’s 1974 album, Saints and Sinners.
    16. Patti Smith Group, (Privilege) Set Me Free . . . Spooky, powerful tune from the Easter album.
    17. Blue Cheer, Saturday Freedom . . . From the band’s self-titled fourth album, released in December, 1969. By that point the group had experienced some lineup changes and was offering a more laid back, bluesy yet still heavy sound. A nice groove on this one.
    18. Bruce Springsteen, The Price You Pay . . . From The River, the third of the amazing run of three albums Springsteen released from 1975-80, the other two being Born To Run (1975) and Darkness On The Edge Of Town (1978). They remain my favorites of his, in terms of front-to-back listens.
    19. The Smashing Pumpkins, Zero . . . Sounds crazy, perhaps, but I had forgotten about this one. It was a single from the No. 1 album, Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness, released in 1995. Good metallic rocker, I just happened to come across it while searching for other stuff I’ve loaded into the station computer. A worthwhile revisit.
    20. Marianne Faithfull, Truth Bitter Truth . . . From 1981’s Dangerous Acquaintances, the follow-up to Faithfull’s 1979 comeback record, Broken English. Music journalists didn’t like the album as much, considering it a safer/more conventional record than Broken English. Fair enough, perhaps, but this song has depth, if that’s what the critics were seeking. Besides, it’s Faithfull’s ‘a lived life’ cigarette and alcohol-affected vocals on Broken English forward that set her apart.
    21. Rod Stewart (If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want To Be Right . . . Stewart has written or co-written many great songs, like Maggie May, Mandolin Wind, the Faces’ Stay With Me to name just a few. But his genius during his heyday was also his ability to select great songs to cover and do them amazing justice. Like this one, by the Stax writing team of Homer Banks, Carl Hampton and Raymond Jackson that was a deserved No. 3 Billboard and No. 1 R & B hit for Luther Ingram in 1972. Stewart’s version is from his 1978 album Footloose and Fancy Free.
    22. The J. Geils Band, Wreckage . . . Dark, bluesy cut from a largely dark album, 1977’s Monkey Island.
    23. Neil Young, No More . . . Well, one more, after this track from Young’s 1989 Freedom album.
    24. Fairport Convention, Farewell Farewell . . . The wonderful voice of Sandy Denny on lead vocals. A sad story, Denny. Beset by drug and alcohol abuse and what some suggest was a manic-depressive condition, depending what you read, she died after a fall down a flight of stairs in 1978, age 31. But we still have the music upon which her amazing voice rides, and elevates.