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

1. Muddy Waters, All Aboard (from Fathers and Sons featuring Otis Spann, Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn, Sam Lay and Buddy Miles)
2. The Chieftains with The Rolling Stones, The Rocky Road To Dublin
3. The Rolling Stones, Surprise, Surprise
4. James Brown, I’ll Go Crazy (from Live at The Apollo)
5. Tom Cochrane, Willie Dixon Said
6. Jeff Beck, Beck’s Bolero (from Truth)
7. Jeff Beck, Diamond Dust (from Blow By Blow)
8. Jeff Beck, Morning Dew (from Truth)
9. Jeff Beck Group, Plynth (Water Down The Drain) (from Beck-ola)
10. Jeff Beck, Wild Thing (UK-only single, 1986, Beck lead vocals)
11. Split Enz, What’s The Matter With You
12. Deep Purple, Strange King Of Woman (live, from Made in Japan)
13. Bruce Hornsby, Talk Of The Town
14. Social Distortion, I Was Wrong
15. Carole King, Corazon
16. Warren Zevon, The Sin (live, from Stand In The Fire)
17. Joe Jackson, Throw It Away
18. The Yardbirds, Happenings Ten Years Time Ago (Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page on guitars)
19. Jeff Beck, Rock My Plimsoul (from Truth)
20. Jeff Beck, Freeway Jam (from Jeff Beck with The Jan Hammer Group Live)
21. Jeff Beck, Big Block (from Guitar Shop)
22. Beck, Bogert, Appice, Jizz Whizz (previously unreleased track, recorded 1973, issued on Beckology box set, 1991)
23. Jeff Beck Group, Going Down (from Jeff Beck Group ‘orange’ album)
24. Jeff Beck, Gets Us All In The End (from Flash)
25. The Band, (I Don’t Want To) Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes (live, from Rock Of Ages)My track-by-track tales:
    1. Muddy Waters, All Aboard (from Fathers and Sons featuring Otis Spann, Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn, Sam Lay and Buddy Miles) . . . Not much more to say beyond my list of who plays on Muddy’s 1969 album, other than it’s great. It was wonderful how, as an elder statesman of the blues by then, Muddy’s ‘sons’ flocked to help him out on albums, including as the decade of the 1970s progressed, Johnny Winter who played on and produced three late period Muddy albums plus the fabulous Muddy ‘Mississippi’ Waters live record.
    2. The Chieftains with The Rolling Stones, The Rocky Road To Dublin . . . Listen closely and you’ll hear the Stones sneak a little snippet of the Satisfaction riff into this 19^th century traditional covered by the Irish band. It’s from 1995’s The Long Black Veil album, a collaborative effort that, besides the Stones, featured Mick Jagger on another track, Marianne Faithfull, Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame, Sinead O’Connor, Sting, Tom Jones and Van Morrison.
    3. The Rolling Stones, Surprise, Surprise . . . I always play the Stones, my favorite band, my show, my rules…although I wasn’t going to necessarily do that once I got the Saturday morning gig in addition to my longtime Monday show. But I can’t help myself. Here are the rules, if anyone cares. Every Monday there’s a Stones’ track, or something Stones-related, from what I call Stones, Inc. ie solo material from any band member or associate, past and present. Saturdays: I’m not committed (although I probably should be) to the Stones in terms of my set list but…here they are again. Anyway, I was of two minds for Saturday’s show. This track, Surprise, Surprise, an early, up-tempo number from 1965 I’ve always liked. Or, another early Stones’ song, The Spider and The Fly but done up for the 1995 semi-acoustic live album Stripped. In the end, I chose Surprise, Surprise because I thought it fit with me playing a Chieftains track which may not be so unusual in that I’m into all forms of music but perhaps unusual given my usual fare on the show. But of course, the random element was the Stones’ participation. And enough about that, time to move on to the next song. Thank Christ, I hear the chorus.
    4. James Brown, I’ll Go Crazy (from Live at The Apollo) . . . Short, sweet, kick butt stuff from the “Hardest Working Man In Show Business’, the “Godfather of Soul’ and he who went by assorted other nicknames, via one of the greatest live albums of all time. It was recorded in late 1962 in Harlem and released in 1963. There wound up being four ‘live at the Apollo’ albums – Vol II in 1968, Revolution Of The Mind: Live At The Apollo Vol. III, from 1971 and Live At The Apollo 1995, the last live album Brown recorded before his death in 2006. All are excellent, typically high-energy James Brown, to me not much to choose between them musically, because as many artists repeatedly prove, as they age they can still ‘bring it’. But the original remains arguably definitive as a landmark album that cemented Brown’s reputation critically and commercially.
    5. Tom Cochrane, Willie Dixon Said . . . I like a lot of Tom Cochrane’s work including his days in Red Rider, the obvious hits, Big League, Life Is A Highway, the Red Rider stuff like Lunatic Fringe, Light In The Tunnel/Human Race, Napoleon Sheds His Skin, the latter three of which I’ve played over time on the show. As for this Willie Dixon-themed tune, I must admit that, years ago, when you had to buy music, I bought Cochrane’s Xray Sierra album specifically for this cut in honor of one of the blues greats. Here’s a tease: He’s got another, similar, great one, about boxer Muhammad Ali. I played it long ago. I’ll play it again soon.
    6. Jeff Beck, Beck’s Bolero (from Truth) . . . Interesting track in terms of songwriting. It’s always credited to Jimmy Page but if you read up on it, Beck claimed credit too, but never apparently got one. Wouldn’t be the first time Jimmy Page was involved in a songwriting controversy yet somehow he and Beck remained friends, apparently. Great track, in any event, featuring a supergroup – Beck, Page, future Zep bassist/keyboard player John Paul Jones and The Who’s drummer Keith Moon. Beck opens with it on the Live At Ronnie Scott’s album/DVD/Blu-ray and streaming, also on YouTube, a concert worth checking out.
    7. Jeff Beck, Diamond Dust (from Blow By Blow) . . . Beautiful stuff from a terrific album.
    8. Jeff Beck, Morning Dew (from Truth) . . . A song by Canadian writer Bonnie Dobson covered by so many including Nazareth and the Grateful Dead. Among the covers, I’ve always found it difficult to choose between the Nazareth and Jeff Beck Group versions. But since much of this set is in tribute to the late great Beck, here’s the version from the groundbreaking Truth album, lead vocals of course by Rod Stewart.
    9. Jeff Beck Group, Plynth (Water Down The Drain) (from Beck-ola) . . . Cool stop start sort of track, written by Rod Stewart, Ron Wood and Nicky Hopkins for the second, and last, album by the first incarnation of The Jeff Beck Group.
    10. Jeff Beck, Wild Thing (UK-only single, 1986, Beck lead vocals) . . . If you go back through Jeff Beck’s material dating to the Yardbirds, he could sing as well as play guitar. Maybe not perfectly, maybe not a true vocalist, but not too shabby, actually. This version of The Troggs hit got wider exposure via Beck’s 1991 box set release, Beckology. It’s an amazing 3-CD compilation. So good, in fact, that in tribute to Beck I considered just playing Beckology for Saturday morning or, at least, as much of it as I could squeeze in in two hours. But, I had a show planned already, then adjusted upon the sad news of Beck’s death, for a half-Beck, half other artists set.
    11. Split Enz, What’s The Matter With You . . . Remember these guys? Some of the key members eventually morphed into Crowded House. Split Enz’s big hit was I Got You but I’ve always preferred this track which wasn’t even a single, although it had fairly good airplay at the time, 1980, in Canada, at least.
        
    12. Deep Purple, Strange King Of Woman (live, from Made in Japan) . . . Total play off the Split Enz track ie what’s the matter with you, you strange kind of woman but of course totally different genres, the hard rock of Purple live vs the pop/new wave of Split Enz. But, it all works in musicland, I say.
    13. Bruce Hornsby, Talk Of The Town . . . Not sure when the last time was, or if there was such a time, that I played Bruce Hornsby. Beyond the two obvious hits he had, way back when, The Way It Is and The Valley Road, he’s an interesting/amazing artist, on his own, in sessions, and on the road in latter day versions of the Grateful Dead. Much respect to artists like him who do what moves them rather than what might bring them commercial success. So, in that sense, he especially belongs in a set largely dedicated to a similar artist, the late great Jeff Beck. Lovely piano as one would expect from Hornsby on a compelling tune about an interracial romance.
    14. Social Distortion, I Was Wrong . . . I got into Social Distortion via this song, from the 1996 album White Light, White Heat, White Trash back when commercial rock radio was still at least occasionally playing new material by relatively new bands, or even new music from longstanding bands. Social Distortion was into their fifth studio album by then, but thankfully I heard it and became a fan. Great lyrics.
    15. Carole King, Corazon . . . Funky, Santana-esque track, something many might not expect from the singer-songwriter who produced the amazing Tapestry album, released in 1971. Corazon is from King’s Fantasy album,  two years after Tapestry. I pulled it from a compilation I bought years ago, The Essential Carole King. It’s a nicely done compilation. The first CD features King as singer/songwriter/performer. The second disc is her songwriting, as done by others including well-known tunes like The Monkees’ Pleasant Valley Sunday and Little Eva’s The Loco-Motion, also done by Grand Funk Railroad.
    16. Warren Zevon, The Sin (live, from Stand In The Fire) . . . To my knowledge, this is the only version available of this song, recorded live in 1980 in West Hollywood, California. It was a new song at the time, debuted live, rock and roll, and there it sits on the Stand In The Fire album. The album was released in 1980 but quickly became hard to find, going out of print, apparently, before I had a chance to buy it. It finally was re-released on CD in 2007. Well worth having/listening to, all available online now of course. But be wary. Online stuff doesn’t always stay there.
    17. Joe Jackson, Throw It Away . . . I played JJ’s A Slow Song last Saturday so I figured I’d go with one of his fast ones this week. Just to show him that he, too, often turned music into the ‘savage beast’ he referenced in A Slow Song. And that’s great. Killer stuff from his debut, Look Sharp!
    18. The Yardbirds, Happenings Ten Years Time Ago (Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page on guitars) . . . Back into the late great Jeff Beck we go on this rousing Yardbirds team-up featuring two of that band’s legendary guitarists, the other being Eric Clapton.
    19. Jeff Beck, Rock My Plimsoul (from Truth) . . . It’s hard to find words for the songs on Truth. The album is ridiculously great – a template for so much of the hard, bluesy rock it influenced.
    20. Jeff Beck, Freeway Jam (from Jeff Beck with The Jan Hammer Group Live) . . . This is why Jeff Beck was so great. He stepped out, into other genres, with different musicians, often on his previous tunes, like this one that first appeared on Blow By Blow, while incorporating all of it into who and what he was.
    21. Jeff Beck, Big Block (from Guitar Shop) . . . I always owned it but didn’t fully get into Guitar Shop until I heard a live version of this track on a later Jeff Beck release, Jeff Beck Live + from 2015. So, I went back to the original studio version and, as often happens, was rewarded. Worth the price of admission for the intro alone.
    22. Beck, Bogert, Appice, Jizz Whizz (previously unreleased track, recorded 1973, issued on Beckology box set, 1991) . . . From the early 1970s power trio, Beck and two-thirds of the original Vanilla Fudge, on a previously-unreleased 1973 recording that only saw the light of day on the aforementioned Beckology box.
    23. Jeff Beck Group, Going Down (from Jeff Beck Group ‘orange’ album, 1972) . . . Great cover of the Don Nix classic by the second Jeff Beck Group, this one comprised of Beck, Bobby Tench (vocals), Max Middleton (keyboards), Clive Chaman (bass) and Cozy Powell (drums) as opposed to the original Beck group featuring Rod Stewart on lead vocals and Ronnie Wood on bass.
    24. Jeff Beck, Gets Us All In The End (from Flash) . . . Killer riffology to start the track, which suffers a bit from 1980s overproduction. It was released in 1985 but yet another indication of Beck’s guitar prowess.
    25. The Band, (I Don’t Want To) Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes (live, from Rock Of Ages) . . . A friend of mine mentioned he was listening to this album the other night, New Year’s Eve in fact which is when much of the album was recorded as 1971 passed into 1972. So, as always, a thought is planted and I play something. Hanging it up now, until Monday’s show.