My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.
1. AC/DC, Let There Be Rock
2. AC/DC, Demon Fire
3. Black Sabbath, Into The Void
4. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Sledgehammer
5. Blackfoot, Gimme Gimme Gimme
6. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Devil In The Bottle
7. Jimi Hendrix, Bold As Love
8. Deep Purple, April
9. Queen, The Hitman
10. Aerosmith, Jailbait
11. Robin Trower, Too Rolling Stoned
12. The Rolling Stones, Tops
13. Joe Jackson, Girl (live)
14. The Beatles, Cry Baby Cry
15. Neil Young, Like An Inca
16. Groundhogs, Split, Parts 1-4
My track-by-track tales:
1. AC/DC, Let There Be Rock . . . Title cut from the 1977 album, Bon Scott still alive and on lead vocals, uncompromising raunch and roll setting the tone for at least the first few songs of the set.
2. AC/DC, Demon Fire . . . One of two tracks – Shot In The Dark the other – AC/DC is playing on its just-begun Power Up tour in support of its 2020 album. A long time between the record release and its supporting tour but lots happened in between: Covid, lead singer Brian Johnson’s hearing issues such that he was replaced by Axl Rose of Guns ‘N Roses on a previous tour – including a period where Rose, with a broken leg, sang from a wheelchair. Kudos to Rose, he did a fine job overall in my view based on available video. Johnson, 77, recovered and alongside lead guitarist Angus Young, 70, AC/DC is still around, alive and kicking by all concert review accounts so far. As for Demon Fire, it’s got a similar funky infectious riff to Safe In New York City from the 2000 album Stiff Upper Lip. That’s a good thing. Are they ripping themselves off? Of course, but that’s AC/DC’s genius – doing variations on a theme for years yet still sounding fresh because discerning listeners know it’s not all the same if one actually investigates the albums, deep cuts and all. Still, Young had fun with that perception years ago:
“I’m sick to death of people saying we’ve made 11 albums (at the time) that sound exactly the same. In fact, we’ve made 12 albums that sound exactly the same.”
3. Black Sabbath, Into The Void . . . Hugely influential metal/doom sludge rock track before there were such categorizations, riding one of guitarist Tony Iommi’s darkest riffs, from Sabbath’s 1971 album Master Of Reality.
4. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Sledgehammer . . . Another band revived and on tour. BTO has been on the road since April 1 in Canada playing all the expected hits plus Guess Who tracks from Randy Bachman’s time in the band plus an encore medley of rock and roll from various artists including BTO: Hey You / All Right Now / Rock’n Me / You Shook Me All Night Long / Honky Tonk Women / Get It On (Bang a Gong) / (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction / Old Time Rock and Roll / Hey You (reprise). No Sledgehammer, though, which is of course cool but a fine deep track with combined lead vocals by Bachman and bassist C.F. (Fred) Turner from 1973’s Not Fragile album which featured the hit single You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet. BTO wraps up the Canadian leg of its tour in early May before starting a series of US dates in mid-July, running through the summer.
5. Blackfoot, Gimme Gimme Gimme . . . Straight ahead southern riff raunch and roll from 1980’s Tomcattin’ album, fuelled by leader Rickey Medlocke’s guitar and lead vocals. Medlocke was an early, pre-released recordings member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, playing drums on demos, some of which eventually surfaced on the post-plane crash compilation Skynyrd’s First and… Last which was later expanded and re-released as Skynyrd’s First: The Complete Muscle Shoals Album. Medlocke rejoined Skynyrd full time, on guitar, for the 1997 album Twenty and has been a core member of the reconstituted band since.
6. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Devil In The Bottle . . . Speaking of Skynyrd (without Medlocke) . . . A touching tale about demon alcohol from the unplugged 1994 album Endangered Species that featured classic pre-plane crash Skynyrd tracks like Sweet Home Alabama, Down South Jukin’, Saturday Night Special and I Ain’t The One as well as material done by the reconstituted band and a cover of Elvis’s Heartbreak Hotel. At the time of Endangered Species, the group still featured several of the plane crash survivors or previous, pre-crash players in the band.
The lineup: Gary Rossington and Ed King on guitars; Leon Wilkeson bass; Billy Powell piano from the classic-era group plus lead singer Johnny Van Zant, the departed singer Ronnie Van Zant’s brother. I like all Skynyrd stuff. I think – and that’s cool – people who criticize the latter-day group as being nothing more than a tribute band may not have sampled and thus are missing lots of good music but that’s ok and understandable. But if people can’t make the full leap from band version to version, I’d recommend Endangered Species as a possible entry point if one is at all curious.
7. Jimi Hendrix, Bold As Love . . . Title cut to Axis: Bold As Love. There’s no real hook to it, yet it’s completely compelling with of course fine playing by Hendrix and band as you float along on the bed of instrumentation they lay down.
8. Deep Purple, April . . . I had to get this classical/progressive/hard rock piece in before the end of April. It’s from the so-called Mark I version of Deep Purple. The lineup featured Nick Simper on bass and Rod Evans on lead vocals although Evans doesn’t come in until almost nine minutes into this 12-minute track from the third and final album done by Mark I, simply titled Deep Purple. It was released in 1969. An underappreciated, inventive period of Purple.
9. Queen, The Hitman . . . A hard rocker from 1991’s excellent Innuendo album, the last record the band released while lead singer Freddie Mercury was alive and a nod to classic 1970s Queen not only on this song but throughout the record.
10. Aerosmith, Jailbait . . . Sleazy start/stop/start rocker from the 1982 album Rock In A Hard Place. It’s an appropriate album title in that guitarists Joe Perry and Brad Whitford had left a band disintegrating amid drug abuse and other issues. They were replaced by Jimmy Crespo (sessions with Rod Stewart, Stevie Nicks and Meat Loaf among others) and Rick Dufay (various sessions). Yet, some quality Aerosmith material was still produced, like this bluesy boozy raunchy rolling track that starts with a wild intro, comes to a stop, then winds up again. Lightning Strikes, which I’ve played before, perhaps too often, remains to me the best track on the album but this rocker isn’t far behind.
11. Robin Trower, Too Rolling Stoned . . . My favorite Trower track from arguably his best album, the 1974 release Bridge Of Sighs. It also serves as an obvious segue to the next band/song.
12. The Rolling Stones, Tops . . . The Stones, wanting a new studio album to tour behind in 1981 but pressed for time, visited their vaults to cobble leftovers into the chart-topping feast that became the Tattoo You album propelled by the hit single Start Me Up. But there’s so much depth to the album including this mid-tempo ballad whose history goes back to 1972 sessions and features great drumming from Charlie Watts and lead guitar from Mick Taylor.
13. Joe Jackson, Girl (from Live Music) . . . No guitars. Piano-driven cover of The Beatles’ cut from Rubber Soul, issued on Jackson’s 2011 live album taken from a 2010 tour of Europe. JJ labeled his band at the time the Joe Jackson Trio, a terrific unit featuring his perennial on bass (Graham Maby) going back to the 1979 debut album Look Sharp! David Houghton, the drummer on Look Sharp! and Jackson’s first few albums and several later ones, is also on board.
14. The Beatles, Cry Baby Cry . . . Haunting yet beautiful track from The White Album, written and sung by John Lennon and punctuated by Paul McCartney’s ‘can you take me back’ coda.
15. Neil Young, Like An Inca . . . How can you not get into, or at least try, a track that starts with the lyric ‘said the condor to the preying mantis’ ? This extended piece from 1982’s off the wall Kraftwerk-like electronic album Trans is actually a curveball within the context of the record, given it’s a ‘traditional’ or conventional-sounding Young song on an otherwise experimental entry. Geffen Records sued Young at the time for not sounding like Neil Young (?!, he obviously should be open to creating as his muse moves him but, understandably perhaps, Geffen would have been expecting Neil Young as folk or grunge Neil Young, not Kraftwerk or whatever). Young countersued in the interests of creative freedom. Both lawsuits were soon dropped and Young received a personal apology from label leader David Geffen for interfering in the creative process. Trans is an interesting album as are all Young’s experiments – albeit not to all tastes – while he was signed to Geffen including Everybody’s Rockin’ (rockabilly) in 1983 and the country album Old Ways in 1985.
16. Groundhogs, Split, Parts 1-4 . . . Time to ‘split’ from the studio via this multi-part title suite from the British blues rock band’s 1971 album. They’re all individual songs, they each ‘end’ on a fadeout and aren’t conventionally connected yet are an overall unified piece.