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

1. Led Zeppelin, Moby Dick/Bonzo’s Montreux
2. Genesis, Conversations With 2 Stools (from Live Over Europe 2007)
3. Mick Jagger, War Baby
4. The Steve Miller Band, Kow Kow Calqulator
5. Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, Rock That Boogie
6. Moon Martin, Hot Nite In Dallas
7. Link Wray, Studio Blues
8. Steve Earle, Continental Trailways Blues
9. Dave Edmunds, Singin’ The Blues
10. Elmore James, Look On Yonder Wall
11. Maria Muldaur, It’s A Blessing
12. Harry Chapin, Dance Band On The Titanic
13. Arlo Guthrie, Alice’s Restaurant Massacree
14. Ian Dury, Clevor Trever
15. David Baerwald, A Secret Silken World
16. Bob Dylan, What Was It You Wanted
17. Murray Head, One Night In Bangkok
18. Dishwalla, Charlie Brown’s Parents
19. Mountain, The Great Train Robbery

My track-by-track tales:

1. Led Zeppelin, Moby Dick/Bonzo’s Montreux . . . A couple of drum showcases to start the set, the first a combination track featuring the late John Bonham put together by Zep guitarist/producer Jimmy Page for the band’s 1990 box set, simply titled Led Zeppelin. “Previously unreleased in this form” as the liner notes on the box set state, as Page merged Moby Dick, which also featured his guitar riff, from Led Zeppelin II in 1969, with Bonzo’s Montreux which was recorded in 1976 but not officially released until the 1982 compilation Coda which consisted of previously unreleased and/or live tracks.

2. Genesis, Conversations With 2 Stools (from Live Over Europe) . . . In which Phil Collins goes back behind the kit to musically converse with longtime Genesis touring drummer Chester Thompson in a six-minute duel. This version is from the band’s 2007 Turn It On Again tour that saw the return of Collins to the Genesis fold after he had left in 1996 to fully concentrate on his solo career. He was replaced by singer Ray Wilson for the ill-fated 1997 studio album Calling All Stations. The ‘conversation’ is something Collins and Thompson started doing beginning with Genesis’ 1977 tour, although Collins – who took over lead vocals in the mid-1970s after Peter Gabriel left the band – continued to do the drumming on studio albums and some live songs over the years.

The Ray Wilson period of Genesis I don’t think is as bad as many critics would suggest. I think the album – which I intend to play again on the show sometime – has good songs and it made No. 2 in the UK charts and was successful in Europe. It’s just that the fan base, particularly in North America where a planned tour was cancelled due to poor ticket sales, wasn’t apparently accepting of anyone replacing what had by then become the iconic Collins. That’s interesting given how Collins was easily accepted as the replacement for the thought-to-be irreplaceable Peter Gabriel in the mid-1970s. Interviews with band members about the Wilson period are available on YouTube and some of the opinion, including from Wilson himself, is that, had the Wilson-Tony Banks-Mike Rutherford lineup done a second album, starting from scratch as a unit (Wilson came in with Calling All Stations already mostly written by Banks and Rutherford) things might have turned out differently, perhaps a more successful third version of the band. Who knows, it didn’t happen. Collins himself suggests in one of the interviews that it was easier for him to take over and the band adjust to the departure of Gabriel, given that the group had been around for less than a decade at that point, than it was for Wilson, who came in after Collins had fronted and written with the band for 30 years.

As for Chester Thompson, he was also in Phil Collins’ solo touring band but the two had a falling out during a 2010 tour; apparently Collins was dissatisified with Thompson’s playing. And that’s the last association Thompson – a veteran who lists on his resume time with Frank Zappa and Weather Report – had with any Genesis member. He was replaced by Collins’ son Nic Collins on the band’s final tour, the 2021 trek The Last Domino? Tour. Thompson was originally hurt by the split with Collins but apparently things have been smoothed out to the point where he was supportive of Collins’ son joining the touring band. Nic Collins had travelled with the group on the 2007 tour and Thompson said it was evident he had great potential.

“I was pretty upset. But I’m over it now,” Thompson is quoted in a Wikipedia entry about his relationship with Phil Collins. “I wish him nothing but the best.”

And as for Nic Collins, now age 23: “We knew at five or six years old that this kid was going to be a monster. I think it’s fantastic that he got to play with his dad,” Thompson said.
But Nic couldn’t play directly with his father on shared drum stool conversation, alas. Phil, due to various health issues including spinal injuries, at last report can no longer play the drums and he sat in a chair at the front of the stage, doing lead vocals, on the most recent Genesis tour.

3. Mick Jagger, War Baby . . . Primitive Cool, Jagger’s second solo album, released in 1987, gets trashed and I’d trash it, too, if all I’d ever heard from it was the first single, Let’s Work. It’s actually in retrospect not a bad dance type track as Jagger, as he usually does when doing solo albums and kudos to him for that, tries to separate himself from the Rolling Stones sound and in this case is helped along by the production gloss of Dave Stewart of Eurythmics fame. But there’s the ridiculous video of fit Mick doing aerobics and running and such and lecturing people to get off their butts and to work, etc. and I remember thinking, WTF, Mick? Yet another case where sometimes an artist, or the record company, picks the wrong single and/or video. And then the whole album is judged by it because not all listeners dig deeper.

There’s much better songs on Primitive Cool than Let’s Work. Like Party Doll, the type of hurtin’ country ballad Jagger does so well and I’ve played on the show before and this one, War Baby. It came to mind because I’m currently reading a biography of Who bassist John Entwistle and the first line of the first chapter talks about how Entwistle, born in 1944 was, like Jagger (born 1943) a ‘war baby’ raised amid the rubble wrought by Nazi bombing of the UK. And Jagger speaks to that in an anti-war song too easily overlooked by random, quick assessments of the album. I will always think Jagger’s next solo album, the 1993 record Wandering Spirit, is easily his best solo effort in large measure because it’s the solo album of his that sounds most like The Rolling Stones. But Primitive Cool, for those who haven’t dug in, is worthy of deeper investigation; you arguably need to approach it from the point of view that it’s a Jagger album, not a Stones’ record. Jeff Beck is lead guitarist on the album.

4. The Steve Miller Band, Kow Kow Calqulator . . . From the 1969 album Brave New World and it would be a new world of bluesy and psychedelic rock for any fans of Miller who only know him for his many 1970s hits like Take The Money And Run, Fly Like An Eagle, The Joker, etc. that make up the bulk of one of the best-selling compilations ever, Greatest Hits 1974-78. There was a Steve Miller Band before all of that, with albums released starting in 1968. A different sort of band. Boz Scaggs of later fame via solo hit singles like Lido Shuffle and Lowdown was in the group, although Boz left before Brave New World, having played on the first two Miller band albums. Miller continued on in the same vein until achieving commercial success starting with The Joker in 1973 and then the back-to-back full of hits albums Fly Like An Eagle and Book Of Dreams in 1976 and ’77.

5. Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, Rock That Boogie . . . I never would have thought so but I must have some rockabilly, or rockabilly boogie, in my soul because I seem to play a fair bit of it. Maybe it goes back to me getting blitzed on Purple Jesus with friends going into a bluegrass festival while in college during the summer of 1980. We weren’t at all into bluegrass, although I’ve come to like it over the years but back then we just went for the party. We realized we’d forgotten or not bothered to get any mix – no purple, just Jesus! – so we just drank the straight booze, passing a bottle of grain alcohol between us, essentially three drunks walking down the street into the festival, little of which, predictably, we saw or heard but again, we weren’t really there for the music. We survived the occasion, such as it was. I crashed out early in a tent we were sharing with other friends we met up with, dirt was the floor such that when I returned home the next day, in relatively fine fettle but white sweat shirt caked with mud, my older and one of my younger brothers asked “what the eff happened to you?”

6. Moon Martin, Hot Nite In Dallas . . . Pulsating production, this straight ahead rock and roller from the guy who gave us two hits, his own Rolene and Bad Case Of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor) covered by Robert Palmer on his Secrets album. The songs were released within a month of each other in the summer months of 1979.

7. Link Wray, Studio Blues . . . I just felt like hearing more instrumental guitar wank from the father of feedback/doctor of distortion, so here we are. With some horns, to boot.

8. Steve Earle, Continental Trailways Blues . . . According to the liner notes on Essential Steve Earle, a 1993 retrospective, this slow burn country rockabilly-ish tune appeared during the 1987 Steve Martin-John Candy movie Planes Trains and Automobiles which I’ve never seen in full, caught bits and pieces while channel surfing whenever it shows up on TV so I’ve gotten the gist of the picture, all well and good. This tune was also released on a 1988 country compilation titled Country And Eastern. Earle, a buddy of mine once said, could sing the phone book (if any still exist but you get the gist) and he’d listen. I agree.

9. Dave Edmunds, Singin’ The Blues . . . Twangin’ is a great album title for Edmunds’ 1981 release in terms of suiting what’s within. I remember initially being disappointed by the album, having come to Edmunds largely via his previous hit record Repeat When Necessary, issued in 1979 and featuring songs like Crawling From The Wreckage by Graham Parker and Girls Talk via Elvis Costello. So I was expecting more instantly immersive songs. Twangin’ ? No real hits, great music. Sometimes, as Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones has said, you have to let things marinate, then you ‘get’ it.

10. Elmore James, Look On Yonder Wall . . . This one’s from 1961. Listening to the great underproduced (or more likely perfectly produced) blues including the vocals and spare yet effective instrumentation, it’s no wonder so many rock artists were inspired by this sort of thing.

11. Maria Muldaur, It’s A Blessing . . . Bonnie Raitt is a backing vocalist on this deep acoustic blues track from Muldaur’s 2001 album Richland Woman Blues. Muldaur is best known for her 1970s hit Midnight At The Oasis but much of her material is bluesy brilliance.

12. Harry Chapin, Dance Band On The Titanic . . . Uptempo tune on yet another of Chapin’s typically great story songs, in this case about that ‘unsinkable’ ship and also a commentary on how diversions can be created to distract from real problems.

Nothing to do with the music but often when I think of the Titanic – and like many I’m endlessly fascinated by the story, the what ifs, etc. – as a sports fan and retired sportswriter I also think of a hockey player, Morris Titanic. He was a hotshot junior scorer drafted in the first round, 12th overall, by the Buffalo Sabres in 1973 but never scored a goal nor earned an assist in the National Hockey League. He had a clean sheet of 0-0-0, not even any penalty minutes, in 19 games over two seasons. I remember various newspaper headlines when he was sent down to the minor leagues:

“Titanic goes down” How could they resist?

Titanic wound up having a six-season minor league career before going into coaching. Others in his draft class fared better in the NHL, among them Hockey Hall of Famers Denis Potvin, Lanny McDonald and Bob Gainey.

13. Arlo Guthrie, Alice’s Restaurant Massacree . . . I first heard this in my high school gym, mid-1970s, a talent show where a classmate of mine played it. He seemed to get mixed reviews despite his excellent performance, perhaps because the song is long, nearly 19 minutes but it’s worthwhile of course, lyrically and musically.

14. Ian Dury, Clevor Trever . . . Yes, it’s spelled that way. Clevor Trever, not the Clever Trevor you might expect. Creativity, you know. A funky groove tune from the New Boots and Panties!! album released in 1977. I got to it in 1978 via a first-year college friend who introduced me to it via the single Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll which was on the North American album but not, at the time given industry practice, on UK releases.

15. David Baerwald, A Secret Silken World . . . Spooky track, harrowing lyrics, it opens with “I took a ride with a sadist on a Saturday night’ and devolves from there. It’s from one half of the perhaps cult figure Davids, Baerwald and Ricketts, who in 1986 under the banner David + David released one of my favorite albums, Boomtown, which I’ve often delved into. Baerwald now does music scores for film and TV with occasional music releases including this one from the 1992 album Triage, while Ricketts has done session work and production.

16. Bob Dylan, What Was It You Wanted . . . “Who are you, anyway’ great line in the context of a full song of brilliant lines, maybe about him, maybe us, maybe someone in particular. One never truly knows with Dylan, which is his lyrical magic. This is from his 1989 album Oh Mercy.

17. Murray Head, One Night In Bangkok . . . Murray Head, as Judas, was a prominent performer on the Jesus Christ Superstar, soundtrack, the 1970 version that is, to me, the best soundtrack of that production. Also starring with Head were Ian Gillan of Deep Purple as Jesus and Yvonne Elliman as Mary Magdalene. Head is in a different musical milieu on this compelling rap/disco/spoken word highlight of the mid-1980s musical Chess, which revolves around a Cold War-era tournament of the best game ever invented.

18. Dishwalla, Charlie Brown’s Parents . . . Heavy riffing from a band that is still around and they rock but turned out to be, perhaps unfairly, a one-hit wonder group – the terrific 1990s hit single Counting Blue Cars that they never managed to follow up to any extent.

19. Mountain, The Great Train Robbery . . . Another story song to finish the set, this one about the famous 1963 robbery in England. It’s from Mountain’s 1971 album Nantucket Sleighride.