My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list. Song clips also available on my Facebook page.

1. The Rolling Stones, If You Can’t Rock Me
2. Uriah Heep, The Magician’s Birthday
3. Scorpions, Top Of The Bill (live, from Tokyo Tapes)
4. Iron Maiden, When The Wild Wind Blows
5. Judas Priest, Burn In Hell
6. Judas Priest, Invincible Shield
7. Arthur Lee, Stay Away From Evil
8. Jethro Tull, With You There To Help Me
9. Blodwyn Pig, San Francisco Sketches (Beach Scape/Fisherman’s Wharf/Telegraph Hill/I’m Falling Out Of The Room)
10. Tame Impala, Elephant
11. April Wine, Slow Poke
12. Savoy Brown, All I Can Do
13. Simon McBride (Deep Purple guitarist), One More Try
14. U2, Surrender
15. Free, Soon I Will Be Gone
16. Blood, Sweat & Tears, Maiden Voyage

My track-by-track tales:

1. The Rolling Stones, If You Can’t Rock Me . . . Energetic rocker with a great mid-song bass break, it’s the opening track on 1974’s It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll album, guitarist Mick Taylor’s last with the band after five fruitful years. He was replaced by Ronnie Wood, who was at least the inspiration if not an uncredited co-writer of the album’s title track, while still in the Faces but inexorably moving into the Stones’ orbit in large measure via his friendship with Keith Richards. The Stones effectively paired this with a rearranged Get Off Of My Cloud during their 1975-76 tours of North America and Europe – available on the 1977 live album Love You Live plus subsequent archival releases – but to my knowledge and research didn’t get back to If You Can’t Rock Me, on its own and well done, until the 2002 Licks tour celebrating the band’s 40th anniversary. They’ve since gone 20-plus years beyond that milestone.

2. Uriah Heep, The Magician’s Birthday . . . We begin a hard rock/metal segment of the set with this progressive 10-minutes and change title cut to the band’s 1973 album. The track shifts between mellow verses and powerful, heavy, what I term ‘galloping’ choruses including rat-a-tat drumming and great guitar soloing. The future members of Iron Maiden were obviously listening. We’ll get to Maiden in about seven minutes but first we’ll sting you with Scorpions.

3. Scorpions, Top Of The Bill (live, from Tokyo Tapes) . . . Originally a three and one half minute track on the 1975 studio album In Trance, this is the pile-driving live version, or at least more pile-driving than the studio song, at double the length, from Tokyo Tapes. The live set was released in 1978 featuring early Scorpions slabs of heavy rock/metal before they became more a pop-metal and power ballad hitmaking machine. A 2015 expanded re-release of the live album includes an 11-minute version of Top Of The Bill, recorded on the same tour that yielded Tokyo Tapes. That version is also available on YouTube if not various streaming services.

4. Iron Maiden, When The Wild Wind Blows . . . Eleven-minute epic from 2010’s The Final Frontier album. It’s one of Iron Maiden’s lengthy prog-metal excursions, something the band has always done but increasingly so later in its career. This track is loosely based on the 1982 nuclear war-themed graphic novel I’ve not read, titled When The Wind Blows.

5. Judas Priest, Burn In Hell . . . Dun, dun, dun, dun dun nun . . . hypnotic, ever-building opening guitar riff preceding all, er, hell breaking loose on this, my favorite track from the Tim (Ripper) Owens on lead vocals version of Priest. It’s from the 1997 album Jugulator, the first of two, Demolition in 2001 the other, released during the period singer Rob Halford left to pursue other projects including the short-lived thrash-metal outfit Fight.

6. Judas Priest, Invincible Shield . . . Smokin’, immediate, heavy riff rocking metal title cut from the 2024 album. It’s the fifth Priest studio platter, as Priest continues to pack a powerful punch, no treading water or resting on laurels, since Halford returned to the fold for the 2005 album Angel Of Retribution. I saw the reunion tour with Halford in 2004, before any new album was out, Slayer opened, great show by both bands.

7. Arthur Lee, Stay Away From Evil . . . Total change of direction into this toe-tapping bouncy funky wah wah guitar-laced groove tune from the band Love leader’s 1981 self-titled solo album. “I wrote the song about myself,” Love says in the album’s song-by-song liner notes. “It means just what it says, but then how can you?”

8. Jethro Tull, With You There To Help Me . . . Progressive folk-rock fusion might be how best to describe this track, and most of Tull’s material in general, aside from the first, blues-oriented album This Was. That album was so named because it ‘was’ Tull before the split between Ian Anderson and Tull’s first guitarist, blues-oriented Mick Abrahams, over musical direction. This is from the 1970 album Benefit which I’ve always thought of as a two-fer musical piece, stylistically flowing together with 1969’s Stand Up which introduced guitarist Martin Barre to the Tull team.

9. Blodwyn Pig, San Francisco Sketches (Beach Scape/Fisherman’s Wharf/Telegraph Hill/I’m Falling Out Of The Room) . . . . A multi-part suite, each offering a different mood while blending jazz, blues, and rock elements, from the band Mick Abrahams formed after leaving Jethro Tull. The song even features some flute, a seemingly obvious tip of the cap to Tull. San Francisco Sketches is from Getting To This, Blodwyn Pig’s 1970 release and second album, after debut Ahead Rings Out in 1969. Terrific name, Blodwyn Pig, Blodwyn being a Welsh name meaning fair, or white, flower. The band name was apparently coined by a stoned friend of the band.

10. Tame Impala, Elephant . . . Retro-psychedelic rock, great riff, could have come out in the 1960s but it’s actually from 2012 by the one-person (at least in studio) project Tame Impala, aka Australian singer and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Parker. I remember my older son mentioning Tame Impala some years ago and I got into the music for a while but, while I like it, it sort of just faded from my playlists until the other day when, rummaging around, I picked up a compilation CD from a 2012 issue of Classic Rock Magazine and, voila. Tame Impala has become worthy of reinvestigation, for me.

11. April Wine, Slow Poke . . . Bluesy ribald subject matter groove tune from the 1975 album Stand Back which featured the hit single Tonite Is A Wonderful Time To Fall In Love. I was generally more an April Wine compilation collector until the 1977 album Live At The El Mocambo, taken from the famous (or infamous) Toronto club shows April Wine opened for The Rolling Stones, and that April Wine live album is actually where I first heard Slow Poke.

12. Savoy Brown, All I Can Do . . . Lengthy, soulful blues rock track, nearly 11 minutes, from the band’s 1971 Street Corner Talking album. As always, it features the sterling guitar playing of the late Kim Simmonds, who I saw live with Savoy Brown at the 2013 Kitchener Blues Festival.

13. Simon McBride, One More Try . . . Gary Moore-like blues rock ballad, when Moore did blues rock as opposed to his forays into hard rock and metal, and another one I pulled from that Classic Rock Magazine compilation CD I found lying around via which I rediscovered Tame Impala. This is from McBride’s 2012 solo album Crossing The Line. As of 2022, he’s Deep Purple’s new permanent guitarist, having replaced Steve Morse. Morse temporarily left Deep Purple to tend to his ailing wife, who has sadly since passed, with McBride taking over on tour until Morse decided to leave permanently, saying he was ‘handing over the keys to the vault” to McBride who, the always classy Morse added, had ‘nailed’ the Purple gig. That was confirmed by a friend of mine who saw Purple last summer and was impressed by McBride’s playing which had its first studio outing with Purple on the band’s 2024 release = 1.

14. U2, Surrender . . . Great song with a terrific rhythmic groove, from the 1983 album War, U2’s third studio release and one that arguably truly broke them big, featuring such hits as New Year’s Day and Sunday Bloody Sunday. Playing it for the show is a classic case, for me, anyway, of rediscovering a song after not having played an album in ages. As soon as it started I was “oh, yeah, I remember this.” Someone on YouTube put it this way and it would be difficult for me to provide a better analysis, so here’s his: “Every great album has at least one or two songs that weren’t a commercial hit, but add to the feel, acts as connective tissue, and gives an album substance and style. This is one of those songs.” Well put.

15. Free, Soon I Will Be Gone . . . And soon this show will be over, one song to go after this one, a beautiful ballad from the 1970 album Highway as I prepare to hit the road home.

16. Blood, Sweat & Tears, Maiden Voyage . . . A cover of the 1965 Herbie Hancock tune that’s become a jazz standard, blending BS & T’s typical jazz and rock elements and recorded for the band’s 1972 studio release New Blood. The album indeed represented new blood for the band, with lead singer David Clayton Thomas having gone solo although he later returned for a few more 1970s BS & T albums. Clayton Thomas was replaced by R & B singer Jerry Fisher on New Blood and other albums, although Maiden Voyage is an instrumental.