My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list. Song clips also available on my Facebook page.
1. Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 5
2. Electric Light Orchestra, Roll Over Beethoven
3. John Mellencamp, Play Guitar
4. John Mellencamp, Serious Business
5. Otis Redding, Satisfaction
6. Ray Charles, Let’s Go Get Stoned
7. Warren Zevon, Bo Diddley’s A Gunslinger/Bo Diddley (live, from Stand In The Fire)
8. Ron Wood & Bo Diddley, Who Do You Love (from Live At The Ritz)
9. The Rolling Stones, Too Tough
10. Pink Floyd, Empty Spaces
11. Pink Floyd, Young Lust
12. Aerosmith, One Way Street
13. ZZ Top, Lowdown In The Street
14. Procol Harum, Long Gone Geek
15. Mountain, Solution
16. Rush, Chemistry
17. Pretenders, Mystery Achievement
18. Van Halen, Up For Breakfast
19. The Black Crowes, Been A Long Time (Waiting On Love)
20. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Ain’t No Sunshine (from Live At The Fillmore 1997)
21. Fleetwood Mac, That’s All For Everyone
My track-by-track tales:
1. Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 . . . Everyone knows those first, dramatic notes . . . da na na na! Etc. Depending on version, or excerpt, the piece can go on for half an hour or more, or less. In this case, it’s about six minutes of me having fun throwing a curveball, perhaps, into an otherwise usual rock and roll show but I’ve done it before. As always, it depends on my mood, my thought process at a given time, what I may have been conversing about, reading, watching, listening to, or whatever. Ideas come from everywhere and anywhere. In this case, I was thinking of playing Electric Light Orchestra so then I thought about Roll Over Beethoven, ELO’s cover of Chuck Berry so it then followed that, what the heck, play Beethoven himself. So here we are.
2. Electric Light Orchestra, Roll Over Beethoven . . . The original 8-minutes and change version as it appeared on the ELO 2 album in 1973 when the band was still in its early phases finding its way and experimenting with psychedelic and progressive rock forms, always with an ear to catchy tunes. So, a Chuck Berry cover like Roll Over Beethoven was perhaps an obvious ‘easy’ thing to do, quite successfully; a great hard rocking/prog version.
3. John Mellencamp, Play Guitar . . . “Forget all about that macho shit and learn how to play guitar” the signature line from a great tune from his 1983 album Uh Huh, still in naming transition between early stage name John Cougar then to his actual surname Mellencamp. The album was released under the name John Cougar Mellencamp but in any event nothing truly matters but the music and it’s one of those albums easily listened to, straight through, with not a dud track in the list.
4. John Mellencamp, Serious Business . . . Another from Uh Huh; I couldn’t decide between this and Play Guitar so, I’m playing both.
5. Otis Redding, Satisfaction . . . Otis’s version of The Rolling Stones’ classic, released on his Otis Blue album that came out three months after the Stones’ 1965 hit single. It is, based on available literature, at least somewhat how Keith Richards of the Stones initially envisioned the song as being, complete with horns. Which, interestingly, with the Stones being augmented in concert by various horn sections over the years since, the song has at least somewhat become a hybrid of the original and Redding versions when the Stones play it live. That often depends on where it is in the set. I’ve seen them open with it, playing it ‘straight’ without horns, and seen them close with it in extended almost orchestra versions.
6. Ray Charles, Let’s Go Get Stoned . . . I’ve been in something of a Ray Charles phase of late, likely started when I played Humble Pie’s live version of I Don’t Need No Doctor fairly recently but in any case, always a good time to play something by one of the masters of music.
7. Warren Zevon, Bo Diddley’s A Gunslinger/Bo Diddley (live, from Stand In The Fire) . . . Incendiary stuff, in line with the album title.
8. Ron Wood & Bo Diddley, Who Do You Love (from Live At The Ritz) . . . I hadn’t planned on playing this but when I decided to play Zevon doing Diddley it just seemed to follow that I would or should play Diddley and this version of arguably his signature song, accompanied by the Stones’ guitarist, from the collaborative 1988 album Live At The Ritz.
9. The Rolling Stones, Too Tough . . . Nice riff rocker from the 1983 album Undercover. It’s something of a ‘lost’ album in the Stones’ extensive catalog. The band didn’t tour behind it as the so-called “World War III’ between songwriting principals Mick Jagger and Keith Richards was heating up as Jagger was in process of launching a solo career, splitting his musical focus. That battle went to greater extremes on the subsequent 1986 album Dirty Work which has been savaged by critics and some fans but which I love due to its naked aggression, reflecting band dynamics at the time. More on that, next time I play a song from the Dirty Work album. Suffice it to say that eventually, by the 1990s, all concerned seem to come to the understanding that they could – and did – pursue solo projects without sabotaging the mother ship.
On that score, it’s interesting in The Beatles’ documentary Get Back, there’s a scene where John Lennon and George Harrison are in studio, musing about doing solo albums in parallel with The Beatles. Paul McCartney wasn’t in the room but apparently later said that, had he known of the conversation, he would have been supportive of the idea. It didn’t happen – outside of some members doing experimental music while the band was still together, things like Harrison’s Wonderwall Music in 1968 and Electronic Sound in 1969 or Lennon’s avant-garde experiments with Yoko Ono – so it’s one of those interesting ‘what ifs’ of history. Lennon, Harrison and Ringo Starr did work together on some of each other’s post-breakup solo albums and McCartney joined the others – although not in studio at the same time – on Starr’s 1973 album Ringo.
As for the Stones’ Undercover album, it actually had its share of hits including the top 10 in most countries funk rock title cut plus She Was Hot and the funk rock/rap Too Much Blood. And Too Tough, to me a ‘shoulda /coulda been’ hit that wasn’t released as a single although it did get some radio play.
10. Pink Floyd, Empty Spaces . . . From The Wall, a lead-in into Young Lust, best listened to as a unified piece, as I’m presenting it.
11. Pink Floyd, Young Lust . . . Featuring the immortal line “I need a dirty woman, I need a dirty girl . . . ” Always reminds me of college days in my off-campus apartment when I got home one night to hear my neighbor, apparently impromptu but maybe he was listening to Pink Floyd, cry out “I want a woman!” Apparently, he didn’t have or get one, at least that night.
12. Aerosmith, One Way Street . . . A seven-minute bluesy cut from the band’s self-titled 1973 debut album that featured the hit single Dream On.
13. ZZ Top, Lowdown In The Street . . . Music is, or can be, very much a time and place thing and that’s what ZZ Top’s 1979 album Deguello, from which this track comes, is for me. I had of course known of the band, their various hits to that point like Tush and Le Grange, owned their first compilation featuring those tunes but during college here came Deguello, with hits like I Thank You and Cheap Sunglasses and I was totally sold, prompting me to go back to the individual albums preceding Deguello, with obvious rewards.
14. Procol Harum, Long Gone Geek . . . Heavy rocker was the B-side to the title cut single from the 1969 album A Salty Dog.
15. Mountain, Solution . . . A new track at the time of its release, 1994, on the excellent/comprehensive Mountain compilation Over The Top which has now, according to a magazine I was perusing in my neighborhood record store last Friday, been re-released after going out of print. It’s a worthwhile compilation to pick up or listen to online, showing how Mountain was excellent beyond their best-known hit Mississippi Queen. Solution, the 1994 track in all its heavy guitar glory, is up to Mountain’s established standards.
16. Rush, Chemistry . . . From the 1982 album Signals which featured the hit single Subdivisions. Typical Rush, the song Chemistry, but upon deeper investigation there are musical signs, (maybe that’s why they called the album Signals) in the song of Rush’s impending move into the controversial and divisive to the fan base synthesizer rock phase over the next three albums – Grace Under Pressure, Power Windows and Hold Your Fire.
17. Pretenders, Mystery Achievement . . . Irresistible rocker, great bass line, from the band’s self-titled debut album, 1979. The hits/best known tracks were Brass In Pocket and Precious but it’s one of those albums where every song is superb.
18. Van Halen, Up For Breakfast . . . Perhaps an indication of what may have been but never happened/continued. Up For Breakfast, hard yet melodic stuff from the Van (Sammy) Hagar version of the band was a new track recorded in 2004 along with two others for the 2-disc compilation The Best Of Both Worlds (the David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar on lead vocals versions of the band, totally ignoring the ill-fated Gary Cherone-fronted Van Halen III album). The compilation came out in support of a reunion tour with Hagar. I saw the show in July, 2004 in Toronto and it was terrific but it apparently was an illusion of sorts as relationships within the band were fraying thanks to musical differences compounded by guitarist Eddie Van Halen’s assorted drug and personal demons. There’s many interviews available on YouTube with, at least, Hagar’s views on what transpired.
19. The Black Crowes, Been A Long Time (Waiting On Love) . . . Unapologetically derivative of their heroes like Faces, Aerosmith and The Rolling Stones, among others, with the added influence of ‘jam bands’ that the Crowes – originally a hit singles band via songs like Jealous Again and Otis Redding’s Hard To Handle – have long since become in the vein of The Allman Brothers Band and others. It’s terrific music, regardless, that I haven’t played on the show in ages and thus is long overdue, so here we come with this track from the 2009 album Before The Frost . . . Until The Freeze. It was recorded before a live audience at Levon Helm of The Band fame’s Woodstock, New York studio, The Barn.
20. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Ain’t No Sunshine (from Live At The Fillmore 1997) . . . The Bill Withers classic done by Petty and The Heartbreakers on a terrific live album that came out in physical copies in 2022. It’s a great listen as Petty and pals go through their own material but also covers like Ain’t No Sunshine, J.J. Cale’s Call Me The Breeze, the Stones’ Time Is On My Side and Satisfaction, The Byrds’ Eight Miles High and Bob Dylan’s Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, among others.
21. Fleetwood Mac, That’s All For Everyone . . . And that is indeed all, for this show at least, as we part, until next time, via this cool cut I’ve always enjoyed, from the 1979 album Tusk.