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

1. The Law, Laying Down The Law
2. Chris Whitley, Phone Call From Leavenworth
3. Joe Satriani, Clouds Race Across The Sky
4. War, Galaxy
5. Ohio Players, Good Luck Charm
6. David Wilcox, Cheap Beer Joint
7. Van Morrison, Moonshine Whiskey
8. The White Stripes, One More Cup Of Coffee
9. Supertramp, Child Of Vision
10. Midnight Oil, Seeing Is Believing
11. Love, The Castle
12. Iggy Pop, Wild America
13. Gary Moore, World Of Confusion
14. The Motels, Apocalypso
15. Doug And The Slugs, Tropical Rainstorm
16. Jimi Hendrix, In From The Storm
17. Styx, Man In The Wilderness
18. Status Quo, Softer Ride
19. Gov’t Mule, Inside Outside Woman Blues #3
20. The Rolling Stones, Till The Next Goodbye

My track-by-track tales:

1. The Law, Laying Down The Law . . . I forgot about this Paul Rodgers-penned tune when I did a mini-Rodgers set last Saturday featuring a song each from his solo career and time with Free, Bad Company and The Firm. He also did one album with drummer Kenney Jones of Faces and The Who fame, in 1991, under the banner of The Law. To me this Bad Company-like song is the best on the record and actually hit No. 2 on the US singles charts (No. 68 in Canada) but then it’s going to sound like that, or Free, with Rodgers singing. Among those playing on various tracks on the album were David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame, Chris Rea and Pino Palladino, who toured as The Who’s bass player after the death of John Entwistle and played on the band’s two – so far – 21st century studio albums, Endless Wire (2006) and WHO (2019). Palladino is a prolific session bassist who has also worked with Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Don Henley, among many others.

2. Chris Whitley, Phone Call From Leavenworth . . . Acoustic bluesy brilliance from the late Whitley, lost to us at age 45, in 2005, of lung cancer. But he left behind lots of not always commercially successful but nevertheless fine albums, perhaps the best of which remains his debut, the 1991 release Living With The Law from which I pulled this track. As for Leavenworth, I recommend the book The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison by Pete Early which I read years ago. It’s a harrowing, rivetting trip into the US prison system in general and, at least as of Early’s 1992 book, what was considered among the most notorious, dreaded facilities in America. It apparently remains so.

I have no opinion on it, not trying to be political in any way and I don’t imagine victims of the incarcerated criminals would have much if any sympathy. I was just thinking of the song, remembered the book I’d read years ago, and researched the prison to the present day so I’m merely an observer. Leavenworth, in May, 2024, came out of a 2-month lockdown on inmates’ movements and daily routines imposed because a firearm got into the facility. Friends and family of inmates say conditions inside the prison are inhumane while the employees’ union says the prison is woefully understaffed, leading to problems. A story via a Kansas City TV station.

3. Joe Satriani, Clouds Race Across The Sky . . . A jazzy sort of trip from Satriani’s electronic music oriented 2000 album Engines Of Creation. It was originally titled As They Sleep, referring to Satriani watching his wife and son sleeping while “having metaphysical questions race through my head” as he wrote in the liner notes to the 2-CD collection The Essential Joe Satriani. He later changed the title to Clouds Race Across The Sky as he sat on his porch one night, strumming his guitar while watching the clouds do exactly that, as he contemplated life and our place in it.

4. War, Galaxy . . . Funky title track to War’s 1977 album from the band that brought us such hits as Why Can’t We Be Friends?, Low Rider and The Cisco Kid after starting their career with two albums collaborating with Eric Burdon of The Animals fame, which produced the hit Spill The Wine.

5. Ohio Players, Good Luck Charm . . . An extended piece of nearly 10 minutes, more in a jazz vein than perhaps more typical Ohio Players funky, raunchy fare like Love Rollercoaster; this one’s sultry smooth. From the 1977 album Mr. Mean.

6. David Wilcox, Cheap Beer Joint . . . If ever a song matched its title . . . you feel like you’re in a smoky dive listening to it. Nothing wrong with dive bars, they have character. And characters. Wilcox, who cut his teeth with Ian and Sylvia Tyson’s Great Speckled Bird, playing on the second and third of that group’s three studio albums, later went solo and has been a perennial on the Canadian music scene since his first album, Out Of The Woods, was released in 1977. I saw/heard him play most of it, including this bluesy barroom song, while working in an Oakville, Ontario bar myself paying my way through college. If you’re wondering, the bar I worked in wasn’t a dive but rather a multiple-room place – live rock bands upstairs, a disco on the ground floor, a folk band-oriented intimate room a floor down and a summertime patio bar beside one of the rivers/creeks that flows through town. It was called, naturally, The Riverside, later Sharkey’s, now long gone.

7. Van Morrison, Moonshine Whiskey . . . Terrific ever-changing tempo country rock/soul tune from 1971’s Tupelo Honey album. Ronnie Montrose of Montrose band fame was the lead guitarist on the album that was produced by Ted Templeman, who has worked a few Van The Man albums along with Montrose, Van Halen and Doobie Brothers releases, among many others, over the course of his lengthy career.

8. The White Stripes, One More Cup Of Coffee . . . As a big Bob Dylan fan I hereby put my stamp of approval on this cover of one of my favorite Dylan songs, which he released on his 1976 album Desire. That said, nobody can sing the line “Your daddy, he’s an outlaw and a wanderer by trade, he’ll teach you how to pick and choose, and how to throw the blade” like Dylan. In Dylan-speak, it’s ‘blade-uh”.

9. Supertramp, Child Of Vision . . . It might sound sacrilegious to some, but of Supertramp’s big four albums – Crime Of The Century, Crisis? What Crisis?, Even In The Quietest Moments and Breakfast In America, Breakfast – the most successful one commercially – is my least favorite. Probably because hit singles like The Logical Song, Goodbye Stranger and Take The Long Way Home have been played to the point of overkill. It’s a great album, don’t get me wrong, and I loved it when it came out, saw the tour in Toronto but, well, beyond the overplayed hits, it’s a bit too pop for me compared to the previous three records. But, this is why you have deeper cuts, like Child Of Vision from Breakfast, which I’d suggest harkens back to earlier Supertramp, with the last four minutes or so of this 7:31-long track a nice keyboard-dominated instrumental.

10. Midnight Oil, Seeing Is Believing . . . As is hearing. Great groove on this one. The opening riff/hook, which repeats at points throughout, sounds almost like, but different enough, from the James Bond theme I opened last Monday’s show with. Seeing Is Believing is from one of my favorite if relatively underappreciated Midnight Oil albums, the almost metallic/industrial-sounding 1998 release Redneck Wonderland.

11. Love, The Castle . . . Inventive playing and tempo changes on this psychedelic/progressive rock tune – all in three minutes – from Love’s second album, the 1966 release Da Capo.

12. Iggy Pop, Wild America . . . Grungy, metallic rocker from Pop’s 1993 album American Caesar. Terrific tune. Song-title wise, maybe 30 years ahead of its time, given last week’s election results? Relax, I’m just having fun.

13. Gary Moore, World Of Confusion . . . I’ve heard this song, a Moore original, described as “Manic Depression (by Jimi Hendrix) on steroids” and it is very derivative of the Hendrix song and we’ll get to Jimi in a bit. A nice heavy one, regardless, from Moore’s 2002 album Scars.

14. The Motels, Apocalypso . . . Latinesque in spots, to my ears, with some sterling saxophone from the band’s keyboard player Marty Jourard supporting the distinctive singing of Martha Davis, the band’s chief songwriter who also plays guitar. It’s from the new wave/pop band’s All Four One album, released in 1982. It was The Motels’ commercial breakthrough with hits Take The L and Only The Lonely which the group followed on 1983’s Little Robbers release with the hit Suddenly Last Summer. All Four One was originally to be titled Apocalypso but that version of the album was rejected by the record company as being too dark and not having any potential hits, although Only The Lonely was on the track list albeit in a less polished, production-wise, form. So the entire album was redone and came out as All Four One. Some Motels fans prefer the more raw version but the redo served its intended purpose as All Four One sold well. The Apocalpyso album was eventually released in 2011, 30 years after its recording. There’s an 18-minute YouTube video comparing the two albums I discovered while putting the show together, worthwhile viewing to anyone interested.

15. Doug And The Slugs, Tropical Rainstorm . . . The hit was the pop song Too Bad and I like it but this bluesy cut is one of my favorites from the Canadian band’s 1980 debut album Cognac and Bologna, and one of my favorite Slugs tunes, period. A clear case where what you hear released as singles isn’t always truly representative of a band or, at least, some of what they can do.

16. Jimi Hendrix, In From The Storm . . . Good rocker in an R & B vein, which is supposedly the direction Hendrix was heading before he died. In From The Storm came out on The Cry Of Love album in 1971, the first posthumous Hendrix release after his death in September, 1970. The entire Cry Of Love album was re-issued in 1997 as part of First Rays Of The New Rising Sun, put together by the Hendrix family trust on its Experience Hendrix label. Experience Hendrix re-released The Cry Of Love, on its own, in 2014.

17. Styx, Man In The Wilderness . . . Originally a six-minute album track on the band’s 1977 record The Grand Illusion, this is the previously unreleased full version, a minute longer, that came out on the 2004 double disc compilation Come Sail Away – The Styx Anthology. That release was retitled Gold in 2006 as part of Universal Music’s compilation series and it’s all I need of Styx. I was never a huge fan, my younger brother was, although I do like most of the hits of theirs that I know plus Miss America, a good rocker from The Grand Illusion that wasn’t released as a single but is on Gold. So it is a good comp in that sense as it digs relatively deep. Lyrically, Man In The Wilderness what one would expect from its title, someone trying to find themselves. Musically, it starts as a power ballad of sorts before transitioning into a guitar riff and soloing showcase about midway through, on both versions of the song.

18. Status Quo, Softer Ride . . . Softer, for about a minute of funky finger-picking on the four-minute tune before things heat up on a nice boogie rocker from Quo’s 1973 album Hello! It was their sixth studio album and first UK chart-topper.

19. Gov’t Mule, Inside Outside Woman Blues #3 . . . Nine minutes of bluesy, metallic, hard-rocking guitar-shredding from Warren Haynes and the boys, from the 2009 album By A Thread. The record was co-produced by Haynes and Gordie Johnson of Big Sugar and Grady fame, who has worked with Gov’t Mule on several albums among his many production credits.
“The number “3” refers to the fact that we did three versions of it, and we liked all three of them, so we included ‘3’ on the CD,” Haynes told The Washington Post upon the album’s release. “No. 1 is on the vinyl and No. 2 will come out somewhere — we’re not sure exactly where — but eventually all three versions will be available. 1 and 2 are just live performances with the vocal and all the instrumentation going to tape live, as if we were on stage, so they just kind of have their own vibe. They differ a bit in arrangement and from a sonic perspective, but mostly in the interpretation and the improvisation.”

Version 1 is on YouTube; I’ve never seen or heard Version 2 but maybe, as Haynes said, it’s out there somewhere.

20. The Rolling Stones, Till The Next Goodbye . . . A lovely ballad from 1974’s It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll album as I say adios, for this show, at least.