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

1. The Rolling Stones, Can’t You Hear Me Knocking
2. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Born To Run
3. Johnny Winter, Feedback On Highway 101
4. The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Arroyo
5. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, F*!#n’ Up
6. Bob Seger, Love The One You’re With
7. John Mellencamp, French Shoes
8. Pretenders, Pop Star
9. Ten Years After, Let The Sky Fall
10. Bruce Springsteen, Blinded By The Light
11. Black Sabbath, The Shining
12. Robert Palmer, Under Suspicion
13. Dead Kennedys, Police Truck
14. Ozzy Osbourne, Diary Of A Madman
15. Talking Heads, Memories Can’t Wait
16. Small Faces, The Autumn Stone
17. Jeff Beck, Let Me Love You
18. Small Faces/Faces, Three Button Hand Me Down
19. Faces, Maybe I’m Amazed (live)
20. Rod Stewart, Seems Like A Long Time
21. George Thorogood, No Expectations

My track-by-track tales:

1. The Rolling Stones, Can’t You Hear Me Knocking . . . Two songs in one, really, opening with the great Keith Richards riff before the entire band kicks in along with Mick Jagger’s vocals and then a bit before halfway through it becomes a Santana-esque instrumental jam highlighted by Mick Taylor’s guitar improvisations teamed up with saxophone player Bobby Keys as they just kept the tapes running.

2. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Born To Run . . . Along with the title track of The Last Rebel album, released in 1993 and from which Born To Run (not the Springsteen song) comes, this extended bluesy rock piece is one of my favorites by the post-plane crash version of Lynyrd Skynyrd and in fact one of my favorites of theirs, period. I’m admittedly loyal to the brand, but it’s because in my view the band has released quality music throughout their career, still going strong at least on the touring circuit, eight studio albums (though none since 2012) since the plane crash in 1977. Yet they aren’t always given a chance by fans of the so-called original band and that’s fine, but those fans tend to forget or overlook that Skynyrd’s lineup, even during the so-called classic years and they were of course the foundation upon which the reputation was built, was relatively fluid and changing, easily looked up. Guitarist Steve Gaines, for instance, who tragically perished in the plane crash, seems to be looked upon in some quarters as an original member yet, brilliant as he was, he only played on one studio album, the pre-crash 1977 release Street Survivors and before that, the 1976 live album One More From The Road.

3. Johnny Winter, Feedback On Highway 101 . . . Boogie rocker from Winter’s 1974 album Saints & Sinners. It was written by Van Morrison and targeted for Van The Man’s 1973 album Hard Nose The Highway but shelved, only appearing on bootlegs, with Winter’s cover to my knowledge the only official commercial release.

4. The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Arroyo . . . Funky country blues from the band’s 1976 album Men From Earth. Like many, perhaps, for the longest time I was satisfied with knowing the Daredevils’ two mid-1970s hits, Jackie Blue and If You Wanna Get To Heaven. Then, one day, I picked up, cheap in a used store, their 21-track CD compilation Time Warp: The Very Best Of The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, released in 2000. What a revelation. Great stuff, beyond those two aforementioned well-known hits, including a terrific swamp rock song, E.E. Lawson, I played back on my April 15, 2023 show. So it’s long past time I dug back into the Daredevils.

5. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, F*!#n’ Up . . . From Neil’s grungy, feedback- and distortion-laden 1990 album Ragged Glory and that it is, terrific unadulterated raunch and roll in all its glory. The chorus/hook “why do I keep effing up” is, I suppose, something we all feel from time to time as we may periodcally fall down, the key of course being to get back up. As time passes and now halfway into my seventh decade, as long as I maintain roof overhead and food on the table, I’m good.

6. Bob Seger, Love The One You’re With . . . Seger’s cover of Stephen Still’s 1970 hit single, from Stills’ self-titled debut solo album. Seger did it on his 1972 mostly-covers release, Smokin’ O.P.’s, which apparently stood for ‘smoking other people’s songs’. Among the other songs on a solid, mostly hard-rocking record are Bo Diddley’s Bo Diddley, Tim Hardin’s If I Were A Carpenter and Chuck Berry’s Let It Rock along with Seger’s own Heavy Music. Heavy Music, Bo Diddley and Let It Rock became staples of Seger’s early concerts and appeared on his first live album, Live Bullet, released in 1976.

7. John Mellencamp, French Shoes . . . A seeming diatribe against a man’s choice of footwear, the Los Angeles Times’ review said the lyrics – “you know the type, without any heels, leather soles, kind of a slip-on deal; no man should be wearin’ those funny French shoes” were ‘vaguely homophobic’ as Mellencamp goes on with this passage “I know it’s not right to judge a man by his clothes, by the way he looks or the people he may know; I’m embarrassed to say if I had to choose I could never really trust any man wearing those funny French shoes.”

Hmm. I just like the musical groove on this one, from Mellencamp’s 1993 album Human Wheels.

8. Pretenders, Pop Star . . . Biting, cynical lyrics about music and celebrity culture in general, set to a driving, infectious, raw beat with a razor-like riff, topped as always on Pretenders material by Chrissie Hynde’s uniquely compelling vocals. From the 1999 album Viva El Amor!

9. Ten Years After, Let The Sky Fall . . . Melodic rocker from TYA’s A Space In Time album. It was released in 1971 and featured a less heavy sound but as compelling in its way as the harder mostly blues rock of previous efforts and resulted in the hit single I’d Love To Change The World.

10. Bruce Springsteen, Blinded By The Light . . . From Springsteen’s 1973 debut album, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. The song came about when Columbia Records president Clive Davis listened to an early version of the album and felt it lacked a potential single. So Springsteen wrote Blinded By The Light and Spirit In The Night, both of which became hit singles with Blinded By The Light going to No. 1 in 1976 — for Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. I like the Springsteen versions of each song as much, though. Springsteen’s wordplay is more pronounced and compelling in his versions, particularly I’d suggest in Blinded By the Light, while musically, arguably, Manfred Mann’s takes are more striking. To me it’s akin to hearing Bob Dylan’s original All Along The Watchtower, a lyrical tour de force as is so much Dylan, as compared to the famous Jimi Hendrix musical reinvention.

11. Black Sabbath, The Shining . . . Typical monumental riffing from guitarist Tony Iommi on this one, from the 1987 album The Eternal Idol, during the arguably underappreciated Tony Martin on lead vocals era. It was a period during which Iommi was the lone constant in a revolving door of musicians that sometimes included original bassist Geezer Butler and also featured, at times, noted drummer Cozy Powell, although it’s former Kiss sticksman Eric Singer on this album.

12. Robert Palmer, Under Suspicion . . . A lament to lost love, “under suspicion of leaving the scene of a broken heart/a hit and run love affair’. It’s from Palmer’s 1979 album Secrets which is what got me – and perhaps many others – into his material via such hits as the Moon Martin-penned track Bad Case Of Lovin’ You (Doctor Doctor), Jealous and Todd Rundgren’s Can We Still Be Friends?

13. Dead Kennedys, Police Truck . . . A staccato driving riff by Raymond John “East Bay Ray” Pepperall of the San Francisco Bay Area punk/hardcore band on this satirical attack on police brutality. It was released in 1980 as the B-side to the single Holiday In Cambodia, one of my go-to Dead Kennedys tracks I’ve previously played on the show, along with Too Drunk To Fuck. Reading about musicians’ influences I always find interesting given the genres they wind up working most often in, like punk rock. But music is an art form of time, place and mood such that you can be listening to jazz one minute and metal the next. In Pepperall’s case, his musical education was broad in a household where his parents listened to a wide range of music including blues artists like Muddy Waters, jazz like Count Basie and folk/protest singer/songwriters like Pete Seeger. Once he picked up a guitar himself, he was fueled by such disparate sounds as Syd Barrett on Pink Floyd’s debut album The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, The Ohio Players and Elvis Presley’s renowned guitarist Scotty Moore, as well as the music of spaghetti western movies.

14. Ozzy Osbourne, Diary Of A Madman . . . Ever-changing from slow to fast, soft and heavy and back again title track from Ozzy’s second solo album after his departure from Black Sabbath, released a year after his debut Blizzard Of Ozz came out in 1980.

15. Talking Heads, Memories Can’t Wait . . . A random selection as I happened to pick out a mix CD I burned years ago of tracks by Talking Heads, Martha and The Muffins, B-52s, The Monks and The Cars for some listening in the car while doing errands and such last week. Memories Can’t Wait, with that mesmerizing bass line, is from the 1979 album Fear Of Music and, while it’s a pretty well-known Talking Heads track, was perhaps surprisingly never released as a single although it’s wound up on several compilations of the band’s work. Life During Wartime – ‘this ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around, no time for dancing, or lovey dovey, I ain’t got time for that now’ etc. – was the hit single from Fear Of Music, an excellent album.

16. Small Faces, The Autumn Stone . . . Rod Stewart came to mind to play, and he’s coming up, but that thought process led me to a mini-set featuring Faces, Small included, and some of the people involved before and during the time Stewart was in the group. Small Faces featured Steve Marriott on lead vocals, guitar, harmonica and piano, Ronnie Lane bass and vocals, Ian McLagan on keyboards and Kenney Jones on drums. The Autumn Stone, a beautiful if haunting folk-rock song, wasn’t released until a 1969 compilation of live songs and unreleased studio cuts called In Memoriam (for that version of the band) after Marriott left to form Humble Pie with Peter Frampton. Stewart and Ron Wood came from the Jeff Beck Group to fill out the roster of what became known as, simply, Faces – apparently partly due to the fact Stewart and Wood were taller than the other guys hence ‘Small’ would no longer have made sense. Unless they called it Small/Tall Faces.

17. Jeff Beck, Let Me Love You . . . Heavy blues rock from 1968 and the Truth is, OK I couldn’t resist that play on the album title, it’s an essential release for anyone interested in what’s become known as classic rock music. Jeff Beck on guitar, Rod Stewart lead vocals, Ron Wood bass, Mick Waller on drums. After one more album, Beck-Ola, together, the band broke up with Stewart and Wood, now on guitar as well as occasional bass, were off to lend some height, and a raunchier sound, to Small Faces.

18. Small Faces/Faces, Three Button Hand Me Down . . . They were still called Small Faces, in some quarters at least, which is why I’ve listed the artist as Small Faces/Faces. This boogie rocker is from 1970’s First Step, the reconfigured band’s, er, first step together with the new boys on the album cover along with the holdovers although depending on the market in which the record was released, it was credited either to Small Faces (like my copy, in North America) or Faces, elsewhere. Ron Wood, sitting in the middle of the group photo, holds a copy of the book First Step: How to Play the Guitar Plectrum (pick) Style, evidently symbolic of the fact he’d moved from bass with Jeff Beck’s band to guitar with Faces.

19. Faces, Maybe I’m Amazed (live) . . . Live version of the Paul McCartney classic. It was recorded at Fillmore East in New York City and, along with another cover, of the Big Bill Broonzy song I Feel So Good, placed on the otherwise all studio second Faces album, Long Player, released in 1971. Rod Stewart’s intro: “Here’s one you may well know, you may not know it, and if you don’t know it I really don’t know where you’ve been, so you should know the tune, here we go . . . ”

20. Rod Stewart, Seems Like A Long Time . . . From Every Picture Tells A Story, the 1971 Stewart solo album that included his big hit single Maggie May. Stewart, who had a concurrent solo and Faces career between 1969 and 1974, was often backed by all or some members of Faces on his solo releases, with Ron Wood on guitar and Ian McLagan on organ on Every Picture Tells A Story. On drums was Stewart and Wood’s former Jeff Beck bandmate Mick Waller. The years 1969-74 were a remarkable creative time for Stewart, nicely described in the liner notes to a 3-CD package, Reason To Believe: The Complete Mercury Studio Recordings containing every studio album plus non-album rarities he recorded for the label: “The seamless blend of electric and acoustic instrumentation employed blurred the lines between the blues, rock, folk, country and soul.” It’s my favorite Stewart period although 1975-77, after Faces broke up and featuring the albums Atlantic Crossing, A Night On The Town and Footloose & Fancy Free, has much to recommend it.

21. George Thorogood, No Expectations . . . I started the set with the Stones, ending with them, sort of. Here’s Thorogood’s pretty faithful to the original cover of the Beggars Banquet tune, from his 2017 solo album Party Of One. No Destroyers, just Thorogood and his guitar doing songs such as Willie Dixon’s Wang Dang Doodle, John Lee Hooker’s Boogie Chillen and Elmore James’ The Sky Is Crying. Other notable covers of No Expectations – I should play them sometime – are uptempo takes by Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings on the bluesy acoustic original.