Lots of guitar pyrotechnics, often lengthy but always compelling, from various virtuosos and assorted raunch and rollers. My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list.

1. AC/DC, Bad Boy Boogie (live, from If You Want Blood You’ve Got It)
2. Ted Nugent, Hibernation (Amboy Dukes track on Nugent’s Double Live Gonzo! album)
3. The Amboy Dukes, Migration
4. Chicago, Free Form Guitar
5. Jimi Hendrix, The Star-Spangled Banner (live at Woodstock)
6. The Rolling Stones, Fingerprint File (from Love You Live)
7. Queen, The Prophet’s Song
8. Jeff Beck, My Tiled White Floor
9. Ian Hunter, Wild East
10. Vanilla Fudge, Street Walking Woman
11. Gov’t Mule, I Asked For Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)
12. Deep Purple, Mistreated (live, from Made In Europe)
13. The Who, My Generation (extended version of the hit single, interpolating various Tommy and other tracks, from Live At Leeds)
14. Johnny Winter, It’s All Over Now (from Captured Live!)

My track-by-track tales:

1. AC/DC, Bad Boy Boogie (live, from If You Want Blood You’ve Got It) . . . Three minutes longer, and the better for it, than the four minutes and change studio version which is terrific, too, originally released on the 1977 studio album Let There Be Rock. AC/DC came to mind to play because the band this past week announced a North American tour for 2025 in support of the 2020 album Power Up.

It seems like a long time between an album coming out and a tour promoting it as a followup but the album was released during the pandemic lockdowns and beyond that, AC/DC has been touring in support of the record in Europe and elsewhere. The band is finally coming back to North America with the first show of the tour scheduled for Minneapolis, Minnesota on April 10, 2025 with the lone Canadian date, so far anyway, scheduled for Vancouver, April 22.

I’ve seen AC/DC live twice, but I won’t be going to, say, close to me locations the band is hitting like Detroit or Cleveland, although I’m sure it will be a great show. Probably. I’m to the point where my big concert days are likely if not certainly done. I’ve missed some, but in general seen all the classic bands/artists I want to see, like AC/DC, the Stones, etc., multiple times and I suppose part of it for me is that, as I and they age, I don’t want to risk seeing them in a bad performance that can happen due to advancing years. I saw AC/DC on their own tour in support of the Ballbreaker album in Toronto in 1996, fantastic show, and then again at the Toronto Rocks SARS show in 2003 in support of The Rolling Stones on a bill that also featured Rush and The Guess Who among many others. I saw the Stones for the millionth time (actually about 20 counting multiple concerts on a given tour; I saw every tour from 1978 on) in 2013, amazing show, and I thought, that’s it for me: I don’t want to risk seeing them not deliver live – as they yet continue to deliver to this day based on reports and fan feedback. But I’m satisfied with the shows I’ve experienced with my alltime favorite band.

I’d never want it to get to where it did with another favorite, Jethro Tull where I’d seen the band numerous times yet when I saw them in 2007 it was clear Ian Anderson’s voice was shot and the show, while competent, made too many allowances via long instrumental incursions and arrangements into well-known tracks that weren’t so much creative as it seemed obvious they were covering for Anderson’s vocal challenges. It was disappointing and sad and many Tull fans have remarked on the decline of his singing over the years yet he’s still out there, albeit with now from what I’ve read a backing vocalist. So that was it for me and Tull. I get it, people age, things change, challenges arise, I don’t begrudge them for continuing, it’s what artists do, but in any case I have all the music to continually enjoy . . . best wishes to AC/DC I’m sure they will continue to rock.

2. Ted Nugent, Hibernation (live, Amboy Dukes track on Nugent’s Double Live Gonzo! album) . . . A lenghty (16 compelling minutes) instrumental from Nugent’s days with The Amboy Dukes which he released as a by then solo artist in a live version on 1978’s Double Live Gonzo! album. Nugent’s address to the audience introducing the song is worth the price of admission alone: “This guitar was born in the motor city, Detroit, murder capital, such a healthy place for all the boys and girls the murder capital of the world (editor’s note: hey, that rhymes) . . . This guitar I been told was one time out on safari, this guitar right here is guaranteed to blow the balls off a charging rhino at 60 paces. . . . You see, this guitar definitely refuses to play sweet shit.”

Good for Detroit that, at my last look, had dropped to No. 12 in the US in terms of murders but back then, Nugent was pretty much bang on. And then he rocked the house. Some despise him for his politics, I’m of the ‘I don’t give a shit I can separate things, I just enjoy much of his music’ persuasion and that applies for me to any artist, when they’re actually playing their music.

3. The Amboy Dukes, Migration . . . Another instrumental, a driving at times spooky title cut to the band’s 1969 album, Nugent out front on propulsive lead guitar.

4. Chicago, Free Form Guitar . . . Utterly out of character cut, this is, for anyone thinking of Chicago as the syrupy ballad band via tracks like If You Leave Me Now (albit a good song) that presaged the group’s subsequent somewhat record company pressured but nevertheless move to in my mind overproduced ballad and power-ballad success of schlock during the 1980s and beyond.

But before that, sublime success certainly creatively and the only Chicago I listen to. Free Form Guitar is a 1969 recording that is the kind of performance where, during a concert – whether it be an extended (and boring to some, sometimes me included although I generally appreciate them) drum or guitar solo – some in the stands go for a bathroom break or a beverage and such experimental avant-garde excursions are usually confined to the live experience. But, not in this case. This almost seven-minute solo slab of the great Chicago guitarist Terry Kath was a studio cut on the band’s debut album, Chicago Transit Authority. But that’s how it was, back then, on radio and album; you’d hear such things and it was a good thing but I’m biased, I grew up back then. In any case, Kath’s perhaps not to all taste’s track apparently inspired what comes next, from a guy, Hendrix, who was on record as suggesting that Kath was better than he was. Who can say? Music isn’t or shouldn’t be a competition, there are so many greats bringing so much to their art, through the decades, we all have our favorites, best to just enjoy what they bring, in my book.

5. Jimi Hendrix, The Star-Spangled Banner (live at Woodstock) . . . By now, from my sports follower’s view of ongoing events, there’s been many guitarists playing the US national anthem. But Hendrix’s performance at Woodstock remains arguably the most well-known. Epic and influential.

6. The Rolling Stones, Fingerprint File (from Love You Live) . . . Raunchy live version (as are all versions of the songs on Love You Live) of this track from 1974’s It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll album, released on the Stones’ 1977 live album. I recall the record – aside from the bluesy El Mocambo side – getting trashed by some media critics yet fans, clearly evidenced now in online comments but back then in general conversation, loved it. As do I.

7. Queen, The Prophet’s Song . . . A lengthy, progish track from the 1975 album A Night At The Opera which featured the hit Bohemian Rhapsody but was, other than that single, an album of great depth as Queen, successful to that point, ascended to a higher level.

8. Jeff Beck, My Tiled White Floor . . . One of two studio tracks on the 2015 live album Jeff Beck Live + . Electronic, hypnotic rock propelled along by the drumming and lead vocals of Veronica Bellino, a noted California session player by way of New York.

9. Ian Hunter, Wild East . . . A lesser known, perhaps, but by no means less quality offering than the rest of Hunter’s 1979 album You’re Never Alone With A Schizophrenic which featured at well known songs like Cleveland Rocks, Just Another Night, When The Daylight comes, I could go on because the whole album is a quality front-to-back listen. I remember linguists suggesting the album title should have been You’re Never Alone As A Schizophrenic which I can see makes sense but whatever.

10. Vanilla Fudge, Street Walking Woman . . . Hard rock psychedelic offering from the band that was, well, hard rock/psychedelic. From the 1969 album Rock & Roll. Drummer Carmine Appice and bassist Tim Bogert went on to form the band Cactus while, later, Appice played in Rod Stewart’s post-Faces bands and both were members of the short-lived group (Jeff) Beck, Bogert Appice.

11. Gov’t Mule, I Asked For Water (She Gave Me Gasoline) . . . Lengthy treatment in the typical harder-rocking manner Gov’t Mule tends to give its blues covers, in this case of the Howlin’ Wolf tune. From the 2021 album Heavy Load Blues.

12. Deep Purple, Mistreated (live, from Made In Europe) . . . Made In Japan tends to get most of the accolades and deservedly so but among the now countless Deep Purple live albums via various formations of the group, Made In Europe, released in 1976, was to my teenage mind equally great and remains so to this day. It was from the so-called Mk. III version of the band: David Coverdale (vocals with a particularly impassioned performance here) and Glenn Hughes (bass/vocals) having replaced singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover for the albums Burn and Stormbringer, from which Made In Europe was drawn.

13. The Who, My Generation (extended version of the hit single, interpolating various Tommy and other tracks, from Live At Leeds) . . . A hit, yes, and this is a deep cuts show for the most part but the depth is in the extension of the original three-minute single into an epic 15-minute excursion.

14. Johnny Winter, It’s All Over Now (from Captured Live!) . . . And we’re outta here, another show over, on Winter’s typically smokin’ version of a tune, in this case the Bobby and Shirley Womack-penned song famously covered by The Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart, among others.