- The Electric Flag, Groovin’ Is Easy . . . From the 1968 debut studio album A Long Time Comin’, which came out after the band had already appeared at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. It’s the one and only studio record Electric Flag co-founder Mike Bloomfield appeared on, before the mercurial guitarist of Butterfield Blues Band and Bob Dylan session work fame departed. The band, which also featured co-founding drummer Buddy Miles of solo, Santana and Hendrix’ Band of Gypsys fame, went on for a couple more studio albums before calling it quits.
- Eric Burdon & War, Paint It Black Medley (Black on Black in Black/Paint It Black I/Laurel & Hardy/Pintelo Negro II/P.C./Blackbird/Paint It Black III) . . . How I like my covers, a total reinterpretation of the Rolling Stones’ classic into a 13-minute soul funk rock epic.
- Keith Richards, Locked Away . . . Soulful ballad from Richards’ great 1988 solo debut album, Talk Is Cheap.
- Rush, Hope/The Main Monkey Business/Malignant Narcissism (instrumentals) . . . I strung together the three instrumentals from Rush’s 2007 album Snakes and Arrows. They don’t appear consecutively on the album. A different genre but as with, say, The Allman Brothers, Rush’s instrumentals are great songs all on their own. Hope is a wonderful solo acoustic guitar piece by Alex Lifeson followed by the two full-band instrumentals.
- Gillan and Glover, I Can’t Dance To That . . . One of the rockier tunes from the Deep Purple singer and bass player’s 1988 collaboration, Accidentally On Purpose. Dr. John helps out on piano on the album.
- David Wilcox, Cactus . . . Will there be cigarettes in heaven? Great opening line to this tune by the Canadian music veteran. And I don’t even smoke.
- Screaming Trees, Nearly Lost You . . . Well, alas, we did lose former Screaming Trees lead singer Mark Lanegan last week at just 57. To my knowledge he had been clean for some years but had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. Lanegan also had a solo career and appeared on several Queens of The Stone Age albums. I’ve played it before, relatively recently but to me, it’s Screaming Trees’ best song. So here it is again.
- Procol Harum, Long Gone Geek . .. In tribute to another popular music loss, Procol’s lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Gary Brooker, who also died this past week, age 76.
- Sass Jordan, Leaving Trunk . . . The Sleepy John Estes blues classic, also covered by the likes of Taj Mahal. Jordan did it for her fine 2020 blues covers album, Rebel Moon Blues.
- Quicksilver Messenger Service, I Hear You Knockin’ (It’s Too Late) . . . Great bluesy tune that arguably inexplicably didn’t make the cut for the band’s self-titled debut album in 1968.
- John Mellencamp, Another Sunny Day 12/25 . . . From 1994’s Dance Naked album, around the time Mellencamp’s sales started to decline as, arguably, his creativity further blossomed.
- Duke Robillard, Don’t Bother Trying To Steal Her Love . . . From the Roomful of Blues band founder and former Fabulous Thunderbirds’ guitarist’s 2019 album Ear Worms. I pulled it from a great Stony Plain Records freebie promo compilation I happened upon in my friendly neighborhood record store recently. One of several coming up in the set from that fine collection.
- Sue Foley, The Ice Queen . . . From that same Stony Plain compilation, the title cut from the Ottawa blues guitarist/singer’s 2018 album.
- Donovan, Season Of The Witch . . . So many people have covered this, including Vanilla Fudge and the Super Session album boys (Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield, Stephen Stills). This is the original by Donovan, although his sometime collaborator Shawn Phillips has also claimed authorship.
- Steve Strongman, Tired Of Talkin’ . . . Title cut from the Canadian guitarist/singer/songwriter’s 2019 album and the last song in tonight’s set pulled from the Stony Plain Records compilation.
- The Beatles, Think For Yourself . . . Kick-butt George Harrison-penned tune from what I increasingly as time goes on have come to think of as arguably The Beatles’ finest album, or certainly way up there, Rubber Soul. Of course, there’s so many good ones it’s impossible to choose, but of late it’s the Beatles’ album I have been spinning the most. It’s one of the first non-compilation albums I ever heard, my older sister bringing it home back when it was released. In any event, interesting reading about the track, what with the two bass guitar parts, including one played by Paul McCartney through a fuzz box, which gives the tune its distinct sound.
- The Hourglass (precursor to The Allman Brothers Band), B.B. King Medley (Sweet Little Angel/It’s My Own Fault/How Blue Can You Get?) . . . I perhaps cheated a bit for the next few songs. I’ve pulled them all from one of two fine Duane Allman anthologies I have that feature his work with myriad artists including of course the Allmans and their early bands, like The Hourglass, which featured Duane with Gregg on lead vocals.
- Wilson Pickett, Hey Jude . . . Duane Allman does the lead guitar honors on Pickett’s Beatles’ cover.
- Aretha Franklin, The Weight . . . Duane Allman again, on Aretha’s soulful interpretation of The Band tune.
- Duane Allman, Goin’ Down Slow . . . A song that shows that Duane could easily have been a lead singer, too. Allman Brothers late great bassist Berry Oakley also appears on the track.
- Wishbone Ash, Time Was . . . Perfect prog track, arguably. Starts slow, then the twin guitar attack of Andy Powell and Ted Turner kicks in as the tempo speeds up. Another one of those long songs, nearly 10 minutes, that doesn’t seem so.
- Supertramp, Better Days . . . From the first album, Brother Where You Bound from 1985, that the band did after the departure of Rodger Hodgson, leaving Rick Davies in full command. It’s a good album musically, albeit dated lyrically in many of its 1980s references to people, places and circumstances of the still-ongoing Cold War. To me, the album is harder edged and harkens back to the glory days of Crime of The Century, Crisis What Crisis and Even In The Quietest Moments that preceded the commercial but to me somewhat overly pop-oriented monster that was Breakfast In America which was tailored for the US market. Things got worse with Breakfast’s followup, . . . Famous Last Words, a bland pop album which signified the split between Hodgson, who wanted to maintain that direction and Davies, who wanted a return to the more progressive rock approach of the pre-Breakfast albums.
I’ll admit that, while I have it, band loyalty I guess, I don’t really know Famous Last Words, the lead single It’s Raining Again (yecch) having turned me off immediately. Maybe I should try again, and I will. In fact I just pulled it up online but it’s a struggle, folks. And I’m not down on Breakfast In America, either. Decent enough album and I saw that tour, amazing but of course it wasn’t just that album’s songs they played. But when people say it’s Supertramp’s best, to each their own but, er, no. Sales don’t necessarily reflect quality or creativity and I suppose a lot of it is how so many of Breakfast’s songs were played to death on radio. I remember at one point with Breakfast thinking, people are crapping all over the Bee Gees for their falsetto vocals on their disco stuff. Yet the yecch “take a look at my girlfriend’ opening salvo of the title cut to Breakfast In America was OK? Honestly, what a candy-ass song and vocal. I mean, this was the same band that did School, Bloody Well Right and so on? I suppose that was my emergence, at age 20, into critical thinking. The three albums that preceded Breakfast easily eclipse it musically. So there. And on that note, see you next week.