The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Come On In . . . Back to my song-title connection ways, but hey, they’re all good songs. Like this short single from Butterfield and the boys, Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop on guitars. About time I got back to the Butterfield Band. So much music, so relatively little time each week.
Trooper, We’re Here For A Good Time (Not A Long Time) . . . A hit single, which I typically am reluctant to play since it’s a deep cuts show, but followers/listeners know every now and then I’ll play a single. And by now they are, er, So Old It’s New, and in this case fits the early set list theme. But you probably picked up on that.
Ry Cooder, On A Monday . . . Cooder gives to me what sounds like the Little Feat treatment to this Lead Belly tune. It appeared on Cooder’s 1972 Into The Purple Valley album.
Van Halen, Push Comes To Shove . . . Nice bluesy cut, one of my favorites from the somewhat dark, which is why I like it, Fair Warning album. David Lee Roth’s spoken word intro, asking for a cigarette, another swig if anything’s left in the bottle, makes the tune.
Bill Wyman, Every Sixty Seconds . . . Former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman is my Rolling Stones, Inc. selection this week. Critics seem to like Wyman’s first solo album, 1974’s Monkey Grip, much more than his second, Stone Alone, which was released in 1976. I imagine because I heard Stone Alone first, I’ve always liked it better, and this is one of my favorite tunes from it. The album is called Stone Alone – which Wyman later used as a book title for one he wrote about the band – but the personnel list to the record is bursting with big-name musical friends. Among the contributors are Van Morrison, Joe Walsh, Dr. John, Bob Welch, Ronnie Wood, Nicky Hopkins, Jim Keltner, on and on. Wyman later re-recorded Every Sixty Seconds for one of his Rhythm Kings albums with R&B/soul singer Beverley Skeete nicely handling lead vocals.
Tom Wilson, What A Bummer . . . From Wilson’s 2001 solo album, Planet Love. Typically great stuff from one of my favorite artists and mainstay of such bands as Junkhouse, Blackie and The Rodeo Kings and Lee Harvey Osmond.
Jimi Hendrix, Lover Man . . . There are so many different versions of Hendrix songs around given the ongoing re-release program by his estate. This dynamic version of Lover Man was cut live in the studio by the Band of Gypsys (Billy Cox on bass, Buddy Miles on drums) about two weeks before their appearance at New York’s Fillmore East on New Year’s Eve, 1969 that resulted in the Band of Gypsys live album. This version is available on 2018’s Both Sides Of The Sky compilation of previously unreleased material.
The Black Keys, Howlin’ For You . . . However it was I got into the Keys, I’m glad I did. Probably hearing them in a music store and asking the staff who it was on the sound system. Or just reading about them, in search of new music (for me). I don’t have or know all their stuff, being a 60s/70s classic rocker coming relatively late to the party, but what I have I like given the raw, distortion-fueled sound of much of their stuff. This one’s from Brothers, in 2010. They recently released their latest album, Dropout Boogie. I have some catching up to do on my listening. I just gave it a quick listen online, no real impression yet but fans seem to think it’s mediocre. They do seem to have smoothed out their sound, to my ears, since Brothers, though. I like the distortion stuff best.
AC/DC, Soul Stripper . . . Pulsating, hypnotic track from the smokin’ hot ’74 Jailbreak EP.
Blodwyn Pig, Dear Jill . . . Great blues from the band guitarist Mick Abrahams formed when he left Jethro Tull after their first album, This Was. Abrahams wanted to continue in a blues direction. Ian Anderson had other ideas and obviously has been hugely successful with them. I like both sides of their ‘argument’.
Goddo, Drop Dead (That’s Who) . . . The funny intro, ‘take 75’ is almost worth the price of admission from these Canadian rockers.
Alice Cooper, Killer . . . Title cut from the 1971 album, by the original band. Dark, epic, eerie, spooky, superb.
Blue Cheer, Out Of Focus . . . B-side to the band’s breakout 1968 single, their raucous cover of Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues. Not quite as heavy, perhaps, but heavy. Blue Cheer was an interesting band, maintaining their heaviness throughout but getting more progressive/psychedelic as time passed. I was going to explore some of that side of the band tonight, and will at some point, but being in a more rocking mood, at least as far as Blue Cheer goes . . .
Gary Moore, World Of Confusion . . . Moore, who we lost to a heart attack at just 58 in 2011, was so very eclectic. He was in Thin Lizzy for a time, of course, did lots of hard rock and metal and broke big to a wider public during one of his many excursions over time into the blues, with his 1990 hit album and song, Still Got The Blues. This hard rocker is from the self-titled and only album release from the trio, Scars, he formed in 2002. Wicked guitar work.
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Ramble Tamble . . . I like when CCR did stuff like this seven-minute rant and raver from Cosmo’s Factory.
Paris, Black Book . . . After leaving Fleetwood Mac following their 1974 album Heroes Are Hard To Find, Bob Welch formed a power trio with former Jethro Tull bassist Glenn Cornick and Thom Mooney, who had worked with Todd Rundgren. Three guys, made a good noise. Black Book is an example.
Grateful Dead, Estimated Prophet . . . One of my favorite Dead tunes. I just like the groove, and the lyrics about false prophets.
Stone The Crows, Big Jim Salter . . . And so we go real deep with Stone The Crows, a band whose name – a homage to the Brit/Aussie expression of amazement or disgust – I’d always thought was cool but whose music, before the internet age, I had not taken the time (or money) to explore. I finally did via one of two amazing compilations I picked up, on the recommendation of a friend, a few years ago. This is from I’m A Freak Baby 2, the second of two 3-CD collections exploring the British heavy psychedelic and hard rock underground scene from 1968-73. Scottish belter Maggie Bell, who some see as the UK’s answer to Janis Joplin and I definitely hear it on some tunes, handles lead vocals on this one. She’s also known for ‘vocal abrasives’ as credited on Rod Stewart’s title cut to the Every Picture Tells A Story album. Other noted members of Stone The Crows were Alex Harvey’s brother Les, who was electrocuted on stage and later died after touching a mic that was not grounded while his other hand was on his guitar strings. Others who passed through the band were Jimmy McCulloch, later lead guitarist with Paul McCartney and Wings, and bassist/singer James Dewar, later a member of Robin Trower’s most commercially successful lineup during the 1970s, and one of my favorite rock singers.
Warhorse, Back In Time . . . From the same I’m A Freak Baby compilation, although I do have some Warhorse stuff. Of course I would; Deep Purple is among my favorite bands and Warhorse was a hard rock/psychedelic Deep Purple offshoot group, this track being a perfect example of their work. Warhorse was formed by Nick Simper after the bassist was sacked by Purple along with singer Rod Evans when Roger Glover and Ian Gillan were brought in as the so-called ‘classic’ Mk. II lineup of Purple moved to a heavier rocking sound and went on to greater glories.
Bob Seger, Bo Diddley . . . Before The Silver Bullet Band, from Seger’s 1972 Smokin’ O.P.’s album of mostly down and dirty cover tunes, hence the title – Smokin’ Other People’s Songs, derived from ‘smoking other people’s cigarettes’ (hence the album cover) but I wouldn’t know, never having smoked. OK, I did, once, as a kid, age 9, with a gang of my friends. We stole a carton of my parents’ cigarettes but mom caught me, finding a cigarette butt in my pants pocket while doing laundry, and I promised never to do it again – and didn’t as I started getting into physical fitness. Interestingly, mom and dad smoked, as did my older brother and sister of the five kids in the family. Different times.
Cat Stevens, Drywood . . . From Stevens’ 1975 album Numbers, a sci-fi concept album of sorts that the record company didn’t like because it didn’t produce ‘catchy’ hits like Moonshadow, Peace Train, Morning Has Broken etc. As a result, it didn’t sell as well as his previous work. But this is art, dammit! Which is what Stevens argued. Besides, I think Drywood is pretty catchy and the pop charts are often infested with dreck ear candy without substance or lasting value, so I’m with Cat.
Maria Muldaur, It Feels Like Rain . . . Bluesy, swampy, sultry version of the John Hiatt song. Muldaur is a great artist, so much more than her lone big pop hit from the 1970s, Midnight At The Oasis. Buddy Guy also covered the song, as the title cut to his 1993 album.
Warren Zevon, The Overdraft . . . Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac fame provides backing vocals on this rollicking ride from Zevon’s 1982 The Envoy album. Waddy Wachtel, session man to the stars, provides typically great lead guitar, as he did on so many Zevon albums.
The Joe Perry Project, South Station Blues . . . From the Project’s second solo album, 1981’s I’ve Got The Rock & Rolls Again. Catchy intro. As with the debut, Let The Music Do The Talking, it was done during the period when Perry quit Aerosmith as the drug and booze-addled band splintered during the sessions for 1979’s Night In The Ruts album, although Perry still played on most of the tracks. Perry had a singer-rhythm guitarist in his band, Charlie Ferren, but handled lead vocals himself on this up tempo shuffle whose genesis was Shit House Shuffle, a 36-second instrumental Aerosmith used as a warm up before recording sessions. It’s available on the Pandora’s Box boxed set, and online. A slightly revamped Let The Music Do The Talking became an Aerosmith song on 1985’s Done With Mirrors album.
Neil Young, For The Turnstiles . . . From Young’s introspective 1974 album On The Beach, prompted by his discomfort with the superstardom his previous studio album, Harvest, brought. Heart of Gold from Harvest was a No. 1 single for Young, as was the album, but in the liner notes to his excellent Decade compilation, he addresses the feelings of wanting to retreat that success fostered in him, and how it led him to produce darker followup albums like On The Beach and Tonight’s The Night. “This song (Heart of Gold) put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there.”
Badfinger, Carry On Til Tomorrow . . . Beautiful track, with some great guitar in its rockier parts, from the band’s 1970 debut album as Badfinger (they released one previous album under the name The Iveys). Magic Christian Music was on Apple Records as the band had an association with The Beatles, much of their early work produced or co-produced mostly by Paul McCartney, some by George Harrison and Beatles associates Geoff Emerick and Mal Evans.