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

1. Lou Reed, Hangin’ ‘Round
2. Eric Burdon & The Animals, St. James Infirmary
3. Simon and Garfunkel, Fakin’ It
4. David Bowie, After All
5. Jeff Beck Group, I’ve Been Used
6. Nina Simone, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
7. Elton John, I’ve Seen That Movie Too
8. Solomon Burke, Cry To Me
9. The Butterfield Blues Band, I Got A Mind To Give Up Living
10. Iron Butterfly, In The Time Of Our Lives
11. Faces, Wicked Messenger
12. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Penthouse Pauper
13. Free, Walk In My Shadow
14. Humble Pie, Beckton Dumps
15. Aerosmith, Combination
16. The Byrds, Medley: Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season)/Mr. Tambourine Man/Eight Miles High (live)
17. R.E.M., Alligator Aviator Autopilot Antimatter
18. Mountain, Bardot Damage
19. ZZ Top, 2000 Blues
20. Jimi Hendrix, Cherokee Mist
21. Eric Clapton, Mean Old Frisco
22. Moby Grape, Hoochie
23. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Circles
24. Rare Earth, In Bed
25. Jethro Tull, Cold Wind To Valhalla
26. T Bone Burnett, Shut It Tight
27. Boogaloo & His Gallant Crew, Cops and Robbers
28. The Rolling Stones, Gotta Get Away

    My track-by-track tales:

    1. Lou Reed, Hangin’ ‘Round . . . Rocker from Reed’s breakthrough solo album Transformer, released in 1972 and produced by admirers of Reed’s Velvet Underground David Bowie and guitarist Mick Ronson, then a member of Bowie’s band. Bowie and Ronson were among the musicians on the record, along with longtime Beatles’ associate and former Manfred Mann bassist Klaus Voormann.
       
    2. Eric Burdon & The Animals, St. James Infirmary . . . Psychedelic blues on this traditional tune arranged by Burdon. It appeared on 1968’s Every One Of Us album. Burdon is forever involved in great music, whether it be the early British Invasion days of The Animals, the psychedelic phase under the moniker Eric Burdon & The Animals, his funk rock explorations with War and his solo work. He put on a great show when I saw him at the 2016 Kitchener Blues Festival, which he also played in 2007. I admittedly have some catching up to do on his solo stuff. His most recent studio work came in 2013 but I can say that his 2004 album, My Secret Life, which I found for about a buck at a flea market years ago, is excellent. I’ve played some stuff from it before and ought to get back to it for the show.
       
    3. Simon and Garfunkel, Fakin’ It . . . From the Bookends album, which was recorded gradually, starting in 1966 until its release in April of 1968 although many of the songs came out earlier as singles, as Fakin’ It did in August of 1967. It gets somewhat confusing as, for instance, the hit single Mrs. Robinson is on Bookends but also, in different form, on the soundtrack album to the movie The Graduate, which came out in 1967 when Mrs. Robinson, the song, was still a work in progress. I direct you to the internet for further reading. As for Fakin’ It, it’s a well-known tune, the early part of it sounds a bit like The Mamas and The Papas to me, or they sounded like Simon and Garfunkel.
       
    4. David Bowie, After All . . . Psychedelic folk rock from The Man Who Sold The World album, the 1970 record (1971 release in the UK) that marked the first appearance of guitarist Mick Ronson on a Bowie record. Lots of Bowie and Ronson in what’s turning into something of a family tree set. See song No. 1.
       
    5. Jeff Beck Group, I’ve Been Used . . . Stomper from 1971’s Rough and Ready, the first album released by the second Jeff Beck Group. Rod Stewart and Ron Wood were now in the Faces while Beck’s new lineup featured drummer Cozy Powell, later of Rainbow, various incarnations of Black Sabbath, Emerson, Lake and Powell and other projects, and singer Bobby Tench. Alex Ligertwood, later lead vocalist in various stints with Santana between 1979 and 1994, was to be the Beck group’s singer but apparently the record company didn’t like his vocals. I think the right choice was made. I prefer Tench’s raunchier approach but then I preferred Gregg Rolie’s singing on the first few Santana records, still my favorites, to Ligertwood’s poppier, to my ears, vocals although of course Santana has had various singers over time.
       
    6. Nina Simone, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood . . . What an emotive vocal performance on this original 1964 version. But that was Simone, what a singer. The Animals had a big hit with the song a year later. It’s been covered by many artists including Joe Cocker on his 1969 debut album With A Little Help From My Friends and Elvis Costello on King Of America in 1986.
    7. Elton John, I’ve Seen That Movie Too . . . Another of the many terrific deep cuts on the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album.
       
    8. Solomon Burke, Cry To Me . . . From the late great R & B/soul singer. It’s the first of two tracks I’m pulling from a CD of songs covered by The Rolling Stones that came with a MOJO Magazine issue I bought years ago. I’ve got some Solomon Burke on his own, including Cry To Me, but such compilation CDs on many of the excellent UK magazines, like MOJO, Uncut, Classic Rock etc. are often revelatory, usually tied to articles in the publication. Cry To Me was included on the 1965 Stones album Out Of Our Heads, one of the few songs that appeared on both the UK and US versions of that record, which had a different cover on either side of the pond. Those were the days when track listings, album covers and even album names of British Invasion bands were often different due in part to the UK practice of singles not usually appearing on albums, leading to repackaging for the North American market done by the record companies. So you wound up with early period US/North American albums like the Stones’ 12 X 5 and December’s Children (And Everybody’s), Beatles ’65, Beatles VI, etc.
       
    9. The Butterfield Blues Band, I Got A Mind To Give Up Living . . . “I’ve got a mind to give up living and go shopping instead . . . ” Nice opening line to this traditional blues tune from the band’s second album, East-West. It was the last of the group’s records to feature the twin guitar attack of Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop. Bloomfield left after East-West to form The Electric Flag.
       
    10. Iron Butterfly, In The Time Of Our Lives . . . Spooky psychedelic rock from the Ball album, 1969.
        
    11. Faces, Wicked Messenger . . . Typically raunchy Faces treatment of the Bob Dylan tune from his 1967 John Wesley Harding album, although it’s titled The
        Wicked Messenger on the Dylan record. It appeared on 1970’s First Step album, the first to feature Rod Stewart and Rod Wood from the original Jeff Beck Group. They joined the remnants of the Small Faces (Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan) after Steve Marriott left Small Faces to form Humble Pie.
        
    12. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Penthouse Pauper . . . Down and dirty raunch from Bayou Country, CCR’s second album overall and first of three (!) equally consistent records the band released in 1969. The others were Green River and Willy and the Poor Boys, all stuffed with classic singles like Proud Mary, Bad Moon Rising, Green River, Down On The Corner, Fortunate Son . . . and fine deep cuts like Penthouse Pauper. Amazing band, CCR, amazing songwriter, John Fogerty.
        
    13. Free, Walk In My Shadow . . . Blues rock from 1969’s debut album Tons Of Sobs. All the band members – Paul Rodgers (vocals), Paul Kossoff (guitar), Andy Fraser (bass) and Simon Kirke (drums) were still in their late teens while recording the record.
        
    14. Humble Pie, Beckton Dumps . . . I didn’t really realize it until getting into my track tales, but as touched on earlier, there’s a lot of connective tissue in today’s set. Accidentally on purpose, perhaps, or something like that, since I was really just randomly picking songs although my mind does tend to naturally work that way with music, and writing. So we have Lou Reed to Bowie and Mick Ronson, Nina Simone to The Animals, Jeff Beck to the Faces to . . . Humble Pie with this one from the Eat It album, released in 1973. Beckton, part of Greater London, is where Humble Pie guitarist/singer Steve Marriott grew up.

    15. Aerosmith, Combination . . . Everything on the Rocks album er, rocks. Great record. Lead guitarist Joe Perry shares vocals with Steven Tyler.
        
    16. The Byrds, Medley: Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season)/Mr. Tambourine Man/Eight Miles High (live) . . . Aerosmith’s Combination leads into . . . a combination of songs. I don’t usually play hits, this being a deep cuts show. But this near 10-minute medley, recorded in 1969 but not released commercially until the Live At The Fillmore February 1969 album came out in 2000, is something of a deep cut. It’s a later Byrds lineup and worth the price of admission for the playing of lead guitarist Clarence White alone. White had joined the group for the Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde studio album the same year.
        
    17. R.E.M., Alligator Aviator Autopilot Antimatter . . . Blistering rocker in the vein of What’s The Frequency, Kenneth? from what turned out to be the band’s last studio album, 2011’s Collapse Into Now. Could easily have been a single, but wasn’t.
        
    18. Mountain, Bardot Damage . . . Mountain had been dormant, studio recording-wise, since 1974 until the Go For Your Life album came out in 1985 although Leslie West had been doing solo material. The album was pretty much ignored, making it to No. 166 on the charts. I don’t own it, but I do own a comprehensive 2CD Mountain compilation, Over The Top, on which the song appears. It’s what you’d expect of a project involving guitarist/singer West, hard-rocking pyrotechnics that thankfully largely avoids the overproduction of so much 1980s material.
        
    19. ZZ Top, 2000 Blues . . . Even at the height of their synthesizer period, ZZ Top still featured the occasional bluesy rock track on their albums, harkening back to their earlier days. I Need You Tonight, from the 1983 commercial monster Eliminator album featuring such hits as Legs comes to mind. By 1990’s Recyler, the band was heading back, at least to some degree, in their original direction, evidenced by 2000 Blues. Like I Need You Tonight, it made the grade for the group’s 1994 compilation One Foot In The Blues alongside such early material as Brown Sugar (not the Stones’ song) from their first album and Sure Got Cold After The Rain Fell, from Rio Grande Mud.
        
    20. Jimi Hendrix, Cherokee Mist . . . Just Hendrix on guitar and sitar along with drummer Mitch Mitchell on this brooding seven-minute instrumental recorded in May, 1968. It remained officially unreleased until the Both Sides Of The Sky album, yet another posthumous but worthwhile batch of archival material, came out in 2018.
        
    21. Eric Clapton, Mean Old Frisco . . . Cover of a blues tune written by Arthur Cruddup, whose That’s All Right became Elvis Presley’s first single, released in 1954. Mean Old Frisco appeared on Clapton’s 1977 album Slowhand, well known for Lay Down Sally, Wonderful Tonight and a cover of J.J. Cale’s Cocaine.
        
    22. Moby Grape, Hoochie . . . Toe-tapping rocker from the San Francisco band’s ’69 album, issued in, wait for it, 1969. A good driving down the highway tune.
        
    23. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Circles . . . Progressive sort of rocker from the band’s Watch album, released in 1978. It wasn’t a single, but later wound up on some compilations. Watch was original drummer Chris Slade’s last album with the Earth Band, which formed in 1971 and was a different entity than the earlier Manfred Mann of such hits as Do Wah Diddy Diddy and Mighty Quinn, their retitled cover of Bob Dylan’s The Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo). Slade, in a massive missed opportunity by both parties, was never in the band Slade. Both Slades are still around, so there’s always hope. Chris Slade did go on to stints with AC/DC, notably on the Razors Edge album, and The Firm with Jimmy Page and Paul Rodgers.
        
    24. Rare Earth, In Bed . . . Nice groove on this one from the second Rare Earth album, Get Ready, released in 1969. Only an edited version of the epic, 21-minute title cut was given a single release although In Bed is on various compilations and I seem to recall hearing it a fair bit on radio.
        
    25. Jethro Tull, Cold Wind To Valhalla . . . From 1975’s Minstrel In The Gallery album. It’s one of those songs, among many of course but perhaps more than most, that demonstrate all of what Tull at its best brings to the table. Progressive rock, folk rock, heavy rock, all in one four-minutes and change trip.
        
    26. T Bone Burnett, Shut It Tight . . . Countryish folk rock tune from T Bone’s 1983 album Proof Through The Night. The record featured contributions from a host of noted guitarists including Ry Cooder, Pete Townshend and, there he is again with a mention in this set, Mick Ronson. The guy was everywhere, but not on this track. It’s Richard Thompson of Fairport Convention fame doing the honors.
        
    27. Boogaloo & His Gallant Crew, Cops and Robbers . . . Second cut, covered by The Rolling Stones in the early days and a hit for Bo Diddley, from that MOJO mag CD I mentioned earlier. Boogaloo was the stage name for American songwriter and record producer Kent Harris, who died in 2019 at age 88.
        
    28. The Rolling Stones, Gotta Get Away . . . Critics often dismiss this early mid-tempo number by the Jagger-Richards songwriting team. Appreciation of the arts is subjective, of course, and I’ve always liked it although as a huge fan of the band, I’m likely the wrong person to ask to differentiate between great and not so great Stones songs. OK, I will say I’m not too big on Summer Romance and Where The Boys Go, both on the Emotional Rescue album, two that immediately come to mind. Good playing, as always, listenable enough but they seem to me to be formulaic throwaways. Back to Gotta Get Away: It was the B-side to As Tears Go By in the US and was on the UK version of the Out Of Our Heads album. In the US, it was on the aformentioned (see my take on song No. 8 in my list) December’s Children (And Everybody’s) record, which used the same cover photo of the band that was used for Out Of Our Heads in the UK. Whole book chapters have been written on this title/album configuration/cover art thing. Well, as the song says, gotta get away. Until Monday’s show . . . Happy Easter, everyone.