This next song is from one of the UK’s most pioneering blues singers, a brilliant songwriter and the master of many instruments. John Mayall’s music career has gone on for over five decades and in that time he’s produced an endless list of albums. He’s been a huge influence on the careers of so many famous musicians, way too many to list here… John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers had line ups of unbelievable talent at various times throughout the late sixties and they made some great albums.
This song, Mail Order Mystics, is from a 1993 album called Wake Up Call… it features the re-formed Bluesbreakers, and once more the line up on each song is impressive with Mick Taylor, Albert Collins and Buddy Guy putting in an appearance on some of the tracks.
I’ve got many of his records, the man is a legend.. No music collection can be complete without some of John Mayall’s stuff in it. I have to have some in the desert island collection so I’ll start with this… and I can’t believe that it was fifteen years ago when I bought this. Where the heck does the time go?.. time wouldn’t pass by so quickly on a desert island, and who’d want it to if you had music like this to fill in your days?
As a footnote to this, John Mayall was awarded an OBE in the 2005 honours list, and on receiving it he was quoted as saying “It’s the only major award I’ve ever received. I’ve never had a hit record or a Grammy or been in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.” … why? .. I find that unbelievable.
Trawling through the vast amount of music I’ve collected over the years to put on here is proving to be very therapeutic in a way. Listening to some of these songs certainly brings back the memories. I’m wondering how the hell I managed to collect all this stuff as well, I couldn’t play it all. It’s crazy really, all this music just sitting here and the biggest part of it never actually gets played. God knows how many mp3 files I have here, I’ve accumulated so much.. bought it, had it given, downloaded it, copied it from friends. If it was all on vinyl I wouldn’t have enough room to store it all, but maybe that’s the reason we all have so many mp3’s, they’re easy to store. All my vinyl records are wrapped away and stored in a spare room in the house, they very rarely see the light of day.. and that’s a shame. Plus all the CD’s I bought, once you’ve ripped them to audio files you very rarely play the originals anymore… but still I continue to collect them, must be some sort of illness.
Anyway.., while I was going through it all this afternoon I came across a ton of stuff I have by Bob Seger, pretty much everything he’s done. I came across his album “Night Moves”.. I was looking for this song to post, Mainstreet, the one I listen to the most because it’s one of my all time favourite songs. I can cast my mind back and remember buying it. I bought it from a sale of fire damaged stock from a record store, my dad used to work for a man who did all that kind of thing, it was mainly textiles but he somehow came across all these records from a shop that had been on fire. He salvaged what he could from them and put them all in a room at the side of a warehouse, opened it to the public and sold them off cheap. Because my dad worked there I got the chance to go in there and rummage through them all before the doors were open for the general sale… I thought that was brilliant. I came away with an armful of albums.. very, very cheap, but some had no album cover with them. Night Moves was one of them, it just had the inner, paper sleeve… but I didn’t care. I just took them all home and played them to make sure they weren’t warped from the heat of the fire, they all played perfect and were all brand new.. a bargain.
So I’m playing the Night Moves album, I liked it straight away but the one song that jumped out at me was Mainstreet, it was just so good. I played it over and over, trying to pick up the words.. the guitar was brilliant as well. And so it became a firm favourite of mine and I’ve never got bored of hearing it. It’s a high ranking desert island must have.
It was released in 1976 and the album brought Bob Seger to the attention of the masses for the first time really, not a bad track on the whole album. Mainstreet was obviously written about the time when he was growing up. The story goes that it was written about a dancer, or maybe a stripper?.. who he’d taken a shine to in his hometown of Ann Arbor, in Michigan and in writing the song he was casting his mind back to his youth. The lyrics to the song are wonderful, they’re telling a true story from a part of his life. I think that’s a very honest thing to do and that’s what makes it such a great song. So into the desert island collection it goes to bring back a few memories of my own.
Well, the weekend is upon us once more.., and I like nothing better than giving my ears a good clearout with a blast of rock music on a Friday night. If you’ve read the blog before you’ll know already that Mountain, and Leslie West, figure highly in my estimation where rock music is concerned.
Can I just say that I’m slightly amazed by the interest in the Mountain songs I’ve posted on here. It seems that many people haven’t heard them before, which is not totally surprising in itself.., but their music’s been around for a very long time. Maybe it’s because of the age of the records, early ’70’s, or maybe it’s because Mountain were never really considered a main stream rock band?… I’m not sure. But I’ll keep posting the odd song because, quite frankly, I think their music should be played everywhere…, and often. And to be honest I reckon they put a lot of the rock bands of today to shame, I really do.
This live recording is from a double CD I have called Over The Top… which is a very comprehensive collection of their work. The song is called Waiting To Take You Away… it’s the live, single version. The song is also on the album Mountain Live – The Road Goes Ever On, and I’ve posted a song from that already.. one of the best live albums you’ll hear if you’re into some serious rock.
Again, this recording just captures the raw power of Mountain when they were in their pomp, they were a very formidable rock act and very well respected throughout the music business. Leslie West has recorded with many other bands, including The Who… and they still tour occasionally. It’s totally must have music for me on my desert island, once this is on I’m in a world of my own. Mountain just smack out the cords, and they do it as loud as possible. So, Friday night… rock music it is to get you in the weekend mode. Time for my weekly dose of Mountain and coconut vodka.., a very potent combination.
I’ll stick with the movie soundtrack theme for this next song. I have to be honest and say that, even though I think Ray Charles is great, I’d never heard this until I watched Trains, Planes and Automobiles. I’d heard him loads of times, liked his music but never felt the need to own any of it. But when I watched the movie and heard this song play I thought ” I have to have it”.. and so I searched the credits, found the title and got it. And from then on I’ve collected of a lot of his stuff, and I love it.
I have Trains, Planes and Automobiles on video, somewhere… and every now and then I watch it for a good giggle. It’s a very funny movie. The song is from the part where John Candy is driving the car while Steve Martin sleeps, it comes on the radio and he starts playing air keyboard on the dash of the car… don’t say you’ve never done it.. and uses his thumb to play air saxophone. It’s a riot. I’d never do that while driving my car.. it’s dangerous… well, maybe sometimes, but only when I’m on a quiet road because if you’ve seen the movie you’ll know the result can be quite catastrophic. The song was released in 1953 and was one of the first big hits for Ray Charles.
No dashboard on my island.., no car. But with a little imagination, and an old wooden cargo crate that got washed up on the shore, I’ll be able to play along with Ray Charles just like John Candy in the movie.., minus the cigarette. You’ll have to make do with the keyboard on your pc, or your desktop. But we can all use our thumbs for the saxophone part… just make sure you washed your hands first.
Warren Zevon, I love his music. He recorded some really good stuff, intelligent lyrics.. songs with a story to tell, and a little off beat. Again, this is from 1978 and was on his album called Excitable Boy, which is a good album. Waddy Wachtel was one of the co writers of this song, and it features John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, from Fleetwood Mac, on bass and drums.
The song has been covered by many artists, even the Grateful Dead, with each giving it their own feel and arrangement… but Warren Zevon’s version is definately the best. He died in 2003 unfortunately, but he was a brilliant song writer and very popular performer. I have many of his songs, love listening to them.. but this one is the one I’d choose for desert island collection because it’s sure to cheer me up everytime I hear it.
I saw the Tom Cruise movie, The Colour Of Money,… the part where he’s shooting pool in a pool hall and this song is playing in the background. I’m not a Tom Cruise fan at all, but I thought that scene in the movie was brilliant… and Werewolves Of London made it so entertaining, even though Tom Cruise dancing to it left a bit to be desired. And then of course it’s always a favourite at Halloween, no Halloween party would be complete without Werewolves Of London being played at least a couple of times throughout the evening…, it just has to be done.
No Halloween parties on my island.., no pumpkins to carve out, no witches and broomsticks. But maybe a few bats flying around at dusk, this song playing on the laptop, and me sitting on the beach on my own howling at the moon… or maybe using a stick for a pool cue and doing my own version of that cheesy Tom Cruise dance from the movie. But then again, on second thoughts I don’t think so…
Back to the one hit wonders for the next song…, there’s no getting away from them when I look through the stuff I’ve put aside for the desert island collection and uploaded for this blog. Still, this particular one hit wonder always gets people singing along when you play.. it’s a fun song, really catchy. I wouldn’t call it rock music, although that’s the genre they’re listed under.. I just reckon it’s a great pop song…’70’s pop that is, 1978 in fact.
I know very little about Yellow Dog, but doing a bit of quick research I found out that they originated from a band called Fox… I do remember them and they had a few hits in the ’70’s.. and this song reached the top ten in the UK when it was released. I also found out that one of the members of Yellow Dog, Kenny Young.., wrote the song “Under The Boardwalk” when he was in his teens.. and that’s about it.
So I’m just going to post the song… maybe when you play it you’ll remember it.. perhaps you’ve never heard it before. One thing is, I’m sure it’ll have your feet tapping.. and your fingers, it’s a great song and I reckon it deserves to played more often. So here it is…. time for a little dance I think.
Is it really five days since I last posted anything?… time flies, I’ve just been too busy but I’ll make amends now.
So, the songs in this post are by The Who… it’s about time I added them to the desert island collection because when it comes to rock music they’re top of my list. They’ve been around so long.., made so many superb albums and performed some of the best concerts, ever. To choose my favourite Who records is impossible… there are simply too many. From the early sixties to the present day they’ve been belting out some of the most awesome rock music I’ve ever heard… my Who collection is massive, I’d have the lot with me on my island…, I’ve grown up listening to their music and never a week goes by when I don’t play their stuff at some point. They’ve influenced so many musicians, performed at some of the biggest concerts on the planet, stopped recording… started again, fallen out.. made friends again and, tragically, lost two of the original members along the way. The story of The Who has been an on going, real life soap opera for decades… and after all these years they’re still the best as far as I’m concerned. The best rock band in the world?… they’re pretty close, even today.
Everyone has their favourite Who songs, all the well known hits and album tracks… and I’ll add some more of mine later on. But for now I’m posting these two songs.
They’re both two of my personal favourites, not the best known.. well, maybe the first one is. It’s called Relay… 1973 I think, it was released as a single. It was going to be on the Who’s Next album but got dropped from it when the album became a single instead of a double one. But it’s a great song, plenty of power.. brilliant lyrics.., prophetic words about the internet?.. I don’t know. All I know is that I love this song.
The second one is from the album The Who By Numbers…, 1975, and the song is called Slip Kid. Again it’s The Who at their best, for me.. although many people don’t know it if you play it to them. Both songs have all the best ingredients from the band.. brilliant guitar, superb drumming, thundering bass, and awesome vocals… but you’d expect nothing less from a great band like The Who. All their stuff is on the hard drive so it would playing all the time on my island, absolutely no doubt about that. They’ve been around forever…, and long may they continue.
The first song I posted on here was Let’s Work Together by Canned Heat, the first record I bought with my own money when I was a kid. Obviously, it didn’t stop there… I’ve bought tons of their music in the years after that and their records have a certain pride of place in my music collection. So for this post I’m digging into my Canned Heat stuff… way back in fact, to 1968 and an album called Boogie With Canned Heat. This is how I prefer to hear them play.., in their own style of boogie blues music with the distorted guitar sound.., Canned Heat boogie.
In this song the guitar sound is awesome, distortion and feedback… and loud. There isn’t a bad track on this album and it’s quite difficult to single out the best one, so it comes down to my personal choice and World In A Jug is just short and to the point…. a blast.
I love the sound of a really distorted guitar.., that dirty sound with all the feedback, and Canned Heat had a guitarist who could get that sound just right. He was called Henry Vestine or “The Sunflower”… and he developed a style all of his own that really made Canned Heat’s music so great to listen to. Look him up on the internet, he was quite an interesting character.., his father had a crater on the Moon named after him and they reckon that some of Henry’s ashes have been kept so that one day, when it’s possible, they can be taken there.. great story.
Anyway, back to the desert island island collection and World In A Jug. If you play it turn it up, you get the best effect that way and you can have a little boogie with Canned Heat on a Sunday afternoon.. As for me?.. well, I’m going up to my local bar shortly to watch Italy v Spain in the last quarter final of the Euro 2008 football tournament… a fine way to spend a Sunday evening. That’s in the real world…. But if I was stuck on a desert island then this evening I might be found tinkering around with my beach shack up there, listening to Canned Heat and using an old piece of driftwood as a makeshift guitar to strum along with The Sunflower… lovely.
For five years in the ’70’s there was a show on BBC Radio 1 every Saturday afternoon called the Saturday Rock Show. The DJ was a guy called Alan Freeman, an Australian who moved to the UK and became a household name in radio. On his Saturday afternoon show he used to play album tracks, as opposed to chart singles. It was all rock, blues, progressive rock.., all that stuff, lots of American bands were featured on the show, lots of bands that I’d not heard of before.., latest album releases, older stuff, everything… fantastic radio as far as I was concerned.
I didn’t always get to hear the show each Saturday, I was usually out indulging my passion for sport on a weekend in those days, but if I was ever at home on a Saturday I’d be sat glued to the radio listening to Alan Freeman. I had the latest cassette recorder hooked up to my hi-fi tuner back then, all the latest gadgets with Dolby noise reduction… all the whistles and bells. So I used to pop a blank cassette in and tape the show so I could have the music to play whenever I wanted.. still have a few of the surviving cassettes today, and even a cassette player to play them on. I listen to them on the odd occasion and realise now just how good that radio show was, it ran from 1973 to ‘78… the stuff he played was excellent… Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Jethro Tull.. on and on the list goes. He’d even put an album on and play the whole of one side, not a chart song in sight…. I loved it.
On one particular Saturday afternoon in 1974 he played a couple of tracks from an album called Feats Don’t Fail Me Now by Little Feat…, I’d not come across them before, they were American, the guy who was singing had a great voice, and the band were brilliant. I had a tape in and was recording the show, it’s one of the tapes I still have. The next track in the desert island collection is from that album, it’s a very good album with some great songs on it but my favourite is Rock’n'Roll Doctor. Once the show had finished I re wound the tape and played it over and over, then took it to a friends house where we listened to it all again. Needless to say I had bought the album within a few days and was wearing the grooves out on it, I played it that much.
A while after that the band appeared on the Old Grey Whistle Test, the BBC TV show, and I saw them for the first time. The singer was Lowell George, he also played the slide guitar with real class… and they played Rock’n'Roll Doctor. They were a very laid back band, all good musicians and they did the song perfect. From that moment on I was a huge fan of their music. The sad thing is that Lowell George only lived to be 34 years old, he died of a heart attack in 1979.. such a shame, but his music lives on…, and great music it is too.
Alan Freeman is no longer around either, he passed away in 2006 at the age of 79. But what an impact he left on music lovers, he introduced us all to so many great bands… bands that we wouldn’t have heard anywhere else at that time.., bands like Little Feat. So I have to thank him for that, thank him for playing all those great songs every Saturday afternoon… and especially for playing Rock’n'Roll Doctor, which has turned out to be one of my all time favourite songs.
That’s the name of the album that this next song is from. Steven Van Zandt, or Little Steven as he’s better known released it in 1987 and this is my favourite track. I heard it on the radio many times, never bought it and then wished I had, years later.
I went to one of those record fairs… the ones where people turn up and set out their stall to sell their old vinyl records… sell your old vinyl records!? .. madness. Anyway, while walking around the record fair I came across the album, Freedom – No Compromise, and straight away it was in my mind to buy it. I thought I’d go and look around some more, see if anything else caught my eye but if it didn’t I’d go back and buy it. Then I came across a couple of other records that I wanted and bought them… and that left me without enough money to go back and buy the Little Steven album…”not to worry” I thought, “I’ll come across it again”. I never did.
So along came the internet, and downloads… so much music, and of course I downloaded this song as soon as I found it. I really do like this song, it’s rock music with a sort of Latin soul feel to it.., if you know what I mean. I haven’t heard it on the radio for a long time now, but I don’t know why because it’s a very catchy, upbeat tune. I do realise that there’s a political message in it.., only I just listen to the song for the music. It took me so long to finally get the song, now I play it regularly and it always gets my feet tapping… I never tire of listening to it and that’s why it has to be in the desert island digital collection, a dead cert top tenner. There’s a wonderful guitar solo towards the end, it’s brilliant, as is the whole song. It’s called Bitter Fruit…, which is not something I come across on my island, everything is fresh and sweet. Coconut vodka time I think, laptop cranking out some Little Steven music.., and dancing on my own on the beach ’till dawn.
