I’ve Got The World In A Jug

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.

The Rock’n'Roll Doctor

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.