Carl Wilson, the rock writer, does a great job here explaining Peter Jackson’s epic (when it comes to the Beatles in January 1969, not civilization) TV show about the Beatles, called Get Back. I finished it last night and it is delightful, insightful, and well worth watching. Read his story here.
The first one is I’m a King Bee, so there are some surprises. This isn’t the usual countdown, these are faves, with a surprising number from Their Satanic Majesties Request. I mean, an appropriate number. Enjoy.
Driving today, this came on KRFC, Radio Fort Collins. Thank you.
I thought this was odd, because I was in a grocery store a few days ago and Canned Heat’s Going Up the Country came on. But Going up the Country is classic rock, a hit song in rock’s best days. So, synchronicity? Not really.
But when I was making dinner (creamy fish chowder) I put on Canned Heat’s greatest hits, and there are some good tunes there. Amphetamine Annie isn’t one of those, exactly but maybe we’ll touch base on some of them in the coming days.
I like this song for the way the band shouts, Speed kills!
An earlier version of this post said Bob Hite doesn’t sing on Amphetamine Annie, when in fact he does. I got that wrong because I always thought Hite sang Going Up the Country, but that was in fact Larry Taylor.
This one is from 1991. Van Morrison is no remnant, he’s been a giant star for a long time. But he’s also a working musician, a scrappy one who has not bent his vision to match the future, as such. He records new stuff, he tours, he has looked like a heart attack waiting to happen for 40 years, but luckily for us he’s survived and visited us with his Celtic rhythm and blues-y jazzbo stylings regularly.
I’m not going to vouch for all of it. There’s too much to listen to, for one thing, but the album this is from, Hymns to the Silence, his 21st long player, seems to me brilliant all the way through, a mixture of personal animus and griping and soulful stylings and professions of faith, with a tight band and not a little bit of nostalgia for things before they’d been debased.
I don’t agree with that last point entirely, but I like the music it pushed Van Morrison to on this record.
When I worked in midtown in the early 80s I’d visit the various discount record stores and buy cut out records for a buck or two based on a track or a name that I recognized from something I’d read or heard about on the radio.
That’s how I found the Dixie Cups Chapel of Love and Iko Iko. Two of the great cuts of the 60s.
Today I found on Google Music an album called the Dixie Cups versus the Shangri Las. Now, apart from the fact that this is a bogus contest, because of it I found a bunch of Dixie Cups songs I don’t think I’d ever heard before.
Are the Dixie Cups greater than the Shangri Las? Here’re two songs to go with their big hits that make me say, maybe!
I heard this one on the Duane Allman Anthology album, which collected all of Duane’s great studio work.
In any case, this is classic rock. There is no remnant part, but it is great.
