Green River (Creedence Clearwater Revival cover)

This is my home recording of Green River, the title track from the 1969 album by Creedence Clearwater Revival. I am playing all guitars and bass on this track, and handling all vocals. A drum machine is keeping the beat.



CCR was not known for its instrumental pyrotechnics. The rhythm section was solid, the songs were short, there were no extended solos, and the lyrics for the most part did not reflect the times (except for Fortunate Son, about the Vietnam draft). This makes their songs timeless, especially this one, the lyrics of which could have been written by Stephen Foster. John Fogerty looks back to the carefree days of swimming holes, tire swings and skipping-a-rock across Green River.

The final verse has the narrator telling us that the guys who ran the campgrounds told him that the world will be-a-smouldering when he gets older, but he's always free to come back to Green River.

The Clash, The Sound of Sinners

What do you think of when you think of the Clash? I think they are still regarded as a punk-rock group, but that only really held true for a brief period, when the Clash debuted in 1977. That album was a punk record, for sure, though if you listen carefully, you could hear some melodies buried in the mix.



But the Clash were more sophisticated than we thought. By 1980, they gave us London Calling, a two-record set with a variety of styles and, most importantly, good songs. Songs like London Calling, Train in Vain, Lost in the Supermarket. There were now horns and some world music. These guys could do what the Sex Pistols and the Ramones could not.


After London Calling came Sandinista!, a three-record set. That was five albums in two years. Sandinista has some fluff, but at least two records worth of listenable variety, including more world music, ska, even some gospel. Had the Clash made Sandinista! a two-record set, it would be one of the great albums of all time.


I saw the Clash in 1982 when the opened for The Who at Shea Stadium. Peter Townsend was a big fan of the Clash. He liked their style, and he saw himself in them. The Who were the Clash of the 1960s. You know, My Generation and other mod/rebel songs. And like the Clash, The Who moved on better things, like Tommy, Who's Next and Quadrophenia. London Calling and Sandinista! are the Clash's Quadrophenia. Problem was, in 1982, I was not aware of the Clash's musical development by 1982. Rock and Casbah and Should I Stay or Should I Go were the hits that year, but the Clash were on their way down by then. Here's a Clash song from Sandinista! to wet your whistle.

Traffic - Full Concert - 08/14/94 - Woodstock 94

Traffic is one the underrated classic rock bands. Led by Steve Winwood, they thrived in the late 1960's-early 1970's. They never really reunited in the 1980s or 1990s and beyond as a means to capitalize on their hits, which probably explains why they are not held in the same esteem as their more celebrated contemporaries.

This video was recorded at Woodstock '94, the last good Woodstock, held in Saugerties, New York, about 20 miles from where I write this. The band was still relatively young, and Winwood was still in his mid-40's. He certainly looks that way. In this set, they are playing their greatest hits. Note the saxophone and flute players.

Traffic was one of the first great bands to break up in the 1960s. They split in 1969, and Winwood went on to join Blind Faith, a supergroup with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, two-thirds of the Cream lineup, which itself split in 1968. Blind Faith pooped out after one great album. Traffic reunited in 1970 and recorded John Barleycorn Must Die, a fabulous album. Then they did Low Spark of the High Heeled Boys, and you know the title track. You also know Dear Mr. Fantasy, from 1968, a psychedelic classic.

Celebrate the musicianship of a band that reunited and nailed it at Woodstock '94 despite not having played together in many years. That's how great musicians work. They can recreate greatness on short notice.

First Aid Kit, To A Poet

Who says no one is recording good stuff these days? First Aid Kit is sister-sister folk rock duo from Sweden. This song is from 2012. Harmonies will always be with us! If you are short on time (and I know that you are not), jump to the part that starts at 3:23 through the end. Ever hear anything so beautiful?

Prince, "Baby I'm a Star"

Something was happening in the rock and roll magazines that I was reading in the early 1980s. The writers were raving about someone named Prince who was dazzling them with these great songs that no one was playing on the FM stations out of New York City. These were the days before YouTube and Spotify, so if it was not on the radio and your friends did not have the album, then you didn't hear it, and that was that. All I knew was that Prince was black and his album 1999 was the album of the year for 1982.

We all found out who Prince was in 1984, when he released the Purple Rain album. This song was not the big hit from that album, but if you did not want to run around the block after hearing this one, something was wrong with you. No song in the 1980s had the excitement of Baby I'm a Star.

Prince was the Jimi Hendrix of the modern age. We did not know this at the time, but he was a fantastic guitarist and knew how to put on a show. He was also the Sly Stone for the modern age. A great frontman who made rock and roll danceable. Except that he did not always make dance music. A year later, Prince released a psychedelic album, Around the World in a Day. And Sign o' the Times (1987) is probably the album of the decade. In all, from 1982 through 1987, Prince released five albums, two of them doubles, which brings us to seven albums in six years. Each album is a five-star classic, placing him in the highest echelon of rock and soul greats. I'd like to see you release seven classic albums in five years. Get started. We got all the time in the world.

Pink Floyd, Dogs

I often think about the trajectory of an artist's career. How they change their styles over time and then peak before they backslide and release lesser material. Or maybe they don't backslide and progress to different levels before they break up and the band members proceed with their solo careers.

Much has been made about the Beatles' transformation during the 1960s, but other bands had also remarkable artistic growth. Pink Floyd had an artistic curve that I have never seen before. I know there are some serious Pink Floyd fans out there, but here is how I see it. They began recording in 1967 under the leadership of Syd Barrett, issuing Piper at the Gates of Dawn, one of the great psychedelic albums of all time. British psychedelia, with humor and a hard-candy sound. Then Syd left the band, David Gilmour joined, and the band sort of meandered for five or six years, issuing mediocre to decent albums year after year with pleasant meandering melodies, sitting in the second and maybe third tier of rock acts through the early 1970s. While they were popular in the United Kingdom during this time, they did not really make it in the United States. Had they broken up during this time, I am not sure you would know who they were.

Then something happened. In 1973, Pink Floyd issued The Dark Side of the Moon, which instantly threw them into mega-superstardom, and for good reason. I know of no other band that turned it around so quickly without any lineup changes. They just got better overnight. They had just released one of their average albums only one year earlier. The songwriting became more disciplined, the albums became more focused, and they became one of the "coolest" bands of the 1970s, along with Led Zeppelin, The Who and The Rolling Stones, dominating the high school parking lot where the longhairs blasted their eight-tracks.

I wonder what an American Pink Floyd fan felt like upon hearing Dark Side for the first time. None of his friends are into the band yet, the album is released without fanfare, and suddenly this album is sprung from nowhere that is so profound it becomes one of the best-selling records of all time. Everyone has The Dark Side of the Moon. Word of mouth and radio airplay sold records back then. Dark Side must have caught fire right away.

But Pink Floyd's new discipline and focus continued through the rest of the decade. Every two years, another great concept album, each with its own lyrical and musical themes. Including Dark Side, that was four albums through 1979. None of the songs on any of these albums would have fit on their other records that decade, and they developed a mystique with artsy-fartsy album covers that did not include band photos. The last album in this sequence was The Wall. Then Pink Floyd became average again. The magic faded away. I know there are Pink Floyd fans who disagree with my "average" assessment, but you know where you can put your objections.

That brings us to 1977, the third album in this sequence, Animals. Every song is named after an animal. This one is Dogs. The theme is alienation, with an Orwellian focus. This is Animal Farm put to music. The songs are longer, so you don't hear them on the radio. Dogs is my favorite. It starts off with interesting acoustic syncopation before Gilmour unloads a wild guitar solo, then some meandering before we return to the strumming. The lyrics are among the most profound in rock history. Roger Waters describes a businessman who spent his life kissing ass and playing the game before he retires to Florida and dies of cancer. Along the way, he wonders if he was "just being used" and he briefly wonders about his "creeping malaise." The killer lyric: "deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending, that everyone's expendable, and no one has a real friend." I still get chills listening to it.

Yo La Tengo - The Race Is On Again

We are in it for the long haul, folks. Time for some Yo La Tengo, an American indie band from Hoboken that seems to have mastered every style of music there is, including 1960s psychedelia. Those who know me know that I love 1960s psychedelia. But I am skeptical of efforts to replicate that style in the modern era. Spontaneous music cannot be recreated. When I heard this album for the first time about 10 years ago (it came out in 2006), I was driving to court for some mundane court appearance when this song came on the CD player. "That sounds interesting," I thought. "Let's hear it again." I ended up playing this song on repeat the rest of the trip and on the way back to the office. I had waited my whole life to hear this song. If you like the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, early Grateful Dead, the Beatles' Revolver, you will like it also. This is where it's at. You'll be pleased to know that this three-member band includes a husband-wife team. The wife plays drums.

In 2007, I saw this band play in Woodstock, N.Y. It was a small venue, and the band was taking requests and questions from the audience. I mustered the courage to request this song from the balcony. Ira Kaplan, the guitarist and singer, pondered the request for a second and the band got to work. Most the audience was not familiar with the song, but they were mesmerized by it. It was my greatest moment as a concert-goer.

Rolling Stones, Can't you hear me knocking

As you start going stir crazy, ponder the Rolling Stones, one of a handful of bands that legitimately qualifies as the greatest of all time. This was recorded in 1971. Songs like Satisfaction, Jumping Jack Flash and Start Me Up get more airplay, but there's nothing like this. This song has it all. Keith Richard's ragged guitar, the saxophone coda and some great Keith backing vocals. The saxophone has 1971 written all over it. Mick Taylor on lead guitar, a 22 year-old prodigy who joined in 1969 and left in 1974, supposedly because being in the band was hazardous to his health, and because the band was denying him proper songwriting credits. Someone is playing the bongos. By 1971, Mick Jagger was also perfecting his vocal style.The Stones had a few good years left in the studio before lapsing into average-land and eventually a seasoned concert act.