Bill Fitzhugh All Hand Mixed Vinyl Sets 21 through 40

Fitzhugh's All Hand Mixed XM Set Lists
Sets 21-40

Go to Segments 1-20 | 21-40 | 41-60 | 61-80 | 81-100 | 101-120

Segment 21
I got a couple of questions for you. Do you own a copy Eric Clapton’s 461 Ocean Boulevard? If so, which version do you have? The original or the other one? How do you tell the difference? Well, on the original release, the second track on side one was “Give Me Strength.” But owing to a dispute over songwriting credits, later pressings of the album featured “Better Make It Through Today” as the second track, a song that was originally on the album There’s One In Every Crowd which came out the year after 461 Ocean Boulevard. Now what’s most interesting about all this is that today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl has nothing to do with either one of those tracks. I just thought I’d mention it. Instead, we’ll be playing “Motherless Children” from the album. Why’s that? Well, the answer has to do with the rhythm of a song written by Lindsey Buckingham. Here’s what happened: I was here in the Way Back Studios one night listening to an album called Belle of the Ball by Richard Torrance and Eureka. What’s he got to do with it? Well, it turns out he does a perfect cover of the Buckingham Nicks track “Don’t Let Me Down Again” a song with a rhythm that reminds me of “Motherless Children.” So we did a little hand mixing to get things started. But after those three songs I couldn’t think of any others with the same rhythm. But did I let that bring me down? No. Did I let it break me down? Of course not. I just seized on the word ‘down’ from “Don’t Let Me Down Again” and made the rest of the set into a theme-time-radio-half-hour-head-trip featuring Graham Parker, Neil Young, Steve Earle, Steve Stills, the Beatles, and the Boss. So sit yourself down on the corner, or get on down the road and get the wax out of your hearing holes. Here’s old Slowhand.
Eric Clapton	Motherless Children
Buckingham Nicks	Don't Let Me Down Again (part 1)
Richard Torrance	Don't Let Me Down Again (part 2)
Graham Parker	Don't Let It Break You Down
Neil Young	Don't Let It Bring You Down
Steve Earle	Down the Road
Stephen Stills	Sit Yourself Down
The Beatles	Don't Let Me Down
Bruce Springsteen	I'm Goin' Down
Well that was a serious downer, man. “Don’t Let Me Down” “Don’t Let Me Down Again” “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” “Don’t Let It Break You Down” “Down The Road” “Sit Yourself Down” “I’m Going Down” and one song about how nobody treats you like a mother will when your mother is dead, lord, that is a downer. I just hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. We opened that set with Clapton’s take on the traditional “Motherless Children” from 461 Ocean Boulevard. The churning rhythm of the song is provided by drummer Jim Fox who was one of the founders of the James Gang. And it reminded me of the rhythm of the Lindsey Buckingham track, “Don’t Let Me Down Again” that was on that great Buckingham Nicks album that came out in 1973 and mysteriously tanked. A year later, Richard Torrance and Eureka covered the song so faithfully on their album Belle of the Ball that we just mixed from one to the other about halfway through without missing a beat. After that, it was all downhill. We heard “Don’t Let It Break You Down,” from Graham Parker’s album The Mona Lisa’s Sister. Followed by Neil Young’s “Don’t Let It Bring You Down.” Steve Earle was in there with “Down the Road” from his debut album, Guitar Town, an album that not only made the Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest albums of all time but also made CMT’s list of the 40 Greatest Albums in Country Music. “Sit Yourself Down” was Stephen Stills with Mama Cass, John Sebastian, David Crosby and Graham Nash on backup vocals. “Don’t Let Me Down” was the B-side of the single release of “Get Back” and was credited to The Beatles with Billy Preston. And speaking of singles, “I’m Goin’ Down” was the sixth of a record seven top ten singles from Springsteen’s Born in the USA. And now the clock’s run down and we’re all out of time. I’m Bill Fitzhugh, thanks for listening. I’ll be back sooner or later with another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 22
As far as I know, in the history of rock and roll, there’s only one group that started its career with three two-record sets. Most of the artists in the Deep Tracks only have one or two in their entire catalogue if you leave out the live albums and greatest hits compilations. The Beatles, the Stones, Springsteen, and Van Morrison each did one, and Van didn’t get around to his until album number 23. The Who, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, and Todd Rundgren each did two. And Dylan has two or three, depending on how you categorize The Basement Tapes. And of course Frank Zappa released several over the years. But Chicago came out of the gate with three two-record sets, back-to-back-to-back. Their first two were impressive collections of pop-rock-jazz fusion with a three man horn section threatening to overpower the standard rock quartet. But on their third album they ventured into new territory, songs featuring acoustic guitars and even the pedal steel. And that’s the style that sets the tone for today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl. Following one each from America and Fleetwood Mac, we’ll hear Chicago sounding as country as they could on “What Else Can I Say.” Toward the end of the set we’ll get “The Treasure” from Steve Stills and Manassas. Followed by Mr. Stills with his buddies Nash and Crosby, and I don’t mean Ogden and Bing. But we’ll start in 1973. Long before he became a multi-faceted corporation, Jimmy Buffett was just a great songwriter. And his album A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean stands as proof. Now there aren’t any fancy segues in this set, just six songs that work like a finely tuned relay team with each handing off to the next in perfect stride, never dropping the baton. So here’s that man from Margaritaville singing about the “Death of an Unpopular Poet.”
Jimmy Buffett	Death of an Unpopular Poet
America	Never Found the Time
Fleetwood Mac	Sometimes
Chicago	What Else Can I Say?
Manassas	The Treasure (Take One)
Crosby, Stills, Nash	Pre-road Downs
Coming in at number 259 on the Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, those guys from The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and The Hollies; Crosby, Stills, and Nash with “Pre Road Downs” a tune that wins the award for the best advice in a pop song: be sure to hide the roaches. Before that, Manassas, the band Bill Wyman said he would leave the Rolling Stones to join. We heard take one of “The Treasure” from their debut album which is a remarkable two record set. Speaking of which, before the Manassas, the only group in rock history to start with three two-record sets: Chicago. From their third album, complete with uncharacteristic slide guitar instead of horns, we heard “What Else Can I Say?” Now I looked all over the place but I couldn’t find any credits for who played that slide part. If you know, drop me a line. You can find an email link at my website. Just do a search for hand mixed vinyl and you’ll find it. We opened the set with the “Death of an Unpopular Poet” from Jimmy Buffett’s album A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean, which is a little pun on an old Marty Robbins tune, “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation.” After that we “Never Found the Time” an acoustic gem from Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell, and Dan Peek, three guys whose harmonies rivaled those of Crosby, Stills, and Nash. That’s from America’s debut album in 1972. After that, in the middle of the set, “Sometimes” a Danny Kirwin composition off Fleetwood Mac’s Future Games. And that’s it. We’re out of time. I’m Bill Fitzhugh, thanks for listening. I’ll be back sooner or later with another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl from the Way Back Studios to the Deep Tracks.
Segment 23
Every now and then we have visitors here in the Way Back Studios. Some are mysterious drifters while others are vague acquaintances hiding from the law. But this one time, I was out here with my friend and fellow writer, Jim Fusilli. Jim is the author of some fine crime novels and one of my favorite short stories, “The Ghost of Rory Gallagher.” He also wrote a terrific book on the classic Beach Boy’s album, Pet Sounds. And, as if that’s not enough, Jim’s also the pop and rock critic for the Wall Street Journal. In other words, dude knows his music. So anyway, we’re out here smoking cigars, and I’m trying to stump-the-music-expert, though without much luck. But I figured I could get him with something from the late, great Willy DeVille, the man Doc Pomus described as looking like a cross between a bullfighter and a Puerto Rican pimp. But I was wrong. Turned out Jim’s been a fan since Willy was Mink, back in ’77 when DeVille’s Cabretta came out. Well, at that point I knew I was wasting my time trying to stump Jim, so I decided to give that up and just make a set of it. And that’s how we got today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl. Well, one thing led to another, and before you could say lower middle-class hillbilly hipster, I’d pulled a Ricki Lee Jones EP, because we both wanted to hear her version of “Walk Away Rene.” And what we discovered was a really nice mix into Willie DeVille’s “Assassin of Love.” Well, that led us to Dire Straits, JJ. Cale, and Stevie Wonder. But we’ll start with something from an album that landed right in the middle of the Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. It sold five million copies. It won three Grammys. And it hit the top of the Billboard charts. She’s “Nobody’s Girl.” From the Way Back Studios, here’s Bonnie Raitt.
Bonnie Raitt	Nobody's Girl
Stevie Wonder	Superwoman
Ricki Lee Jones	Walk Away Rene
Willie DeVille	Assassin of Love
Dire Straits	Six Blade Knife
J.J. Cale	Cajun Moon
One of the enduring mysteries of life is why certain musicians never reach a mass audience. The phenomenon of the cult artist. I mean if Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, and Lynyrd Skynyrd like you, how come everybody doesn’t? The answer? Don’t ask me. But we just heard from several artists who suffered that very fate. Like for example, J.J. Cale. We just heard his “Cajun Moon” from his album Okie. In the middle of the set, two more talents relegated to the pop culture sidelines. Ricki Lee Jones, the Duchess of Coolsville, came out of the gate with a huge album, featuring the hit “Chuck E.’s in Love.” After that, no matter how good her records were, she never reached that level of popularity again. Here we heard Ricki Lee’s cover of “Walk Away Rene.” After that, the cultest of cult artists, the late, great Willie DeVille. A guy who made some brilliant albums but who remains largely unknown. DeVille’s debut album, Cabretta, was a sleeper masterpiece. It came out about a year before the first Dire Straits album and I was always struck by how similar DeVille and Mark Knopfler sounded but I thought I was the only one. So imagine my surprise a decade later, when Knopfler produced and played on Willie DeVille’s “Assassin of Love.” And, just to prove the point, we followed Assassin with “Six Blade Knife” from Dire Straits. At the top, Bonnie Raitt, who started out on the cult circuit but who finally broke through to the masses with her tenth album, and just in the Nick of Time. After that, a guy who was always a star: Stevie Wonder. We heard “Superwoman” from Music of My Mind. By the way, if you’re looking for any of the set lists or if you’re just curious about the show, drop by my website or track me down on Facebook. I’m Bill Fitzhugh and I’ll be back sooner or later with a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 24
The music in the Deep Tracks is a lot like America. It’s a melting pot, a gumbo, a hybrid, a mixed breed, a mutt. And all the better for it. Each generation of musicians grows up listening to the previous generation, some were influenced by the blues artists who preceded them, others were influenced by country, folk, jazz, or a combination of them all. Well, today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl takes a look at the influence of one particular jazz composition you may not know on two songs you do: Steely Dan’s “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” and Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing.” The great pianist and composer Horace Silver wrote “Song For My Father” in 1963. It’s the title track to an album that was one of hard bop’s most famous recording dates. It’s a Bossa Nova in F minor, about seven minutes long, and it has six false endings, though we only have time to use a couple of them. We’ll break the song into three parts and we’ll rearrange them for maximum edification. Steely Dan integrated jazz forms into their music more consistently than perhaps any other group in the Deep Tracks. It’s well known that Becker and Fagen took the bass line from “Song For My Father” as the starting point for “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.” But what’s less well known is that Stevie Wonder took the descending horn line from “Song For My Father” and used it for the chorus of “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing.” Elsewhere in the set, a guy who incorporated jazz into his songs every bit as well as Steely Dan, Van the Man. We’ll hear his cover of Cannonball Adderly’s “Sack o’ Woe.” And before that, we’ll hear the Electrifying Eddie Harris along with Les McCann doing their famous live take of “Compared to What,” a soul jazz pop monster recorded live in 1969. But first, that Horace Silver track. Listen to the bass line for Steely Dan, and the horns for Stevie Wonder. From the Way Back Studios, here’s “Song For My Father.”
Horace Silver	Song For My Father (part 1)
Stevie Wonder	Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing
Horace Silver	Song For My Father (part 3)
Steely Dan	Ricki Don't Lose That Number
Les McCann & Eddie Harris	Compared to What?
Van Morrison	Sack o' Woe
Horace Silver	Song For My Father (part 2)
Wrapping up that jazzy little set, an excerpt from Horace Silver’s “Song For My Father.” At the top of the set we heard the opening minute and a half of the song to highlight its influence on Stevie Wonder as he composed “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing” where Stevie’s chorus mimics that descending horn line from Silver’s composition. In the middle of the set, we cut to the last minute or so of “Song For My Father” to show exactly how Steely Dan appropriated the bass line from the song to create their biggest hit, “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.” Proving the old adage that good writers borrow but great writers steal. By the way, the albums Pretzel Logic and Innervisions both made the Rolling Stone list of the 500 Greatest Albums of all time. Following the Steely Dan, we heard the soul jazz masterpiece “Compared to What.” That was Les McCann and the Electrifying Eddie Harris recorded live in 1969. Funny how those lyrics seem so contemporary. “The President, he’s got his war. Folks don’t know just what it’s for. Nobody gives us rhyme or reason. Have one doubt, they call it treason.” We came out of that bit of the truth into Van Morrison’s cover of Cannonball Adderley’s “Sack o’ Woe.” Taken from the album How Long Has This Been Going On which was recorded live (but without an audience) at the famous London jazz club, Ronnie Scott’s. Well, to paraphrase Stevie Wonder, Everybody needs a change, a chance to check out the new, but you’re the only one who sees, the changes in the Way Back Studios. I’m Bill Fitzhugh, thanks for listening. If you’ve got any questions, comments, or suggestions, drop by my website and send me an email. Meanwhile, I’ll be here on the dusty fringes of Los Angeles, working on a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl for your listening pleasure, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 25
Other than some mystical musings by the Moody Blues, I can think of only one album in my entire collection with a poem on it. That would be Chicago III. The first track on side four is a poem called “When All The Laughter Dies in Sorrow.” It’s read by Robert Lamm and was written by a guy named Kendrew Lascelles. Lascelles is an English writer best known for an anti-war poem called “The Box” which he recited once on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, around 1971. John Denver recited it for the last track of his album Poems, Prayers, and Promises. If you’re interested, you can find that on You Tube. In any event, today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl revolves around a mix I used to do back in the day where I took “When All The Laughter Dies in Sorrow” and played it over Steve Miller’s “Space Intro” timed so that the poem ends just as “Fly Like an Eagle” begins. As for the rest of the set, it’s a completely characteristic combo platter of FM rock classics, some of which were hits, some of which weren’t. Since I don’t need to tell you about the hits, I’ll tell you about The Sopwith Camel instead. According to their web site it was the second Bay Area band signed to a national record label, the first being Jefferson Airplane and the third being the Grateful Dead. Sopwith Camel had one hit with a kitchy little number called “Hello Hello” when they recorded for the Kama Sutra label. A couple of years later, on Warner Brothers, they released The Miraculous Hump Returns From the Moon from which we’ll hear a song called “Fazon.” But first, some Pink Floyd. Depending on how you look at it, there are either three songs titled “Another Brick in the Wall” or there’s one song by title, done in three parts. “Another Brick in the Wall (part 2)” was a huge single, topping the charts in 1980, the most over-played Pink Floyd song since “Money.” And that’s just one of the reasons we’re going to play “Part 1” instead.
Pink Floyd	Another Brick in the Wall (part 1)
Steve Miller Band	Space Intro
Chicago	When All the Laughter Dies in Sorrow
Steve Miller	Fly Like an Eagle
Sopwith Camel	Fazon
Joni Mitchell	Just Like This Train
Spirit	Nature's Way
Canned Heat	On the Road Again
Donovan	Barabajagal
Wrapping up a set that sounds like FM rock radio on a Saturday afternoon circa 1970, at least there at the end, that’s Donovan with the Jeff Beck group doing “Barabajagal” a single that made it all the way up to #36. Before that, another FM rock classic that crossed over to AM success, Canned Heat’s “On the Road Again” made it to #16 on the charts. Now my sources are conflicted when it comes to whether or not “Nature’s Way” was released as a single. But even if it wasn’t, it got enough air play on FM radio to make you think it had been. That’s from Spirit’s celebrated album The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus. Before that, a couple of songs that definitely weren’t released as singles: Joni Mitchell’s “Just Like This Train.” And “Fazon” by the Bay Area band, The Sopwith Camel from their album The Miraculous Hump Returns From the Moon which was best described by Mark Allen for the All Music Guide, thusly: “Imagine a jazzy John Sebastian who’s into Eastern culture and vaudeville. This is pleasant, unambitious hippie groove music for a lazy, sunny afternoon. If you’re in that mood, it will take you to a warm, fuzzy place.” Ain’t that the truth? At the top of the set, also not released as a single, “Another Brick in the Wall (part 1).” Part 2 was a single, in fact it was a #1. We followed the Floyd with a favorite old mix of mine: we took the poem “When All the Laughter Dies in Sorrow” from Chicago’s third album and played it over Steve Miller’s “Space Intro” before going into his big hit, “Fly Like An Eagle.” Well it’s like Steve said, time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’ into the future which is where you’ll find me, in the Way Back Studios. I’m Bill Fitzhugh. Thanks for listening. I’ll be back with another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl before you know it, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 26
I always thought it was Shakespeare who said, “Oh! what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive.” But it turns out that was Sir Walter Scott. Well, there’s no practice to deceive in today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl but there is a tangled web that weaves in and out between the sacred and the profane, the latter of which is supplied by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, down the basement with their needle and their spoon and a bunch of "Dead Flowers." But back to that tangled web. This set starts off with a mix of Little Feat singin’ about their semi-smokin’ mama in between two songs by Dave Mason. Any connection there? Well Bonnie Bramlett sang back up vocals on Dave Mason’s Alone Together and on Little Feat’s Dixie Chicken. She’s also one of the vocalists on the Earl Scruggs Review album, more about which later. Now, Bonnie Bramlett’s daughter, Bekka, was with Fleetwood Mac at the same time Dave Mason was with the group. And of course Bonnie was half of the famous and influential Delaney and Bonnie whose first album, Accept No Substitute was a favorite of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, among many others, including Jimi Hendrix. Delaney Bramlett once told the story of a press conference where a reporter asked him what he called his music. Delaney said he didn’t know. Was it rock or gospel or what? Again, he said he didn’t know. As it turns out, Jimi Hendix was taking part in this press conference. Jimi quietly stepped to the microphone and said, “I’ll tell you what you call it. Call it spiritual and leave it at that.” And that’s how we get to the sacred part of this set. One of the highlights of Accept No Substitute is a great gospel ballad called “Ghetto,” which features Leon Russell on piano, who was also on Dave Mason’s Alone Together. And as long as we’re in the gospel mode, we’ll get to that Earl Scruggs Review, Anniversary Special album featuring Bonnie Bramlett on the rousing gospel track “Royal Majesty.” We’ll also hear from Jonathan Edwards and Jesse Winchester but first, from the Way Back Studios, it’s “Just a Song.”
Dave Mason	Just a Song
Little Feat	Feats Don't Fail Me Now
Dave Mason	Silent Partner
Rolling Stones	Dead Flowers
Jonathan Edwards	When The Roll is Called Up Yonder
Jessie Winchester	Midnight Bus
Delany and Bonnie	Ghetto
Earl Scruggs Review	Royal Majesty
Billy Joel and Earl Scruggs? How’s that for an unlikely combination? That’s “Royal Majesty” from a great album called The Earle Scruggs Review Anniversary Special from 1975. There’s not enough time to list all the artists on the album, but here are the people who played just on that song: In addition to Billy Joel’s piano, we had Earl, Gary, and Randy Scruggs on banjo, bass, and acoustic guitars, Roger McGuinn and Alvin Lee on electric guitars, and Charlie Daniels on electric slide guitar as well as vocals. The other vocalists are the great Tracy Nelson, The Pointer Sisters, Joan Baez, and Bonnie Bramlett, who I like to think of as the Kevin Bacon of rock and roll. I swear you can connect her to anybody in the business in six moves or less. And the reason for that was her partnership with Delaney Bramlett. Before “Royal Majesty,” we heard Delaney and Bonnie doing “Ghetto” from their album Accept No Substitute. There were two other gospel tracks in that set: Jesse Winchester put us on the “Midnight Bus” and Jonathan Edwards delivered a stirring take on the traditional “When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder.” Those come from two albums that are worth finding: Winchester’s Third Down and 110 To Go and Jonathan Edwards’s Have A Good Time For Me. At the top of the set, Dave Mason’s “Just a Song” from Alone Together, an album featuring Bonnie Bramlett on background vocals. That led us into “Feats Don’t Fail Me Now” from Little Feat, a group Bonnie sang backup for on the Dixie Chicken album. After that it was another one from Dave, song called “Silent Partner.” Then it was down to the basement with the Glimmer Twins, Mick and Keith, who once said that one of their favorite records from 1969 was Delaney and Bonnie’s Accept No Substitute. There’s more to say but no time to say it. I’m Bill Fitzhugh, thanks for listening. I’ll be back next time with a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 27
Every now and then I like to take a minute to explain what it is we do here in the Way Back Studios because as you know new folks are jumping on the Deep Tracks bus every day of the week – and you might be one of them. And if so you might be asking yourself, what’s this guy up to? Well, the main thing is, we’re tryin’ to have some fun with the music. As we like to say, it’s not just what we play, it’s how we play it. Sometimes, we’re all about mash-ups and segues and plunder-phonics. Other times we find a theme and we stick to it, a sort of head-trip theme-time radio half-hour if you will. Occasionally we’ll just concentrate on putting the right songs in the right order. In other words, we like to mix things up, keep things interesting, variety being the spice of life as they say. And today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl is a good example because it’s none-of-the-above. Instead, we’re going places. From the Grand Opera House in Belfast to Cobo Hall in Detroit. From the Santa Barbara County Bowl to the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis. From the Park West in Chicago to the Brixton Academy in England. But we’re gonna start with Loudon Wainwright III at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Los Angeles in 1978. Loudon once famously sang, “God I hate women, they mess up your life. I’ll kill your mother if you’ll kill my wife.” Maybe we can all chip in and pay for some anger management classes for Loudon. Reviewing his album, A Live One, Rolling Stone said: “it’s a comprehensive and cracked compendium of one lunatic’s refusal to deal with the world on any terms other than his own.” Be sure to listen for Loudon’s imitation of Van Morrison toward the end of the song; it’s fabulous. Later in the set we’ll hear one from Van himself, and later still, we got Bob Seger doing a cover of Morrison’s “I’ve Been Working.” We’ll also hear from The Pat Metheny Group, by themselves, and later, as Joni Mitchell’s backing band. And we’ll round it out with one each from Pete Townshend and Bonnie Raitt. Music the way it’s supposed to be heard: performed live. So sit back, relax, and enjoy another All Hand Mixed Vinyl concert.
Loudon Wainwright III	Kings and Queens
Pat Metheny	(Cross The) Heartland
Pete Townshend	Save it For Later
Van Morrison	Into the Mystic/Inarticulate Speech of the Heart/Dweller on the Threshold
Joni Mitchell	Free Man in Paris
Bob Seger	I've Been Working
Bonnie Raitt	Three Time Loser
From the last show of her tour in 1980, that’s Bonnie Raitt on stage at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota with “Three Time Loser.” Before that, from Cobo Hall in Detroit, Michigan, 1975, Mr. Ramblin’ Gamlin’ Man, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet band gave us a cover Van Morrison’s “I’ve Been Working.” A little earlier in the set, from March of 1982, Van himself live from the Grand Opera House in Belfast. Starting with a tricky little intro, the band does a few bars from “Into the Mystic” before segueing into a few bars of “Inarticulate Speech of the Heart” before segueing into “Dweller on the Threshold.” And sticking with the Van Morrison theme for a moment, the set opened with Loudon Wainwright the third, recorded live at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Los Angeles in 1978. Toward the end of “Kings and Queens” Loudon lapses into an imitation of Van Morrison, and admits it. After the Dead Skunk guy, we heard one from The Pat Metheny Group performing at Park West in Chicago. We heard “Cross the Heartland” which was originally on the album American Garage from 1980. Two songs later, we’d moved to the Santa Barbara County Bowl for a date on Joni Mitchell’s Mingus tour where she was backed by a variation of The Pat Metheny group with Lyle Mays, Jaco Pastorius, Don Alias, and the late great Michael Brecker on Joni’s classic “Free Man In Paris.” And somewhere near the middle of the set, we dipped into Pete Townshend’s Deep End Live album for a cover of “Save It For Later,” a song that was the English Beat’s biggest hit in the U.S. And that’s all the time we’ve got for stoking the star making machinery behind the popular song. I’m Bill Fitzhugh and you can read all about it at billfitzhughdotcom. I’ll be back with another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl before you know it and I hope you can join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 28
Like a lot of folks, I find I can get by with a little help from my friends. In fact today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl ended up, quite accidentally, featuring a lot of friends – artists and producers who worked with one another in different bands that have connections to other artists in the set which we’ll talk about afterwards. But the set started with an idea from one of our best friends and a frequent visitor to the Way Back Studios, D. Victor Hawkins. Seems he was listening to Rory Gallagher one night, more specifically, the Live in Europe album from 1972 – one of the great live blues rock albums of all time. The second track is a Gallagher composition called “Laundromat” and there was a riff in the song that reminded Victor of “Bad Motor Scooter” by Montrose. And, speaking of friends, something in the Montrose reminded victor of a riff from former Montrose member Sammy Hagar’s “Three Lock Box.” So far so good but too short for a set. So I did some poking around in the hard rocking section of the library and came up with Cactus and their furious version of a Mose Allison standard. And then, from another one of the all time great live rock albums, Johnny Winter And Live. We took “Mean Town Blues” and broke it into two parts, put one near the top, and one near the bottom. And then to wrap it up, we grabbed B.B. King’s Live & Well from which we’ll hear “Let’s Get Down to Business.” We put it all together and guess what? If you could graft a pair of lips onto this set, it could suck start a rusted Harley. It’s a juvenile delinquent suite with a little something extra for the loud motorcycle enthusiast on your Christmas list. It’s prison time on Parchman Farm. It’s a woman with blood red lipstick and something in her eyes that isn’t fear. It’s leather and chrome rock ‘n’ roll plugged into a mile high stack of Marshall amps turned up to eleven. And it goes a little something like this...
Sammy Hagar	Intro to Three Lock Box (voice intro)
Johnny Winter	Mean Town Blues (part 1)
Cactus	Parchman Farm
Montrose	Bad Motor Scooter
Rory Gallagher	Laundromat
Sammy Hagar	Three Lock Box (song)
Johnny Winter	Mean Town Blues (part 2)
B.B. King	Let's Get Down to Business
If that set didn’t clear the carbon outta your pipes you might wanna seek professional help. As I mentioned at the top, there are a lot of connections among the artists in that set. See if you can follow this. We ended with “Let’s Get Down To Business” from B.B. King of the blues and his album Live & Well, produced by the prolific Bill Szymczyk. Now it turns out that Szymczyk was the technical director on Edgar Winter’s They Only Come Out at Night, a record featuring Rick Derringer and Ronnie Montrose. Before the B.B. King, we heard the end of “Mean Town Blues” from Johnny Winter playing with Rick Derringer and the late Randy Jo Hobbs who were in the McCoys together when they did “Hang On Sloopy.” Later, Hobbs joined Sammy Hagar, Ronnie Montrose, Bill Church and the rest to record the Montrose album Jump On It. But we heard an earlier incarnation of Montrose on the track “Bad Motor Scooter,” from an album produced by Ted Templeman who also produced Edgar Winter as well as Van Morrison’s Tupelo Honey which featured Ronnie Montrose and Bill Church. You still with me? After Montrose broke up, Sammy Hagar went on to make a slew of solo albums, one of which was Three Lock Box, featuring Bill Church on bass. Near the top of the set, Cactus nearly tore the front gates off Mose Allison’s “Parchman Farm.” Now Cactus was one of the early super-groups, a group formed by artists who had previously been in other well known bands. Carmine Appice and Tim Bogert came out of Vanilla Fudge. Jim McCarty came from Mitch Ryder’s Detroit Wheels and Rusty Day had been in the Amboy Dukes. Oh yeah, and smack in the middle of the set, and unrelated to anybody else in there, was Rory Gallagher doing “Laundromat” from the Live in Europe album. Well it’s time for me to get on my bad motor scooter and ride but I’ll be back with another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl sooner or later. Thanks for listening, I’m Bill Fitzhugh and I hope you’ll join us next time, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 29
When it comes to the taxonomical organization of the music in the Deep Tracks, I think we can generally agree about who tends to play what. Deep Purple’s hard rock. Arlo Guthrie’s folk rock. Steely Dan? Jazz rock. Charlie Daniels? Country rock. Where you find yourself getting into arguments and the occasional fist fight, is when you try to pin down the first record in any given category. For example: a lot of people say the first country rock album is The Gilded Palace of Sin by the Flying Burrito Brothers. Here, you might get an argument from The Byrds or Buffalo Springfield since they’d both started down that path years before. And no discussion of the subject is complete until someone brings up the one album by The International Submarine Band. Well, today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl ain’t lookin’ to pick a fight, but it is lookin’ to play some country rock. Now, at some point in the evolution of rock radio, the range of musical styles getting air-play began to narrow. Now if you don’t believe in evolution, just think of this as unintelligent design. But this much is true: once upon a time in rock radio, you were just as likely to hear The Flying Burrito Brothers twanging up the rock as you were to hear Black Sabbath being heavy with it. But then somebody let the consultants in with their research that said we all wanted to hear the same 200 songs for the rest of our lives. After that, things changed. If you wanted to hear a Whole Lotta Led, they changed for the better. But if you liked a little fiddle and some pedal steel with your rock, well, sorry. The consultants took most of the evidence of the country rock movement and they burned it out in the desert, near Joshua Tree, like it was the body of Gram Parsons himself. Well, we went and dug it up. So, from the Way Back Studios, here’s another reason to be thankful for satellite radio. Rosen up your bow, this is what we call country rock.
Linda Rondstadt	Silver Threads and Golden Needles
Loggins and Messina	Listen To a Country Song
Manassas	Fallen Eagle
Poco	High and Dry
Marshall Tucker Band	Blue Ridge Mountain Sky
Charlie Daniels Band	The South's Gonna Do It
Dan Fogelberg	Long Way Home
If you didn’t know you were listening to vinyl before the end of the Fogelberg, you know now. That scratchy old record is my original copy of Dan’s first album from thirty-seven years ago, he said, reaching for his medicare card. That’s “Long Way Home (Live in the Country)” with a guy named Buddy SpiKer on the violin. Spoke to Buddy on the phone recently. Seemed like a nice guy, and he’s still giving lessons if you’re interested. We started that set with Linda Ronstadt’s second version of “Silver Threads and Golden Needles.” She first recorded it in 1969 for the Hand Sown, Home Grown album. Four years later she recorded it again with a guy named Gib Guilbeau on the fiddle. That’s from her album Don’t Cry Now. After that, Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sittin’ In along with Al Garth playing violin on “Listen to a Country Song.” We followed that with Manassas, a track called “Fallen Eagle” featuring Byron Berline on fiddle. The only song without a fiddle was right in the middle of that set, we heard “High and Dry” from Poco’s album Cantamos. Then it was Charlie Daniels back-to-back: first playing with the Marshall Tucker Band on “Blue Ridge Mountain Sky” and then, name dropping some southern musical favorites from Dickie Betts and Grinderswitch to Wet Willie and Elvin Bishop who might not be good looking but he sure can play. The Charlie Daniels Band with “The South’s Gonna Do It” from one of the quintessential country rock albums: Fire on the Mountain. You know it occurred to me while I was mixing this set that if you had stolen my eight track tape collection in 1974 – if you had reached into that beat up Ford Galaxy and snatched that black faux alligator carrying case – if you had done that, you would have had all the music necessary to do this set. Food for thought from the Way Back Studios, I’m Bill Fitzhugh thanks for listening. I’ll be back with a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl before you know it. And I hope you’ll join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 30
Have you ever stopped to wonder what would happen if you took a musical interpretation of a gothic horror story and mixed it with an instrumental about a troubled musical genius and combined that with a Brazilian jazz interpretation of a classical German tone poem based on a philosophical novel that doubles as the theme to a classic sci-fi film and then spiced it all up with a snappy Latin beat? Me neither, at least not until today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl which is easier to listen to than it is to explain. So how do I say this? Imagine Pink Floyd’s tribute to Syd Barrett as filmed by Stanley Kubric based on a screenplay by Edgar Alan Poe with a soundtrack by the Alan Parsons Project based on his interpretation of “The Fall of the House of Usher” while Eumir Deodato simultaneously updates Richard Strauss with occasional incursions by Carlos Santana. That about sums it up. So right about now you’re either flipping over to Classic Vinyl or you’re asking yourself, what the hell’s a tone poem? Which is what I did, and here’s what I discovered. A tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in which the content of some non-musical source – in this instance Nietzsche’s philosophical novel “Thus Spake Zarathustra” – is illustrated or evoked. Now, Richard Strauss wrote the original “Thus Spake Zarathustra” in the late 19th Century. About eighty years later, Eumir Deodato gave it a pop jazz reinterpretation that got significant airplay on FM radio. But the set opens with an excerpt from side two of The Alan Parson’s Project album Tales of Mystery and Imagination, essentially a tone poem based on Edgar Alan Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher.” That leads into a two minute mash-up with parts of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” that you don’t want to miss. After that, a couple of nice segues with Deodato’s “2001” broken into two parts and mixed with two from Santana’s third album. So, from the Way Back Studios, here’s some mystery and imagination.
Alan Parsons Project	Fall of the House of Usher (excerpt)
Pink Floyd	Shine On You Crazy Diamond (part 1)
Deodato	Also Sprach Zarathurstra (part 1)
Santana	Guajira
Deodato	Also Sprach Zarathurstra (part 2)
Santana	No One To Depend On
Creed Taylor was a trumpet player before he moved to the other side of the microphone. Once on the business side of the record industry, he ended up with his own label, CTI. CTI was one of the prime movers in jazz-fusion and one of the biggest records they ever released was Eumir Deodato’s album, Prelude. His nine-minute interpretation of Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zerathustra” became a wildly improbable hit. We used to play the whole thing on the FM side, but it was so popular, CTI issued a single version edited to about five minutes; that hit #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #5 on Adult Contemporary charts. We took the nine minute version and broke it into two parts, mixed with a couple from Santana’s third album. “No One to Depend On” at the end of the set and “Guajira” right in the middle. At the top of the set we had some fun with the Alan Parsons Project and Pink Floyd. Now, Parsons is best known for having been the engineer on Dark Side of the Moon which came out in ‘73. After that, Parsons joined with Eric Woolfson to form the Alan Parsons Project. In 1975 they released Tales of Mystery and Imagination, a sort of musical interpretation of several of Edgar Alan Poe’s short stories. We heard an excerpt from the gothic horror tale “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Three minutes into that, we did a fun mash up with a couple of minutes of Pink Floyd’s “Shine on You Crazy Diamond,” a song written in nine parts, from the album Wish You Were Here, all of which is a tribute to Syd Barrett, a guy whose life is tragic enough that he could have been the subject for a story by, say, Edgar Alan Poe. Well, to quoth the raven nevermore, we’re all out of time. Thanks for listening, I’m Bill Fitzhugh and you can read all about it at billfitzhugh dot com or look for me on Amazon dot com. Either way, I’ll be back with another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl before you know it. And I hope you’ll join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 31
One of the Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus is a song called “Space Child.” It’s an instrumental, about three minutes long that breaks into three distinct parts. The first and the third parts are nearly identical and revolve around a riff that’s remarkably similar to the riff Steely Dan used eight years later for their song “FM.” We took the open and the close of the Spirit and sandwiched Becker and Fagen in between, and we followed that with one of my favorites by the Doors without Jim Morrison, a song called “Ships with Sails.” Then, because we don’t like to waste anything here in the Way Back Studios, we tagged the middle part of “Space Child” onto the end of the set. So that’s the mix at the center of today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl. And if we lived in the best of all possible worlds, these various parts would have acted as the organizing principal behind the whole but, as you may have noticed we live elsewhere. So, the remainder of the set sounds like an iPod on shuffle, with songs loaded by the ghost of Big Daddy Tom Donahue. And that’s a good thing. One of the artists who pops up on random is Shawn Phillips, a singer-songwriter with nearly 20 albums to his credit who somehow remains largely unknown. Phillips ‘problem’ – if that’s the right thing to call it – is that he was ‘different,’ employing unusual instrumentation along with classical and jazz influences in his work. His eleventh album, Do You Wonder, came out in 1975. From that we’ll hear a typically, atypical song of his called “Blunt and Frank.” Five years before that, Phillips made an album called Contribution, featuring most of Traffic, speaking of whom, we’ll hear one from Jim Capaldi’s solo album, Short Cut Draw Blood. But we’re going to start with another singer-songwriter. Jackson Browne’s younger brother, whose debut album, oddly enough, was on Motown. “It’s Just a Matter of Time.” Here’s Severin Browne.
Severin Browne	Just a Matter of Time
Shawn Phillips	Blunt and Frank
Jim Capalid	Living On a Marble
Spirit	Space Child (part 1)
Steely Dan	FM
Spirit	Space Child (part 3)
The Doors	Ships With Sails
Spirit	Space Child (part 2)
When Jim Morrison died on July 3, 1971, a lot of people figured The Doors had died as well. And that was their mistake because the genius of the band didn’t reside solely in their lead singer. Ray Manzarek, Robbie Krieger, and John Densmore brought plenty to the table as evidenced by the songs on “Other Voices” the album they were working on during the fateful summer of ‘71. Before that jazzy little bit of Spirit at the end of the set, we heard “Ships with Sails” a song that sounds like it could have escaped from L.A. Woman. At the top, we heard “Just a Matter of Time” from Jackson Browne’s younger brother Severin. The story goes that he was at Motown pitching songs when Barry Gordy walked in and asked if he’d like to make an album. Naturally, Severin looked up and said, “No.” But evidently he changed his mind. We followed Mr. Browne with Mr. Blunt and Mr. Frank a song by the inexplicably overlooked Shawn Phillips, from his 1975 album, Do You Wonder. Five years before that, Phillips recorded an album called Contribution, featuring Chris Wood, Steve Winwood, and the late great Jim Capaldi. So we followed the Shawn Phillips with “Living On a Marble” from Capaldi’s album, Short Cut Draw Blood, featuring Steve Winwood on bass and the late great Barry Beckett on piano. In the middle, a little experiment to test the similarities between Spirit’s “Space Child” and Steely Dan’s ode to frequency modulation, “FM.” We zeroed in on the similar piano figure in both songs just to prove a point. Well, it’s like the guy said, “Bury the bottle mama, it’s grapefruit wine, kick off your high heeled sneakers, it’s party time” here in the Way Back Studios, so I need to get going. By the way, if you want to see the set lists for the shows or what goes on behind the scenes, drop by my website and poke around. I’m Bill Fitzhugh and I’ll be back sooner or later with another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl, scratchy perhaps, but no static at all here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 32
Sometimes a song just hands you a segue. For example, in the middle of the “South California Purples,” Chicago quotes the Beatles, “I Am The Walrus” which allows you to do this: [Insert segue] Well, as you might guess, today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl features just such a segue. In fact, it contains two such segues. The starting point is 1969 and the second album from Blood, Sweat, and Tears. The third track on side two is called “Blues (Part 2).” Don’t bother looking for Part 1 because there isn’t one, at least not on that album. Anyway, “Blues (Part 2)” proves that BS&T was fairly characterized as a jazz rock band. The track is nearly twelve minutes long and, as frequently happens with jazz guys, in the course of playing the song at hand, they’ll quote other songs. In this case, about halfway through the track, Jim Fielder starts quoting the bass riff from “Sunshine of Your Love,” Cream’s top 5 single from 1968. So that’s where we go. After that, we return to “Blues (Part 2)” where the horn section is quoting the Sunshine riff. Then about 40 seconds later, Fielder starts quoting from Willie Dixon’s “Spoonful” a song that Cream covered on their debut album in 1966. So we segue over to Cream for that before returning to part three of “Blues (Part 2).” Given all those blues, you might think that opening the set with a menacing prog rock track from Emerson, Lake, and Palmer would be a disaster, but you’d be wrong. And not only does it work, but it also helps prove my point about musicians quoting from other musicians. ELP’s first LP was released in the US in 1971. The track “Knife Edge” is based on the first movement of a work called Sinfonietta by a Czechoslovakian composer whose name I’m not even going to try to pronounce. In the middle of the track, there’s an instrumental section that includes an extended quotation from Bach’s first French Suite in D minor, or so I’m led to believe. The song ends with that dramatic turntable-coming-to-a-halt effect that makes for a good transition into the BS&T. So, tread the road cross the abyss and take a look down at the madness from the Way Back Studios, here’s “Knife Edge.”
Emerson, Lake, and Palmer	Knife Edge
Blood, Sweat, and Tears	Blues (Part 2) (part 1)
Cream	Sunshine of Your Love
Blood, Sweat, and Tears	Blues (Part 2) (part 2)
Cream	Spoonful (part 1)
Blood, Sweat, and Tears	Blues (Part 2) (part 3)
Cream	Spoonful (part 2)
Like so many other things in the Deep Tracks, “Spoonful,” traces its ancestry back to the Mississippi Delta. It might go back as far as the legendary Charlie Patton who was doing a song called “A Spoonful Blues” in the early nineteen hundreds. Fifty or sixty years later, Willie Dixon, wrote “Spoonful” a song that Howlin’ Wolf recorded in 1962 on the record that’s come to be known as The Rocking Chair album. The actual name is just Howlin’ Wolf, but the cover art featuring a guitar leaning against a rocking chair led to the popular renaming, sort of like the White Album. Anyway, it’s been pointed out that a lot of Americans never heard the blues until it had been absorbed by young white musicians in the UK and then returned to the US as blues rock. And there’s no better example of this than Cream. We took their version of “Spoonful” from their debut album Fresh Cream in 1966, an album that also featured songs by blues legends Robert Johnson, Skip James, and Muddy Waters, all of whom came out of the Mississippi Delta. Earlier in the set we heard Cream’s big hit, “Sunshine of Your Love” from Disraeli Gears. And the reason we played all that Cream in the first place is because Jim Fielder, the bass player for Blood, Sweat, and Tears kept interrupting their song, “Blues (Part 2)” with quotes of the Cream tracks. We broke “Blues (Part 2)” into three parts and mixed in the Cream for a high cholesterol set of blues and jazz rock. At the top of the set, we caught Emerson, Lake, and Palmer quoting, not from the blues masters, but from the classical. We heard “Knife Edge” most of which derives from the first movement of Leos Janacek’s “Sinfonietta.” The song also features an organ solo directly quoting the first French Suite in D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach, a guy who probably would have loved it here in the Way Back Studios. I’m Bill Fitzhugh, thanks for listening. I’ll be back with another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl before you know it, and I hope you’ll join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 33
Right about now you may wanna take your protein pills, put your thinking cap on, and sharpen your number two pencil, because it’s time for another Way Back Studios pop quiz. Here’s today’s question: What do a Swiss scientist and an inventor from the Midwest have to do with some of the most famous songs in the Deep Tracks? The answer? Plenty. Lester William Polsfuss was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 1915. He went on to invent the solid body electric guitar, the instrument that made possible the sound of rock and roll. Lester was also a pretty fair guitar player who went by the name of Les Paul. As for the Swiss scientist, Albert Hoffman’s contribution to the Deep Tracks was a little something we call LSD, which he first synthesized in 1938 around the same time Les Paul was working on the multi-track recording process. Flash forward about thirty years and we find John Lennon taking acid and writing “I Am the Walrus” a song that was on Magical Mystery Tour, an album that wouldn’t have been possible without multi-track recording or LSD. The same can be said about In Search of the Lost Chord, the Moody Blues album that gave us the track at the heart of today’s trippy batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl. A lot of people think the song is called “Timothy Leary’s Dead,” when the actual title is “Legend of a Mind,” even though those words aren’t in the lyrics. Never one to leave well enough alone, I’ve broken the song into three parts and used the natural transitions between the parts to create some great segues, so get the wax out of your hearing holes and get ready for those. We’ll hear one going from a Ray Thomas flute solo into a trippy little flute part from Ian Anderson. The other two segues involve tracks from Magical Mystery Tour. One, “Your Mother Should Know” and then, at the end of the set, that song about the large amphibious sea mammal. But first, speaking of psychedelic, here’s the guy who gave us “Purple Haze.”
Jimi Hendrix	EXP
Shawn Phillips	The Only Logical Conclusion
Moody Blues	Legend of a Mind (part 1)
Beatles	Your Mother Should Know
Moody Blues	Legend of a Mind (part 2)
Jethro Tull	With You There To Help Me
Moody Blues	Legend of a Mind (part 3)
Beatles	I am the Walrus
The story goes that John Lennon took parts of three different songs he was working on and cobbled them into that one about the corporation t-shirts and stupid bloody Tuesday. Around the same time he heard that a teacher at his former school was having students analyze Beatles’ lyrics, an idea John seems to have considered ridiculous, so he took some nonsense lyrics from an old nursery rhyme, added them to the song and said, “Let ‘em work that one out.” Before the Walrus, we had our way with one from the Moody Blues, one of those bands whose records could make a deejay kinda jumpy, at least back in the day when we were still playing vinyl on turntables. That’s because the songs on their albums tended to segue into one another, sometimes pretty abruptly. If you weren’t on your toes you could slip from one track into the next after you’d started another record, and the whole thing was an aural disaster. Here, instead of getting all jumpy, we just took advantage of it, and did our own segues. First, we waited for one of tempo changes in the Moody Blues track “Legend of a Mind” and instead of allowing it to happen, we made the transition to the Beatles, “Your Mother Should Know.” Later, during Ray Thomas’s flute solo in the middle of “Legend of a Mind” we took the easy way out and slid over to Ian Anderson’s fluty intro for “With You There to Help Me.” But my favorite segue was at the end of “Legend of a Mind” where it sounds like a downward buzzing airplane that mixes perfectly with the swooping string intro of “I Am the Walrus.” Now, in keeping with the psychedelic nature of the set, we opened with Jimi Hendrix playing a space alien by the name of Mr. Paul Caruso. And we followed that with an instrumental by Shawn Phillips called “The Only Logical Conclusion OR Get Up Off Your Ass and Dance.” Well, I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together in the Way Back Studios. I’m Bill Fitzhugh, thanks for listening. I’ll be back with a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl next time and I hope you’ll join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 34
If you’ve been listening to our little show long enough, you’ve probably heard me talk about a guy named Francis Grasso. He was club deejay in New York from the late sixties to the early eighties and he invented what we call the slip-cue, the method of holding a record still on a moving turntable with the help of a felt pad between the two, and letting it go at the right moment so it hits on the beat of the song that’s currently playing so there’s no jarring change in the tempo. Slip cuing is also useful when you’re trying to beat match from song to song. And today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl features a perfect example of exactly that. I was listening to Harry Nilsson’s album, Son of Schmilsson and the track “Ambush” came on. In the middle of the song, most of the band stops playing but the drummer keeps the beat while Nilsson talks over the top saying, “Now this time through, we want everybody to listen to the punch line.” And as the drummer keeps playing, all I can think of is the beat to Steely Dan’s “Chain Lightening.” So we do a nice little slip cue and, that’s exactly where we end up. That’s later in the set, but first, something completely different, something that reminded me of a conversation I had recently with my friend Jim Fusilli, who covers music for the Wall Street Journal. He’d just seen Lucinda Williams in concert and he asked me how I defined the type of music that’s referred to as Americana or Alt Country. I said it’s music played with the standard instruments and traditions of country, that country radio won’t play: everybody from Lyle Lovett and Buddy Miller to Guy Clark and Lucinda Williams. Well, long before those guys showed up, we were listening to Americana in the songs of Jim Croce, Bob Dylan, Willis Alan Ramsey, and Jesse Winchester. So, from the Way Back Studios, here’s some “Dangerous Fun.”
Jesse Winchester	Dangerous Fun
Willis Alan Ramsey	Ballad of Spider John
Bob Dylan	Knockin' on Heaven's Door
Simon and Garfunkle	Kathy's Song
Jim Croce	Walkin' Back to Georgia
J.J. Cale	Cherry
Harry Nilsson	Ambush (part 1)
Steely Dan	Chain Lightening
Harry Nilsson	Ambush (part 2)
At a press conference in 1968 John Lennon and Paul McCartney were asked to name their favorite American artist and they both said the same thing: Harry Nilsson. The guy released around twenty albums covering a wild range of material. He did an album of Randy Newman covers. The soundtrack for an animated film that spawned the hit “Me and My Arrow.” And in 1972, he released Son of Schmillson which gave us the track we just heard, “Ambush.” Among the many great songs on that album is a lively sing-along with the residents of a nursing home on a ditty called “I’d Rather Be Dead Than Wet My Bed.” It’s an astounding album that’s worth tracking down. Anyway, in the middle of “Ambush” we did a nifty little beat match to segue right into Steely Dan’s “Chain Lightening.” Before the Nilsson, we heard J.J. Cale doing a song called “Cherry” from his album Trubadour, which also happens to be the name of a famous club in Hollywood out of which Harry Nilsson and John Lennon were thrown after they got drunk and heckled the Smothers Brothers. At the top of the set, some early Americana, starting with “Dangerous Fun” from Jesse Winchester’s album, 3rd Down, 110 to Go. After that, we heard the “Ballad of Spider John” by Willis Alan Ramsey from the only album he’s ever released. It came out in 1972 on the Shelter label and is legendary among songwriters. Among the artists who have covered him over the years are Jimmy Buffet, Jerry Jeff Walker, Lyle Lovett, and Shawn Colvin. Rumor has it Mr. Ramsey is working on that long-awaited follow-up album. All I can say is, take your time. It’s only been thirty-seven years. Elsewhere in the set, Jim Croce, Simon & Garfunkle, and Bob Dylan, knock, knock, knockin’ on the door to the Way Back Studios which means our time is up. By the way, if you want to see the set lists or send us an email or find out what else we’re up to around here, you can drop by my website or the Facebook page or track me down on Amazon. I’m Bill Fitzhugh, thanks for listening. I’ll have a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl next time, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 35
Phil Lesh, Jack Bruce, and David Crosby have at least two things in common. First, and most obviously, they were all in seminal rock bands from the Sixties and Seventies. The other thing they have in common is that they’ve all had liver transplants. And that means they’re also lucky because most of the people waiting for organs, don’t get them in time. Why? Because there’s a shortage of human organs donated for transplant. And that’s why the medical biotech industry is busy trying to perfect what’s called xenografting which is any transplant done between two different species. Mostly they’re trying to create transgenic pigs, even though non-human primates might be better suited for the task. It’s pretty complicated and mostly revolves around solving the problem of hyperacute rejection. And how would I know all this? Well because I wrote a book called The Organ Grinders that deals, in its own bizarre way, with this particular area of science. One reviewer likened it to something that might have resulted from a collaboration between Carl Hiaasen and Michael Crichton. So right about now, you’re probably saying, okay, and what’s that got to do with anything other than blatant self-promotion? And that’s a fair question. Here’s the answer. The plot of The Organ Grinders revolves around the possibility of transgenic baboons and that gave me the idea for today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl. Unfortunately like human organs, there’s a severe shortage of songs with ‘baboon’ in the title. But I didn’t let that stop me. Instead, I turned to the baboon’s fellow primates because it turns out there’s a ton of monkey tunes in the Deep Tracks, none of which are by Phil Lesh, Jack Bruce, or David Crosby. Instead, we’ll hear from Mother’s Finest, The Stones, The Traveling Wilbury’s, Smokey Robinson, Steely Dan, and Mink DeVille. But we’ll start with the biggest primate of them all. He’s got arms like legs. He’s got hands on his feet. Got a nose like a donut. And a tendency to over eat. From the Way Back Studios, he’s still a Gorilla.
James Taylor	Gorilla
The Rolling Stones	Monkey Man
Willie DeVille	Keep Your Monkey Away From My Door
Mother's Finest	Mickey's Monkey (part 1)
Smokey Robinson	Mickey's Monkey (part 2)
Steely Dan	Monkey in Your Soul
Travelling Wilburys	Tweeter and the Monkey Man
The Monkees	Monkee's Theme Song
What’s more fun than a barrel of monkeys? How that brachiating batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl wrapping up with the “Theme Song” for all 58 episodes of The Monkees television series. That was written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart whose songs were covered by a lot of artists, including Iggy Pop of all people. The Monkees weren’t exactly the Milli Vanilli of their day but they started off in the neighborhood inasmuch as they were a made-for-tv act and didn’t actually play the instruments they appeared to play on the show. The producers auditioned about 500 actors and musicians for the gig, among them, Steven Stills and Harry Nilsson. And, among the many studio musicians credited on that first Monkees album are Jim Gordon and Glen Campbell. Before the Monkees, we heard “Tweeter and the Monkey Man” from the Traveling Wilburys, Volume One. In the middle of the set, following Steely Dan’s “Monkey In Your Soul,” we monkeyed around with “Mickey’s Monkey” taking the first part of the Holland-Dozier-Holland song as performed by Mother’s Finest and mixing that into the original version by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles from 1963. At the top, keeping with the primate theme, James Taylor’s “Gorilla,” followed by the Stones’s “Monkey Man” and a great tune from Mink DeVille, “Keep Your Monkey Away From My Door” from the album Where Angels Fear to Tread. By the way, if you joined us in the middle of the set and you’re wondering what all this monkey business was about, just go to Amazon dot com and search for The Organ Grinders. That’ll explain everything. I’m Bill Fitzhugh and we’re all out of time and monkeys. Thanks for listening. I’ll be back with another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl before you can say I’ll be a monkey’s uncle and I hope you can join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 36
As far as I know, no one has ever made a movie called Brown Foxy Sugar Lady, though I think someone ought to. The title brings to mind the image of Pam Greer in a dark alley, waving a switchblade at the man. But instead of a blaxploitation film with a big pimp budget, today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl features a mix as smooth as Billy D. Williams. We’ll take the Jimi Hendrix classic “Foxy Lady” and break her into two parts and mix those with a little “Brown Sugar,” also done in two parts. And when I say “Brown Sugar” I don’t mean the one by the Glimmer Twins. I’m talking about the one by that little ole band from Texas, Z.Z Top. Now, as much as I’d like to take credit for this one, I can’t. Here, I’m standing on the broad shoulders of our frequent Way Back Studios pal and un-indicted co-conspirator, D. Victor Hawkins who created the set many years ago at WZZQ-FM, and he named it Brown Foxy Sugar Lady. Both songs use guitar feedback in similar ways which allows us to mix back and forth between the tracks a couple of times for your amusement and listening pleasure. But the mix only adds up to about eight minutes so I had to surround it with some other stuff. To my surprise, I discovered that the end of “Foxy Lady” dovetails nicely with the little slide part at the start of Little Feat’s “Skin it Back.” So that’s at the far end. At the front, I found a cover of an Elmore James song called “Bleeding Heart” that mixes neatly with the first part of “Brown Sugar” and coincidentally, the cover is by none other than Jimi Hendrix, from his Blues collection. Given that, it should come as no surprise that we’ll hear one from the Allman Brothers, right after Bonnie Raitt does another cover. We’ll hear her take on Steven Stills’ “Bluebird” right after a song that Eric Clapton covered on his album, Slowhand, one called “May You Never.” But instead of that cover, here’s the original by the late, great, John Martyn.
John Martyn	May You Never
Bonnie Raitt	Bluebird
Allman Brothers	Don't Keep Me Wonderin'
Jimi Hendrix	Bleeding Heart
Z.Z. Top	Brown Sugar (part 1)
Jimi Hendrix	Foxy Lady (part 1)
Z.Z. Top	Brown Sugar (part 2)
Jimi Hendrix	Foxy Lady (part 2)
Little Feat	Skin It Back
That’s those little bitty feat doing “Skin it Back.” Before that, the hand-mixing part of the set, conceived by our friend D. Victor Hawkins using all that feedback from Z.Z. Top’s “Brown Sugar” and from Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady” to create what he called the Brown Foxy Sugar Lady mix. Little Feat followed that because of the sliding guitar note that mixed so nicely out of the Hendrix. Leading into all that was the Band of Gypsys, Jimi with Billy Cox and Buddy Miles working an Elmore James blues called “Bleeding Heart.” And keeping with the blues rock form, we heard the Allman Brothers from Idlewild South. “Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’.” Before that, Bonnie Raitt from one of those records that always makes me wish I’d been a fly on the wall during the sessions. For me there’s something about the spare production of certain artists’ early records that gets lost later in their careers, to their detriment. And Bonnie backs me up on this in the liner notes to her first album from which we heard her cover of “Bluebird.” She said they recorded live on four tracks because they wanted a spontaneous, natural feeling in the music, a feeling often sacrificed when musicians know they can overdub their part on a separate track until the life’s sucked out of it. At the very top of the set, the late, great John Martyn a guy who released thirty some-odd albums yet managed to be largely ignored by radio programmers. We heard “May You Never,” a song Eric Clapton covered on his Slowhand album. Eric was quoted somewhere as saying John Martyn was so far ahead of everything it’s almost inconceivable. Sort of like the passage of time, that of which we are out. From the Way Back Studios on the dusty fringes of Los Angeles, I’m Bill Fitzhugh. Thanks for tuning in. I hope you’ll join us again next time for another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 37
Every now and then these sets come together with very little effort and they’ll follow the same thread from beginning to end. Other times there’s a little more work involved and we end up cobbling together two or more smaller sets with a common theme. This is one of those. The first part comes from June of 1965 when The Byrds released their first album and their first single, both of which were called “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Those opening notes and the sound of Roger McGuinn’s 12 string Rickenbacker were irresistible and like nothing we’d heard before. Or had we? Well, that depends on when you bought another album that was released in June of 1965 featuring a guitar sound that was virtually identical to what McGuinn achieved on Tambourine Man. And it wasn’t just the sound of the guitar either, but the actual sequence of the notes as well. The song’s title was “What You’re Doing” and the US version of the album was called Beatles VI. And these are the songs that got us started on today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl. Fortunately for what we do, “What You’re Doing” has a false ending that allows us to slip neatly into the Byrds and back again before moving to the second part of the set. Since we started by mixing songs with similar guitar riffs, I figured we’d keep going down that path, and in no time at all, I had five more tracks to work with. And, as luck would have it, three of those had false endings. A regular embarrassment of riches that left us with nine songs done in thirteen parts when all was said and done. Five of the tracks involve George Harrison and / or Eric Clapton. Two feature the Beatle-esque sounds of Badfinger, with the crunchy guitar riffs of Joey Molland. And with all those false endings, the set becomes an eccentric exercise in waiting for the other shoe to drop. So, playing songs you know in ways you’ve never heard before, from the Way Back Studios, here’s the Fab Four.
Beatles	What You're Doing (part 1)
Byrds	Mr. Tambourine Man
Beatles	What You're Doing (part 2)
Badfinger	Baby Blue
Cream	Badge (part 1)
Ringo Starr	It Don't Come Easy
Cream	Badge (part 2)
George Harrison	What is Life (part 1)
Badfinger	No Matter What (part 1)
Beatles	Help
Badfinger	No Matter What (part 2)
The Byrds	All I Really Want to Do
George Harrison	What is Life (part 2)
The last twenty-five minutes or so is a virtual catalogue of classic rock guitar riffs. Ending with one from an album featuring the guitars of George Harrison, Dave Mason, Eric Clapton, Peter Frampton, Pete Ham and Joey Molland. I just wish Roger McGuinn had played on it too for reasons that will be clear in a minute. But for now, let’s just leave the Byrds out of this and focus on Badfinger, the Beatles, and George Harrison. Their songs at the end of the set used to be in one of their own. And after putting it together, it occurred to me the set had a seriously morbid subtext. Check this out: “All Things Must Pass” was produced by future convicted murderer Phil Spector. In 1999 Harrison was nearly murdered by a knife-wielding lunatic before dying prematurely of cancer two years later. At the false ending of what, in this context, is the ironically titled, “What is Life?” we mixed over to a song by Badfinger, a group whose primary creative forces, Pete Ham and Tom Evans, both committed suicide. In the middle of Badfinger’s “No Matter What” we heard the Beatles screaming for ‘Help,’ a song written primarily by John Lennon who was murdered by a crazed fan. How’s that for creepy? The common thread in the set was George Harrison. Obviously he played on the two Beatles tracks and his solo album, but George also co-wrote “Badge” with Eric Clapton which we heard in the middle of the set and he played on and produced Ringo’s “It Don’t Come Easy”; he also played guitar on and started off as the producer of Badfinger’s “Straight Up” album before Todd Rundgren took over. And, as mentioned at the top, Badfinger also played on All Things Must Pass. The only connection I found to The Byrds was from an interview where Roger McGuinn talked about visiting George once and playing the Rickenbacker George had played on “A Hard Day’s Night.” Well, I could go on for days, but I’m out of time. If you want to find out more, drop by the website or Amazon or Facebook and poke around till you find me. I’m Bill Fitzhugh in the Way Back Studios and I hope you’ll join us next time for another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 38
Whenever someone asks what I do here in the Deep Tracks I say my job is like being the curator at a museum where we have a lot more art than we have wall space to display it. And it’s my job to select six or eight pieces at a time and arrange them in just the right way to create an exhibit. And since museums typically name their exhibitions, we’ll call this batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl: “Goin’ Wild on Rock and Roll.” It started with this great collection called Chess Records Original Rhythm and Blues Hits. This is a French reissue package with all sorts of great artists including Etta James, Koko Taylor, and a guy named Bobby Deab doing a song listed as “Going Wild on R and R” with a songwriting credit that says, “Unknow” not ‘unknown.’ Well it turns out the folks at Mode Records not only can’t proof read very well, their research also leaves something to be desired. Turns out the song is actually called “Just Go Wild on Rock and Roll” credited to a writer named Bullock and performed by a guy named Bobby Dean, not Deab. Well, as they say, mon Dieu. Anyway, the song rocks and it sets the tone and the pace for the rest of the set, even though it’s near the end, just before a jump blues beauty from the great Finis Tasby. Now, elsewhere in that same collection is the original version of “Rocket 88” which I almost played but instead, we’re gonna hear a version by guitarist extraordinare Arlen Roth. That’ll pop up during the false ending of Huey Lewis and the News “Workin’ For a Livin’” which is followed by one of the many great tracks from 2008’s Donna Jean and the Tricksters. We’ll also hear “Walkin’ the Road” from Peter Green. And Stevie Ray Vaughn weighs in with his furious little instrumental “Scuttle Buttin’.” But the set gets started with another rockin’ instrumental. Now, if you’re driving, you might want to cinch up that seat belt a little and keep an eye on the speedometer. From the Way Back Studios, here’s “Rough Mix” from Ronnie Lane and Pete Townshend.
Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane	Rough Mix
Huey Lewis and the News	Workin' For a Livin' (part 1)
Arlen Roth	Rocket 88
Huey Lewis and the News	Workin' For a Livin' (part 2)
Donna Jean and the Tricksters	No Better Way
Peter Green	Walkin' the Road
Stevie Ray Vaughn	Scuttle Buttin'
Finis Tasby	Jump Children
That’s Finis Tasby doing the title track to his disc Jump Children. And if you like that one, I can recommend the whole disc, which I admit I was playing off CD because it was never released on vinyl. I came across the disc one night when I was staying at a place just outside of Clarksdale, Mississippi, on the old Hopson Plantation. The Shack Up Inn is a B&B which for them means Bed & Beer since they don’t get up early enough to cook you breakfast. I’ve got some pictures of the place on my website and they’ve got their own site as well. If you’re ever in that part of the Delta, I highly recommend you stay there. And be sure to tell ‘em I sent you. Now, speaking of Clarksdale, Mississippi, the original version of “Rocket 88” is credited to Clarksdale native Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, but the song was actually worked out by Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm at the Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale long before the Shack Up Inn opened for business. Well, earlier in the set we heard Arlen Roth’s version of “Rockett 88” with Janey Schram on lead vocals. That’s from a great album called Guitarist. Also in that set, we went all the way back to 1957 for Bobby Dean’s “Just Go Wild For Rock and Roll.” We also heard a little blues rocker from ex-Fleetwood Mac guitarist, Peter Green, a song called “Walkin’ the Road.” There were two instrumentals in the set, one from Stevie Ray Vaughn’s album, Couldn’t Stand the Weather, a song called “Scuttle Buttin’.” And at the top, we heard the instrumental “Rough Mix” the title track from the collaboration between Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane. Other than the Finis Tasby, the only other track we played from CD, came from the 2008 release, Donna Jean and the Tricksters doing “No Better Way.” And back to vinyl, we heard one from Huey Lewis and the News. We’re takin’ what they’re givin’ ‘cause we’re “Workin’ For a Livin’” here in the Way Back Studios. I’m Bill Fitzhugh, thanks for listening. I’ll be back next time with a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 39
Have you ever considered the term “acoustic guitar”? Think about it. The term is what’s known as a retronym, that’s a word or term somebody had to coin after a technological development rendered the original term inadequate. Another good example of a retronym is “terrestrial radio.” Used to be just “radio.” But once we started delivering the content through satellites, we needed a new term. And that term is satellite radio, but you can call us Sirius-XM. In any event, the same was true for the guitar. Up until about 1930 if you said guitar, there was only one instrument you could be talking about. And it was acoustic. Then somebody came along and stuck a tungsten pickup on the thing and after that, you had to specify if the guitar you were talking about was electric or acoustic. And the reason I bring this up is that today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl is all about the acoustic guitar. Why? Because I love the way they sound. Always have. I don’t care if you pick it or strum it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a six string or a twelve, as long as it’s acoustic. You can sing along or play an instrumental. Either way is fine with me. And today’s set has some of both. The set got its start back in 1975 when a guy named Brian Protheroe released an album called Pick Up. For me, the stand out track was one called “Enjoy It.” It’s propelled by a catchy upbeat acoustic guitar riff. A year later, Joni Mitchell released Hijira, an album featuring both Joni and Larry Carlton on acoustic guitars. The moment I heard “Coyote” I knew I had a segue. It ends the same way “Enjoy It” begins. But before we get there we’ll hear the acoustic guitars of Jose Feliciano, Richard Torrance, Dan Fogelberg playing with Joe Walsh, and Alex Chilton and Chris Bell of Big Star. But we’ll start with a song written and performed by a guy who used to write comedy for the Smothers Brothers. Here is Mason Williams.
Mason Williams	Classical Gas
Jose Feliciano	I'm Leavin' (part 1)
Richard Torrance and Eureka	The Jam
Dan Fogelberg	Part of the Plan
Big Star	Watch the Sunrise
Jose Feliciano	I'm Leavin' (part 2)
Joni Mitchell	Coyote
Brian Protheroe	Enjoy It
That’s a guy named Brian Protheroe who put out a few albums on Chrysalis in the mid 1970s before switching to television where he’s had a successful acting career. We segued into Protheroe’s song “Enjoy It” coming out of Joni Mitchell’s “Coyote” where she had help on guitar from Larry Carlton. Before that we heard the second part of Jose Feliciano’s “I’m Leavin’” from his 1973 album Compartments. That was produced by the legendary Steve Cropper who made a name for himself starting out at Stax Records in Memphis which happens to be where the group Big Star was formed in 1971. Big Star was most famous for not becoming as famous as everybody thought they would. Their first two albums were hailed as masterpieces but owing to botched distribution and promotion by Stax Records, they never reached a national audience. The resulting frustration led to infighting and the clichéd demise of the band. But not before they produced a third record, featuring the guitar work of the aforementioned Steve Cropper. In the middle of the set we heard Big Star’s “Watch The Sunrise” from their first album, #1 Record. Elsewhere in the set, we heard Joe Walsh producing and playing on Dan Fogelberg’s “Part of the Plan.” Before that we heard Richard Torrance and Eureka doing “The Jam.” Leading into that, was the first part of Jose Feliciano’s “I’m Leavin’.” And we started the set with one of my favorite acoustic guitar songs of all time: Mason Williams’ “Classical Gas” a tune that picked up three Grammys in 1969. And now? We’re all out of time. By the way, if you’d like to see the set lists for the shows or what goes on behind the scenes, drop by the old website or the Facebook page and poke around, maybe send me a note. I’d love to hear from you. I’m Bill Fitzhugh and I’ll be back sooner or later with another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 40
Throughout the 1960’s the three bands with the most Top 40 hits in the U.K were The Shadows, The Beatles, and The Hollies. Other bands had more number one hits, but The Hollies were a force to be reckoned with. They were a great pop band whose songs centered around their bright vocal harmonies. Songs like “Bus Stop” and “Carrie-Anne.” While The Hollies were cranking out that host of radio-friendly singles, another band from the UK was busy working the other side of the street. Fleetwood Mac started as a serious blues rock outfit more focused on albums than singles. In fact their first album didn’t have any singles and it still reached #4 in England. You’d be hard pressed to find two bands that sounded less alike, there being very little common ground between, say, “Rattlesnake Shake,” on the one hand, and “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” on the other. But then a funny thing happened. Fleetwood Mac released Kiln House featuring a song called “Tell Me All the Things You Do.” And not long after that, The Hollies released the single “Long Cool Woman In a Black Dress.” And those are the two tracks that get us started on today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl. “Long Cool Woman” actually starts with two different riffs. The opening bars sound a little bit like Roger McGuinn but it’s the riff after that that connects it sonically to “Tell Me All the Things You Do.” And speaking of the blues, we’ll hear a great little mix of Grand Funk Railroad’s “I Don’t Have to Sing the Blues” and the Beatles track, “Rain.” We’ll break both songs into two parts and do the segue using the big drum beats the songs have in common. That’s followed by another guitar mix that goes to show how similar George Harrison and Roger McGuinn could sound, something we’ve explored before. Elsewhere in the set, one each from Steven Stills and Janis Joplin. So, take your harpoon out of your dirty red bandana and tell me all the things you do…
The Hollies	Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress
Fleetwood Mac	Tell Me All the Things You Do
Stephen Stills	Maryanne
Grand Funk Railroad	I Don't Have to Sing the Blues (part 1)
Beatles	Rain (part 1)
Grand Funk Railroad	I Don't Have to Sing the Blues (part 2)
Beatles	Rain (part 2)
The Byrds	Chimes of Freedom
Janis Joplin	Me and Bobby McGee
He’s a Rhodes scholar and Phi Beta Kappa to boot. And I read somewhere that he knows how to fly helicopters. Kris Kristofferson has written a lot of songs in his day, but that’s still my favorite and my favorite version, courtesy of the girl from Port Arthur, Texas. Before that the Byrds covering Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom” from the Mr. Tambourine Man album. In the middle of the set we mashed the Beatles up with Grand Funk Railroad of all people. We took “Rain” which was the B-side to “Paperback Writer” and “I Don’t Have to Sing the Blues” from Grand Funk’s third album, Closer to Home. We broke ‘em both in half and had our way with them for your listening pleasure. Before all that we heard Stephen Stills playing with his wah-wah on “Maryanne.” And at the top, The Hollies with the least Hollies-like song they ever recorded. In fact most reviews talk about how much it sounded like something from Creedence Clearwater Revival. “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” is like a noir short story with a rock soundtrack. There’s a guy working undercover for the FBI, a femme fatale who’s five foot nine and has a pair of 45s that made him open his eyes and kept him from turning her over to the D.A. Tony Hicks’ guitar part in “Long Cool Woman” has always reminded me of Danny Kirwin’s riff on Fleetwood Mac’s “Tell Me All the Things You Do” which explains why played ‘em back-to-back. Now if ever there was a group that had more crazy people run through it than Fleetwood Mac, I’d like to know who it was. After reading the bios on Peter Green, Danny Kirwin, and Jeremy Spencer, I was reminded of a line Jack Nicholson’s character says in the movie “As Good As It Gets.” ‘If you’re selling crazy, you’ve come to the wrong place, we’re all full up here’ in the Way Back Studios. I’m Bill Fitzhugh. Thanks for listening. I’ll be back next time with another Batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl and I hope you can join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.

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