Segment 140

You might think that if you took one song, played it in ten parts, done by five different groups, including the original as well as the complete cover versions by The Grateful Dead, The Buckinghams, The Who, and Eddie Money, you’d think that if you did that, you’d have enough for today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl. But you’d be wrong, at least in this instance. So what we have here is two very distinct sets with nothing more than Mike Nesmith’s First National Band standing between the two in an attempt to maintain some semblance of aesthetic order. The second set is a shorty, just three familiar tracks that start and or end with some similar guitar feedback, allowing us to slip seamlessly from one to the next until we all feel fine which is my way of saying that after we flip the record over and play the First National Rag, we’ll hear from Jefferson Airplane, The Rolling Stones, and The Fab Four. Now, about that song we’re going to hear five versions of. It was a big hit back in 1966. #1 on the charts. The first of several #1s by this group out of New York City. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s got a false ending that makes it perfect for what we do here in the Way Back Studios. And better yet, almost everybody who covered it, included the false ending. So, that’s where we’ll have our fun. After all that you’d think you’d have enough for today’s set, but again you’d be wrong which explains why we’re going to start with a song that’s been recorded by all sorts of folks, everybody from Jimmy Reed to The Yardbirds and The Animals to Aerosmith. First put to tape in 1959, the version we’re going to hear was recorded in 1980, live at the Universal Amphitheter in Los Angeles, which is now called the Gibson Amphitheater, and features Tom Scott, Paul Schaeffer, Donald “Duck” Dunn, Steve Cropper and the rest of the gang fronting for Elwood and Joliet Jake, those sensational soul revivalists known as The Blues Brothers.

Following that marathon of “Good Lovin’” we slipped in a bit of what we call interstitial programming courtesy of Michael Nesmith’s First National Band (that was the part where we flipped the record over to get to the second portion of the show). So the last three tracks were a little set of their own where we used the guitar feedback at either end of the songs to tie ‘em all together. And if I had another seventeen minutes of songs like that I could do a complete show along those lines, and I’ve been looking for those songs for years to no avail, so I finally decided just tag that on to another set and be done with it. The bulk of that batch consisted of four cover versions of “Good Lovin’” along with the original from The Young Rascals. In the middle of which, the only version I found that didn’t have the false ending in it; that was The Who from the BBC Sessions. We started with the first half of a live version by The Buckinghams, a group out of Chicago that had a handful of top 20 hits, including “Kind of a Drag.” We followed that with the first of three parts by The Grateful Dead from the album Shakedown Street produced by Lowell George. Then we did the first part of the Young Rascals’ original take on the song before giving Eddie Money a crack at the old chestnut. That’s from his 2007 release called Wanna Go Back featuring covers mainly of Sixties R&B hits. Once we got part one from everybody we went back and heard their part two, and in the case of the Dead, part three as well. But even all that wasn’t enough for a full set, so we opened with some rhythm and Blues Brothers doing the classic “I Ain’t Got You.” But fortunately you’ve got me, delivered by satellite from the dusty fringes of Los Angeles to your little hearing holes. I’m Bill Fitzhugh, thanks for listening. And remember, everything you need from the truth to the rumors is available at billfitzhugh.com and on Facebook. And while you’re poking around on the web, I’ll be here mixing up another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl for next time and I hope you’ll join us, right here in the D.T.