Segment 84

In an effort to keep things interesting for listeners we do our best not to fall into ruts here in the Way Back Studios. Like to throw a change-up now and then just to keep people guessing. Might do a jazzy set one week and rock hard the next. Sometimes we’ll put together a veritable Rube Goldberg contraption of segues, breaking songs apart and inserting parts of other songs where you least expect them and generally wreaking havoc with the music. Other times I’ll just find a group of songs that happen to line up real nice next to each other. And today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl is one of those. I was down at the far end of the record collection one night, I could see Warren Zevon from where I was, but instead of grabbing the excitable boy, I grabbed The Youngbloods along with some nearby Neil Young. So it looked like we’d be leaning toward singer-songwriter and country rock which is always fine with me.

As I rolled toward the other end of the alphabet looking for another slide guitar, I paused in the M’s long enough to pull one from the Belfast Cowboy before continuing to Greg Allman’s “Laid Back” which itself wasn’t far from where J.J. Cale keeps “The Sensitive Kind” on Number 5. Then I went looking for a curve ball, just to keep you on your toes, and, as long as I was in the C’s, I grabbed Chicago III. Sure, a big jazz-rock horn band might not be where you’d normally look for a slide guitar but there it is right on “Flight 602,” though I never could find out who played it. There are no credits on the album, the CD, All Music Guide, nothing. Drop me an email if you know. As for the Mink DeVille at the end of the set, hey, it’s my show. I can do what I want. Besides, it works. Well, like rust, he never sleeps. From Comes a Time, here’s Neil Young.

“Can’t do without it.” Mink DeVille from the album Cabretta, which I highly recommend. It was produced by the great Jack Nitzsche who was a long time producer and collaborator with Neil Young, who started that set for us. We heard “Four Strong Winds” from Neil’s 1978 album Comes a Time. Among the guitarists playing on that album, though not that particular song, was J.J. Cale. We heard his “Sensitive Kind” just before the Mink DeVille. Greg Allman was in there too, from his first solo album, the classic Laid Back, we heard the moodier version of his song “Midnight Rider” that the Allman Brothers did on Idlewild South. And we had Van the Man snowbound in his Woodstock cottage with Janet Planet, his wife at the time, and all he wanted to do was roo.

Before that, the Youngbloods whose biggest hit was “Get Together” which came out in 1967 but only reached #62 on the charts before disappearing. But two years later, the song was used in a television public service announcement for the National Conference of Christians and Jews, after which it re-entered the charts and went all the way to #5. I mention that because in this set we heard the song “Sugar Babe” which had a similar story. It’s from their album Earth Music which didn’t yield any hit singles. But a couple of years later, “Sugar Babe” was featured on the soundtrack of the film “Zabriski Point” after which it became an international hit. Which just goes to show, you never know what’s going to happen in this life or in the Way Back Studios. I’m Bill Fitzhugh. Thanks for listening. If you want to drop me an email, I’d love to hear from you. You’ll find an email link on billfitzhugh.com or you can track me down on one of those popular social media sites. I’ll be back sooner or later with a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl and I hope you’ll join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.