On the Road

I am having one of those weeks when actual remunerative labor gets in the way of blogging, so here’s a quick burst of randomness from the 11, 331 songs currently in the laptop music stash to get us both through the next day or two.

“Desperado”/Eagles. This version is from a bootleg called Second Night MTV Unplugged, recorded in April 1994 at the same Los Angeles stand that produced the Hell Freezes Over album. The recording is widely available on the Internet, and the sound quality is as good as an official album release.

“Falling Apart at the Seams”/Marmalade. In which the same band that recorded the exquisite “Reflections of My Life” in 1970 updates its sound for 1976. It should have sounded great in a season filled with the likes of “Silly Love Songs” and “Right Back Where We Started From,” but it reached only to Number 49 in Billboard.

“UFO”/Jimmy Caravan. Caravan is a Hammond B3 organ player, and “UFO”’s approximate vintage is the late 60s. Beyond that, I know nothing.

“Schoolgirl”/Steve Forbert. From the Little Stevie Orbit album. It occurs to me that one reason I’ve never really embraced this album is that for every good song on it, there’s a throwaway like this one.

“George Bruno Money”/Brian Auger and the Trinity. If you haven’t explored the Brian Auger catalog much, start. His ’60s recordings with the Trinity and with Julie Driscoll are grossly underrated—how it is they didn’t become approximately as big as, say, Traffic, I dunno. Then move forward in time to . . . .

“On the Road”/Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express. From the first album billed to Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express, released in 1971, a fusion album heavy on Auger’s B3. In any contest to pick the coolest band name of all time “Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express” would have to be in the semi-finals. Someday I’ll tell the story about the first time I ever heard ‘em.

“Lost Hearts”/Cochise. From the extremely obscure Swallow Tales, about which I blogged earlier this year.

“Radio Operator”/Rosanne Cash. From Black Cadillac, the 2006 album Cash made in the wake of the deaths of her parents and stepmother. Johnny Cash had been a radio operator in the Air Force, which makes Rosanne’s lyric about signals from a distance particularly poignant. (Rosanne talks about the writing of the album and plays “Radio Operator” and “I Was Watching You” here).

“Jim Dandy”/Black Oak Arkansas. Made Top 40 radio in early 1974 mostly for its novelty value. (I blogged about it nearly four years ago.) It was the 1970s—we couldn’t help ourselves.

“Never Can Say Goodbye”/Cal Tjader. A tasty version of the Jackson Five hit, from a 1973 album called Last Bolero in Berkeley, on which the vibraphonist also covers “I Want You Back,” “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight,” and “Where Is the Love.”

Later in the week: Another installment of my 1976 daybook and the first part of a 1976 countdown, because sooner or later, we always come back to 1976.

“Desperado” (live)/Eagles (bootleg)