It was 50 years ago today ...

[Fman99]

I'm particularly fond of the Stills and Crosby songs best on this album. I love this version Crosby does of the title track in his band CPR, which includes his son on piano.

[Frayed Knot]

Nice version, though I've tended to be less a fan of Crosby's stuff as compared to the others. On Deja Vu I'd rank the S & Y contributions above those of either C or N, but your mileage may vary
As Crosby himself put one time that I heard, 'I was put on this earth to sing harmony', and that may be true and he's certainly good at it. But, to me, he didn't have the songwriting chops of the others.
More recently it seems that everyone he ever worked with hates him now, but that's a separate story.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

I know I'm getting ahead of the release pace but just wanna say we streamed COSMO'S FACTORY last night and that is one hell of a rekkid

For me, CCR was something I rediscovered in Jr high while most of my pimply contemporaries were rediscovering The Doors. The thing was, all the record company controversies that band encountered made processing their album progression by 1980 a difficult thing. The CCR section at the record store was always loaded with German-issued Greatest Hits compilations. That in fact was "my" CCR album... A collection called HEY TONIGHT which had some clip art scene of a motorcyclist at a diner and the title in the style of a neon sign that made the whole thing look like it was packaged so as to play on the popularity of Happy Days and took it all out of context.

At least the Doors compilation that everyone had and thought was a real album, 13, *looked* like a real album.

Anyway, "Ramble Tamble" gets that thing off to a such rousing bluesy start before the pop hits you all know and love appear and the deeper cuts reveal such soulfulness. One of those albums with great openers and closers "As Long As I Can See the Light" and SIX sub-3 minute songs, presumably to fit the 11 minutes of Grapevine. Klasik

https://www.discogs.com/Creedence-Clear ... se/1226736

[batmagadanleadoff]

I know I'm getting ahead of the release pace but just wanna say we streamed COSMO'S FACTORY last night and that is one hell of a rekkid

For me, CCR was something I rediscovered in Jr high while most of my pimply contemporaries were rediscovering The Doors. The thing was, all the record company controversies that band encountered made processing their album progression by 1980 a difficult thing. The CCR section at the record store was always loaded with German-issued Greatest Hits compilations. That in fact was "my" CCR album... A collection called HEY TONIGHT which had some clip art scene of a motorcyclist at a diner and the title in the style of a neon sign that made the whole thing look like it was packaged so as to play on the popularity of Happy Days and took it all out of context.

At least the Doors compilation that everyone had and thought was a real album, 13, *looked* like a real album.

Anyway, "Ramble Tamble" gets that thing off to a such rousing bluesy start before the pop hits you all know and love appear and the deeper cuts reveal such soulfulness. One of those albums with great openers and closers "As Long As I Can See the Light" and SIX sub-3 minute songs, presumably to fit the 11 minutes of Grapevine. Klasik

https://www.discogs.com/Creedence-Clear ... se/1226736

Holy mother of mercy! I never saw that before. That thing looks like a K-Tel special!



The Doors' "13" (also a 1970 release - didja know?) looked like a real album because it was released while The Doors were still active. That CCR thing came out in the 80s -- sez the web.

"13" was one of the albums I bought the very first time I ever went to J&R Music World (RIP!). I think that the only other greatest hits record I owned up to that point was that tremendous mid-70s Elton John greatest hits album that probably topped the charts and came out during that period when Elton was on top of the rock and roll world.

Sub three minute songs was CCR's thing, wasn't it? In fact, I read that they recorded their stretched out version of Grapevine on Cosmo's with the long so-called musical guitar improvs, in part because other bands were mocking them for their tight and short songs. I say so-called because Fogerty's guitar soloing on Grapevine wasn't as improvised as you'd think. Just about every single note of CCR's extended Grapevine was rehearsed to the bone. And speaking of 1970, go back one year to the Amazin' 1969 and check out CCR's output. Three albums. Three classic albums. Three incredible albums. That was incredible.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

The HEY TONIGHT tracklist was pretty good, and jammed with like 18 songs but it obviously took the band's art way out of context, making them look way more dated than they were especially when contrasted with contemporaries like the Doors, who I'm not exaggerating, was everyone's favorite dead band in 8th grade, (Skynyrd a close second, though they were the top 2 by a mile). They practically issued copies of 13 along with your class schedule. I had that one too, but we all seemed to have a familiarity with the names of the other albums with separate burnout camps favoring particular ones.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The HEY TONIGHT tracklist was pretty good, and jammed with like 18 songs but it obviously took the band's art way out of context, making them look way more dated than they were especially when contrasted with contemporaries like the Doors, who I'm not exaggerating, was everyone's favorite dead band in 8th grade, (Skynyrd a close second, though they were the top 2 by a mile). They practically issued copies of 13 along with your class schedule. I had that one too, but we all seemed to have a familiarity with the names of the other albums with separate burnout camps favoring particular ones.

I remember. When that CCR album came out, the Doors were about as popular as any active band even though Morrison had been dead for about 10 years. The No One Here Gets Out Alive book was a best seller; Apocalypse Now drove the Doors popularity by featuring The End and Rolling Stone magazine published that .Morrison cover -- Hot, Sexy and Dead.

[Willets Point]

CCR is a criminally underrated band. I also listened to them (and the Doors) in Junior High and High School. However, when I was in High School it was Led Zeppelin who was everyone's #1 favorite defunct band.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

The Zep at least had fresh stuff with OUT DOOR but yeah.

Bob Leibowitz was a leading burnout (what used to be called "greaser" dominating the KISS pinball machine at Al's Luncheonette, leaving cigarette burns on the cabinet, always wearing a Levi's demin coat with a white fuzzy collar, flannel shirt and engineer boots, and the guy I think of as most influential among music listeners, equivalent to the Spotify influencer of today.

The Leibowitz top 5:
Doors
Skynyrd
Allman Bros
Tull -- not Jethro, always just"Tull"
Zep

[41Forever]

My Dad didn't have a ton of albums, but one he had was "Cosmo's Factory" and I know that by heart. We would set up speakers in the back yard and crank it up. That's summer to me!

[Fman99]

Those CCR albums are all fantastic and even the deeper cuts are super listenable.

[Edgy MD]

It's largely because Fogarty never mailed in a vocal. Even on the two or three long ones — "Suzy Q," "Run Through the Jungle," and of course "IHITtGV" — he brings it from the depths. On the short records though, he just tears it up with extreme prejudice.

Insane that the label didn't see him as the singer, and the first few singles were released with Tom on lead vocals.

[Willets Point]

The Zep at least had fresh stuff with OUT DOOR but yeah.

The "fresh stuff" when I was in high school was the boxed set with the previously unreleased "Traveling Riverside Blues." It was a BFD among the Zepheads.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The Zep at least had fresh stuff with OUT DOOR but yeah.

The "fresh stuff" when I was in high school was the boxed set with the previously unreleased "Traveling Riverside Blues." It was a BFD among the Zepheads.

You mean the "cube" that came out in '93 that had all the studio releases plus extras on "Coda"?

PS There's not one word in this message that I didnt have to to type AT LEAST twice, usually more, before I got it right. Even this PS. Does anyone else have so much trouble typing on a smartphone? All the time. Maddening.

[Frayed Knot]

It's largely because Fogarty never mailed in a vocal. Even on the two or three long ones — "Suzy Q," "Run Through the Jungle," and of course "IHITtGV" — he brings it from the depths. On the short records though, he just tears it up with extreme prejudice.

I remember hearing a DJ reading something Fogerty had written (liner notes maybe) about a song he had covered -- can't remember which one it was, don't think it was GRAPEVINE though. Anyway, he was trying
to describe why he covered it and how he went about transforming it into his style. After a few attempts at explaining what he did, he finally just settled on: 'in short, I took the song into the swamp'.
Probably as good an explanation as any of JF's style.

[batmagadanleadoff]

That's the weirdest thing about that group. They sing about swamps and mud and the woods and backwoods and running barefoot in grass fields and chooglin' and you think they grew up with Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. But they're California city kids.

[Edgy MD]

Northern Cal, too.

Also, you ever notice the pattern in his songs which pays tribute to the primacy of other places? So many titles are built around a preposition:

"Lookin' out My Back Door"
"Born on the Bayou"
"Down on the Corner" and "out in the street"
"Run Through the Jungle"
"Up Around the Bend"
"Walk on the Water"
"It Came Out of the Sky"

Now, that's less than half their hits, but it's a good sample, and others without prepositions in the title ("Green River," "Proud Mary") are about places out of reach (or out of time).

The only comparable catalog is the early -ixties Drifters hits written by multiple people:
"Up on the Roof" (Goffin & King),
"Under the Boardwalk" (Young & Resnick),
"Saturday Night at the Movies" (Mann & Weil), and
"On Broadway" (Mann & Weil AND Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller).

I'm sure I'm over-reading it, but the two catalogs come only a few years apart, but on two different sides of the cultural revolution. I nonetheless think they kind of tapped into the same vein from two different ends.

[Fman99]

That's the weirdest thing about that group. They sing about swamps and mud and the woods and backwoods and running barefoot in grass fields and chooglin' and you think they grew up with Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. But they're California city kids.

I am not exaggerating when I say that I've used the phrase "Chooglin" at least ten thousand times in my life.

[Frayed Knot]

I am not exaggerating when I say that I've used the phrase "Chooglin" at least ten thousand times in my life.

Ever while dressed?

[Fman99]

Sure, then too. Chooglin' actually makes for an excellent status on my work-required instant messenger. What's my status? I'm chooglin', man. And when someone (invariably) asks me what that means, then I share the song with them.

[Willets Point]

The Zep at least had fresh stuff with OUT DOOR but yeah.

The "fresh stuff" when I was in high school was the boxed set with the previously unreleased "Traveling Riverside Blues." It was a BFD among the Zepheads.

You mean the "cube" that came out in '93 that had all the studio releases plus extras on "Coda"?

PS There's not one word in this message that I didnt have to to type AT LEAST twice, usually more, before I got it right. Even this PS. Does anyone else have so much trouble typing on a smartphone? All the time. Maddening.

The 1990 Led Zeppelin Box Set. I'm not familiar with the "cube." By 1993, I was in college and fully immersed in the "alternative" revolution.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The Zep at least had fresh stuff with OUT DOOR but yeah.

The "fresh stuff" when I was in high school was the boxed set with the previously unreleased "Traveling Riverside Blues." It was a BFD among the Zepheads.

You mean the "cube" that came out in '93 that had all the studio releases plus extras on "Coda"?

PS There's not one word in this message that I didnt have to to type AT LEAST twice, usually more, before I got it right. Even this PS. Does anyone else have so much trouble typing on a smartphone? All the time. Maddening.

The 1990 Led Zeppelin Box Set. I'm not familiar with the "cube." By 1993, I was in college and fully immersed in the "alternative" revolution.

[41Forever]

"In Through the Out Door" gets a bad rap.

[Willets Point]

I hadn't realized that "In Through the Out Door" was disliked. "All My Love" and "Fool in the Rain" were in constant rotation on Classik Rawk radio back in the day.

[ashie62]

Led Zeppelin was kryptonite to the punks

I'm out

[batmagadanleadoff]

I hadn't realized that "In Through the Out Door" was disliked. "All My Love" and "Fool in the Rain" were in constant rotation on Classik Rawk radio back in the day.

Yes they were. I rarely listen to In Through. As far as I'm concerned, that's not even a Led Zeppelin album. Page was out to lunch on drugs during its production. And so Plant and Jones did all the heavy lifting on that album. Page and Bonham were eager to get back to heavy rock and roll for their next but that obviously never came to pass.