Friday Arts

It's been a quiet week. Some new Spotify cuts:

Country Life, You Won't Get Me, from Savaloy Dip, Alan Price — I don't know how I ended up listening to this. I had no idea who Price was, but I was struck by the keyboard work on the album. When I looked him up, I found out he was the organist for the Animals. Mystery solved. He's not at all bad on the piano, either. I like throwing unfamiliar songs into the playlist. There's more to classic rock (or any rock) than "Stairway to Heaven" (not in the playlist, btw; no one needs to ever hear this song again). It's nice to sprinkle new(-ish) songs among the old favorites.

The Mighty Quinn, Manfred Mann — I was having a conversation with someone about either covers or unlikely composers or something like that, and it occurred to me that I didn't have this Dylan song in the playlist, so I just tossed it in. I can't recall ever listening to Dylan sing it. Come to think of it, I checked, and there's no Dylan at all in the playlist. I think he has recorded a couple of albums over the years. I need to start going through them. I'll start at the very beginning. It should keep me busy.

Valerie, Talking Back to the Night, Steve Winwood — Those of us raised on albums like Mr. Fantasy and John Barleycorn Must Die and AM hits like "Gimme Some Lovin'" are cursed to listen to everything else Winwood does, finding whatever gems one can. Mr. Fantasy was especially exciting when it came out. It was like nothing else. It certainly wasn't like Spencer Davis. It was the sort of album that separated the masses. If you were not an instant Traffic fan, you could go back to AM radio where you belonged.

No cuts, Future Games, Fleetwood Mac — Continuing auditing the career of this band. This one sounds way more like what they became than the rockers they had been. Nothing grabbed me.

No cuts, The Name of This Band is Talking Heads — I like a lot of these songs, but I prefer the studio cuts to the live versions. That's true of most rock recordings. There's exceptions, but mostly I like the sound of studio work.