YOU ARE HERE: zharth.net / Zharth's Music Log / Week 39 (Rain Mix)
Preface: This week's theme is a tribute to "April showers" - we'll be doing songs related to rain!
Monday (4/14/08): Buffalo Springfield - In The Hour Of Not Quite Rain [Last Time Around, 1968]
Comments: Buffalo Springfield have more to offer than just the song For What It's Worth. They only released three albums, but they have some interesting material, including some of Neil Young's earliest and overlooked hits. The band kind of bounced around between folk, pop, rock, psychedelic, etc. ...and today's track shows off one of the more orchestral soundscapes the band produced.
Tuesday (4/15/08): Neil Young - See The Sky About To Rain [On The Beach, 1974]
Comments: This is one of the more mellow tracks from the outstanding lost classic album On The Beach.
Wednesday (4/16/08): The James Gang - Ashes, The Rain And I (Live) [Live In Concert, 1971]
Comments: The James Gang features a young Joe Walsh on this impressive live album from the early 70's. This band has more to offer than just Funk #49. Are you starting to understand what mainstream radio is doing wrong?
Thursday (4/17/08): The Blues Project - Little Rain [Blues Project, 1972]
Comments: The Blues Project are a pretty good band for their level of obscurity. And despite their image as a blues rock band, they transcended that label in a number of ways - although their blues rock material is also very good. Early on, the band partly featured Al Kooper, who later formed Blood, Sweat & Tears, and played with Mike Bloomfield on the Super Session album. Obscure Song Roots Trivia: Kooper was responsible for the arrangement of I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes that Alvin Lee picked up on and expanded into an epic rock jam with his band Ten Years After.
Friday (4/18/08): Robin Trower - Same Rain Falls [Long Misty Days, 1976]
Comments: Long Misty Days doesn't quite measure up to Trower's previous albums, in my opinion, but it still has a lot to offer. The opening track, Same Rain Falls, is one of my favorites off of the album, though not quite as good as the opening track to the following album, In City Dreams...
Saturday (4/19/08): John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers - Sitting In The Rain [Looking Back, 1969]
Comments: Alright, you may know about The Yardbirds, but have you heard of John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers? Mayall was one of the fountainheads for the appreciation of the blues in the British music scene during the 60's and onward. His backing band, The Bluesbreakers, featured such esteemed guitarists as Eric Clapton, Peter Green (who formed Fleetwood Mac), and Mick Taylor (who went on to play with The Rolling Stones during their golden age). This is a gentle little tune recorded during the days when Green headed The Bluesbreakers.
Sunday (4/20/08): The Yardbirds - The Sky Is Crying [Live! Blueswailing July '64, 1964]
Comments: Speaking of The Yardbirds... You think you've heard The Sky Is Crying before? Well, here's a rather unique niche version featuring Keith Relf's harp and vocals, with Eric Clapton on lead guitar. This isn't the only recorded version of this song Clapton's played on...
Afterthought: Looking back at this theme from 2024, I'm surprised I didn't include the song Let It Rain from Eric Clapton's 1970 self-titled debut album (I suspect it was because I was trying to highlight less popular and more frequently overlooked tracks back then - today, I would have just used Stevie Ray Vaughan's version of The Sky Is Crying, and squeezed this song in somewhere). It's one of my favorite radio hits from Clapton's solo discography. You know how some songs hit you at a certain point in your life? Listening to this song takes me back to the summer I graduated high school, and the last time I visited my childhood vacation spot with my dad, before we were all grown up and stopped taking family vacations together. It's a bittersweet, but not unpleasant, memory.