Creedence Clearwater Revival: C or D?

I'd say the first 5 albums are great, 'Cosmo's Factory' is no dud. Long 'Grapevine' guitar solo and all.

They are the bollocks. Rocked as hard as the Stones at their best. 'Green River' and 'Willie and the poor boys' can stand happily alongside the likes of 'Let it bleed' or 'Beggar's Banquet'.

And you're right about the great singles. I came across them through 'Chronicle' which is as good an introduction as any.

Wouldn't that be great? Part of me suspects that something about CCR doesn't translate well for the British ILMers tho... someone prove me wrong!

Along with half of Canada.

Still CCR are klassik, rockist or not.

I'm still dreaming of some to-be-discovered bootleg recording of like a 20 minute live freakout jam on "Keep On Chooglin'"....

On principle of what, disliking good music?

Take Willy and the Poor Boys--Poorboy Shuffle and Side O' the Road are throwaways.

Green River--same goes for Cross Tie Walker, Sinister Purpose, Night Time is the Right Time.

I just remember really really loving the greatest hits when I was a kid. And then buying all the albums, and liking them, but being slightly disappointed that there weren't any real amazing finds beyond the singles.

No way, I think all those songs are great, just as strong as the singles. The harmonies on "Night Time" are this really strong, deep thing. "Sinister Purpose" is totally creepy, it's like a prelude to a murder down by the river or something.

you could say the same of "Factory Girl" and "Dear Doctor," too, though I agree that CCR's albums aren't as good as the Stones'. oh, and the answer is TOTAL CLASSIC.

And I was going to make the point about the Stones, but Matos made it for me. Except that I would have mentioned "Country Honk", and that he is TOTALLY wrong about "Factory Girl". That is one of the high points of that lp! It was great when they dug it up for the Steel Wheels tour...

(Also, the thing that makes songs like Dear Doctor et al more interesting to me is that they are not done straight--Jagger always has a distance from the material, and the lyrics themselves are somewhat ambiguous/parodistic, which makes the songs a bit more interesting since you don't know how seriously to take them)

As to yr main point -- I agree that the influx of country and mountain music is more important and successful with CCR than it is the Stones (although the Stones' double country whammy of "Dead Flowers" and "Sweet Virginia" kicks all of CCR's ass halfway to Modesto), but CCR's blues infusion feels kinda weak to me. I'm thinking of the middle bits of Willy & the Poor Boys here, and while Johnny can do a fair sharecropper impression with that yelp of his, it falls flat. It just seems that the Stones wanted to get the Negro strut down more than anything (which Mick still works at but Keith was born with), to get the style and the feel, while CCR went for the sound, but not the emotion. Maybe this is why CCR is so commonly identified as a very "white" band? (I'm thinking of the Big Lebowski and White Men Can't Jump (Snipes hassles Woody for them, doesn't he?) in particular)

On principle of not relating to rootsy Americana trad-rock boredom, which then gets shoved in your face as real authentic 'good' music. The whole rough-and-ready meat-and-potatoes-ness of it all. Of hating country music like any well-adjusted person. Like I said, though, they don't actually sound that bad. It's all pettiness.

Clarke just butted in but I know what he means about the aura.

Tracer roxor as always, even if I do think the Stones were ultimately a...not "better" but greater band, if you see what I mean--wider ranging (counts for a lot w/me, Prince was my formative listening) and more chance-taking. CCR's more perfect but the Stones had greater outreach. love 'em both about equally in that way

You can't say something like "I dislike them on principle", on this board of all places, and not expect to be called out on the meaninglessness of the statement unless you define your terms.

Of hating country music like any well-adjusted person

Color me ill-adjusted.

I agree with Andrew L about Grapevine... their ultimate endless boogie track was Back on the Bayou

Also due to the demands of their label, Fogerty released 3
albums in 1969 and two in 1970, ranking from good to excellent.
Imagine what dynamite albums they could have released on a
one-per-year schedule:

Bayou Country
01. Born On The Bayou
02. Good Golly Miss Molly
03. Proud Mary
04. Green River
05. Bad Moon Rising
06. Lodi
07. Wrote A Song For Everyone
08. Don't Look Now
09. Down On The Corner
10. Fortunate Son
11. Midnight Special

Cosmo's Factory
01. Before You Accuse Me
02. Travelin' Band
03. Lookin' Out My Back Door
04. Run Through The Jungle
05. Up Around The Bend
06. Who'll Stop The Rain
07. Long As I Can See The Light
08. Have You Ever Seen The Rain?
09. Hey Tonight
10. Molina

I'll go on the record as saying that these two proposed
tracklists kick every Stones album directly in the ass.

strictly speaking they are of course anti-rockist

explain.

I don't get this one.

also i think that the music they minded about was music that ROCK AS IT BECAME AWARE OF ITSELF was trying to put behind it, or get beyond, or something

like in the late 60s, a LOT of music — pop and non-pop — from the 50s and early 60s was widely considered a bit of a primitive yokel joke: and i think they clung to it in quite a lonely, dogged way...

this later (80s etc) became for others a revivalist shtick which played super-well in music mags etc — grrr the clash haha — and part of the general dad-rock cd-rerelease spasm, but these were the years when rock was in its prime and needed no memory, or anyway a sense of its own HISTORY was not yet at all important to its essential identity

(sorry this probably isn't very clear: i think what i'm saying is that the content of "revival" in their name and aesthetic — partly bcz it wz half ironic, in a bitter sort of way — was that it refused to place faith in these huge PLACEMARKER WORKS, dylan/beatles/stones blah blah, which stood in the way of understanding where they themselves as works came from, and provided the glue of the music community all round, the values it shared...)

Guess I shouldn't have used the term "poseur" in the question then. But really, it's when the Stones were brought in that the "authenticity" topic raised its ugly head (mostly because for some reason people find the Stones' toying with the whole concept to be such a stroke of genius - though I don't share this view personally).

re: Mark S. I see what you're saying I guess. Regressive traditionalist attitude = anti-rockist. I like their albums but no argument that they were a singles band, their albums are not deliberately constructed as statements (a la Blonde on Blonde or Her Satanic Majesties' ad nauseum).

i'm tempted to say that i don't think they thought about or cared about LASTING (possibly also why they got screwed over re ownership of their songs?) (i mean this may have been just naivety, and i don't mean to sentimentalise or romanticise some kind of po'boy live-in-the-now nonsense, but sometimes not second-guessing how the future will see you gives you access to a power to speak in the present which actually hands the future to you... )

The Fantasy/Saul Zaentz debacle is a whole other issue...

at the height of the grunge fad, i do remember wondering why it was that Neil Young was getting all the credit for inspiring that sort of music but CCR weren't name-checked at all -- which struck me as odd because Green River kinda works in the same vein and is almost as "grunge"-y as Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. maybe it's because Fogerty always stuck to what worked and never did anything as left-field as Neil Young did?

"if i only had a dollar for every song i've sung and ev´ry time I had to play while people sat there drunk ... " hard to beat that IMHO.

Do Brits listen to bands like this? I think there's something uniquely American there that many of them don't hear or fimd interesting (because I don't hear them talk about these bands much). See also Los Lobos.

I actually wish I could hear most of my favorite music this way--catch it by surprise--but the radio is just so awful at the moment, so I end up buying a lot of records. My favorite moments are those when I'm seized, for no reason I can articulate, by the desire to hear a very particular album or song, almost as though it had come to me by accident.

Oh, also, I had a conversation about CCR with a good friend last week. I saw the box set sitting on his table. I remember him telling me--maybe six or seven years ago-- that he couldn't stand John Fogerty's voice, that it was too obviously an affectation. I mentioned this, and he turned to me with a puzzled expression, and said basically, Oh no, I was stupid then, of course they're grebt. So I don't know anyone who's been able to sustain a dislike for this band for very long.

Yes! Perhaps not 4, but I long for the days of an album or two a year. All that lovely filler and songs written by the drummer - all GRATE stuff!

I think there are quite a few Brits on here, myself included, who love CCR. And the 'uniquely American' thing isn't a hindrance (though you could prob argue the Beatles being part of their musical upbringing as with 95% of US bands of that era) - there's been an obsession with American music over here since at least the forties, not least the Beatles and Stones themselves.

Very interesting that you mention Los Lobos though, and you could have a point there. I've been thinking of starting a Los Lobos thread for a while as I've not encountered anyone over here who sees anything in them. And there is something similarly broad in their musical scope to the bands you mention (the Dead etc). For a Mexcian-American band the 'American' is at least as important as the 'Mexcian'.

Where did I say they weren't conscientious about choosing their name? "somewhat bitter irony" = conscious deliberation. The use of the word "revival" was very deliberate, yes to ref. tent-preachers, and yes to invoke an aesthetic which said "the present is corrupt, the past it's where it's at" — except (here's where the deliberate irony kicks in) we CCR are the real present and so the PRESENT is where it's at.

If anyone's assuming that because I'm saying "hey this is pop not rock" I'm saying the makers didn't care a great deal about it, or that it matters less "artistically", then they're exactly missing the point of Fogerty's attitude to the "throwaway pop" of the 50s: that the work put into it that counted was work that was directed at the present, not work calculated to second-guess the future.

I don't think this is really accurate, and this is why I brought up Fogerty's notorious controlling studio perfectionism - as evidence that they (or at least JF) *did* think and care about lasting. I don't think Fogerty was naive about what he was doing or what kind of myth he was trying to build. The point up-thread about the Berry-Fogerty-Springsteen progression of American "everyman" is pertinent here, he saw himself in - and acted to fit into - this kind of progression. In a sense, even getting screwed over the ownership of their songs does *more* to cement this kind of myth ("look! The Man is fucking with me!") although I'm sure that wasn't Fogerty's intention (to get screwed, that is).

I misunderstood your point about the "revival" in their name, sorry.

I find it interesting that CCR is kind of viral -- lots of people who don't want to like 'em do anyway, and they slip completely from your conciousness only to sock you in the gut after random jukebox encounters. Why is that so?

it's obv. a circular argument, but perhaps this is why the CCR-are-classic camp would describe them as such.

No comment, I just felt like reprinting that thought so that we could savor it.

"Love In Vain," "Country Honk," "Let It Bleed," "You Got the Silver," You Can't Always Get What You Want" = songs that would improve Let It Bleed by being absent.

CCR = Sexless, timid, lacking in experiment, hence not much at all like the music they were drawing on (compare "Green River" to Elvis's "Mystery Train"), though that doesn't make them a bad group, since those were limits that worked for Fogerty ("Green River" a real good song). Fogerty set songs in the South because he thought his own life in El Cerrito, California was boring, so preferred to write from his imagination. Well-loved by white people in Appalachia County, Virginia when I passed through in 1971. Black people there preferred James Brown. I was the only one to prefer "Brown Sugar." But neither CCR nor Stones defined rock by then. Hendrix, Cream, Zeppelin had changed the game.

The adjective "authentic" is close to useless unless paired with a word that it is modifying.

(All the songs you list are amazing, ESPECIALLY "You Got The Silver": I sometimes prefer Keith as a vocalist to Mick)

(But then if I had Let It Bleed on CD I might like it fine. Given the memory function, almost all my beloved CDs end up as four-song EPs. For instance, there are only three albums on my Pazz & Jop ballot this year that I listen to more than four songs on, and two of those three are near the bottom of my list.)

Semi-agree. Definitely keep "Country Honk" (a total gas) and "Let it Bleed" and in the very least the Sisters of Mercy sections of "You Can't Always Get What You Want" (+ all of "Gimme Shelter" and "Monkey Man," though maybe only the bass line from "Live With Me"), get rid of the rest, especially "Midnight Rambler" and "Love in Vain."

Revelation - maybe I'm a folkist

"Sexless" - I have no complaint here, I think, because this isn't their subject (a classroom-hallway distinction?).

I may be hypocritical, though, because I have the "Sexless" complaint about Chuck D. But I want his subject to suit his music.

No, they never improved on (or equaled) Mystery Train. But my ill-informed instincts say Elvis wouldn't have known to sing Lodi like Fogerty did, and wouldn't have done Fortunate Son, period.

Except Hendrix, Cream, and Zeppelin all sound dated now while "There Was a Time," "Lodi," and "Brown Sugar" do not.

(haha & maybe I've been reading too much Curnow & Brasch lately, but while not taking geography-as-destiny (or geography-as-haunting) too seriously, all the NZ rawkundroll fans I know have spent far more time around the otago/cantebury plains than I have).

"Subjective" is no good as a synonym for "value-laden." As a matter of fact it's no good as a word, period. (Nor is its twin "objective. Ban 'em both!)

Tracer: there are all sorts of ways to use the word "folk," but if you're using it anthropologically (folkways, folklore), I can't think of any other songs in modern America that are as folk as Xmas Carols, except maybe for "Happy Birthday" and "Rock 'N' Roll Part 2."

Zeppelin doesn't strike me as dated, while Hendrix and Cream and CCR do, though I don't have a quick explanation why. Punk and hair metal helped to switch the game again, maybe knocking Hendrix and Cream into the past, but since Stones-based punks like the Stooges, Dolls, and Pistols had all absorbed Clapton-Hendrix-Kaukonen guitar sustain, their changing the game didn't bring Stones '70 back to seeming retrospectively modern. (And the Stones themselves transformed from a song band to a groove band, though I don't think they pulled this off thoroughly until Emotional Rescue.) If "Brown Sugar" sounds not-so-dated now, this is because its style of riffing has a life in new country (though it hadn't back in the day). "Brown Sugar" is all over the place in recent Brooks & Dunn. Strangely, given that CCR was admired so much in country land, CCR doesn't live in modern country, while Skynyrd, Charlie Daniels, and the Eagles all do.

They were both of and not of the counterculture, which was one of the interesting things about them.

Mark, I still doubt that the term "rockist" helps people to communicate or think through their ideas, but I won't make that argument here. I want to point out, though, that in using "rockist," Shakey is raising the question as to whether it's rockist to like Creedence now, not whether Creedence was rockist back in their day. For instance, staking one's allegiance to the Ramones makes you butt-plug reactionary now but didn't in 1977, at least didn't for most people. Depends how you deployed your allegiance to the band. Note, that there's a difference between liking the Ramones and staking your allegiance to them. I still like 'em. I think.

Funny that you mention this, 'cause I was thinking the same thing after I re-read my comment about "Lodi" after this thread sprang back to life. That tension -- being both of and not of the counterculture -- is what makes that (and other) CCR songs work. Lyrically, it's about the American Dream -- staking out on yer own to "make it," the singer working hard for and having "success" dangled in front of him. Musically (at least at the beginning), it's meat-and-potatoes American rock (or CCR-type "chooglin'"). Then comes the last verse, with the key change and the singer's epiphany that his version of the "American Dream" might be being stuck in shitty bars sinking to drunks for the rest of his life. At least to me, it seems very much of its time -- a counter-cultural Sixties twist on a common American archetype which may still resonate because of its craft and sublety, but also because of how cynical we've become since the Sixties.

my two cents anyway.

Hendrix, "dated"? I don't think it's ever going to date, that stuff is as audacious as the day he made it. I've come to the conclusion that, as much as I like rock and roll, and as instinctively hostile I can be toward "rockism" or whatever you call it, Hendrix is in a whole different class than anybody else who ever made "rock." I'm sure this opinion is not shared by everyone.

CCR, though...it is stiff, stiff. Bad rhythm section. Mechanical. Great songs performed with a kind of caution, a really bad reverence for some "past" which consistently hobbles the whole project. Ben Williams up the thread hit it, "Let it Bleed" contains some "eerie" moments where the bullshit of Jagger's lyrics sorta gets hijacked by something altogether more mystical...as in the slide-guitar/piano/vibes bit in "Monkey Man." Which is all Keith. Whereas CCR never once hit a note like that.

That said, I still kind of like them, as superior radio music, and I think "Willy and the Poor Boys" is a fine record, I always liked "Effigy." I mean explain to me how "Effigy" is all that different from "Mod Lang" or something...once you get past the limberness of the Big Star rhythm section and the stiffness of CCR's. But the basic conception is similar...

So, a classic, but even more dated than the Band, who had some of the same problems of over-thinking everything and self-conscious mythologizing...the Band were far superior musicians, and they sounded like they had been having a better time out on the road than CCR had...

Dan Penn does "Lodi" on his early '70s "Nobody's Fool" album, quite well.

If we had football chants in America they'd probably be the ultimate successful example of folk attitude in this country. The Pinefox mentioned on a war thread that he feels the art of chanting is DOA. Maybe he could expand on that here? I think if he's right it has serious implications for democracy!

I don't see how "sexy" by this definition is different from "makes me think about sex" - and as such it seems to be necessarily observer-dependent, ie., different strokes for different folks. For example, if I was to say that I don't find Elvis "sexy", how would you argue that I was wrong?

And CCR did have an influence on mid-late 80s Seattle. Mark Arm and some pre-Pearl Jam dudes had that band Green River. And didn't the early incarnation of Nirvana do CCR covers? Or at least Kurt claimed to have played in a CCR cover band. Something like that.

Andrew M., that is some interesting, uhmm, but have you ever been to "Appalachia" (pronounced correctly it rhymes with "appa-latch-a," not "appa-laytchi-a")? CCR has zero to do with any of that. They from California, man, and that's a long, long way from E. Ky./Tenn./W. Va., not to mention fucking Germany...personally, I used to dig Can when I was driving across, say, *Arkansas*, but otherwise, it's a bit honky for my taste...stiil, Applachian-Kraut boogie is a funny idea, someone out there in I Love Music-Land fire up the 4-track, we gonna have a part-ee!!

Lest I sound like an overly gushing fanboy, I'll admit that his solo albums have
been VERY inconsistent. The best songs are great, but nearly all of it sounds
like unecessary backtracking. Of course, it's hard to keep writing great songs
when you only release an average of 10 new songs per decade. These
things take practice.

I was surprised at how much I still loved some tracks (good god "Fortunate Son" might be the most ferocious song of the Vietnam era), but so many kind of filtered out into blandness. I really wanted to like it/them more than I do.

more info plz

That said, I find them incredibly boring and samey. There's something so mechanical about them, and JF's voice grates. Prototype of all the back-to-roots groups (the Band too, of course), and they lack the glamour I need from rock and roll. I know, I know--they weren't after glamour.

When something like "Fortunate Son" comes on the radio, I dig; but they're a group (I feel the same way about REM) whose records I don't own any more and have no desire to play. Nice on the radio. Fogerty's solo records are horrendous, I have always hated "Center Field" with a passion, what a stupid song. But sure, classic. And no way are they a patch on the Stones, give me a break.

SP: They were crankin' back in the day, I can attest.

Rock music: C or D?
Music: C or D?
Sex: C or D?
Oxygen: C or D?

I was just listening to the debut w/ a bonus track "Call It Pretending", & learned that their first single was "Porterville" / "Call It Pretending". It occurs to me that those are amongst the band's most ~~60s-ish~~ songs, the former with SF-style backup vocals, the latter a Motown rip. I know it sounds silly to say that a 60s band sounded 60s-ish, esp. one featured in every movie about the 60s ever, but CCR always seemed more futuristic to me in their concision & stripped-down sound. But this single, both sides, isn't like that. "Call It Pretending", the more I think about it, would have been a good Stones cut in 1966, which is what I mean when I say it sounds 60s---Jagger & co wouldn't have tried to pull that off in 1972.

but CCR always seemed more futuristic to me in their concision & stripped-down sound

I know what you mean, insofar as there was no one else who really sounded like them in '68 and '69. (There's never been anyone who really sounds like them, actually, even if stuff like "Long Cool Woman" tried to.) I'm not sure if they were pointing the way to the future, or if they had just reached back so far that it seemed like they were. In general, moving towards a stripped-down sound was common in '68: The White Album, Beggars Banquet, John Wesley Harding, etc. I don't really have a point here. I don't have their first album, either, but I'm going to see if I can find the two songs you mention on Grooveshark. Seems to me I know "Porterville" from somewhere.

Yeah--"Call It Pretending" is really good, and totally atypical. It's got a little bit of "Out of Time" in it.

Yeah, "Out of Time"s a good comparison; for "Porterville" it's like a Dead song circa 66, out of time indeed.

The debut's really pretty light (in a good way!) compared to where they'd go next, into swampy doom. And it's interesting how Chronicle recontextualizes the songs from the debut ("Suzy Q" & "I Put A Spell On You"): they fit well there, more swampy doom. But the debut is overall more of a mishmash, more bluesy than the later records; which makes sense given its provenance from pre-CCR bands (Golliwogs mostly).

heard creedence everywhere i went yesterday. there literally is no music more omnipresent than CCR. ~science~

For John Fogerty’s next album, due this fall, the former Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman will revisit his old band’s deep catalog of hits in new collaborations with rock, pop and country duet partners including the Foo Fighters, Miranda Lambert, My Morning Jacket, Bob Seger, Keith Urban and Brad Paisley.

“Wrote a Song For Everyone” also is slated to include new Fogerty songs, set alongside Creedence touchstones such as “Fortunate Son” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain” from the band's most successful period in the late '60s and early '70s.

The new project shows Fogerty fully embracing his artistic legacy; for many years after Creedence disbanded in 1972, he refused to perform the group’s songs because of legal issues with his former record company. He famously refused to play with former band mates Doug Clifford and Stu Cook when Creedence was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. The fourth original band member, guitarist Tom Fogerty, John's older brother, died in 1990.

Fogerty eventually began performing Creedence material again during his live shows, and last September in New York played Creedence’s albums “Green River” and “Cosmo’s Factory” in their entirety over the course of a two-night stand.

The new album, which also will include duets with Alan Jackson, Dawes and other artists still to be confirmed, draws its title from Fogerty’s song that originally appeared on “Green River” in 1969.

Most recently Fogerty made his acting debut portraying himself in an episode of the Fox TV series "The Finder," for which he wrote and sang the theme song "Swamp Water," at the invitation of the show's creator, Hart Hanson, a longtime Fogerty/Creedence fan.

The new project shows Fogerty fully embracing taking a fat dump on his artistic legacy

CHOOGLE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JjxpGpKNR4

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/attachments/creedence-eating-at-taco-bell-burbank-january-1968-jpg.261965/

CCR at Taco Bell

A few hours later Fogerty had a Rude Awakening #2, if you catch my drift...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BYcVUs8CIAAggUO.jpg

haha!

Learned yesterday that you cannot use "choogle" playing Scrabble. (Not against a computer, anyway--you could try to bluff a real player with it, and hope s/he's a CCR fan.)

I protest!

is teh owner of that game Saul Z?

choogle is totally a word fuck that computer

CCR is blowing my mind right now, I know I'm wrong but tonight their 4 records from the 60s sound better to me than anything the beatles, stones or doors did in that decade.

Having a revisit to Willy & The Poor Boys this week! I think "It Came Out Of The Sky" could be one of the best rock songs of the sixties.

great record! maybe their most fun. almost every tune is one of the best rock songs of the sixties

midnight special is prob my favorite

Put a candle in the window

Just saw Lorraine, she says hi

Probably synced after the fact, but I've never seen this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aae_RHRptRg

What happy fellows. Born on the bayou with leather trousers on.

Love this band. "Willy the Poor Boys" is still my favorite, but it especially gets a lot of play around election time thanks to "It Came Out of the Sky," "Don't Look Now," "Fortunate Son" and "Effigy." Fogerty wrote some the sharpest political commentary in rock, maybe the best before the punk era.

Someone in the official Tom Fogerty FB group shared this photo of the band from October 1980, at Tom’s wedding. They played a few songs that night, first CCR performance since 1972. First quartet performance since 1970, and the last ever. pic.twitter.com/bPRCKWn6Q2

— John Lingan (@johnlingan) May 24, 2020

You stare at this photo and ask yourself, “Could John Fogerty possibly improve upon this look? Could he more effectively convey that it’s 1980?” And the clouds part and a beam of heavenly light delivers you this. pic.twitter.com/Py944VxSrz

— John Lingan (@johnlingan) May 24, 2020

OMG. Feel like I am related to several people in that picture.

i want to live inside that photo

I am flashing back to when I did live in it.

I can smell the Salems on that leather jacket.

lol. I remember that moment when being a kid when I was old enough to borrow books from the adult section of the library and noticed that some of the more popular blockbusters in the 7-Days Only section had a strong smell to them which it took me quite a long time to identify as cigarette odor.

Forgerty playing an Explorer!

Afterwards he had it cut down into a baseball bat.

lol

revive delivers

Other guitar player in the amber-tinted glasses totally looks like my uncle who was smoking up his branch's copies of those Martin Caidin el al protectively-covered hardbacks whose daughter became a librarian.

insane to me that i didn't have this thread bookmarked.

Too cool for a suit eh
And yeah I can totally smell that jacket. And hear it.

Get out the good ashtrays, guests are coming!

JF looks like he can't wait to bail in both pics

he looks like a character from a cop show of the era

Evokes the decade about as well as this tune does the previous
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO9ekL9lohk

cool shit!

There’s an official Tom Fogerty FB page...

Er, group. I mean, I’m just trying to process that one exists. Great pics, obv.

WTF? Tom Fogerty made FIVE solo albums between '72 & '81!

"shipped gold, returned platinum"

I just had a brief flick through some Tom solo tracks, 'harmless' is what I take away from his post-Creedence career.

i like-a way you woak
i like-a way you toak

John Fogerty, 75 years young yesterday!

keep returning to the woodstock set, its so so SO GOOD

it really is

Lodi is their best song

Nope. Green River

ramble tamble or pagan baby

Someday never fucking comes

Nope not that one

Old man down the road vs centerfield

Run through the Jungle!!!

But yeah Lodi is definitely up there.

Pretty remarkable the vibe they work up on Bayou with just a tremolo effect on the guitar and a single 7th chord. Guess that’s a testament to the rhythm section

classic

A lot of it comes directly from Pop Staples, no? Which I believe may be discussed upthread.

Not this thread but a Fogerty sibling thread

Around the Bend
midnight special
someday never comes
run through the jungle

Apparently there’s a 2016 thriller film called midnight special starring Michael Shannon and Kirsten dunst???. “Shannon plays a father who escapes with his son from both the government and a cult after they discover that his son has special powers.l”

indeed

I've seen it, but that's all I can really say about it.

Have you seen Lorraine?

I just read the older version of the RAH gig which I have on cd somewhere possibly still and haven't heard in an age is actually from Oakland.
Not heard that before .Is it like widely known?

RAH? Robert Anson Heinlein?

Royal Albert Hall

Thanks. Figured that out but posted anyway.

Watching the documentary now; I already knew from the live-at-Woodstock album what monsters they could be onstage, but seeing it on film really hammers it home. Doug Clifford has a swinging backbeat of doom as heavy as Bill Ward or Phil Rudd, but he delivers the apocalypse while staring off into space like a St. Bernard — it's incredible to watch.

Possibly my favorite rhythm section ever.

Update: They've been playing about a half hour and there has been ZERO stage banter. I've seen grindcore bands take longer pauses between songs. These guys were absolutely merciless.

And after 11 two- to three-minute songs in a row, bang bang bang, they end with an eight and a half minute version of "Keep On Chooglin'." It's insane; it's like if the Ramones ended one of their shows with a cover of "Stranglehold."

it's really something how great the music sounds and how utterly dreadful the picture quality on the interviews is. i guess last dance and get back raised the bar for the treatment of historical footage but man it's just... bad. a swarming mass of weird mpeg artifacts. sit far back enough from the TV and i guess it's alright? or squint. the overlaid text is just bad powerpoint default text as well, just minimum effort. and no insight, no stories, nothing surprising. on the other hand the music just sounds incredible. in fact every show on that european tour sounds incredible. is there high quality sound for all those shows? it's funny though, sometimes with creedence it's a little bit deflating because apart from the jams it really does sound - and they refer to this explicitly in the doc - so much like the record that you're like, well, okay, fine, i could just listen to the record.

last night i did a double-bill of this and the zz top doc and it was pretty funny how they both did the whole walk-hard thing, black and white footage of sock hops, etc. the zz top doc is easily superior in terms of funny stories and just all around quality but it felt extremely jarring to have it come to an end right after... eliminator? i'll probably take it to the zz thread but kinda disrespectful imo. "breakaway" on antenna is probably my favorite song they ever did.

sometimes with creedence it's a little bit deflating because apart from the jams it really does sound - and they refer to this explicitly in the doc - so much like the record that you're like, well, okay, fine, i could just listen to the record.

Yes and no. The arrangements are certainly the same as the record — there’s no radical (or even slight) re-imagining of the songs. But the intensity, momentum, and juuust slightly and perfectly ahead-of-the-beat agitation makes it a far different, and more exciting, experience for me.

Yes and no. The arrangements are certainly the same as the record — there’s no radical (or even slight) re-imagining of the songs. But the intensity, momentum, and juuust slightly and perfectly ahead-of-the-beat agitation makes it a far different, and more exciting, experience for me.

Agree with this 100%. They were absolutely more energetic and intense onstage than in the studio; that's why I wound up focusing so much on the drums, and hearing the similarities to (Bon Scott-era) AC/DC.

it is better live, i agree.

Some nice slap-back / Sun Ra feedback delay on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2oJIBQKlnw

this is enough of a thing that fogerty is even quoted discussing it on wikipedia but (given how political he was and how much of a touchstone it was for the counterculture in its years of defeat and setback and turmoil) i continue to love how jolly "bad moon rising" sounds

One thing I took away from this was how many songs are in E that I had always thought were in D - Bad Moon and Mary come to mind

D Major
The key of triumph, of Hallejuahs, of war-cries, of victory-rejoicing. Thus, the inviting symphonies, the marches, holiday songs and heaven-rejoicing choruses are set in this key.

D Minor
Melancholy womanliness, the spleen and humours brood.

E♭ Major
The key of love, of devotion, of intimate conversation with God.

D# Minor
Feelings of the anxiety of the soul's deepest distress, of brooding despair, of blackest depresssion, of the most gloomy condition of the soul. Every fear, every hesitation of the shuddering heart, breathes out of horrible D# minor. If ghosts could speak, their speech would approximate this key.

E Major
Noisy shouts of joy, laughing pleasure and not yet complete, full delight lies in E Major.

I think they tuned down on at least some songs?

If you mean that some songs were played in a different key from the record at the RAH show, no, all songs were in the same keys as the recordings. But if you mean “tuning down” in the sense that some CCR songs use a drop-D guitar tuning, then yes — “Ramble Tamble” uses that tuning (where the high and low E strings are tuned to D).

Haven't seen the doc yet, but I did read that the audio version of the set has apparently trimmed out brief moments of banter and guitar swapping, so perhaps that was also the case with the video of the show?

(xp) the latter

... actually no, I meant they'd tune down a whole step, if that's the right terminology.

As far as I can tell, CCR's instruments were all in standard tuning (lowest to highest strings): E A D G B E. On "Ramble Tamble" the tuning was D A D G B D.

The video shows Fogerty stopping to drink something between songs, and a roadie hands him a different guitar a couple of times, but the pauses are never more than a few seconds, and he never speaks to the audience until right before "Keep On Chooglin'," and all he says is "Thanks; this is our last song, it's called 'Keep On Chooglin''."

Got it, I was just reading on another forum someone complaining that some between song stuff had been "excised" on the audio release.

The Royal Albert Hall doc might have been a dvd release of just the concert in the 2000s, but it seems like they had to pad it with a documentary portion for Netflix. It's so flimsy though that it feels like someone created an AI prompt for "Creedence visiting European landmarks." Nevertheless, the show is a fun watch. The seated crowd mostly seems bottled up throughout until a handful of them lose their shit during "Keep on Chooglin.'" What a strange, powerful alchemy these guys had.

good to hear stu explaining how very different denmark is from norway tho

Watched the doc last night and christ, "Fortunate Son" is so amped up and frantic it sounds like the Feelies or something. Doug Clifford keeps pushing it faster & faster until by the end its like a hairs breadth from going completely off the rails. Fucking killer.

Damn, that lady in the front row losing it to "Keep On Chooglin'"...You only wish you could have as good a time as that.

Proud Mary definitely has some higher string jangle in the studio recording so maybe they used capo on the second fret for that, but couldn’t be bothered live

Damn, that lady in the front row losing it to "Keep On Chooglin'"...You only wish you could have as good a time as that.

Gotta say that whole audience looks very 1965, was expecting hairier hippies.

I say it all the time, most people didn't start getting really hairy till the 70s.

I've been looking at footage from Paris '68 recently and the men all have such short hair and are so neatly dressed.

It’s the royal albert hall, not the Fillmore west

The audience at the Oakland Coliseum gig are similarly not very hairy.

that’s what they call CHOO-gih-LIEH

it'll do

the guy who says great googly moogly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSAXLayoMKI

but instead he says great googly choogley

Meanwhile, back in the jungle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iTT8tIVTkE

should post it in a lebowski thread but "I love you, but sooner or later you're going to have to face the fact you're a goddamn moron" would be a great tombstone quote.

I've been on a big Creedence kick for the first time in a while, prompted by getting a nice copy of Green River finally. While listening to Sinister Purpose, I started thinking about an alternate version of the band by focusing on their apocalyptic/jammy side, like they were some lost blues/psyche band that released a one-off in 1970. So I constructed the following playlist, styled as a single LP:

Sinister Purpose
Side A
1. Born on the Bayou (5:15)
2. Sinister Purpose (3:22)
3. Ramble Tamble (7:11)
4. Keep on Chooglin' (7:40)

Side B
1. Run Through the Jungle (3:05)
2. Graveyard Train (8:35)
3. Gloomy (3:51)
4. Effigy (6:27)

The one track that might not fit is Gloomy, so I could omit that and go with:

Sinister Purpose
Side A
1. Born on the Bayou (5:15)
2. Sinister Purpose (3:22)
3. Run Through the Jungle (3:05)
4. Keep on Chooglin' (7:40)

Side B
1. Ramble Tamble (7:11)
2. Graveyard Train (8:35)
3. Effigy (6:27)

Other replacements for Gloomy were Bad Moon Rising (too jaunty) or 45 Revolutions Per Minute Pt. 1 (would add a little psyche).

no "I Put A Spell On You"?

Sinister is in E7 for the verses and goes to C7 for the chorus right ?

Or is it drop D

for me that’s not the “alternative version of the band” this playlist is the main side, the white-hot molten core of them

i might add suzy q and a few others

no "I Put A Spell On You"?

― sleeve, Friday, December 16, 2022 7:38 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I thought about it, but I need to give it more of a try. If it replaced Gloomy, it would push it over my single LP limit of 45 minutes.

Also thinking about another LP length playlist that focuses on their sad-sack side. Like how depressing are Someday Never Comes and Wrote a Song for Everyone?

^ add both rain songs to that one

and Lodi

Yeah, Lodi is pretty bleak.

I wish John had given into his instincts and pronounced “purpose” as “poipose”

The "depressing" CCR album should include "It's Just a Thought".

Ok, put this together:

Someday Never Comes
Side A
1. Someday Never Comes
2. Lodi
3. Who'll Stop the Rain
4. It's Just a Thought
5. Wrote a Song for Everyone
6. Long as I Can See the Light

Side B
1. Bad Moon Rising
2. Poor Boy Shuffle
3. Feelin' Blue
4. Have You Ever Seen the Rain
5. I Heard It Through the Grapevine

It's almost 46 minutes long, so if I needed to remove anything it would be Poor Boy Shuffle/Feelin' Blue. I guess Long as I Can See the Light is a little hopeful, but I still feel it fits - he's not sure the light will be there to guide him.

That first side is something else.

Excellent work all

I'd maybe replace "Grapevine" with "(Wish I Could) Hideaway". Fogerty sounds genuinely distressed (about his brother leaving the group), not just fatalistic or dejected.

I will give that a try. I honestly don't know Pendulum that well and Mardi Gras almost not at all!

Listening to the Someday Never Comes playlist on the way to work this morning and was struck by two thoughts:

1) Someday Never Comes is a more direct and less maudlin Cats in the Cradle; and
2) He makes Lodi sound like some outer plane of hell where crushed dreams and boredom reign.

I wish John had given into his instincts and pronounced “purpose” as “poipose”

I always hoid it that way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fQ85VjQhDA

Looks like CCR live rarities will be played on Fogerty's upcoming tour.

Getting ready and rehearsing for tour! Gonna bring some of my songs I have never performed live before. I think 'Effigy' might make the cut… @shanefogerty

What other songs should we bring on the road with us? 🤘🏼🎸

https://www.instagram.com/p/CqqZHhyvSHS/

I heard a song in a store today that I could’ve sworn sounded like a long lost CCR b-side. I couldn’t make out a chorus or much of the lyric though it ended with a repeated “get it on” refrain. After much internet sleuthing it turns out it’s “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” by the Hollies. The resemblance to CCR is uncanny.

and deliberate, it's from 1972

and xxp thanks for that, I should try and go see him

Seems to be a lot of Shakey on ILX today...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKRZc2M_zQA

Whole lotta Shakey Goin' On

How is it possible that I'd never heard of the UK's number one singles-selling artist of the '80s until now?

Saw Fogerty tonight - I can't remember the last time I've seen a senior-age father have so much fun with his kids. Two of his sons played with him tonight with one acting as second guitarist (rhythm with occasional lead) and it was pretty awesome watching them trade phrases at one point. Just prior to that, he played a song for his wife, and that was accompanied by a photo collage of his family spanning 30+ years - some taken at public events but most of them were clearly personal photos, showing things like family vacations, posing at home, etc. This was definitely a very close family and I came away from the show thinking he must've had an incredibly happy domestic life these past 30 years. (Perhaps more remarkable considering his falling out with his brother.)

Forgot, he also dug up a couple of great tracks off Willy and the Poor Boys - "Effigy" and "It Came Out of the Sky," arguably the two best that weren't put out on a single. Neither had been played for almost 20 years before this tour.

Thanks for posting - that set list is impossibly great. Just noticed that he's playing Saturday night at the LA County Fair in Pomona in a week and tickets are relatively inexpensive.

Was there choogling?

dammit no PNW dates, this sounds great

huh the red rocks date is listed as "the string cheese incident with john fogerty." the fuck is that on string cheese can fill redrocks with boulder douches any day, why are they in this

Was there choogling?

Hah, YES! "Keep On Chooglin'" was where Fogerty was trading phrases with his son for a good bit of the song!

Also should mention a few more things:

1) This is the first time he's touring as the legal owner of his songs - I think that made him extra happy as it was mentioned several times.

2) Also, for a good selection of songs, he played with a guitar he used at Woodstock, including at least one classic that he wrote on it - after CCR broke up, some kid went up to him and asked if he could have one of guitars, and Fogerty in an admitted crazy move gave him that guitar gratis. Then like 45 years later, his wife asked him whatever happened to it, and he was too embarrassed to say. So without him knowing, she tracked it down and wrapped it for him as a surprise Christmas present.

3) He told the audience he had a special guest bassist for their final encore. Turns out, he didn't go far to get them, only one more block at Rockefeller Center - it was NBC news anchor Lester Holt.

This two CD mono ‘Singles Collection’ sounds so awesome. Wish I would have got it before. Just like with the Stones mono box, the original mono singles just thump.

Cosmo’s drumming definitely has the Phil Rudd and Charlie Watts beat the beat into the ground. Drums sound so much better on these old 60s mono mixes compared to the stereo ones.

I just treated myself to this set and absolutely agree.

My whole family sat around listening to the difference between the remastered Spotify version of Green River and the mono single. Consensus was that the remastered stereo version sounds “more polished” but the mono version’s “got that dog” in it

After that I treated them to a 2-hour discourse on vinyl mastering which they all listened to in rapt fascination, best night of their lives

ok sold

what is the DVD material from?

also lol tracer, that was an xp so I could not properly appreciate your tart self-deprecation

but it's all true, mono 45s rule

I love well made compilations like that. Will be on the lookout.

is there DVD material? i just have the 45s.

the booklet that comes with it is sadly pretty useless. written like a beginner's potted history. surely anyone enough of a lunatic to buy this is Heavily Into Creedence and wants session notes, oral histories etc

ohh ok there is I guess a bonus DVD with the 2xCD set? which is what I got b/c cheap

Lol Tracer. Fwiw I would legit listen if you recorded that as a podcast

FWIW, Russ Gary (the engineer) once posted on another forum that the Green River singles are true dedicated mixes. The mono single mix for the song "Green River" alone really is amazing. Everything else might be folds though.

what are folds?

Mono mixes that are electronically converted from the original stereo, rather than being mixed specifically to mono, or "dedicated" to mono.

There used to be a button on stereo systems that would do this.

It was right next to the Loudness button iirc

My Bluetooth headphones sometimes accidentally do those folds sometimes. Really a trip when listening to Olivia Rodrigo or something else clearly not mixed that way.

Bluetooth sometimes seems to have a mind of its own imho.

In my experience

there's a mono setting on android - works pretty neat

Gonna listen to "Rude Awakening #2" all day brb

This compilation is on Tidal, and yeah, it sounds great. Might have to pick up a physical copy for the living room.

just ordered the mono singles comp, excited to hear it #deathtostereo

My Bluetooth headphones sometimes accidentally do those folds sometimes. Really a trip when listening to Olivia Rodrigo or something else clearly not mixed that way.

bluefolded

Late last night
I WEN FO WAH

So is the Hollies “long cool woman in a black dress” the uk’s best attempt at ccr style

It's definitely the most blatant!

Yeah. Im trying to think of an American band that ripped off the UK in a similar way

Nick Lowe had an excellent one with "Stick It Where the Sun Don’t Shine," but the Hollies' track probably gets my vote for the best.

That one is so shameless

Hunk of Burning Love definitely owes a lot to CCR.

As far as rips go.

Im trying to think of an American band that ripped off the UK in a similar way

Well there was that pop-punk vocal style that was sometimes said to coopt 70s UK poonk, innit

Every Nuggets track imitating English accents.

I assumed that wasn't a serious comment.

Don’t go ‘round tonight
Well it’s bound to take yo life
There’s a bathroom on the right

I've heard Creedence four times on the radio today, once in what was possibly a block of three or four songs in a row, which threw me off, because everybody knows today is two-for- Tuesday. Had to Google Fogerty to make sure everything was okay.

So you're saying that your radio station... kept on chooglin'?

Two-for-choogsday

Electric Choogaloo

Choogs your own adventure

lol

Just finished John Lingan's A Song for Everyone. Pretty good--the right side of serviceable, I guess. He had the cooperation of Stu Cook and Doug Clifford but not, surprise, Fogerty. One good thing is that the book gives due diligence to "Ramble Tamble." And the page on The Big Lebowski is good--never cared for it that much, but I may revisit. Think I'll try to track down some solo work from the other three.

The ending is even sadder and messier than I knew. I didn't know that John never visited Tom in the hospital when he died in 1990.

i had an opportunity to talk to doug and stu a couple years ago but my editor wasn't interested unless i could get fogerty too, very bitter about that still smh

That's kind of lousy. Doug and Stu were still half of this monumental band...they were there, every step of the way.