5-Song Playlist for a Sunday Afternoon
Led Zeppelin – Black Mountain Side (1969)
The Doors – Moonlight Drive (1967)
The Who – Going Mobile (1971)
The Who – Behind Blue Eyes (1971)
The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again (1971)
Led Zeppelin – Black Mountain Side (1969)
Buried in the middle of Side Two of
LZ’s debut album, recorded in 1968. It’s an acoustic instrumental with an “
Eastern” vibe, mostly due to the drone characteristic of the solo guitar and the use of tabla. Somewhat hypnotic, don’t you think?
Yet another song attributed to Jimmy Page, but is just a rehash of
Bert Jansch’s 1966 cover of a traditional Irish folk song called
Down By Blackwaterside.
Zeppelin may be
THE band that has ripped off
more music than any other band. But they did it
so well.
The Doors – Moonlight Drive (1967)
A quirky song from
The Doors’ second album,
Strange Days. Even when
The Doors were “phoning it in” with a conventional Blues arrangement, they still manage to be incredibly engaging. This one is notable for the bottleneck guitar of
Robby Kreiger.
Oh, and
Jim Morrison sure knew how to write lyrics that could lasso you in:
"Let's swim to the moon, let's climb through the tide, penetrate the evening that the city sleeps to hide."
The Who – Going Mobile (1971)
The Who – Behind Blue Eyes (1971)
The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again (1971)
The last three tracks from
The Who’s fifth album,
Who’s Next.
Going Mobile features guitarist Pete Townshend singing lead. Listen for drummer
Keith Moon’s exuberant drumming on the fluffiest track on the album.
“I don't care about pollution
I'm an air-conditioned gypsy
That's my solution
Watch the police and the taxman miss me
I'm mobile”
Behind Blue Eyes amuses me for the extended amount of time
Moon has to sit still and be quiet. The three-part vocal harmonies from
Daltrey, Townshend, and Entwistle are quite nice. It was released as the second single from the album, and reached Number 34 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Oddly enough, a cover of the song from
Limp Bizkit was released in 2003. Although it stalled at Number 71 in the US, it did quite well in other parts of the world. It reached number one in the Czech Republic and Sweden and charted within the top three in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Norway. Elsewhere in Europe, it became a top-twenty hit in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland while peaking at Number 18 on the UK Singles Chart. It reached number four in Australia and number five in New Zealand.
Won’t Get Fooled Again was released as the third single from the album, although edited down to less than half its length. It cracked the Top Twenty in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Netherlands, and Ireland.
It contains possibly the best ever scream in a rock song.
