Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cosmo's Factory (1970)

After pretending to be someone else on Willy and the Poor Boys, Creedence Clearwater Revival (sometimes called CCR, or just Creedence) followed up that classic 1969 album with an LP that showed the band as themselves once again - a San Francisco Bay Area band determined to prove themselves as artists worthy of comparison to the trendier bands across the bay from CCR's hometown of El Cerrito, California.  The result is an album that offers up the band's usual selection of sparsely arranged originals and covers but also features daring, moodier and, yes, longer cuts to answer the Grateful Dead's long modal jams (this, ironically, at a time when the Dead were putting out LPs respecting traditional song structure).

Cosmo's Factory - the title refers to CCR drummer Doug "Cosmo" Clifford's description of the band's rehearsal space as a factory - retains the tight sound of earlier Creedence records, but leader John Fogerty explores various forms of pop beyond the band's roots-rock origins.  "Ramble Tamble," the opening cut, begins with Creedence's typical rockabilly sound but then evolves into a slow, burning jam that builds in intensity; by the time CCR are ready to make their way back to the melody and tempo they started out with, they're almost at the edge but pull back before going over.  Even more menacing on Cosmo's Factory is "Run Through The Jungle," a Vietnam War parable with apocalyptic lyrics as well as sound effects created with backward instruments, putting the listener in the middle of the war-torn tropical wilderness.  But Fogerty is too adventurous to limit himself to progressive experiments, as he balances experimentation with traditionalism; "Travelin' Band," a manic song about life on the road, recalls the excitement of Little Richard and Chuck Berry, while "Up Around the Bend" explodes with a bold, heavy guitar sound that makes heavy metal seem like child's play by comparison.

For all of the attempts at stretching out, Cosmo's Factory still has a worthy number of songs that stick to a purely traditional sound, from the good-time vibe of covers such as Roy Orbison's "Ooby Dooby" and Arthur Crudup's "My Baby Left Me" to their original Buck Owens pastiche "Lookin' Out My Back Door" (with some really warm hokiness in the scratchy guitar riffs and the absurdist lyrics), and Fogerty's commanding take on Bo Diddley's "Before You Accuse Me" is so durable that not even Eric Clapton could better it.  And CCR's own "Who'll Stop The Rain," a pensive folk-rocker that looks again at Vietnam, is a protest song clearly rooted in the traditions of Woody Guthrie. The overall sound of Cosmo's Factory is carried flawlessly by the guitar work of Fogerty and his brother Tom, anchored by as always by Stu Cook's well-paced bass and Clifford's wrecking-ball drums.

This sound comes together perfectly on the least likely piece of music - an eleven-minute version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," which challenged the Grateful Dead's mastery of extended jams and probably pushed the Dead to try harder.  Because for all of his efforts to expand his music here, John Fogerty kept his feet on the ground, adhering to rock's blues and country roots rather than straying too far from his own working-class origins.  And despite the ugly reality Fogerty dealt with (and still deals with) in his music - his own songs here have images of war and sorrow at every turn, while his cover arrangements bite just as hard - he still sees music as a healing balm.  "Long As I Can See the Light," the closing R&B-flavored song that sees hope beyond the horizon, makes the case for the honesty of  Creedence's music in spades.  

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Willy and the Poor Boys (1969)

Creedence Clearwater Revival were the Beatles of American sixties rock bands, so it's appropriate that they would record an answer to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Willy and the Poor Boys is a concept album of a fictional skiffle-rock band of blue-collar guys playing on the streets for pennies and nickels, and the album takes on the form of a street-corner show.  But Creedence's LP could not be more different from the Beatles' masterpiece, with its proletarian, anti-elitist dig against the American class system, as evidenced by the cover.  Instead of dressing in fancy uniforms and playing to celebrities in a posh park, Willy and the Poor Boys appear performing in a rundown neighborhood in Oakland, California in front of a nondescript grocery store, their instruments including a washboard and a washtub bass, their show appreciated by only three black children - the forgotten people of America.  Band leader John Fogerty, as Willy, had no time playing to the cool kids or the "in" crowd. This is a record where the band members aren't asking themselves how it feels to be among the beautiful people. They're too busy speaking to and for the salt of the earth.  (Most of the music on this album isn't played on acoustic and homemade instruments, of course, so, as with Sgt. Pepper, a suspension of disbelief is required.)

Willy and the Poor Boys opens with an introduction to this fictional band with "Down On the Corner," a steady gritty rocker that celebrates the ease of making music from the most basic elements, with only a modest request for a nickel.  Then the group tears into a collection of straight rockers, blues numbers, a few traditional tunes, and some astute social commentary that made Fogerty and his bandmates (his brother Tom on rhythm guitar, bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford)  working-class heroes before John Lennon himself coined the phrase.  The emotional connection to Americana comes through in their spiritual, even soulful interpretations of Leadbelly's "Cotton Fields" and the traditional work ballad "The Midnight Special," simultaneously highlighting the dignity of work and disrespect for the worker.

John Fogerty's own laments more than capture the feel of these old standards; "Feelin' Blue" is a slow lament of a downtrodden soul, while "Don't Look Now" is a prayerful, muted paean to the working men who mine the coal and plow the land to support civilization.  But while their are many moments of levity here, such as the skiffle instrumental "Poorboy Shuffle" (in which Creedence play the instruments they are shown playing on the LP's cover), John Fogerty's best compositions on Willy and the Poor Boys cut and draw blood.  "It Came Out of the Sky," a tale of a farmer witnessing the landing of an unidentified flying object, bristles with growling guitars and heavy drums.  The song pointedly satirizes people's attempts to interpret the incident described and use it to their own advantage  and pitiless put-downs of the political and media elites.  (Then-Vice President Spiro Agnew and then-California governor Ronald Reagan are lampooned for their foolishness, and even Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid of CBS News don't escape ridicule.)

Fogerty's biggest slashes are what makes Willy and the Poor Boys a great album.  Thinly disguised as a standard anti-war song, "Fortunate Son" surges with metallic fury against a class system that sends the poorest young men to fight in Vietnam while the rich and powerful children stay home, including the San Francisco hippies in the Vietnam era that came from affluent families (the Fogerty brothers and their bandmates grew up in a blue-collar section of a Bay Area suburb).  Willy and the Poor Boys closes with "Effigy," a harrowing, terrifying guitar rocker that is the album's "A Day In the Life."  It chronicles a firestorm destroying everything in its path, representing the dissolution of America into a morass of violence, bigotry and revenge ("Silent majority weren't keepin' quiet anymore," Fogerty says, referring to the famous line Richard Nixon used to describe the disgruntled Middle America voters who supported him).  Both songs remain relevant today; Fogerty foresaw the common man lost in the ugliness of what America was becoming and railed like an Old Testament prophet as only a working-class rocker could.  "Effigy" doesn't end on a crashing chord like "A Day In the Life" does; long before it slowly fades out, the end has already come to pass.

I hope you have enjoyed the show.  

Music Video Of the Week - November 11, 2016

"Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)