Thanks to
@bennyboy for his ‘Night Time Radio ‘ playlist which I’m sure brought back a few memories for us all.
Next up is
@OB1 assuming I’ve got it right this time!
I’m looking forward to this ,as I suspect he has a substantial music collection.
A fair sized collection but who knows if anyone will like this offering:
That's a link to the playlist. Not much of a Spotify user. Is there a better way to share it? I can see you can add to profile or embed but what is the correct way.
I went with this song selection theme because the longer playlist of the same name that I have was the musical accompaniment to my lunchtime walks when the idea of doing these lists was first floated. Also, I liked the symmetry with my first pick on the Album Review thread. I make no apologies if this one goes down like a led balloon with some listeners. Sadly one of the tracks is not the version I am familiar with but it runs out one is not available on Spotify and it was too late to change for another track.
This play list takes its title and lead from
Led Clones by
Gary Moore, off the album “After the War”.
Moore wrote the song with Neil Carter, who had a spell in UFO and was a member of Wild Horses. Carter plays keyboards on the track, whilst the one-time Rainbow rhythm section of Bob Daisley and the mighty tub thumper Cozy Powell complete the band. Ozzy Osbourne guests on lead vocals and provides some Plant like wails in the mid-section.
The track is an ironic dig at bands who attempt to emulate Led Zep; especially Whitesnake, whose “Still of the Night” is namechecked in the lyrics. I didn’t include the latter song in this playlist on the grounds of potential over familiarity.
Zeppelin of course took a great deal of inspiration from the Blues and soon after this album, Moore himself discovered that musical genre and left hard rock behind. Here though he shows a whole lotta love to the greatest rock band to walk among us.
Borrowed Time by
Diamond Head.
This tile track from Diamond Head’s second album also features a West Midlands vocalist, indeed the whole band emanated from that vicinity. Lead singer Sean Harris gets a special mention because he once said that my use of (just) the side lamps on their lighting rig was better than the lighting technician they were using on their headline summer tour of UK venues in 1981. My best friends and I spent three weeks in the presence of the Stourbridge rockers due to being part of the support act Silverwing and their road crew. I operated the lights and shared transit van driving duties with the drummer and my best man to-be.
Although I roadied and handled the lights at plenty of Silverwing gigs, this was the only proper tour I went on: I started my career as an accountant after that summer, one that was full of great experiences: the bass player and I headed off to the US for a month’s holiday shortly after the tour ended. The DH tour was highly memorable, not least for the politically incorrect tales some of the far more experienced DH roadies had to tell.
We didn’t watch all of every show by the headliners, but this track was performed each night despite not having been released on record. I can still hear the main lick that often accompanied us loading the van. The song has an “Achilles Last Stand” vibe, and its chorus has the ability to become an ear worm after a few listens. Unfortunately, the stripped back earlier version of this song from a promo version of a Diamond Head compilation released by FM Records, a small independent label that the friend I went to the U.S. worked for at one point as an A&R man.
I also got a promo copes of a John Sloman solo album from the same source, which neatly leads me to
The Ballad of Crafty Jack by
Lone Star. This barrel-house tale with squishy synth bursts and speaker to speaker drums by Welsh rockers Lone Star is from their second and final album; the first to feature lead vocalist John Sloman. Sloman not only tried to sing like Robert Plant, he even copped some of his stage moves. He was quite a controversial choice. Lone Star were one of those bands I thought were destined for bigger things but couldn’t keep it together. They lost their excellent guitarist Paul “Tonka” Chapman to UFO as Michael Schenker’s replacement. I met Chapman briefly at one of the UFO gigs I was a backstage guest at on the aforementioned US trip.
Detective were another band that only released two studio albums but should have made more. Their debut album was released on Swan Song Records and was accompanied by rumours that Jimmy Page had played a part in its production. The sound on this moody rocker that begins with Bonzoesque drums certainly has an air of the great man’s work. The band featured ex-Yes keyboard player Tony Kaye and ex Silverhead lead vocalist and future solo artist, actor and DJ Michael Des Barres. This track is a good clue to the quality that had Jimmy Page recalling "They were good. That first album of theirs, it was really good. It should have been more popular, shouldn't it?".
Blue and Evil by
Joe Bonamassa This song about an axe wielding Smurf by the New York guitar virtuoso Bonamassa starts off gently, and then the band crash in with a metallic crunch akin to two fully laden pantechnicons colliding head-on at high speed. The main riff is Page like. The chorus has a whiff of Kashmir. The solo smokes like a Texan barbecue.