Classic Rock Gold (2005) presents a variety of music from oddities like Jethro Tull’s “Locomotive Breath” to more well known hits like Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.” I’m fond of Golden Earring’s “Radar Love” with Brenda Lee “Comin’ On Strong.”
Included in this 2-CD set is one of my favorite songs by The Cars, “Just What I Needed.” That’s a song I replay a lot!
Our local NHL hockey team uses The Scorpions’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane” for their intro music to their on-air TV broadcasts.
Do you remember these songs? Any favorites here? GRADE: B+
TRACK LIST:
| Steppenwolf– | Born To Be Wild | 3:30 | |
| Santana– | Evil Ways | 3:57 | |
| The Guess Who– | American Woman | 5:07 | |
| Free– | All Right Now | 5:30 | |
| Jethro Tull– | Locomotive Breath | 4:24 | |
| Joe Walsh– | Walk Away | 3:34 | |
| Rod Stewart– | Maggie May | 5:45 | |
| Ten Years After– | I’d Love To Change The World | 3:44 | |
| The Hollies– | Long Cool Woman (In A Black Dress) | 3:17 | |
| Edgar Winter– | Frankenstein | 4:45 | |
| Elton John– | Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting | 4:54 | |
| Grand Funk Railroad– | We’re An American Band | 3:25 | |
| Joe Walsh– | Rocky Mountain Way | 5:16 | |
| The Doobie Brothers– | China Grove | 3:15 | |
| Golden Earring– | Radar Love | 6:24 | |
| Lynyrd Skynyrd– | Sweet Home Alabama | 4:41 | |
| Bachman-Turner Overdrive– | You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet | 3:52 | |
| Bad Company (3)– | Bad Company | 4:44 | |
| Nazareth (2)– | Hair Of The Dog | 4:10 | |
| Head East– | Never Been Any Reason | 5:10 | |
| Foghat– | Slow Ride | 3:56 | |
| Peter Frampton– | Show Me The Way | 4:39 | |
| Blue Öyster Cult– | (Don’t Fear) The Reaper | 5:09 | |
| Foreigner– | Cold As Ice | 3:19 | |
| Ted Nugent– | Cat Scratch Fever | 3:39 | |
| The Cars– | Just What I Needed | 3:45 | |
| Eddie Money– | Two Tickets To Paradise | 3:58 | |
| Cheap Trick– | I Want You To Want Me | 3:41 | |
| 38 Special (2)– | Hold On Loosely | 4:39 | |
| Red Rider– | Lunatic Fringe | 4:21 | |
| Billy Idol– | White Wedding | 4:13 | |
| Scorpions– | Rock You Like A Hurricane | 4:13 | |
| Whitesnake– | Here I Go Again | 4:38 |
While scrolling and scanning, I ended up with “Radar Love” by the Doobie Brothers, and I’ve been trying to imagine that ever since.
Jeff, it depends on whether “Radar Love” was sung by the old Doobies or the Michael McDonald Doobies.
Not a bad collection—“Radar Love” and “Long Cool Woman” are particular favorites—but there’s a lot of filler: Head East (as John would say, “headlining at Tulsa Memorial Stadium”), Red Rider, and not one but two songs from Joe Walsh? (Although, in all fairness, I think “Walk Away” is by the James Gang and not Walsh as a solo act.)
Deb, your comments lend credence to my skepticism about the word “GOLD” in the title. Too much filler dross…
I’ll pass. The ones I like (“Born to Be Wild,” “American Woman,” Elton, Idol) are vastly outnumbered by stuff I really never want to hear again (Grand Funk, Skynard, Cheap Trick, etc).
Fred, the strategy of many of these compilation CDs is “Something for Everybody.” CLASSIC ROCK GOLD is the result.
At first bleary scan, I noted only one atrocious song, “American Woman” by the (Canadian) Guess Who, all about how awful American groupies are to our poor put-upon sullen hippies (the extended cut opening with breath sounds indicating the sex the band resents having with the women so addressed). I’ve hated this song since it and I were new.
A lot of pleasant-enough work, on down to Foreigner’s (perhaps) most catchy hit. As a whole, feels like the soundtrack of an unimpressive bar, missing only the stale cigaret smoke and spilled beer.The Sanatana and the Cars songs are pretty much the best things here. I should probably ?refresh my memory of the Ten Years After song, as it’s the only one I’m not sure I’ve heard (but I probably have simply forgotten the title).
Todd, you’re right about some of these songs being “reaches.”
And I’m another admirer of the Hollies doing their best impression of CCR.
Todd, The Hollies are underrated.
Very sad how few are familiar to me. I missed my generation’s music apparently.
Patti, I was spending a lot of time in my vehicle in those days driving around so I heard most of these songs on the car radio.
Not a huge fan of this group, but then for some inexplicable reason I never liked Deb’s favorite “Long Cool Woman” or the Frampton. Most are OK. I prefer Joe Walsh’s “Life’s Been Good” but “Rocky Mountain Way” is OK too. I do like “Just What I Needed” too. By coincidence, we were watching the SNL show from 1978 with Christopher Lee as the host (which featured Meat Loaf), and there was a skit of a man being attacked by a woman in various grisly ways, to the soundtrack of “Cold as Ice.”
Jeff, remember when SNL used to be good?
Actually, that was a short film on SNL, when Gary Weis would do them semi-regularly.
https://www.onesnladay.com/2018/09/29/
“COLD AS ICE
“by Gary Weis- a woman injures & tortures Stacy Keach [uncredited at the time].
“— Oh, a serious Gary Weis music video. Ugh, I thought that type of Weis film was long behind us.
“— If anything, this at least shows how much I had been enjoying this episode until this point, as this film is the first time in the whole episode where I was truly bored.”
I certainly remember how good at times, and how uneven usually, SNL has been from jump. Though, of course, some seasons have tended to be worse than others, particularly the Doumanian and the first several Ebersol seasons, but no few Lorne Michaels-produced episodes as well. I generally enjoy “Weekend Update” and usually there’s at least a couple of decent sketches.
My favorite sketch in that episode, as I recall, was guest Christopher Lee as Death personified, visiting and chatting with a very young girl (Laraine Newman was the resident horror junkie in the cast, and campaigned for the role…not realizing that Gilda Radner had actually written the sketch, and meant to play the girl herself).
But Radner shrugged it off…mostly.
The one line I remembered exactly 46 years later:
Lee: “Ladies and gentleman, I’d like you to meet Loaf! What was that? Oh, Meat Loaf.”
Actually, Lee was quite good, played in most of the skits that night.
The absolute worst host that season, other than the old lady who won the “Anyone can host” contest and basically did nothing – and possibly O.J. Simpson, as we refused to watch that episode, – was Charles Grodin. The conceit was, he was shopping for gifts for the cast all week and didn’t have time to rehearse, so in several sketches he would suddenly break the fourth wall and talk to the cast member directly, asking what the point of the skit was, what was going on, etc. And it was painfully annoying and not funny.
Jeff, there were a lot of mis-steps in SNL sketches over the years.
Todd, the current WEEKEND UPDATE seems very uneven to me. Che can sometimes be far off the mark.
I believe he enjoys baiting the audience.