As you will remember, my Inno only caught the latter half of my XM show on the Loft last month.  Well, I just received CD copies of my appearance, and here’s what I left out.

1. "Spring Is Here"
Wendy Waldman

They’ve got this giant library at XM.  Where they have full-time employees feeding in data, ripping not only CDs, but vinyl too.  Then that material is available to EVERYBODY in the XM universe.  So, if you want to play a track NOT in the library, you’ve got to deliver the disc to the librarians, who input it.

They needed to input "Spring Is Here" from Wendy Waldman’s eponymous third album.  For, despite having 14,000 tracks in the Loft library, Mike didn’t have this one.  So, he brought in the CD.  He recommended starting off the show with THIS.  Since he knew how much I loved it.

When I run the world, Wendy Waldman will get just as much airplay as Joni and Jackson.

Start here.  The CDs are now available.  This is SO FAR from what they play on terrestrial radio today, yet so RIGHT!

Utterly timeless.

And inspirational.

2. "Fifty"
Tom Robinson

Played in honor of Mike’s 50th, which explains his absence and my appearance on the Loft.

This guy’s been forgotten, but that very first double album, "Power In The Darkness", it was good from start to finish in a way today’s CDs never are.

3. "Spanish Jack"
Willy DeVille

Mike turned me on to this.  Utterly magnificent.  Play it in the middle of the night in your one room apartment in Manhattan.  It’s got that city vibe.  Pregnant with possibility with a side of defeat to tempt you.

4. "Why Can’t I Forget About You"
Subdudes

In the seventies, I used to go to this roadhouse Cold Spring Tavern high in the hills above Santa Barbara.  An old stagecoach stop, in a glen of trees, just over the ridge from the ocean side, this log cabin featured bikers on their Harleys and bands playing earthy, country rock every Sunday afternoon.

If you’ve ever been to the country, if you’ve ever slowed down enough to be comfortable with your own thoughts, you’ll dig this.

This was never a hit on the radio, but it’s in my own personal pantheon.  Because it captures brilliantly the sense of loss you have after a relationship has ended.  You shared so much.  And maybe you don’t belong together, but the bond persists.

Discovered on XM too.  Which is why I became such a booster in the service, all these great tracks were sitting out there and no one was HEARING THEM!

5. "Face Of Appalachia"
Valerie Carter

When Valerie digs down deep and sings "APPALACHIA" after the break the hair stands on your back, you stop doing what you’re doing and pay attention.

Still, as much as I loved this track, the one that KILLED me was John Sebastian’s original.  Which someone e-mailed me about after I wrote about Valerie’s take. 

Read what I had to say at: Face Of Appalachia

6. "Your Gold Teeth"
Steely Dan

I meant to play "Your Gold Teeth II", from "Katy Lied", but chose this one by accident.

You see there’s a computer program.  And you scroll through the tracks, which we had alphabetized by name, and then drag to the top window what you want to play.  And, being in a rush, needing to catch a plane, I picked the wrong track!

I’m not a huge fan of "Countdown To Ecstasy", which this is from, but I LOVE "Katy Lied".  Played it on those rainy summer days…

But, did you ever notice how the aliens on the cover of "Countdown To Ecstasy" resemble both those in "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" and "E.T."?  I think Spielberg saw this record…

7. "(I Don’t Want To Love You But) You Got Me Anyway"
Sutherland Brothers & Quiver

I remember exactly where I was when I heard this.  On PCH just the other side of the McClure Tunnel one spring day in 2003, a couple of months after getting XM installed in my car.

I heard this song ONCE on the radio in the seventies and had to rush out and buy the album IMMEDIATELY!

8. "The Loner"
Neil Young

He’s a perfect stranger
Like a cross of himself and a fox

Now if THAT ain’t Neil Young.  And that’s what we love about him, the fact this alienated prick is the perfect us.  Someone who does whatever he wants, when he wants to.

Who knew this guy with the weird voice from Buffalo Springfield was so talented?

Most people didn’t come on board until "After The Gold Rush".  And although I love that album, really, my favorite is the very first.

The record starts out with the jingle-jangly "The Emperor of Wyoming" and then EXPLODES into this.  But "The Loner" is cryptic, just like its writer.  It goes from intense to dreamy, and back again.

I did a whole podcast on this record, you can listen to it/download it at: The Loner – Rhino Podcast

9. EASY TO SLIP!!!!
Little Feat

It’s so easy to slip
It’s so easy to fall
And let your memory drift and do nothing at all

Wow.

I bought "Dixie Chicken" because the reviews were so good.

Took me many plays to get into it.  But then I became ENRAPTURED and had to go back and buy "Sailin’ Shoes", which began with this magical track.

This was my bump skiing song in Utah.  Every day, I’d go up to Gadzooks with the assembled multitude, and when it was finally my turn, as we skied one by one under the chairlift, I’d sing this as I descended, for INSPIRATION!  To the point where others sang it too, even though they’d never heard the original.

It IS so easy to slip.  Not only on the ski slope, but in life.  Get up off that couch right now.  Leave your house.  EMBRACE life.  It’s going by SO fast.  Don’t let it pass you by.  Know that it’s tough, that you’ll feel confused, but you only feel alive when integrated with people, and the elements.

10. "Leather and Lace"
Stevie Nicks (With DON HENLEY!)

When I cut my record, which is never going to happen, musical talent is god-given, and I don’t have it, I’m going to call Irving Azoff and ask him to get Don to duet with me, AT LEAST do harmonies.

Stevie Nicks is a minor talent.  Here and there on Fleetwood Mac albums she shined.  But left alone, she just didn’t have enough good material.

On her debut…

The big hit was "Edge Of Seventeen".  I can’t even listen to that today.

The Petty cover of "Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around" is a killer.

But the essence of the album is this, "Leather and Lace".

It sounds like they’re singing in a dell.  In farmland.  Stevie is telling her story, and then from over the hill, from around the corner of the barn, comes Don Henley.  He sings:

You in the moonlight
With your sleepy eyes
Could you ever love a man like me

YES!  And I’m STRAIGHT!

Listening to this you know why girls all over the world lifted their skirts for Don Henley.  Something this pure, something this REAL, rarely comes alive.  And when it does, you just want to get CLOSER!

11. "Gasoline Alley"
Rod Stewart

Take me back, carry me back, to Middlebury College where "Gasoline Alley" came in a cardboard box from the Record Club of America and I removed the record and heard THIS!

You have to realize, this was before the Internet.  So often, the only way we could hear records that the press was raving about was to BUY THEM!  And you’ve got to know, when I heard this guy’s voice…hell, WAS IT A VOICE??

This is a fucking masterpiece.  Don’t confuse the guy who sang this with the sellout cutting standards.  Once upon a time, Rod Stewart was a god.

12. "Going To California"
Led Zeppelin

Sure, "Stairway" was great.  But I never really cottoned to "Rock and Roll", never mind "Black Dog" and "Misty Mountain Hop".  Rather, the essence of the fourth Led Zeppelin album for me was "When The Levee Breaks", "The Battle Of Evermore" and this.

I prefer "The Battle Of Evermore", but I played this, since soon I was going to get BACK on that big jet plane and fly to California.

13. "That Song About The Midway"
Joni Mitchell

Thirty years ago, most people only knew the cover by Bonnie Raitt, which is magical, but lacks the essence of the Joni Mitchell original.  The WISTFULNESS!  She had something, but then it slipped through her fingers.  Did she ever have him?  Was it really that good?  Oh, what a great sound this record has.

14. "Long Ride Home"
Patty Griffin

The live version.  Although I prefer the studio take.

Do you own "1000 Kisses"?  You should.

There’s no room for records like this on terrestrial radio, but there’s plenty of room for them in people’s hearts.

15. "All I  Want To Be (Is By Your Side)"
Peter Frampton

NEVER dismiss this guy.  He’s a HELL of guitar player.  The fact that his career was screwed up by Dee Anthony shouldn’t make you overlook the man’s debut.  When he was just another English rocker, and not a pretty boy.

This is pure seventies.  A six minute epic.  With a wave across the face riff, lead guitar noodling and an epic coda.

Oh, he recut it for "Frampton Comes Alive", but the studio original is best.

It was hearing THIS on the Loft that made me know Mike Marrone and I were on the same page.

16. "20th Century Man"
The Kinks

Unfortunately, Ray Davies didn’t deliver on his solo album.  Turns out he needs Dave.  You’ll know that when you listen to this MASTERPIECE!  Which somehow goes from country to pure rock over its six minute length.

This is the age of machinery
A mechanical nightmare
The wonderful world of technology
Napalm, hydrogen bombs, biological warfare

This is the twentieth century
But too much aggravation
It’s the age of insanity
What has become of the green pleasant fields of Jerusalem

If only someone could write lyrics like this today.  Then people would believe.

Oh, it’s not only the words.  That organ part two-thirds of the way through is the pure ESSENCE of rock and roll.

This band still means something forty years later.  And always will.  Because it’s not about hits, but great work.  And this is great work.

17. "Big Barn Bed"
Paul McCartney

I wouldn’t buy this album when it came out because of the sappy "My Love".  But I LIVED for the times I heard this track on FM radio back in the summer of ’73.

Listen to this and you’ll never say another bad word about McCartney again.  God, this guy’s got more talent in his little finger than all of today’s hypes.

I can’t even describe it!  What is it…the descending riff?  The harmonies that sound like there’s a ZILLION people singing?  Or the changes or the SCATTING!!

Who you gonna weep on
Who you gonna sleep on
Who you gonna creep on next
Weeping on a willow
Sleeping on a pillow
Leaping armadillo, yes

Oh, the lyrics SOUND stupid, but they’re not.

There’s such an unbridled JOY in this record, it’s completely infectious.  Don’t listen to it if you want to be depressed, because it’s better than Paxil, it will straighten you right out.

18. "County Fair"
Joe Walsh

When I heard this in that Steve Prefontaine movie I about plotzed.

Joe Walsh is seen as a joke, as a sideman in the Eagles, but once he was a star unto himself, deservedly so.

All the colors of the landscape are in this track.  Listen.

For the rest of the playlist, please visit: My XM Playlist