If you’re planning to meet me down on Peachtree, you’re in for a rude surprise.

Sometimes your brain says one thing and your fingers say another.  Or maybe it’s that you know something, but forget it.  Or just don’t dot your i’s and cross your t’s.  That’s not a cover of Little Feat’s "Oh, Atlanta" Alison Krauss does, but BAD COMPANY’S!

"Oh, Atlanta" appeared on Little Feat’s 1974 album, "Feats Don’t Fail Me Now", about the time Lowell George’s influence was beginning to wane.  Oh, I’m a big Billy Payne fan (listen to "Gringo" off "Hoy-Hoy!"), but Lowell was the genius, and the key albums are the two before this one, especially "Dixie Chicken"…with its incredible cover of Allen Toussaint’s "On Your Way Down" and the weary "Fool Yourself".  Play "Fool Yourself" for a musician today and he’ll look at you quizzically, or say EUREKA!

But this isn’t about the SoCal boys at all.  But that band from England.  Led by the singer with one big hit with Free and the guitarist who was an afterthought in Mott The Hoople.  On Led Zeppelin’s label, Swan Song.

Things were going in the wrong direction for Bad Company.  "Burnin’ Sky" had the title track and "Leaving You", but not much else.  It looked like the band was headed for expiration.  But they modernized the sound and returned with a vengeance, with "Desolation Angels".

Ray Davies wrote the ultimate "Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy", but that track is cerebral, it ultimately pulls at your heartstrings.  Whereas Bad Company’s classic goes straight to your genitalia.  There’s all that rock and roll swagger, when it was still about how you sounded, as opposed to how you looked on MTV.

Still, I love the second track, "Crazy Circles", more, with the acoustic guitar, straight off a Zeppelin album.  But Rodgers could "hmmm" better than Plant.  This is an incredibly vibrant track from a band that had seemed to devolve into plodding.  Still, there’s more swagger in "Gone, Gone, Gone".

The rest of side one kills too.  A tour de force, akin to the band’s perfect album, "Straight Shooter".

And just like "Straight Shooter", side two starts off with a tear.

You needed to deal with the preacher if you were a rock and roll fan, but this side opener on Bad Company’s second album made you give up your old deity for a new religion, ROCK AND ROLL!  STILL, "Lonely For Your Love" BETTERS IT!  Eclipses "Deal With The Preacher".  Mick Ralphs intros the song with a swinging groove that makes you realize what an integral part of the Hoople he was (they went downhill after he left).  But what truly stuns is Paul Rodgers’ vocal.  He sings the whole song like some woman is squeezing his balls, he’s in the upper register, you can feel the intensity as the guitars swirl.  As for the rhythm section…ROCK SOLID!

Side two has the disco-infused "Rhythm Machine", which you wanted to hate upon first listen, but then got hooked by.  Just like you loved the Stones’ "Miss You" and Rod Stewart’s "Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?" (yes, we loved it before we hated it, and Rod).

And right smack dab in the middle of side two is the original "Oh, Atlanta".

I’m not on my way back to Georgia.  But there must be something there…  Didn’t EJ buy a condo in Hot ‘Lanta??

And it’s this English rocker that Alison Krauss covers.  Faithfully.

Gretchen Wilson has gone on record that "Back In Black" is one of her favorite albums, that it was on every jukebox where she grew up.  You see the country musicians know their rock.  The influence is not only in one direction.

Meanwhile, Bad Company reunited a few years back…and almost no one cared.  Not sure exactly why, maybe because it was just about the music.  Not the drama.  There were no legendary personnel fights, there was no dating of starlets.  They can’t get back together again, Boz Burrell has passed to the other side.  But the records live on.

I’d say to start with the very first.  Flip over the disc, start with the first track on side two, not the legendary "Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love" that opens side one.  "Bad Company", the title, eponymous track, is the best thing the band ever did.  A complete western in under five minutes.

And be sure to listen to "Seagull".  And the remake of "Ready For Love".

From there go on to the second record, the aforementioned "Straight Shooter".  "Shooting Star" is as good a song about stardom as any.  And, the opener, "Good Lovin’ Gone Bad", is a tear.  Still, the classic retains its power…FEEL LIKE MAKIN’ LOVE!

Baby, when I think about you…

They’re waltzing through the desert, and then they…what can I say…WHIP OUT THEIR DICKS!  It’s not date rape, it’s your fantasy come alive.  They’re being all tender, and then they’re being completely MANLY!  That guitar kicks you in the gut.  Makes you wake up and pay attention.

And there’s the instrumental interlude.  How do you WRITE a song like this?

I’d go straight to "Desolation Angels" from there.  But, do stop for my second favorite Bad Company track along the way, from "Run With The Pack", "Simple Man".

It’s got the distant feel of Blind Faith’s "Can’t Find My Way Home".  The down home swagger of the Allman Brothers.  Still, there’s that one line that resonates, so simple, yet the essence of rock and roll, my credo:

Freedom is the only thing means a damn to me!

That’s what we’re fighting for.  To look at our porn on the Internet.  To get our abortions.  To be free from a government run by people who’ve abandoned their party’s principles.

Life is about getting along.  First in school.  Then you’ve got to watch out for cops, for the IRS.  And, I believe in obeying the law, but I understand why people drop out, and move to Alaska, or Montana.  They’re looking for elbow room, they’re looking to get away from prying eyes.

I am just a simple man working on the land
Oh, oh, it ain’t easy
I’m just a simple man workin’ with my hands
Oh, baby believe me

That’s what I’m doing, working with my hands.  It’s not that complicated.  I just heard all these records and they changed my life.  I don’t want you or anybody else to forget it…  The power of music, the power of rock and roll.