I know, I know, I’m late to the party.<\/p>\n
On my second trip over the hill today, from Sherman Oaks to Santa Monica, I heard Fleetwood Mac’s "Rattlesnake Shake" on SiriusXM.<\/p>\n
Felice complained that her presets were screwed up.\u00c2\u00a0 So I was checking them out.\u00c2\u00a0 I was in her car, since mine was now in the shop and I had to go back to Santa Monica to discover whether I’d left my cell phone in my house or at Subaru of Santa Monica or on the bus or…<\/p>\n
You can’t live without a cell phone anymore.\u00c2\u00a0 This occurred to me when Subaru of Sherman Oaks told me they’d call me. Where?\u00c2\u00a0 I was not gonna be home all day tomorrow.\u00c2\u00a0 The naked feeling of driving without a cell is bad enough, but what if you really need to use it?\u00c2\u00a0 They said they’d call me when a loaner became available…\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, how would they reach me?\u00c2\u00a0 If I borrowed Felice’s car to go to James’s studio in Glendale, which was the original plan, but…<\/p>\n
And thinking about all this, wondering how to play it all out, and I’m a planner if nothing else, to the point where sometimes I find it hard to move, because I’m afraid of making a mistake, I keep pushing the SiriusXM buttons.\u00c2\u00a0 And even though I’ve been on the freeway for a long time at this point, they’re still playing the same damn Fleetwood Mac song on Deep Tracks.<\/p>\n
It’s obviously live.\u00c2\u00a0 And at first it seemed a bit garage-bandy, which is why I did not stay there.<\/p>\n
But now that I was on the off ramp at Cloverfield\/26th, the song had slowed down and I was enraptured.\u00c2\u00a0 This was obviously Peter Green, the legendary Peter Green.<\/p>\n
And the track kept getting better and better.\u00c2\u00a0 I was reminded of the blues rock era, of the days of innovation, when one track could take up an entire album side.<\/p>\n
And I thought how even though this track was at least forty years old, it was new to me.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what’s great about great music, it’s a land mine, just waiting for you to discover it and get blown up.<\/p>\n
And I come home and start Googling and clicking on YouTube clips and checking allmusic.com and EVENTUALLY, I find the version of "Rattlesnake Shake" I heard on the radio.<\/p>\n
Not the live YouTube clip from the Playboy show, with Hef and Barbi Benton doing the introduction of a truly live cut.<\/p>\n
Not the version done by Bob Welch and Mick Fleetwood.<\/p>\n
Not any version on Spotify.\u00c2\u00a0 Not any version on Rhapsody.\u00c2\u00a0 But the one on Napster.\u00c2\u00a0 From the 2002 album of a February 1970 Boston Tea Party concert, "The Vintage Years Live".<\/p>\n
You can hear it here:<\/p>\n
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