yeah Someday Never Comes is the most emotionally affecting song in their catalog - other songs are fun or angry or creepy but heartstring-tugging wasn't a thing Fogerty went for a lot (never wrote a love song etc) and he really nails it
― the choogler and the chosen one (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 13 August 2012 19:27 (twelve years ago) link
man is "Tombstone Shadow" good or what
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 13 August 2012 19:29 (twelve years ago) link
"Long As I Can See The Light" tugs my strings like "Someday..." too, but not to the same degree.
― Ermahgerd Thomas (Dan Peterson), Monday, 13 August 2012 19:31 (twelve years ago) link
for years i only knew "run through the jungle" as sung by lydia lunch
^^^
I think I might even have heard the Gun Club cover it as well before I heard the CCR version!
― Colonel Poo, Monday, 13 August 2012 19:35 (twelve years ago) link
yeah, Long As I Can See the Light, Who'll Stop the Rain, Have You Ever Seen the Rain?, and Lodi are all downers (in a great way though)
― wk, Monday, 13 August 2012 19:36 (twelve years ago) link
the problems with Sweet Hitch-hiker and Someday Never Comes = no killer hook on the intro, no great harmony vox on the chorus, no catchy lyrical hook on the level of "do do do lookin out my back door" or "rollin rollin rollin on the river".
― wk, Monday, 13 August 2012 19:40 (twelve years ago) link
Does anybody else feel like "Proud Mary" is the weakest of CCR's big hits? I've never liked that song - it's always bugged the hell out of me, in fact.
― 誤訳侮辱, Monday, 13 August 2012 20:21 (twelve years ago) link
My least favorite of the hits is "Travelin' Band."
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 13 August 2012 20:23 (twelve years ago) link
It's hard for me to remember what "Proud Mary" felt like to me before overexposure. It's not among my favorites, then or now. I actually still have a pretty vivid memory of hearing "Sweet Hitchhiker" for the first time on top 40 radio, heat of the summer, 1971. Love "Travelin' Band" although it seems like a pretty obvious Little Richard borrowing.
― Ermahgerd Thomas (Dan Peterson), Monday, 13 August 2012 20:26 (twelve years ago) link
Proud Mary is their most classic, so it's the most overplayed, and therefore the most annoying.
I still remember this horribly annoying commercial "Penske, Penske, Penske Toyota" http://www.bobray.com/Piercey_Toyota.html (link to audio at the bottom of the page)
I agree that Travellin Band is one of the weakest. Feels like it just benefitted from the momentum of the other singles.
― wk, Monday, 13 August 2012 20:28 (twelve years ago) link
It's weird that they had so many top 10 hits but never made it to #1. It would be interesting to see a list of all of their #2 hits and what #1s they were up against.
― wk, Monday, 13 August 2012 20:44 (twelve years ago) link
The best version of "Proud Mary" is the one by Garrett Morris
― He Wasn't Even The Best Drummer In The Rutles (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 13 August 2012 20:50 (twelve years ago) link
Five consecutive #2 singles, I never realized that. Proud Mary was up against "Everyday People" by Sly and "Dizzy" by Tommy Roe.
― Ermahgerd Thomas (Dan Peterson), Monday, 13 August 2012 20:56 (twelve years ago) link
yeah, here they all are
Proud Mary: "Everyday People" - S&tFS, "Dizzy" - Tommy RoeBad Moon Rising - Love Theme From Romeo and Juliet - Henry ManciniGreen River - Sugar SugarLookin Out/Long as I can see - Ain't No Mountain High EnoughTravellin Band / Who'll Stop - Bridge Over Troubled Water
― wk, Monday, 13 August 2012 21:01 (twelve years ago) link
apparently at the time billboard counted those "double a side" singles as one
I have no recollection of Henry Mancini ever being played on my Top 40 station!
― Ermahgerd Thomas (Dan Peterson), Monday, 13 August 2012 21:03 (twelve years ago) link
Only when both sides were played and when each received a certain percentage of the combined airplay. Each side had to have something like a minimum of at least one-third of combined plays. So I'm told.
Totally. It's a heartbreaking song, and my favorite of everything Fogerty ever did. I think it's underplayed today because it's a little too affecting for casual, oldies-style listening. I don't really get the idea that it doesn't have a vocal hook, and harmonies on the chorus would only have ruined the presentation of the song as one man's private existential angst. Pretty stellar choice as the last real CCR single before they called it quits, too.
― crustaceanrebel, Monday, 13 August 2012 22:23 (twelve years ago) link
I don't really get the idea that it doesn't have a vocal hook
Lyrical hook, not vocal hook. "Someday Never Comes" is a pretty weak line compared to their biggest hits. It doesn't have the sing along quality of "down on the corner", "rollin rollin rollin on the river", or "doo doo doo lookin out my back door", and it doesn't have the visual quality of "bad moon rising" or "have you ever seen the rain". And even though there's some assonance going on with "Someday" and "Comes" it doesn't quite have the poetic ring of lines like "run through the jungle", "susie q baby I love you" or "come on the risin wind, we're goin up around the bend".
But apart from all of that, I just don't think it's that great of a melody either. And it doesn't have any killer riffs like Up Around the Bend.
― wk, Monday, 13 August 2012 22:48 (twelve years ago) link
agree that it lacks a strong lyrical hook. doesn't have much pop bite, musically. it's a moving song, though. that's the hook.
― contenderizer, Monday, 13 August 2012 22:56 (twelve years ago) link
I like the song but yes it's a facile trope.
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 13 August 2012 23:00 (twelve years ago) link
facile trope wouldn't be a bad lyric actually. I can hear fogerty singing that and rhyming it with rope.
― wk, Monday, 13 August 2012 23:04 (twelve years ago) link
fogerty didn't write suzy q tho right?
― Jandek at the Disco (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 13 August 2012 23:35 (twelve years ago) link
Odd timing, but, even though I would have known most of the earlier hits, "Someday Never Comes" was the first CCR song I experienced on the radio in the here and now. On that basis, it still holds great nostalgic appeal for me (listening to it as I type, and it sounds really good), but if I step back, it doesn't rate with the '68-'70 stuff, and I like "Hey Tonight" and "Sweet Hitchhiker" better too.
― clemenza, Monday, 13 August 2012 23:37 (twelve years ago) link
Suzie Q is a Dale Hawkins song
― the choogler and the chosen one (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 13 August 2012 23:39 (twelve years ago) link
"Someday Never Comes" is simply a song about my parents undergoing a divorce when I was a child and me not knowing many things. When my dad left me, he told me to be a man and someday I would understand everything. Now, I'm here basically repeating the same thing really. I had a son in 1966 and I went away when he was five years old or so and again told him "someday" he would understand everything. Really, all kids ask questions like "Daddy, when are we going fishing?" and parents always answer with "someday", but in reality someday never comes and kids never learn what they're supposed to learn. -John Fogerty, 1973
― queequeg (peter grasswich), Monday, 13 August 2012 23:40 (twelve years ago) link
Nice quote. Someone was paying attention:
"My son turned ten just the other dayHe said, 'Thanks for the ball, Dad, come on let's playCan you teach me to throw,' I said 'Not todayI got a lot to do,' he said, 'That's okay'"--Harry Chapin, 1974
― clemenza, Monday, 13 August 2012 23:49 (twelve years ago) link
I wasn't trying to make any point about Fogerty as a songwriter, just why to me a song like Someday Never Comes is clearly not as good as their other, bigger hits. Which was all just an attempt at figuring out crustaceanrebel's question of "whether it's potentially familiarity with their hits that makes the other stuff seem lesser."
― wk, Tuesday, 14 August 2012 00:06 (twelve years ago) link
wiki says that "cat's in the cradle" was based on a poem written by chapin's wife, sandy. their source for that says she wrote the poem a year or so before HC began working with it, and that she based it on an unidentified country song:
"It was about a man and a woman sitting at their kitchen table and looking out to the backyard. They had a swing set and a sandbox and bicycle in the corner," she said. "They were talking about how it all went by so fast and how they could have spent more time, and now the kids are gone. That song put me in the mood for writing a lyric."
― contenderizer, Tuesday, 14 August 2012 00:07 (twelve years ago) link
The Dead does have a heck of a deep catalog of original songs.
Their 'greatest hits'.
Truckin' Touch of Grey Sugar Magnolia Casey Jones Uncle John's Band Friend of the Devil Franklin's Tower Estimated Prophet Eyes of the World Box of Rain U.S. Blues The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion) One More Saturday Night Fire on the Mountain The Music Never Stopped Hell in a Bucket Ripple
Ok, for original songs of note…not including covers for which they were known.
DealLoserWharf RatSugareeBrown Eyed WomenDire WolfNew Speedway BoogieBrokedown PalaceBlack PeterBerthaCumberland BluesChina Cat SunflowerShip of FoolsJack StrawRamble On RoseHe's GoneMississippi Half-Step Uptown ToodelooAlabama Getaway
These tunes are original ones that they would use to often go outward on with improvisation.
Dark StarPlaying in the BandThe Other OneBird SongHelp On the Way/SlipknotFeel Like a Stranger
As for the lack of 'hits', I think part of it was they never really played the game and then oddly left so many of their classic tunes to be done on solo records by Weir and Garcia, some with the band backing on some in stripped down company. Part of this as they were leaving Warner's in the early 70s to start their own label.
They got down to deeper songwriting a bit later and I would imagine their rep probably kept them from ever getting on much AM radio where CCR flourished. Even in the studio most of these tunes are more like 4 minutes plus too and I'd say the compact genius berevity of some of the Creedence tunes definitely helped them getting on the radio.
I'd say more than a few of the Deads songs have had a good life afterwards being played by other artists.
― earlnash, Tuesday, 14 August 2012 00:12 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah, I don't think the Dead ever wrote any songs that were top 10 material (apart from Touch of Grey obv). Casey Jones was the closest but I'm guessing the cocaine reference held it back. LIke for that reason it's not something my mom would listen to.
― wk, Tuesday, 14 August 2012 00:30 (twelve years ago) link
album tracks on Willy as strong as the singles imo: Effigy, Don't Look Now are of a piece with Fortunate Son
― Euler, Tuesday, 14 August 2012 00:44 (twelve years ago) link
New (Old) Warehouse Decree: EVERY FRIDAY is CREEDENCE FRIDAY
― one dis leads to another (ian), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 01:09 (twelve years ago) link
hate that Chapin song so much
― Romney's Kitchen Nightmares (WmC), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 02:19 (twelve years ago) link
you are dead to me
― contenderizer, Tuesday, 14 August 2012 02:42 (twelve years ago) link
it was inevitable
― Romney's Kitchen Nightmares (WmC), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 02:52 (twelve years ago) link
i love CCR but it has to be The Band.
― if i had a goat's cheese tostada i might cream myself a little (stevie), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 11:05 (twelve years ago) link
guys the point of this poll is so the CCR fans can get a W on the board. please do not vote in this poll unless you are voting for CCR I will be sad if they don't win, everybody deserves a win now & then.
― steven fucking tyler (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 11:42 (twelve years ago) link
love all these dudes, but at this point in my life it's the Band
― it's smdh time in America (will), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 13:44 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjBBDJ5OiT0
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 15:32 (twelve years ago) link
Adam I don't know what your display name means but it is cracking me up somehow, ty
― steven fucking tyler (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 16:25 (twelve years ago) link
dick's picks 28. it's a winner.
― thomp, Tuesday, 14 August 2012 21:14 (twelve years ago) link
Dick's Picks 3 + 10 are pretty good, although I'm not really well-versed on the late-70s. Dick's Picks 22 is just MASSIVE and really shouldn't be passed up on.
― spanky hotel frogstrot (how's life), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 22:08 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah, 22 is the Dead record I'd play for Velvets fans who think they hate the Dead. This thing could go toe-to-toe with The Quine Tapes (and I think it even has more feedback).
― Choogle Image Search (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 22:10 (twelve years ago) link
22 is the great loud 60s one right? maybe the earliest live thing out?
― thomp, Tuesday, 14 August 2012 22:13 (twelve years ago) link
this isn't that loud...it borders on actual rocking
it's like the Grateful Dead work up a little half-chub and Deadhead act like it's a raging boner
― Jandek at the Disco (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 22:27 (twelve years ago) link
i feel like i should change my display name to some laboured wordplay on your display name and the song 'mississippi half-step uptown toodeloo' rather than engaging with your point
― thomp, Tuesday, 14 August 2012 22:36 (twelve years ago) link
they have a word in common and are both p polysyllabic
haha do it!
― Jandek at the Disco (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 22:41 (twelve years ago) link
The former, yes. The latter, I dunno...but everything pre-'68 I've heard has been decidedly more folkie than skronky. This is skronky.
― Choogle Image Search (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 22:54 (twelve years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Wednesday, 15 August 2012 00:01 (twelve years ago) link