Album: Credence Clearwater Revival, Chronicle, 1976
Acquired: I probably picked this up at the Little Creek Exchange as one of first five tapes. I stand by having made the acquisition.
Best Track: "Down on the Corner" (But that's a pick that will probably change by the time I finish writing this post. Of the 20 songs on this greatest hits collection, any band would kill to have 17 or 18.)
Lasting Memory: As I was driving to high school in December 1987 or January 1988, "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" was playing on the AM-only radio in the powder blue Ford Fairmont as a light, cold drizzle coated the windshield just enough to annoy but not enough to merit switching on the wipers that didn't have an intermitment setting. I remember thinking, "Somebody better start or stop this damn rain."
Or maybe that never happened. It certainly seems like it should have. Just about everything I or you has ever done has been done at some point with a CCR song playing in the background. Which has got to be a good thing except to the extent that we can hear a song so often that really stop hearing it all. Explain. Open your bluebooks. You have two hours.
When brothers John and Tom Fogerty and their friends Stu Cook and Doug Clifford formed a garage band in 1959, could they have known that they would wind up becoming one of the most important groups in rock history? A band both syncreatic and seminal? A fount of superlative adjectives for hack-y music blogkeepers everywhere?
No.
But as the undisputed but eventually resented leader of the group, John certainly understood how important it was to blend old influences with innovations and produce a sound that -- really for lack of a better description -- was the sound of America. Or at least that part of America south of a line running east fom Sacramento, Calif. Which is cool when you keep in mind that the guys in CCR grew up in El Cerrito, which is south of Sacto. QED.
After all my hemming and hawing about what to write about this band, I finally realized I can't tell you much you don't know already know about CCR's history, sound, or lyrics. Rather than bore you, I'll just throw out some interesting factoids I might be misrembering from VH-1's Behind the Music:
- Before changing their name to CCR, the boys called themselves The Golliwogs. A rose by any other name would not have rocked, after all.
- The Fogertys father didn't think much of music as a career.
- In 1969, CCR released three albums while also touring constantly. Take that, all you "exhausted" modern-day musicians and actors.
- Tom, among others, sued John for copyright infringement because some of the songs on John's Centerfield album sounded too much like songs John alone had written for CCR but credited to all members of the band. A federal court eventually ruled that an artist cannot plagiarize him- or herself.
- John, for as much as he rocks even to this day, just might qualify for induction to this ill-fated fraternity.
Editor's Note: Today's post not spell-checked or proofread for your derision.
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