After doing ‘Better Man Than I’ with Scott Bittner, I got the idea in my head to do another Yardbirds song – the only question was which one? They had so many cool hits.

I finally opted for one from the 1966 album Roger The Engineer that featured Jeff Beck and his raga-like guitar (reproduced here with the help of a gadget called an E-Bow), but I kinda went for a bit more of a rockabilly feel for the verses – and added a Beck-ish solo at the end that recalls Beck’s time with the Big Town Playboys.

My band Nurse Diesel is known for taking certain, umm, chances with our choices of material – we’re a three piece band, but we often do material that’s a lot more complex than guitar, bass and drums. So when Diesel bassist Tommy Dolan and I decided to do a song we figured we’d get, umm, ambitious. So we figured we’d do half of The Beatles‘ 1967 Double A Side single, and made plans to do the other half soon.

In terms of composition, this is an absolutely fearsome piece of music. It’s hard to believe that such a forward-leaning piece of music was a Top Ten single. It shows that The Beatles’ audience was ready for just about anything by this point of their career. Fun song to record.

While updating my drum software a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that the update included a new drum kit they called ‘Levee.’ And that reminded me of a mashup that my band Nurse Diesel used to do, using the music from ‘When The Levee Breaks’ and the lyrics from David Essex‘ 1973 hit ‘Rock On.’ I had a couple of hours to kill this afternoon, so I ducked into the studio and did a quick version of it.

What the hey, right? This one should piss of the purists, but I dig it.

Here’s a song from one of my favorite bands – the title track from Mountain‘s third album, 1971’s Nantucket Sleighride. This one was suggested a while ago by my long-time guitar tech Rodney ‘Rocky’ Arnhold, so i decided to finally give it a go.

I learned a couple of things about this song while researching – the song itself is based on a true story about whaling ships and cannibalism (story here). And Leslie West apparently hated the song and didn’t want to record it. Lucky for us, he did.

After Mike Tirelli and I did ‘It’s No Good,’ we started talking about another song to do. We were talking about doing a song by INXS, and this one from the Kick album was what we landed on – but with a slight twist. It turns out that we’re both fans of an amazing performance that Terrence Trent D’Arby did with INXS at the Michael Hutchence tribute concert, and Mike went more in the TTD style than that of Hutchence. Nailed it, too.

Mike got his Holy Mother band mate Jim Harris to do the backup vocals – with a special cameo appearance by Mike’s daughter Violet as well. Thanks to all. Crank it.

When I posted that Yardbirds tune last week, I struck up a conversation with Bill Hafener (Finn & His Rustkickers) about doing a song. Bill suggested that he bring in the band and do a revved-up take on Bruce Springsteen‘s ‘Nebraska,’ done in the style of Social Distortion. So we completely flipped the script on how it’s usually done here – the band recorded a blistering live version of the track, and I took a guest turn on the first solo. This track kicks a whole lot of butt. Turn it up.

There are tentative plans for The Rustkickers to put out a slightly different version of this track as a future single, and if things go right I may do a slightly different guest shot on that one…

This one was a lot of fun to put together. This was the hit single from Michael Penn‘s 1989 debut album March, and you can classify this one as a guilty pleasure. There is so much detail in this song, and I tried to do as much of it as I could. It took 6 guitar tracks, 8 vocal tracks, a Hammond organ track and more than the usual amount of drum programming. But I got such a kick out of doing it, all that tracking was definitely worth it.

Scott Bittner suggested doing this 1965 track by The Yardbirds, but upon listening to it I thought the arrangement could use a little freshening up. I suggested styling it after 80s Power Pop, specifically a song called ‘A Million Miles Away’ by the Los Angeles band The Plimsouls.

Scott sings the lead vocal, and plays the first solo – which is a take on the solo from the Plimsouls tune. I did the second solo, and patterned it after the Yardbirds single ‘Shapes of Things’ (‘Better Man’ was the B side of the American single of ‘Shapes of Things’). I love it when musical worlds collide, and this one ended up being a pretty cool mix of Power Pop and Psychedelia.

Sure, ZZ Top went global in the Eliminator – Afterburner – Recycler era, but this song is from the Antenna album, one of the later records before they went back to more of the old school sound. This has always been one of my favorite Top tunes – still pretty heavy on the electronics, but all loaded up with BFG guitar tracks.

Confucius once said ‘Many hands make light work.’ Sounds about right for this 1974 Paul McCartney & Wings tune – this one breaks the record for the sheer number of people involved!

I approached Tom Collier (formerly of Grimm Jack, presently a host of Musings, Rants & Guitars on Youtube) about doing a song and he suggested this one. I did the drum programming and bass and sent it to Tom for guitars. I also reached out to Macca fanRich Forman, who supplied the keyboard track, and contacted Billy Kohout (Grimm Jack) to do the lead vocals, which were engineered by Joey Masters (who also added background vocals). Then everything got sent back to me, and I added even more background vocals and did the mix. Here’s the end result, hope you like it.

Some debut singles are a shot across the bow, and this one from Everclear‘s 1995 major-label debut Sparkle and Fade is exactly that – it goes from zero to ‘punch in the throat’ in the first 10 seconds and does not let up. This song has been on my to-do wish list forever (despite the near-impossible task of singing while playing that devastating riff), so I decided to give it a shot. After a couple of attempts that fell short, I asked Scott Bittner if he wanted to contribute a guitar track. Having a slightly different feel for the second rhythm guitar made all the difference in the world.

This deep cut from Aerosmith’s Rocks album came about when I asked Joey Sykes (The Babys) to do a song. After briefly flirting with doing a Pink Floyd tune, we reconsidered and decided on this one instead. And when I mentioned that we were doing this tune to bassist and Aerosmith fan Anthony Lombardo (Gypsy, Fearless), he jumped at the chance to lay down the bass track.

Joey takes care of the rhythm guitars (left and right on your stereo, while my track is in the middle) and the first solo, and I do the whammy freakout at the end. Joey does the Tyler vocal bits, I do the Perry. This track was a lot of fun.

Anyone who has spoken to me about music in the past few years is well aware of my love for Scottish trio Biffy Clyro. For my money, there are few bands on Earth who rock harder and still maintain a great sense of melody and humanity in their lyrics.

This song is from their 2007 album Puzzle, which was their breakthrough album in Europe. While they’ve gained popularity in the States over the past few years, my opinion is that they deserve to break through here and be as huge as they are everywhere else in the world.

This track features an old friend and former bandmate from my home town of Philadelphia, Bill Haney. When I approached him to do a song for the project, I told him that ‘left-field’ tunes were more than okay with me – and he immediately picked this deep cut from Cream’s Wheels of Fire album.

Bill sings it and plays all the guitars, while I did the drums, synthesized cellos, and my best Jack Bruce on bass guitar.

After working on two songs from the Sixties (‘My Back Pages’ and ‘Smile A Little Smile For Me’), Bob Sole and I were talking last weekend about what to do next. We decided to jump forward a couple of decades and do this Squeeze hit from 1980’s Argybargy album.

Bob sings the high (Tilbrook) part, I sing the low (Difford) bit.

This Queen track features members of my band Way Back When – Bobby D’Andrea on lead vocals and Gary Hyatt on bass, with Mike McKeon from the band Stagecoach on drums. We added it to our song list just before everything got locked down, so when we started talking about doing a song for the site this one was a natural.

This song has been rolling around in my head for a couple of weeks, since I was cleaning out my office and found a promo button for the single.

This is the best-known song by a Canadian band called The Pursuit of Happiness, from their 1988 album Love Junk. It was the meeting of two of the most sardonic characters in rock – TPOH front man Moe Berg and producer Todd Rundgren. The result was a deadpan lament about being a grownup, and it’s one of my favorite songs. I got a new piece of equipment this week, and while testing it the intro beat to the song was played, and one thing led to another. Turn it up.

Doom Davis and I racked our brains for the better part of an hour deciding what to follow up ‘Golden Years’ with, and after calling out 20 or 30 songs we settled on this Tears For Fears track suggested by my wife. This one was actually a few weeks in the making, with Doom ultimately laying down 12 tracks between his bass and vocals and the programming I did for the basic track.

A few hours’ mixing to try and catch the cinematic quality of the original, and here we are. This track was a blast to put together, hope you guys enjoy it!

I got the big idea to do something Rockabilly, so I reached out to my bud Joe Rock (Joe Rock & The All Stars) and he was kind enough to oblige. After batting a few songs back and forth, the final result is this Robert Gordon tune from 1977. We got real gone, man…

Catch Joe Rock middays on WBAB radio!

John ‘Doom’ Davis plays bass and sings for 70s Rock Parade, a band known for their spot-on recreations of 70s rock hits. When I asked him what song he wanted to do, it didn’t take him long to pick this Bowie tune from the Station to Station album. And he brings his best Bowie to the table on this one. He also laid down the funky bass and some world-class whistling.

‘Golden Years’ is one of Bowie’s biggest hits, but it’s a pretty odd tune. We stuck pretty close to the original, but we used more ambience in the mix, unlike Bowie’s super-dry 1975 recording.