Songs you haven't heard for ages

When I was 15 I bought a 1970 double vinyl album by Stefan Grossman, The Ragtime Cowboy Jew (sorry to the woke folk out there, but that's what he called it). I loved it, but it was an odd mix of blues/ragtime guitar (including two great tracks with Son House on vocals) and original, full band songs in more of a folk/rock style. I've looked for it on Spotify many times, but it's not there, so I was pleased to see a CD version on Amazon. It arrived today and I've played it through, a great nostalgia trip. Whilst it is claimed to be digitally remastered, it sounds very like it has been re-recorded from the vinyl, but the quality is not bad. So good to hear it again after all this time. Now I'm wondering where my vinyl copy went.

Silly Sisters

This one

Cool tune. One of the first records I owned was Santana 3. I think I got it the way many of us got our first records -- I taped a penny to the Columbia House card that was stuck in the TV guide and sent it off. A few weeks later a box containing 11 LPs showed up in the mail.

I think it took me ten years to pay that off.

Anyway, I've been buying Santana records ever since.

(Sorry bassngtr, I don't know what happened to your quote!)

Years ago (8-10?), the last time I was in a band, we were playing at the bass player's annual Labor Day party. After one of our sets this guy came up to me, telling me how much he enjoyed a song we did (The Troggs: "Love Is all Around"). He said "I haven't heard that songs in years... I love that song!"

To put this comment in its proper perspective, our arrangement of that song was nothing special, and we were definitely not a Pro band. And, to further downgrade our rendition, this was the one song that the band allowed me to sing in public. (About my vocal ability: I started singing while playing when I was learning how to play my first song. However, I never kept up with it because my voice sucks. In my head it sounds like I'm singing in key, but in reality I can't sing in any key! Even simple back-up vocals sound bad; I mean REALLY bad. The only time I got to sing was during practice if we were working on a new song and no one else knew it well enough to sing; at least we'd have some vocals while we worked on the song.)

So, the fact that playing (not very well) a rarely-heard song that I chose evoked memories and feelings in an audience member, so much so that he felt that he had to let me know about it, was to me the best compliment I ever received. There was no "Great Job" for the guitar playing of this hack rhythm guitarist, and not a word about my vocals, but it made me feel good to know that there were people out there who appreciated my song selection. I never understood, with SO MANY great rarely-played songs out there, why bands seem to keep playing the same songs. I realize that audiences want to hear the big hits. I also realize that while a guitarist might really love a mostly-unknown song with a cool riff by a popular band, if the song wasn't "radio-friendly" the audience probably doesn't want to hear it. That said, there are tons of old songs that got plenty of airplay at the time, were fairly popular and liked, but over the years were replaced by newer music and rarely played on the radio again. These are the songs that I'd love to play, and I'm STILL looking for other people who want to play them too!