Friday Night Jazz Swamp-Rock: John Fogerty

If you are a fan at all of Creedence Clearwater Revival and/or John Fogerty, then check out some of the tunes on Fogerty’s new disc Revival. 

The title — obviously referring to CCR — is his first new disc in three years. The sound is unmistakably Creedence with little bits of swamp rock, blues, country, folk and soul.

Fogerty is more than a "just" a great song writer; He comes in at #40 on Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.   

This is Fogerty’s return to politics with songs like "Long Dark Night, I Can’t Take it No More, It Ain’t Right, and Longshot.

For those of you who want a sample the work, Fogerty’s my space page has 4 streaming tunes from Revival. You can also see a few videos below (YouTube has tons of his earlier work).

In addition to CCR, I am a very big of the latter solo work: 1985’s Centerfield, with its chooglin’ one-chord jams. This is the album which led to his former label suing him, claiming that the songwriter had plagiarized himself. Fogerty eventually won the lawsuit.

I also really like 1997’s roots rock shuffle, Blue Moon Swamp.

Both of these are must haves for CCR fans. ($7.97 at Amazon — about time the recording industry figured out dynamic pricing).

The reviews of the new disc have been good: Metacritic has it as an 83 (Universal Acclaim). Here’s some other reviews:

"Full-bore return to choogling swamp-pop." —USA Today, Edna Gundersen

"Revival is no rerun. It is Fogerty getting back to work—and finally
acting on his own advice, in a song he’s actually named after his old
band: "You can’t go wrong if you play a little bit of that Creedence
song."  —Rolling Stone, David Fricke

"Fogerty’s muse comes fully alive, nodding gently to his estimable legacy while moving firmly forward."   —Harp, Fred Mills

"Still making his guitar twang, still singing in that rockabilly yowl,
John Fogerty is angry about the war, the president, American culture
and vanished youth on his new album, ‘Revival,’ and it just makes him
rock harder."  —New York Times, Jon Pareles

"Mr. CCR has created a masterpiece and Revival is unquestionably one of the ten best discs of 2007."   —Relix, Lou Friedman

Don’t take my word for it, there are enough streaming versions of the new songs to almost sample the full CD.

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UPDATE:  October 27, 2007 11:24am

An emailer asked about CCR’s work. For those people with a passing interest, you should at least have Chronicle, Vol. 1: The 20 Greatest Hits in your music collections.

More hardcore fans may way to get the Creedence Clearwater Revival BOX SET — a 6 CD set, described as "superbly remastered versions of all of their studio and live albums," which, at $37 bucks, looks likes a good deal . . .

click for the surprisingly upbeat:  "Don’t You Wish It Was True"

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Letterman Performance of Revival

Interview about the new album