Creedence Clearwater Revival

I realize as I get older that the generation gap is hitting me harder every day. Jeopardy can run a category on recent Grammy winners and I won't know one answer. Usually I hear of some musical act after they get arrested or make a home-made sex tape. I try to keep up with the kind of music I like, but it gets tougher and tougher for a guy who doesn't fool with downloading music (I finally have an iPod, but I'm wary of iTunes, instead copying all my favorite songs from my CDs. I know have close to 1,000 songs on it, not one purchased from iTunes).

So I continue to gaze back at the music of my youth. Just the other day I got Creedence Clearwater Revival's greatest hits. Now, when they were big I had no idea who they were, they were the kind of band I caught up with in my teens, after they had acrimoniously broke up. For a couple of years, 1969-1970, they were huge, the most popular American rock band, with hit after hit.

Their sound was antithetic to what most popular music was like those days. They weren't psychedelic by any stretch of the imagination, and except for "Fortunate Son," they weren't particularly political. Founded by the Fogerty brothers, Tom and John, CCR's sound was self-describe as "swamp rock," a mixture of R&B and roots rock. Most of their big hits contained imagery of backwoods romps, with bullfrogs croaking and the moon shining.

There first hits were cover songs--"Suzie Q" and "I Put a Spell on You," but John Fogerty ended up writing some indelible hits. "Proud Mary," "Bad Moon Rising," "Green River," "Lodi," "Looking Out My Back Door," "Up Around the Bend," "Who'll Stop the Rain," "Run Through the Jungle" and "Have You Ever Seen the Rain," all miniature classics. In the middle of all that they made an eleven-minute cover of "Heard It Through the Grapevine" that almost (but not quite) surpasses the original.

CCR's sound was a muscular one, with heavy guitars, a thumping rhythm section, and Fogerty's howling vocals, which are immediately identifiable. Over the years they have been heard in quite a few films, such as "Suzie Q" playing an important part of Apocalypse Now. Just recently Tropic Thunder used "Run Through the Jungle," which seemed to be both an honest use of the song and a parody of all the films that rely on classic rock soundtracks.

Things seemed to end badly for CCR. The group broke up and for years John Fogerty has been difficult about some things (during their induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he refused to play with his old bandmates). Also, as a solo artist, he didn't do CCR songs in his concerts. He was finally persuaded to when someone pointed out that most people thought "Proud Mary" was a Tina Turner song.