The lead singer of Eddie and the Hot Rods died suddenly earlier this month. The Rods were a kind of precursor punk band more or less superseded by the likes of the Sex Pistols when they came along. Their brief heyday was in 1977 when this song – released under the name The Rods – became their biggest hit.

The Rods: Do Anything You Wanna Do

Barrie Masters: 4/5/1956 – 2/10/2019. So it goes.

Murray Head first came to my attention when he played Judas on the original studio recording of Jesus Christ Superstar which was released a fair time before there was any stage production.

Say it Ain’t So is a song about fallen heroes and the phrase is supposed to have been uttered about baseball player Joe Jackson after he was implicated in a bribery scandal over the outcome of the 1919 World Series.

Another from Clifford T Ward. In fact the one I referred to in this category’s 147^th post.

Here’s Clifford in a live BBC TV performance.

Tull in their pomp. An acknowledgement of their bluesy origins in the intro leading into a complete rock-out and then one of Ian Anderson’s trademark flute solos. The mix of blues and rock also pointed to Prog Rock leanings but Tull always denied they ever purveyed Prog.

Edited to add. This video has the LP track overdubbed onto concert footage.

Last week Dr John died.

In his early years known as The Night Tripper, he never troubled the UK charts much. (At all? Well a no. 54 with Right Place, Wrong Time).

I featured Marsha Hunt’s version of Walk on Gilded Splinters – a song from Dr John’s first album Gris Gris – in Friday on my Mind 11.

Hunt’s single was weird enough but Dr John’s original – as I Walk on Guilded Splinters – is even eerier.

Here’s Dr John playing Such a Night live.

Malcolm John Rebennack (Dr John:) 20/11/1941 – 6/6/2019. So it goes.

Yet another from 1970.

The Guess Who were Canadian and had a first success with a cover of the Johnny Kidd and the Pirates hit Shakin’ All Over released by their record label under the name Guess Who, which effectively forced them to accept the new name. Their biggest hit in the UK (at no. 19 apparently equal to its follow-up No Sugar Tonight – which I confess I cannot remember at all) was, though, this song.

I’m spoiled for choice with this one. It was written in 1960 by Boudleaux Bryant and recorded by the Everly Brothers the next year but not as a single. It was an accidental hit for Roy Orbison in Australia when it became part of a double A-side but not a hit in the UK till Nazareth took it into the charts in 1975.

Dan McCafferty’s voice was perfect to bring out the song’s angst.

More Scott Walker (in case you missed him last week.) This time from the return of the Walker Brothers in 1975.

The magnificent No Regrets.

The song’s writer was Tom Rush. Here’s his original.

A couple of weeks ago I featured a song with this title. It’s not the first one that would have come to my mind when I thought of it.

That would be the following, side 2, track 3 on the album Led Zeppelin III, from 1970.

The title of the book I’m reading just now* (if you’re looking at this later than 26/1/2019 just put The Driver’s Seat into my search bar.) naturally put me in mind of this song, the only hit in the UK – another single in the Netherlands apart, their only hit anywhere – for the unforgettably named band Sniff ‘n’ the Tears. I doubt the book and the song will have anything in common.

*Edited to add: I’ve finished it.