John Fogerty - Revival

Artist : John Fogerty

Title : Revival (2007)

Genre : Rock

Rating : ***** ***½ (out of 10*)

This Week I'm Listening To...
The album's title is "Revival" and Track 3 is called "Creedence Song". That will pretty much clue you in as to what this album's about. If you were a CCR enthusiast back in the 60's/70's, you're gonna like the music on Revival.

FWIW, this album came out on 02 October, the same day as Bruce Springsteen's "Magic", and Annie Lennox's "Songs of Mass Destruction". All in all, a great day for classic rockers.

What's To Like...
The lyrics are excellent. The guitar-playing is excellent. Fogerty's voice is still good. All the songs rock. The CCR sound is back.

What's Not To Like...
There's no new ground being covered here. The longest song is 4½ minutes, so you don't have any epics, like "Heard It Through The Grapevine".

Most of the negative reviews bemoan the fact that there are two overtly political songs on the album (Long Dark Night and I Can't Take It No More).

(I'm) Sick & Tired Of Your Dirty Little War; I Can't Take It No More...
Once upon a time; way, way back in the 1960's, Rock & Roll was rife with groups singing protest songs. This included , Country Joe & The Fish, The Doors, John Lennon, and yes, it also included CCR (see Fortunate Son). And the radio stations were forced to play these songs, due to their immense popularity.

Then the war ended, Tricky Dicky got his a$$ kicked out of the White House, and company-mandated random drug tests seriously curtailed partaking of the sacred weed and other assorted hallucinogens.

Meanwhile, Rock & Roll got replaced with weak, tame, pop music. Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, and Janice Joplin found themselves pushing up daisies. The record companies then started telling us that Foreigner and Steely Dan were cutting-edge R&R, and those who couldn't remember the 60's believed that malarkey.

But the truth is, Rock & Roll is, and has always been, inherently counter-culture. Before the Beatles, Elvis was offending the establishment; and even before him, Frank Sinatra was viewed as being a bad influence on impressionable teenagers. So it goes.

Now we have a major a$$hole for President, who invades countries based on known-to-be lies and doesn't care a whit that almost 4,000 of America's finest young people have died for his right-wing politics. Since Dubnutz apparently didn't get the message in last year's congressional elections, I for one am glad that Rock & Roll is once again proclaiming that we're sick and tired of his dirty little war.

But I digress. Revival is a great album. Fogerty's probably too old of a geezer for this to get much airplay. But as long as poeple like him keep getting out the anti-war message, there is hope that we aren't totally doomed to having Hannah Montana shoved down our throats.