Rock + Alternative

Recently at The Dowsers, we had Dale Crover of sludge-rock titans The Melvins make us a playlist of his favorite drummers to coincide with the release of the bands double-album opus A Walk with Love & Death. Now, it’s bandmate Buzz “King Buzzo” Osborne’s turn to salute his six-string heroes: Of course, I could fill countless playlists with the likes of Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Billy Gibbons, and Jimmy Page but that would be too easy. Everyone likes those guys. Here are a few guitar players that are interesting to me and not necessarily in a “traditional” guitar-hero sense. As a thinking and working guitar player, I find all of these guys extremely inspirational.—Buzz Osborne, The MelvinsJames Honeyman-Scott, The Pretenders: "Tattooed Love Boys" Love the solos on this and his cool use of harmonics. It’s a pity he ODed. Lord knows where he could have taken his guitar.Dave Shepherd, Weedeater: "Weed Monkey"Shep has a way of dragging out the riff that I love. Weedeater to me are what Flipper would sound like if they played heavy metal. Shep’s a huge part of that. It’s in his hands and attitude and I’m a big fan.Jon Spencer and Neil Hagerty, Pussy Galore: "Dick Johnson"I think Jon Spencer is the most underrated guitar player out there. Once again, it’s all in the attitude. This song is perfect. (I included Neil Hagerty on this because I don’t know who plays what.)Dave Davies, The Kinks: "Attitude" (One for the Road live version)Daves guitar makes this song. What a great riff! No one ever talks about Daves guitar playing and they never talk about this song, which is one of their best.David Hidalgo, Los Lobos: "Viking"Los Lobos are the most eclectic band from L.A. and Davids guitar playing is an essential part of this. Also, his work with the Latin Playboys is some of the best music ever made. I’ve seen Los Lobos countless times and I’ve never seen them play a bad show. It doesn’t get any better.Eddie Hazel, Funkadelic: "Hit it and Quit it"Eddies solo at the end of this song buries me every time. One of my all time favorites ever. Tragic early death of a supersonic talent.Ron Emory, T.S.O.L.: "Weathered Statues"This stuff was very refreshing when it came out in the early 80s. I’ve always thought Ron’s playing on this song was electric, and a nice change from the “hardcore” that seemed to boringly dominate everything at the time. Huge inspiration.Ted Falconi, Flipper: "I Saw You Shine"I have no idea what Ted’s playing most of the time and it doesn’t matter. Without Ted, Flipper it wouldn’t work. Flipper is one of the best bands ever.Andy Gill, Gang of Four: "Paralysed"This is the first song I ever heard by these guys and Andy Gills guitar playing worked its way into my brain and never came out.Robin Trower: "Bridge of Sighs"Yes, he sounds like Hendrix—but who cares? This is one of the most soulful songs ever, and it’s the right tempo! I saw him once in the early 80s and he toasted two Fender Twin reverbs during the last song. Smoke and fire.Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Ward Dotson, The Gun Club: "Ghost on the Highway"I listed both of these guys because I have no idea who plays what on this and I love it either way. An amazing song on one of my favorite albums. I’ve listened to this at least once a week for well over 20 years.Captain Sensible, The Damned: "Smash it Up Parts 1 & 2"Severely underrated guitar player. Don’t skip the first part of this song. Saw them in the early 80s and it remains one of my favorite memories of live music. I never tire of The Damned.Greg Sage, Wipers: "When It’s Over"My God… nothing describes the hopelessness that was and probably is the Northwest better than this guy. I still get chills every time I hear this song. The Wipers aren’t given the attention they deserve and Greg Sage is one of the best guitarists ever.

If you’re a fan of excellently crafted folk-rock and you’re not spinning Bidin’ My Time, Chris Hillman’s first album in over a decade, you have to change this. Featuring fellow former Byrds Roger McGuinn and David Crosby, the nostalgia-kissed collection very much is a meditation on The Byrds’ unique legacy. When you really think about it, the breadth of recordings linked to everybody who passed through the Byrds between 1964 and 1973 is downright astonishing—in addition to those already mentioned, there’s Gene Clark, Gram Parsons, Clarence White, and roughly a half-dozen others.Crosby, for example, is a key link between the folk-rock boom of the ’60s and the following decade’s singer-songwriter movement. After all, on top of co-founding the supergroup CSN(Y), he produced Joni Mitchell’s debut, Song to a Seagull, and provided harmonies to Jackson Browne’s masterfully minimal 1972 self-titled album. At the same time, cosmic American music pioneer Gram Parsons—who helped turn The Byrds into a country-rock outfit with 1968’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo—was equally active, helming two pivotal groups in the International Submarine Band and The Flying Burrito Brothers (the latter with Hillman and original Byrds drummer Michael Clarke). He also partied hard with Keith Richards and, as legend has it, sings backup on “Sweet Virginia,” the drunken, shit-kicking anthem from Exile on Main St. Even a lesser known Byrd like Kevin Kelley—who filled the drummer’s chair for most of 1968—really got around. Before joining The Byrds, he played with the Rising Sons, an absurdly ahead-of-their-time blues-rock act co-founded by Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder, while afterwards he appeared on The Yellow Princess, an album from American primitive guitarist John Fahey, and did some recording with the mystical, singer-songwriter visionary Judee Sill.As one would expect, such an expansive lineage reaches clear across the rock music spectrum, yet as our playlist captures, there are several central themes running throughout The Byrds’ universe. Revisit their original albums (even the spotty ones have moments of sheer brilliance), and what you’ll notice is the music rests upon a cluster of overlapping tensions: tradition versus futurism, earthiness versus the cosmic, simplicity versus virtuosity. After all, here is a band that within a span of 12 months in the 1968 zone explored abstract synthesizer music (“Moog Raga”) and covered The Louvin Brothers’ Southern gospel tune “The Christian Life.” Yet oftentimes these tensions can be found in a single song, like how their landmark version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” wraps pastoral folk balladeering in the crisp, soaring aesthetic of the jet age or the way the late guitar genius Clarence White shades the John Coltrane-inspired psych-rocker “Eight Miles High.” Check the live version from 1970’s (Untitled) with mind-bending solos grounded in his scorching bluegrass picking.Jump to the seemingly endless network of solo albums, projects, and guest appearances spawned by The Byrds, and the very same tensions pop up. The epic “Some Misunderstanding,” from Gene Clark’s 1976 spiritual masterpiece No Other, sounds like country-rock—if it were recorded inside a black hole. Though not nearly as dark and brooding, The Flying Burrito Brothers’ “Sin City,” one of the landmarks of cosmic American music, also achieves a sublime balance of rootsy twang and spacey splendor. And then there’s a piece like “Have You Seen the Stars Tonite” from Paul Kantner and the Jefferson Starship’s seriously underrated Blows Against the Empire; it may only be tangentially related, yet it does feature Crosby’s high, ghostly voice and ethereal strum in service of a song that uses folk-based music as jumping off point for some galactic-scale rock.Over 50 years after The Byrds first took to flight, these tensions still grip them. Simply check out the sublime version of Gene Clark’s early composition “She Don’t Care About Time” on Hillman’s Bidin’ My Time. Everything about Hillman’s version—his dusty, time-weathered voice, the simple, heartland arrangement and throwback guitar jangle—reflect a man looking back on life and embracing his mortality. And yet, if you dig into Clark’s esoteric poetry, it’s a whole other story: This isn’t a mere love ballad; it’s a near-religious meditation on the infinite and universal. Perhaps the reason why The Byrds have meant so much to us through the years is this singular ability to, however tenuously, bring the earthbound and heavenly closer together, even if only for a song.

Chances are it will never become a national holiday unless Jack White is elected president, a possibility that may not be so far-fetched given the universe we now live in. Regardless, Record Store Day has fast become one of the most cherished events on the calendar for a growing swath of music lovers. Back when it began in 2007, the event’s humble ambition was to celebrate the musical ecosystem fostered and sustained by the nearly 1,400 independent record stores in the U.S. But little did the participants know that vinyl sales were about to boom, making an unlikely climb from 1.88 million units in 2008 to 13.1 million last year. So what if the top-selling vinyl LP last year was by Twenty One Pilots? Nothing can spoil the sweetness of this comeback, not with new record stores becoming the surest sign of a gentrifying neighbourhood.Meanwhile, the number of special releases for Record Store Day has grown nearly as dramatically. Ranging from instantly covetable seven-inch singles to ridiculously lavish box sets—and from long out-of-print albums by heritage acts to obscurities by new favourites—the massively diverse slate for this year is another embarrassment of riches. To whet your proverbial whistle, here’s a selection of tracks from this years Record Store Day releases that can be yours. That is, of course, if you happen to be in the right store at the right time. Quantities range from the 5,000 copies for the new edition of David Bowie’s BOWPROMO—a long AWOL EP originally released as a teaser for Hunky Dory—to the mere 200 copies for an exclusive split single on Captured Tracks by Alex Calder and Homeshake, all proceeds for which go to the International Refugee Assistance Project. It’s up to you how to spend those dollars on Record Store Day, but make ‘em count.

In July of 1967, The Monkees dropped what would quickly become their fourth top-five single in just under a year. At first blush, “Pleasant Valley Sunday” is a lot like its predecessors: a hummable gem powered by finger-snapping swing and tumbling folk jangle over which fly pleading harmonies anchored by Micky Dolenz’s nervy soulfulness. There’s a nifty percussive breakdown at the 1:30 mark that recalls Ringo Starr’s super-charged bongos in “A Hard Day’s Night;” even better, though, is the bottomless cavern of reverb and echo that, like a black hole, swallows the song whole in the closing 30 seconds--a small but significant step towards the then exploding psychedelic movement.“Pleasant Valley Sunday” is exactly why Screen Gems picked up The Monkees concept from producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider: to churn out the kind of feel-good pop that both The Beatles, having graduated from lovable mop tops to acid-dropping sound explorers, and The Beach Boys, retreating into insular eccentricity after Smile failed to materialize, had abandoned by the time of the Summer of Love. Davy, Peter, Michael, and Micky, the film production company were banking, would appeal to those suburban youth who still craved innocent AM pop and not the anti-establishment weirdness of the hippies.Dig into the verses, however, and one discovers the song--penned by Gerry Goffin and Carole King in reaction to the leisurely boredom of identical row houses, perfect lawns, and patio cookouts--actually satirizes the very suburbia that embraced the act. It’s brilliantly subversive, and The Monkees make for an exceptional delivery system, turning out a nuanced performance that manages to encode youth alienation into a song that on its surface is as plastic and superficial as its subject.At the time, and for several decades afterwards, The Monkees were derided as corporate-manufactured fluff (i.e. the “Pre-Fab Four”). It’s a view that has softened in recent years. Yet there’s still a long list of music critics and rock tastemakers (including, apparently, Jann Wenner, cofounder of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that has yet to induct them) who fail to fully acknowledge the band’s slyly radical genius--of which “Pleasant Valley Sunday” is just a small taste. From 1966 through to 2016’s Good Times!, an impeccable album featuring one of the 21st century’s most heart-aching slices of indie folk in the Ben Gibbard-penned “Me & Magdalena” (and yes, The Monkees make modern indie folk), they haven’t just released a wealth of finely crafted pop; they’ve also pushed the form into brand new sonic territory and conceptual complexity.Considering the era from which they emerged, it only makes sense that The Monkees’ experimental streak expresses itself most stridently in their psychedelic recordings. Their single greatest song, the symphonic “Porpoise Song (Theme from “Head”), from their 1968 flick lampooning their own celebrity and consumer society in mid-’60s America, is every bit as glorious and dramatic as “Good Vibrations” and “A Day in a Life.” Not far behind is “Randy Scouse Git,” littered with references to partying with The Beatles and a dancehall-style melody sped up and smashed into pieces with ball-peen hammer, and “Auntie’s Municipal Court,” which folds the chiming drone and bassy thump of the Fabs’ “Rain” into California-bred roots-pop. But seriously, we could could go on and on, citing nuggets like “Daily Nightly,” one of the first rock songs featuring the sci-fi zaps and twirls of the Moog synthesizer (Dolenz owned one), or the drug reference-littered “Salesman,” written by Craig Smith who later record deeply strange psych-folk under the name Satya Sai Maitreya Kali, or “Circle Sky,” a fuzz-punk raver pivoting on a wiry riff presaging The Fall, or “Zilch,” ear-tweaking avant-gardeness that’s crosses Mothers of Invention-type studio shenanigans with composer Steve Reich’s tape loop experiments. You see?There also exist subtler yet no less bold examples veering off in the other direction, into earthy twang and proto-singer-songwriter intimacy. The Monkees--whose battles with music supervisor Don Kirshner for creative control are now the stuff of rock legend--actually had a far harder time slipping this material onto their ’60s albums. Where the psych-pop fare could be pretty strange, at least it made commercial sense when placed alongside trippy joviality like “Incense and Peppermints” and “Sunshine Superman.”Cuts such as 1967’s “You Told Me,” in contrast, make a more thorough break with the silly lightheadedness of The Monkees television program, recasting them as pioneers of the kind of countrified confessionals that wouldn’t pierce mainstream pop until the early ’70s. As the cerebral and astute Michael Nesmith has explained time and time again, the concept of The Monkees, as a mass media creation, simply didn’t have the room for his love of American vernacular music. This meant a great deal of the outfit’s most mature material, including the Bob Dylan-flavored “Nine Times Blue” (a dreamily poetic ballad Nesmith’s First National Band also recorded), wouldn’t see the light of day until Rhino’s stellar Missing Link series of outtakes, demos, and rarities that popped up in the late ’80s.When you add up these myriad facets of The Monkees’ catalog--all the psychedelia, the fuzzy garage punk, the rustic country-rock, the synthesizer-laced Baroque pop—a case can be made that not unlike The Byrds or even The Grateful Dead they managed to unite humanity’s oftentimes opposing desires for a sense of roots and cosmic transcendence into a rock-and-roll vision that’s profoundly expansive. And they did this while struggling to achieve creative autonomy and a sense of human dignity in a cold, corporate world. No shabby feat, people.

Even if you take Soundgarden off his résumé, the late Chris Cornell was one of the most dynamic and adventurous rock singers to emerge in the 90s. He explored lush psychedelia and folk-informed songwriting on solo albums like Euphoria Morning and Higher Truth, and was a must-have soundtrack guest, whether crafting sprawling acoustic gems like "Seasons" for Cameron Crowes Singles or teaming up with Joy Williams for 12 Years A Slave. He created funk-informed arena rock with Audioslave and an a Generation X-defining duet with Eddie Vedder on Temple of the Dogs "Hunger Strike." Just to prove there was no genre he feared, hes the only rock singer to have worked with both Timbaland and the Zac Brown Band, while always sounding unmistakably like himself.

It’s that time of year again when shop windows fill with red-and-green dioramas, city sidewalks bristle with shopping bags and sharp elbows, and the pressure to reach strictly enforced levels of good cheer can turn the season into one giant, holly-covered bummer. Sometimes it can feel like there’s just no eggnog strong enough to take the edge off.That’s why it’s so nice to have music that understands how you may feel (or not feel) about the whole holiday thing. For every unwelcome tiding of joy, there’s another song that captures the melancholy side of the season, the alienation felt by anyone whose experience of the holidays doesn’t align with a rosy fantasy of cozy contentment as spun by Hallmark Christmas TV movies and radio stations that cruelly play nothing but “Joy to the World” 24 hours a day.Perhaps the most lovably caustic of the holiday-themed classics, “Fairytale of New York” is an especially valuable counterpoint to all that. First released a few weeks before Christmas of 1987 and later included on the Celtic folk-punk faves’ third album, If I Should Fall From Grace With God, the classic song united The Pogues with their friend Kirsty MacColl for a tale of star-crossed lovers whose romance began on a more hopeful note “on a cold Christmas Eve” only to shatter like an ornament dropped from a great height. Singer and co-writer Shane MacGowan casts himself as a wreck reminiscing about good and bad times while spending the big night in a Big Apple drunk tank. MacColl appears as the voice of the other half of this romantic calamity. Hard words are exchanged (a few of them too hard for some stations), and God only knows what misdeeds could’ve inspired lines like “Happy Christmas your arse, I hope it’s our last.”As rancorous as the song may be — and poignant, too, all the more so after MacColl’s tragic death while on a pre-Christmas holiday in Mexico in 2000 — it’s an accurate snapshot of the big emotions that the season elicits in many of us. In fact, “Fairytale of New York” is full to the brim with the same feelings expressed in the rest of this playlist’s special selection of bittersweet holiday fare.Christmas cheer be damned. Go ahead and revel in the loneliness conveyed by Boyz II Men’s “Cold December Nights,” the unrepentant bleakness of Sufjan Stevens’ “That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!” or the dread and despair that fill the full-on Santa-pocalypses described in Johnny Cash’s “Ringing the Bells for Jim” and Nat King Cole’s “The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot.” To borrow a phrase by LCD Soundsystem’s endearingly Scrooge-y curmudgeon James Murphy, Christmas can break your heart in oh so many ways.

For those who get tired of hearing the same tired old versions of the same damn Christmas tunes every time the holidays roll around, this playlist offers some electrifying options to keep your seasonal soundtrack vital, and hopefully prevent you from falling asleep in your eggnog.Even those who think they know it all when it comes to the classic-rock canon might be surprised by the number of Christmas songs that have been recorded by some of rock n rolls mightiest artists over the years. The best-of collections by the Eagles and REO Speedwagon rarely, if ever, end up including tracks like "Please Come Home for Christmas" and "Ill Be Home for Christmas," respectively. And when the catalog of The Beach Boys is celebrated, how often does their "Little Saint Nick" get a mention?Even prog rockers have taken time out from their tricky time signatures and otherworldly epics to spend some time in the land of sleigh bells and roasted chestnuts. Emerson, Lake & Palmer offered up a tune that would become a holiday standard in England, "I Believe in Father Christmas," and Jethro Tull turned out a flute-tastic version of the classic carol "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen."The harder end of the rock spectrum is represented not only by Twisted Sister giving a new spin to a time-honored idea with "Heavy Metal Christmas (The Twelve Days of Christmas)" but also by the kings of metal satire, Spinal Tap, with their satanically seasonal "Christmas with the Devil." Beatlemaniacs are well served at Christmastime — theres John Lennons hopeful "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)," Paul McCartneys jubilant standby "Wonderful Christmastime," and Ringo getting his licks in with "Come On Christmas, Christmas Come On."While some of the most popular classic-rock Christmas tunes are originals, theres also a fair number of rockers who have tackled timeless holiday standards, coming up with their own takes on the venerated tunes. Bruce Springsteens live version of "Santa Claus Is Comin to Town" is probably one of the best-known and most beloved, but dont sleep on Stevie Nicks take on "Silent Night" either.Pioneering 50s rockers left their mark on the holiday canon as well. Chuck Berrys "Run Rudolph Run" pretty much set the template for every rock n roll Christmas tune to come, and Elvis Presleys "Blue Christmas" is just about the most mournful seasonal track ever recorded.So when it comes time to crank up the holiday soundtrack this year, dont worry about drowning in worn-out warhorses. Just turn to this collection of classic-rock cuts to keep your Christmas crackling with energy.

Deep down in the shadowy, cobwebby corners of many musical legends, you’re bound to come across a stray track that goes way against the grain, differing so drastically from the artist’s signature sound that you might think it was recorded by someone else entirely. These tracks are the outliers, and while a handful of them have become renowned over time, many are still lurking in the darkness waiting for some hardy historian to shine a light on them.One of the most famous outliers is The Beatles’ “Revolution 9,” in which John Lennon left conventional song format far behind in favor of an utterly avant-garde musique concrète composition. Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music—essentially an album full of feedback and electronic whirring and buzzing—is almost as iconic. But there are plenty of other equally anomalous tunes to discover from the catalogs of major artists.Creedence Clearwater Revival might seem like the band least likely to go for their own “Revolution 9,” but that’s pretty much what they did with “Rude Awakening #2”; Folk rock trailblazers The Byrds found time to mix synths and Indian influences on the out-there instrumental “Moog Raga”; and everybody from Chubby Checker to Sonny Bono to The Four Seasons managed to turn out a mind-bendingly trippy tune or two in the psychedelic era.Those who associate Foghat with leaden blues rock boogie will be astonished at the shockingly Squeeze-like power pop nugget “Wide Boy,” and who expected hard rock hero Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy to cough up a Eurodisco-tinged synth-pop tune co-written with Ultravox’s Midge Ure? Tony McPhee, frontman for UK blues rockers The Groundhogs, is a cult hero, but his 20-minute electronic freakout “The Hunt” is such a quintessential example of the outlier phenomenon that it’s the ideal way to close out this carnival of the unlikely.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Classic rock possesses all the stubborn resilience of a cockroach . It’s the 21st century, and the technological singularity is upon us: Humans are banging in VR, autonomous cars are causing fender benders up and down the West Coast, 3-D printers are capable of creating hideous yet entirely livable homes, and indie folkie Bon Iver has gone full-blown weepy cyborg. But despite wave upon wave of civilization-disrupting futurism, young musicians totally worship the musty vinyl albums on which their grandparents rolled joints back in the ‘60s and ’70s. The Temperance Movement’s bluesy chops earned them an opening slot for The Rolling Stones in 2014; Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats have zipped up the charts thanks to the kind of high-octane rhythm ‘n’ blues that made the J. Geils Band a workhouse live act in the mid-’70s; and Deap Vally, the take-no-shit female duo from Los Angeles, lay down grooves as big and growling as anything from Cactus.Clearly inspired by The White Stripes and The Black Keys—who basically are the patron saints of what we’ll call nü classic rock—a good number of these young guns temper their nostalgia with modern touches and twists inspired by alt-rock. On Sound & Color, Alabama Shakes dress up their Southern-fried garage rock with a gauzy, shoegaze-like drift and hulking bass drops. Royal Blood, who’ve memorized the stripped down, pulverizing caterwaul of Led Zeppelin I and II, have in Ben Thatcher a drummer whose beats frequently slip into the battering-ram stutter of robotic hip-hop funk.But not every artist on this playlist is a descendent of the Jack White/Dan Auerbach lineage. Both Crobot and Sweden’s Blues Pills follow the lead of retro-everything forerunners Wolfmother and The Sword, bashing out hybridizations of bell-bottomed riff rock and vintage metal heavily informed by Deep Purple, early Rush, The Jeff Beck Group, and other eardrum-drubbing longhairs from the FM rock days. If you think Western civilization peaked with James Gang’s “Funk #49,” then this definitely is the playlist for you. Best of all, no VR goggles needed.

Classic rock, cook-outs, and flag-waving patriotism aren’t only for right-wing yahoos who keep a copy of Cat Scratch Fever tucked next to their Beanfield Sniper Remington Sendero SF II. I know it feels that way in an age when the Nuge and Kid Rock are snapping selfies in the Oval Office. But trust me: There’s plenty of us on the left who jump at the chance to blast big, shaggy riffs and slather grub in barbecue sauce (even if the grub being slathered is veggie burgers). And it’s for you, my fellow classic-rock lefties—like the proud American down my street with the “End the War on the Middle Class” sign in his window and a pickup truck covered in union stickers—that I’ve put together what, in my humble opinion, is one hell of a Fourth of July playlist stuffed with songs fighting the good fight.A lot of the tunes you know and love, like Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” (though maybe not everybody has cracked open the howling, wall-of-guitars rendition from 1975’s Rolling Thunder Revue) and Jefferson Airplane’s muddy-ass, piano-banging, Woodstock anthem “Volunteers.” (“Hey, I’m dancing down the streets! Got a revolution!!!”). And as should be expected of any patriotic playlist worth its salt, you’re bound to find some Springsteen (whose original, acoustic version of “Born in the U.S.A.” is a bloody, brooding anti-war cry that sounds more like the dread-stained “State Trooper” than the high-gloss “Dancing in the Dark”) and Seger. (If you know only the Night Moves era—which isn’t bad, mind you—then his 1969 anti-Vietnam War psych-raver “2 +2 =?” will have you burning flags by its second verse.)But listeners will also run into a bunch of obscure nuggets. Detroit’s megaton demolition of The Velvet Underground’s “Rock ’n’ Roll,” from 1971, should’ve been a massive hit for lead singer and perpetual underdog Mitch Ryder, who around the time of its recording had joined the fight to release White Panther revolutionary and all-around awesome guy John Sinclair from prison. Ditto for Relatively Clean Rivers’ “Easy Ride,” a smoothly rolling evocation of rural hippie ethos that will totally appeal to those pro-legalization types in love with Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty.There’s also a ton of soul and funk to be heard, and that’s because all true lefty rock fans don’t see any difference between rock ’n’ roll and R&B. It’s all righteous people making righteous groove music to battle the forces of oppression and tyranny that now, more than ever, are bearing down on our beloved United States. On the deliriously punchy, horn-stabbing “You Haven’t Done Nothin’,” Stevie Wonder rails against Tricky Dick, but it may as well be 45. Aretha Franklin’s “Spirit in the Dark” isn’t overtly political but rather serves as a gorgeous and uplifting example of the sublimely redemptive vibrations emanating from African-American spiritual music. Another powerhouse is the proto-disco “I Want to Take You Higher” recorded at Woodstock. For just shy of seven minutes, Sly & the Family Stone make good on the American dream: full equality and integration riding some of the most ecstatic funk ever laid down.So, this Fourth of July, crank these jams, eat a ton of great food, maybe even set of some explosives. But come Wednesday morning, let these songs inspire you to crawl into the trenches to fight all the anti-union, anti-universal healthcare, anti-Black Lives Matter, anti-LGBTQ, anti-climate change, anti-public education, anti-abortion, pro-corporate, pro-war, pro-Koch forces hijacking our country.