Album Reviews # 43 Creedence Clearwater Revival - Hits Album # 1 Bad Moon Rising

'Looks like we're in for nasty weather...'

As I carry on with this blog it becomes a harder exercise but something I need to perservere with.It started off as an album review exercise but in time has turned into the thing I said on my first post that it wouldn't be. Diary entries. Life is a more difficult road to navigate than you ever thought it might be on the offset. However, time to get back to long playing records. I feel now that I should review Creedence. They're a band quite apart, Never really an albums band. Much more entuned to the individual song and the emotion and feeling that gets across. So I'm going to review the first record I bought of theirs in round about 1983. A greatest hits record. I'll do a song at a time, one a day, 'til the album's done.

First up is Bad Moon Rising. Clearly among their finest songs and one I imagine that is closest to leader John Fogerty's heart. Like so many of his songs it's deeply political and scared, talking of deep primeval fears that have always lurked within us, but also understanding of the audience it's reaching out to. It got to Number 1 or else Number 2 in every chart it registered on as far as I know, And quite right too. Celebratory, despite it's darkness and sure to hit a chord every time it's played in a public place. You'll see the reaction of those around you whenever people hear it's opening chords and Fogerty's vocals. I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't react positively to this.

Of course it's also laden with gloom. Written with Nixon and Vietnam in mind and aware that the Hippie Dream all around them is utter nonsense and there's a need to return to basic values and sounds. But this is no act of nostalgia. Not a Rock and Roll song that could have been churned out in the Fifties to an unaware and contented America. Times have changed. Important figures who might have transformed the landscape are dead and the world is now one of impending chaos where a short, sharp but also sweet statement is required. Two minutes and twenty one seconds and it's gone. Fogerty was quite right that things were about to get ugly. They did over the next few years across America and elsewhere.

Still. One of the best songs I know. It resonates with me today just the same as when I first heard it. We have an election in the UK in three days time when appalling things could happen if the result is wrong and the sense of impending dread and need to respond is just the same. Creedence always helps!