Sunday, May 10, 2015

Album Reviews # 43 Creedence Clearwater Revival - Hits Album # 7 Commotion

    'Rushin' to the treadmill.'

1970 album, Cosmo's Factory was given its name by drummer Doug 'Cosmo' Clifford in reference to John Fogerty's ceaseless, unflagging work ethic, an expectation he applied to the rest of his bandmates as well as himself.  But not every day on the production line was a fruitful one. Here's the first dud on the record. Very occasionally Creedence found themselves sinking into their own swamp of sound. No surprise really considering that in 1969 they chose to release no less than three full studio albums. Here they cave in to the worst tendencies of the time. More specifically, the jam. While most of their material sounds refreshingly apart from the time and place it came out, fittingly immersed in clear water, this I'm afraid is knee deep in 1969 urban mud. Fogerty is stuck in city traffic, never a place he wants or ought to be. Not his natural element and it shows.It all leads to an ugly outbreak of leaden and unprepossessing riffing. The irony is that for a song that seems to be about ceaseless, aggravating modern noise it only succeeds in adding to it. Only three minutes long but it feels much longer. B Side to Green River, a far more lucid, graceful statement.




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