“Who’ll Stop The Rain,’” feels like a discovery of a beautiful song that was waiting to be written. As I typed that sentence I just realized that I will actually get to do that eventually! And that is the reason people have babies. I wish I could play it for Harvey for the first time and that he could talk and tell me what he thinks. You would think that “Up And Around The Bend,” would have been the first song on side one, not side two! This song is so familiar that it’s a little hard to hear. I like not knowing that information until after I’ve listened to the entire thing, but I’ll try to keep it out of my review. I also read about this album earlier than I usually do because I wasn’t feeling inspired and saw that it is considered their best by critics and fans. I was actually about to turn the record player off and come back to it tomorrow, because I just wasn’t inspired to comment on anything, but then that phantom patchouli smell came in through the back door, so to speak. I enjoyed the first four songs, but it wasn’t until “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” came on that I finally felt the urge to write something. Their songs are still played on the radio all the time! But what were they like when they were together and writing these famous songs? Their Wikipedia page says that they’re actually from San Francisco and not the south. And this probably has no actual merit to it, but they also look like kind of cocky assholes.ĬCR is one of those bands that I know everything about and absolutely nothing about. Before putting this album on, I looked at all of the pictures taken by Bob Fogerty on the back cover and all I could think about was that these guys looked like stereotypes of hippies. This song is great! I love the little guitar solo interlude, and when it gets very slow, but there’s definitely a hippie stigma attached to it. I think I started smelling phantom Patchouli when “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” came on.

Cosmos factory poster