CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL – "Bad Moon Rising"

Ehhhh……. I hear what you’re saying, and I do dig its folksy apocalypse (“Hmm, my gitchy knee is acting up, reckon there’s trouble coming, young feller”) but it’s just never done all that much for me as a song. It plays well on houseboat parties, where you’re all just floating down the river and’t much care if the music is going anyplace either… but for a number one it seems weirdly without any moments of climax or shifts in the drama. The arrangement is too continuous, the texture turgid.

Much prefer “Green River,” for its more distinctive guitar activity cutting at angles through Fogerty’s twangy “Weaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllll,” and “Fortunate Son” for its fusion of hillbilly dirt farmer pride and contemporary political outrage.

This is a terrific song. Ok, John Fogerty and Creedence were great technicians and it does tick all the right boxes, maybe in a bloodless way – good intro, simple lyric, vocalist with the right kind of catch in his voice, sharp ending, right length (doesn’t outsay its welcome) – but I’ll still argue with anyone who considers it perfunctory and cold. Apocalyptic subject matter has rarely been put across so “jauntily”. Does anyone know what kept it off number one in the US? To be honest, I wouldn’t have minded this one being given a 9 or even a 10 – guess it’s up to the Archies now.

I’ve always hated this one. Sorry, guys, that whole charoogle southern boogie thing just turns me off.

Catchy, though.

Does anyone know what kept it off number one in the US?

“Get Back” by The Beatles

I always wished I had the chorus line of this on some sort of ansaphone type push-button thing, so that when guests at my last home asked where the toilet was I could have John Fogerty intone (what I always thought sounded like) “There a bathroom on the right.”

I love Creedence, and would have marked this higher though, yeah, it’s not my favourite of theirs either.

“Swamp Music” is what this was and I remember it very clearly being at the top. We used to have one of those things called a radiogram, a piece of furniture the size of Clapham Common containing a record player, a radio, escaped Great Train Robbers and everything else. For some reason I recall distinctly sitting next to this when BBR was number one. Like for many of you this is not my favourite CCR hit – “Up Around The Bend” is, I think, but for a song warning of impending doom, this isn’t half bad. Hardly “Eve Of Destruction”, of course, but what you gonna do?

Interesting that CCR managed a UK#1 – as I mentioned in another recent thread, they have the unfortunate distinction of five US#2’s without a #1, this being one of them.

I’d say this is one of my favourite CCR songs: I like the ghoulishness of it: John Fogherty seems positively delighted that ‘were in for nasty weather’, like Cabin In The Woods’ harbinger of doom chuckling as he prophesises the bloodletting to come.

White Ape occasionally do this as a warm up though it’s somewhat ill-suited: it’s hard to resist snarling through the last verse and tearing the vocal chords…

PS What’s CCR’s other Rain song?

@TM,15. Who’ll Stop the Rain?, i.e., in addition to the nailed-on 10 of Have You Ever Seen the Rain?

Critic watch:

1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die, and 10,001 You Must Download (2010)
Bruce Pollock (USA) – The 7,500 Most Important Songs of 1944-2000 (2005)
Dave Marsh & Kevin Stein (USA) – The 40 Best of the Top 40 Singles by Year (1981) 3
Dave Marsh (USA) – The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made (1989) 198
Life (USA) – 40 Years of Rock & Roll, 5 Songs for Each Year 1952-91 (Updated 1995)
Pitchfork (USA) – Top 200 Songs of the 60s (2006) 155
Rolling Stone (USA) – The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time (2004) 355
Rolling Stone (USA) – The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time (Updated 2010) 364
Guinness Book of Hits of the ’60s (UK, 1984) – Tim Rice’s Top 10 Songs
New Musical Express (UK) – The Top 150 Singles of All Time (1987) 61
Q (UK) – The 1001 Best Songs Ever (2003) 585
Sounds (UK) – The 100 Best Singles of All Time (1986) 61
Rolling Stone (Germany) – The Best Singles of 5 Decades (1997)
Gilles Verlant and Thomas Caussé (France) – 3000 Rock Classics (2009)
Giannis Petridis (Greece) – 2004 of the Best Songs of the Century (2003)

Coincidence ahoy: I’d never knowingly heard Creedence until this morning, when I was in a cafe and one song absolutely ripped out the speakers (no mean feat when it was preceded by Smells Like Teen Spirit). A quick Shazam-for-posterity revealed it to be CCR’s other rain song ‘Have You Ever Seen The Rain?’. I’m having a second listen right now on my phone speaker and yeah, my first impression stacks up. Great singing.

Wow, binging their discography now, and as a Please Mr Postman-filching banger, Call It Pretending is second only to Feel it Still by Portugal. The Man! Sadly unbunnied – I am aware in certain circles, that opinion might get me shot.

Though as I trawl these great (h)ap(p)ocal(y)ptic end of the 60s sounds, I’m planning a dawn raid myself on whoever took Trout Mask Replica off Spotify..

I’m very fond of this song. Has most of the things I look for in a single. 8/10 for me.