Creedence Clearwater Revival - Travelin' Band (Live)
I Wanna Move
Creedence should be everyone’s second favorite Rock and Roll band. They’re my second favorite. I have ZERO idea who my favorite band is. From one week to the next that changes. CCR is a staple of classic rock radio because they never recorded a bad song - some not as great as others, but if the benchmark is something like the Vietnam film soundtrack requirement of Fortunate Son then even a B-plus track is top-tier comparatively, and these fellas averaged an A-minus.
You know all of their songs and can sing them by heart over the radio, but no one calls CCR their very favorite band of all time - they’re not the Beatles or Stones or Zeppelin (Classic Rock pantheon gods all). They’ve made an appearance on every road trip people over 40 have EVER made (right alongside Tom Petty). They hold the Billboard record for the most number two songs in popular music history without a number one. That’s five number two tracks, Proud Mary, Bad Moon Rising, Green River, Lookin' Out My Back Door/Long As I Can See the Light, and our focus for this piece, Travelin' Band/Who'll Stop the Rain without a number one. That’s just childish frolics. This was also back when singles had an A and a B side, so-called because one had to physically flip a record over from the A side to the B side. CCR just ripped double singles off like it was commonplace. The original lineup recorded six albums in three years including three full-length LPs in 1969 alone. Three albums in one calendar year… while somehow, improbably, playing Woodstock and 40 other live shows that year. Traveling band? You’re damned right.
I wanna move
Playin' in a travelin' band, yeah
Well, I'm flyin' 'cross the land
Tryin' to get a hand
Playin' in a travelin' band-Creedence Clearwater Revival, Travelin’ Band
Rock and Roll is self-referential to a comical degree. The premier magazine celebrating the genre was named after a Muddy Waters track and referenced a band named after that Muddy song, and then the greatest poet of the era named a song Like a Rolling Stone, and then a band with a great sense of humor wrote a song called The Cover of the Rolling Stone… and then showed up on the fucking cover of that premier magazine celebrating the genre.
Rock bands write songs celebrating the brand of music they play and themselves and have historically done a fine job of it (Rock and Roll All Nite, I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll, It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll). The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has adopted Jazz, Blues, Country, R&B, and Hip-Hop into its folds (which I’m okay with because the music itself is more of an attitude than anything else). We even have a band called The Band which is legitimately a great, great band. Then we have Travelin’ Band by one of the greatest bands, the second greatest band in fact.
Here’s the recipe: take a three-piece crack rhythm section, add one of the greatest post-war American songwriters who just happens to have dazzling guitar solo capabilities, and pretend the band is from Louisiana. Swamp boogie sells, baby. Then you take the Chuck Berry model, stomp on the gas pedal, and leave the crowd smoking in their sneakers. The track is listed at two minutes and 17 seconds. In all honesty (rare in the Rock trade), the song is finished one second short of the two-minute mark (The crowd cheering chews up the remaining seconds). In that minute and 59, we get four verses, four choruses, a guitar solo, AND an outro. The Ramones would later make this their standard template (minus the solo, of course). The (traveling) band is in rare form, in rarified air, playing as if they’re each snakebit with 2 minutes to live. Again, they only recorded for four years together, and that was enough for the Rock Hall (which was invented by the publisher of that self-referential magazine in the second paragraph) to come calling. Four years as CCR, the Golliwogs before that, and the Blue Velvets even before that, and then the traveling band was out of road. That tends to happen when you go that fast.
Had a lot of fun reading that - well done!