Canned Heat
One More River to Cross

THE REVIEW

Ok, there are no great albums left in these artists' careers. Ok, these are people who only know how to make music and records in life, no matter how good the first and of what artistic value the second are. Ok, they have decided to live off this, through highs and lows, despite the inevitable downward path, even though gravity always manages to push everything down, even inspiration.

If you search and search, you find that Canned Heat still exists today, that of the historic core there's perhaps little left, but they still make music and maybe even records; you find that every year one or more compilations are released, that every three years a B-sides album comes out, that every four years a bootleg of an old concert... A bit of a miserable thing, like "look at the ridiculous end that great bands from '68 have to face," but then you think about the end of the whole movement and its survivors, and in the end, you realize: you see the gods of hard rock playing at the Greek theater of Taormina, then at the sports arena of Cropalati and then at the squacquerone festival of Bertinoro, and on the other hand, energy is needed before a very long performance by Riccardo Antonelli... You see the journalist from '68 who today has a family, and then is much more aligned and covered, in fact he's a real bootlicker for the current superpower, yet he hasn't stopped being a journalist. The intellectual of that time is also an intellectual now, and now as then he seeks glory, but yesterday glory was at the negative university of Trento, where he tried to be the sociology professor of people like Renato Curcio and Mauro Rostagno, while today glory is located in the bank account and some well-to-do Forza Italia sitting room.

In short, not being able to, not wanting to or not having had the intelligence to end a career at its peak, those who create and make for a living, compose and write, build and design, know that it is difficult to reach those heights again, let alone surpass oneself! Can a footballer at the end of their career be as effective as when they were twenty-eight, especially if they haven't changed roles on the field? Can a multi-medal-winning marathon runner of almost forty beat their own personal best, set some fifteen years ago, as well as an army of young Kenyan talents? "Sometimes it has happened," you might say. "Sometimes," I say.

But life, deep down, is this: you keep going, even if your strength is less, even if your family demands more resources, even if, sooner or later, perhaps everyone reaches the moment to lower their pants, even if inspiration flounders and endurance has dropped. Life is this: never stop moving, even if you're no longer able to run, let alone fly.

And then what more can one ask from the tenth album (in seven years) of Canned Heat? Fun, I say. No psychedelia, no concept albums, none of the sixties, none of the twenties. And so here is a piece written by the son of the Bear, namely Robert Hite Jr., there's the title track that sounds like CCR have started playing blues; there’s some funky, rhythm and blues, there's another piece signed Lieber & Stoller, that mixes salsa into the blues; there's a spectacular beach rock, a beautiful mixture between an old soul and an equally old Chicago blues, then a splendid boogie version of the classic rock n' roll "Shake, Rattle And Roll" and a very successful final medley of Fats Domino's timeless hits.

The result? You dance, you jump, and in the softer moments you at least sway a bit. In other words, they put on the table what they had left to put on the table. The least bad of what they were able to do at that time.

Ok.