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Title: Creedence Clearwater Revival – Mardi Gras (1972) [SACD 2003]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Mardi Gras is the final album by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Recorded in the spring of 1971 and January of 1972, the album was released on April 11, 1972. The group disbanded after the album was released. By the time the album was recorded, Tom Fogerty had left the group due to disputes over his desire to play a more creative role in writing material. Mardi Gras featured songs written and performed by the remaining three members of CCR; Doug Clifford and Stu Cook each wrote and sang the lead vocals on three songs. This was a departure from CCR’s previous albums, for which John Fogerty had written and sung lead vocals on almost all songs.

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Title: Creedence Clearwater Revival – The Concert (1970) [SACD 2003]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

The Concert is the second live album by American rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival, released by Fantasy Records in October 1980. The album was recorded at the Oakland Coliseum in Oakland, California on January 31, 1970. Originally the album was mistakenly titled The Royal Albert Hall Concert. Only later was it discovered that it was not recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, it was duly renamed for later reissues. The album reached #62 on the Billboard 200 in 1981. The album achieved gold status (500,000 units sold) by the Recording Industry Association of America on February 27, 1986 and made platinum status (1,000,000 units sold) on September 30, 1996.

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Title: Creedence Clearwater Revival – Pendulum (1970) [SACD 2003]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

During 1969 and 1970, CCR was dismissed by hipsters as a bubblegum pop band and the sniping had grown intolerable, at least to John Fogerty, who designed Pendulum as a rebuke to critics. He spent time polishing the production, bringing in keyboards, horns, even a vocal choir. His songs became self-consciously serious and tighter, working with the aesthetic of the rock underground — Pendulum was constructed as a proper album, contrasting dramatically with CCR’s previous records, all throwbacks to joyous early rock records where covers sat nicely next to hits and overlooked gems tucked away at the end of the second side. To some fans of classic CCR, this approach may feel a little odd since only “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” and maybe its B-side “Hey Tonight” sound undeniably like prime Creedence. But, given time, the album is a real grower, revealing many overlooked Fogerty gems. Yes, it isn’t transcendent like the albums they made from Bayou Country through Cosmo’s Factory, but most bands never even come close to that kind of hot streak. Instead, Pendulum finds a first-class songwriter and craftsman pushing himself and his band to try new sounds, styles, and textures. His ambition results in a stumble — “Rude Awakening 2″ portentously teeters on the verge of prog-rock, something CCR just can’t pull off — but the rest of the record is excellent, with such great numbers as the bluesy groove “Pagan Baby,” the soulful vamp “Chameleon,” the moody “It’s Just a Thought,” and the raver “Molina.” Most bands would kill for this to be their best stuff, and the fact that it’s tucked away on an album that even some fans forget illustrates what a tremendous band Creedence Clearwater Revival was.

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Title: Creedence Clearwater Revival – Cosmo’s Factory (1970) [SACD 2002]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Cosmo’s Factory was the fourth, biggest, and best of the astonishing string of five Top Ten albums Creedence Clearwater Revival released in 1969 and 1970. It went on sale in August 1970, well after two of its tracks had stormed the radio—the No. 2 “Travelin’ Band”/”Who’ll Stop the Rain,” which began its parabola in January, and the No. 4 “Up Around the Bend,” released in April. But as Fantasy most certainly knew, there was a third hit in its grooves, the transcendent “Lookin’ Out My Back Door”—the fifth and last No. 2 lead single for the preeminent pop phenomenon of its brief era, which never had a No. 1—and the album rode all four beloved songs to nine weeks atop Billboard’s album chart.

Throughout 1969 and into 1970, CCR toured incessantly and recorded nearly as much. Appropriately, Cosmo’s Factory’s first single was the working band’s anthem “Travelin’ Band,” a funny, piledriving rocker with a blaring horn section — the first indication their sonic palette was broadening. Two more singles appeared prior to the album’s release, backed by John Fogerty originals that rivaled the A-side or paled just slightly. When it came time to assemble a full album, Fogerty had only one original left, the claustrophobic, paranoid rocker “Ramble Tamble.” Unlike some extended instrumentals, this was dramatic and had a direction — a distinction made clear by the meandering jam that brings CCR’s version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” to 11 minutes. Even if it wanders, their take on the Marvin Gaye classic isn’t unpleasant, and their faithful, exuberant takes on the Sun classics “Ooby Dooby” and “My Baby Left Me” are joyous tributes. Still, the heart of the album lays in those six fantastic songs released on singles. “Up Around the Bend” is a searing rocker, one of their best, balanced by the menacing murkiness of “Run Through the Jungle.” “Who’ll Stop the Rain”‘s poignant melody and melancholy undertow has a counterpart in Fogerty’s dope song, “Lookin’ out My Back Door,” a charming, bright shuffle, filled with dancing animals and domestic bliss – he had never been as sweet and silly as he is here. On “Long as I Can See the Light,” the record’s final song, he again finds solace in home, anchored by a soulful, laid-back groove. It hits a comforting, elegiac note, the perfect way to draw Cosmo’s Factory — an album made during stress and chaos, filled with raging rockers, covers, and intense jams — to a close.

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Title: Creedence Clearwater Revival – Willy And The Poorboys (1969) [SACD 2002]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Creedence Clearwater Revival’s fourth album, shows a band in the full flush of success, following two albums that had spent over a year on the charts (as this one would do), and powered by two hit singles, one of which would become an anthem for its times. The album came out when Creedence, surely the most anomalouss band in the “San Francisco” explosion of the late Sixties, was also proving to be the most commercial and most reliable seller of them all.
Make no mistake, Willy & the Poor Boys is a fun record, perhaps the breeziest album CCR ever made. Apart from the eerie minor-key closer “Effigy” (one of John Fogerty’s most haunting numbers), there is little of the doom that colored Green River. Fogerty’s rage remains, blazing to the forefront on “Fortunate Son,” a working-class protest song that cuts harder than any of the explicit Vietnam protest songs of the era, which is one of the reasons that it hasn’t aged where its peers have. Also, there’s that unbridled vocal from Fogerty and the ferocious playing on CCR, which both sound fresh as they did upon release. “Fortunate Son” is one of the greatest, hardest rock & rollers ever cut, so it might seem to be out of step with an album that is pretty laid-back and friendly, but there’s that elemental joy that by late ’69 was one of CCR’s main trademarks. That joy runs throughout the album, from the gleeful single “Down on the Corner” and the lazy jugband blues of “Poorboy Shuffle” through the great slow blues jam “Feelin’ Blue” to the great rockabilly spiritual “Don’t Look Now,” one of Fogerty’s overlooked gems. The covers don’t feel like throwaways, either, since both “Cotton Fields” and “The Midnight Special” have been overhauled to feel like genuine CCR songs. It all adds up to one of the greatest pure rock & roll records ever cut.

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Title: Creedence Clearwater Revival – Green River (1969) [SACD 2002]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Released in August 1969, a month before Woodstock, Green River is utterly of its time, a throwback to early rock’n’roll, and a visionary work that imagines the world yet to come. The album has to be of its time, because with a string of remarkable hits, Creedence Clearwater Revival helped shape its era. The singles here “Green River,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Lodi,” and “Commotion” define the everyday quality of the band’s music, the melodies and rhythms you seem to have known forever before you’ve heard them all the way through once.

If anything, CCR’s third album Green River represents the full flower of their classic sound initially essayed on its predecessor, Bayou Country. One of the differences between the two albums is that Green River is tighter, with none of the five-minute-plus jams that filled out both their debut and Bayou Country, but the true key to its success is a peak in John Fogerty’s creativity. Although CCR had at least one cover on each album, they relied on Fogerty to crank out new material every month. He was writing so frequently that the craft became second-nature and he laid his emotions and fears bare, perhaps unintentionally. Perhaps that’s why Green River has fear, anger, dread, and weariness creeping on the edges of gleeful music. This was a band that played rock & roll so joyously that they masked the, well, “sinister” undercurrents in Fogerty’s songs. “Bad Moon Rising” has the famous line “Hope you’ve got your things together/Hope you’re quite prepared to die,” but that was only the most obvious indication of Fogerty’s gloom. Consider all the other dark touches: the “Sinister purpose knocking at your door”; the chaos of “Commotion”; the threat of death in “Tombstone Shadow”; you only return to the idyllic “Green River” once you get lost and realize the “world is smolderin’.” Even the ballads have a strong melancholy undercurrent, highlighted by “Lodi,” where Fogerty imagines himself stuck playing in dead-end towns for the rest of his life. Not the typical thoughts of a newly famous rock & roller, but certainly an indication of Fogerty’s inner tumult. For all its darkness, Green River is ultimately welcoming music, since the band rocks hard and bright and the melancholy feels comforting, not alienating.

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Title: Creedence Clearwater Revival – Bayou Country (1969) [SACD 2002]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Bayou Country is not hte only album that defined the sound of Creedence, it was the band’s first masterpiece. In a single, bold stroke, it announced Creedence Clearwater as a bright, vital force in rock and staked a place for what was yet to come.

Opening slowly with the dark, swampy “Born on the Bayou,” Bayou Country reveals an assured Creedence Clearwater Revival, a band that has found its voice between their first and second album. It’s not just that “Born on the Bayou” announces that CCR has discovered its sound — it reveals the extent of John Fogerty’s myth-making. With this song, he sketches out his persona; it makes him sound as if he crawled out of the backwoods of Louisiana instead of being a native San Franciscan. He carries this illusion throughout the record, through the ominous meanderings of “Graveyard Train” through the stoked cover of “Good Golly Miss Molly” to “Keep on Chooglin’,” which rides out a southern-fried groove for nearly eight minutes. At the heart of Bayou Country, as well as Fogerty’s myth and Creedence’s entire career, is “Proud Mary.” A riverboat tale where the narrator leaves a good job in the city for a life rolling down the river, the song is filled with details that ring so true that it feels autobiographical. The lyric is married to music that is utterly unique yet curiously timeless, blending rockabilly, country, and Stax R&B into something utterly distinctive and addictive. “Proud Mary” is the emotional fulcrum at the center of Fogerty’s seductive imaginary Americana, and while it’s the best song here, his other songs are no slouch, either. “Born on the Bayou” is a magnificent piece of swamp-rock, “Penthouse Pauper” is a first-rate rocker with the angry undertow apparent on “Porterville” and “Bootleg” is a minor masterpiece, thanks to its tough acoustic foundation, sterling guitar work, and clever story. All the songs add up to a superb statement of purpose, a record that captures Creedence Clearwater Revival’s muscular, spare, deceptively simple sound as an evocative portrait of America.

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