Counting down my favorite 25 albums of 1970:
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cosmo's Factory
This is CCR's 42 minute clinic on rock and roll music - it's history, and it's influence on the then current incarnation of the genre. For comparison sake, they provide two covers of classic rock songs ('Ooby Dooby' and 'My Baby Left Me') faithfully interpreted in the style favored in the last half of the fifties by the likes of Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley. They also provide two originals performed the same way ('Travelin' Band' and 'Lookin' Out My Back Door'), to show that the genre is durable. To prove the genre is flexible as well, they perform two additional covers in styles popular with their contemporaries: a rocking cover of a blues standard ('Before You Accuse Me'), and an epic length meandering rock jam ('I Heard it Through the Grapevine').
If there's one track that best exemplifies the band's authority on rock and roll, it's 'Ramble Tamble', the first song on the album. One critic (Steven Hyden from The Onion's AV Club) makes a convincing case for this song being the 'Most Rockin' Song of All Time'.
The album does have a few notable departures from its prevailing roots rock theme: the socially conscious folk rock song 'Who'll Stop the Rain', the menacing bayou blues of 'Run Through the Jungle', and the soulful "Long As I Can See the Light".
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