Play it Again, Sam #11b - "Friday On My Mind"

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From Australia to Ireland we go in today's Play it Again, Sam. We are at #11b, the "cover" portion: Gary Moore's cover of The Easybeats' "Friday On My Mind." The late Gary Moore is, simply put, my all-time favorite guitarist, so you should know by now that if I have the chance to use him in one of my MyLot music countdowns, I'm damn sure going to use him! While he was a very blues-obsessed individual, Gary Moore obviously listened to a lot of pop music while growing up in Belfast. Just check out his cover of The Yardbirds' "Shapes of Things" sometime, or this, his cover of "Friday On My Mind." Recorded for his 1987 album, Wild Frontier, "Friday On My Mind" was not the usual protest song fare from the hard rocking guitarist. In fact, the song sounds as if it were aimed straight at the radio (likely due to pressure from the suits at the record label.) Yes, while he did rock it up a bit, Moore stayed fairly true to the original, resulting in a very radio/listener-friendly single. It paid off rather decently, charting in the Top 40 in five countries, with it's highest placing being in Finland, where it reached #15 (as usual, the single was ignored in the US. I have always been baffled as to why this guy never really achieved more than a cult following over here. Other than a marketable image, he had everything that rock music fans and radio programmers wanted. It had to have been all of those protest songs. Had to have been.) Anyway, in addition to Gary, "Friday On My Mind" has been covered multiple times, and by quite a few heavyweights, notably: David Bowie, Blue Oyster Cult, Peter Frampton, and Richard Thompson. Both Bruce Springsteen, and Squeeze, have been known to perform the song in concert. It wasn't voted Best Australian Song of All Time for nothing, after all! (Info verified by Wikipedia)