Mr. Fantasy – Traffic – What’s On The Table
Dear Mr. Fantasy,
Yesterday we released a completely spontaneous and short-notice acapella version of the new Beatles song “Now & Then”. Today, we’re making our lives easier and listen to other people making music. 😉
Traffic’s debut album “Mr. Fantasy” is a beautifully strange psychedelic rock record and one that was a joy to discuss and dissect.
If you have your own stories to share, we are keen to hear them!
Stay groovy,
Mona & Lisa
PS: A BIG thank you to MLT Club member Roger P. for sending us the vinyl!!
I am not that familiar w/Traffic except for Mr. Fantasy which did get a lot of air time on the radio. I am more familiar w/the supporting music you included. Brings back a happier time for me. Peace be.
Mona, I hope 🙏 💛 you are feeling better!!
Awesome musician. I like some of the songs, but didn’t buy the album. There were just so many great artists and great music, I couldn’t afford to buy everything and The Beatles came first.
I did buy other artists, though…
Great discussion as always with lots of context in the mix. I know a few of the songs. Hole in my Shoe is also famous for the Neil (The Young Ones TV show) comedy version from the 1980’s. Great vocals on these tracks and yes, stereo spanning was crazy in the 60’s. Which leads me to ask have you got the new red and blue albums yet?
Mona and Lisa wow! This was a fantastic What’s on the Table….love it Love it and I did not catch up with Traffic until 1971 and heard Mr. Fantasy and got the album and one of my favorite albums to go to. Thank you for the tid bit information as well and did not know he got with Billy Joel, how cool is that? But I agree he has a distant rock voice and I remember someone telling me he was 17 years old doing Gimme some Loving with Spenser Davis group. As always love you both and hugs from me and Maddie
Bill and Maddie Isenberg Huge fans from Pittsburgh PA USA
I only discovered “Traffic” on satellite radio back in the mid 2000’s. Not sure how I could have grown up in the 60’s with all the psych-rock influence and what I did listen to without hearing of them!?!? Steve Winwood is certainly an iconic vocalist, and an excellent keyboard player. I would rate him right close up there with stellar vocalists like Ian Gillan and Paul Rodgers, who for me are the top two rock vocalists of all time. Dear Mr Fantasy still gets lots of playtime on Sirius XM Classic Vinyl! I’ve been looking for the LP but haven’t managed to score one yet…you can be sure I will though, and I don’t care which version.
Small bit of trivia that is stuck in my brain full of mostly meaningless drivel and useless fodder: Jimmy Greenspoon of Three Dog Night fame played a Hammond B3 a lot.
Dumb question maybe, but what is with the mini orange and white VW Microbus on the hat(?) on the back of the sofa? Like I need another piece of trivia in my head…(bwahahaha)
Another great WOTT!! Got to learn quite a bit on this one. It’s hard for me to think the Steve Winwood on the 60’s and early 70’s with the Steve Winwood of the 80’s, though I like both, they are so different to me!
Thank you!
Great video about great album ! You mentioned Steve´s previous band The Spencer Davis Group. Here´s a TV concert they played in Finland 1967. I remember seeing this as a little boy. youtu.be/mVJTVGDDAQA
That was excellent!! I wish shows like this still were still around. SO much skill on that stage!
Thank you, Lisa ! You are right. This kind of music shows are very rare in TV nowadays. All we have are reality shows like “Idols”, “The Voice” and “X Factory”
Nice WOTT! I discovered Traffic when I was in high school in the early eighties. So we were excited to have Steve Winwood put out some new material. I got to see the Higher Love tour twice. The highlight for me was when the lights went down and Steve played the opening of Low Spark. It was very surreal. The second show was a few weeks later and we were psyched to relive that moment again. The show was a good mix of old and new.
When I started watching this episode I was thinking I should point out Steve’s performance with his daughter, so it wa kool that you already knew it. Reminds me of Teach Your Children.
Oh yeah, I just remembered we saw Steve many years ago in a very small theater. It was a really kool show with a small group, maybe a thousand seats, of true fans. I reminded Marlo it was twenty years ago, 2003. She gave me that look. Time flies.
Oh, for a Pink Floyd connection, Steve played his Hammond on David Gilmour’s solo album About Face. It’s pretty kool.
It’s finally getting cold around here. Brr-rr
I saw Steve Winwood a few years ago. He opened for Tom Petty. Petty’s band was late to the venue, held up in air traffic. Winwood was already in stage, instead of playing for an hour, he played on for over 1:45. I understand his band doesn’t use a playlist, they just play what they feel like playing. So he just went out for almost 2 hours and made it up on the way, it was fantastic. Then Petty came out and blew what was left of our minds away. It was one of the best concerts I have ever seen, definitely in my top 3.
Hi Tim,
That sounds like a great concert. I have not seen either of them perform.
Tom Petty passed away on October of 2017, so what year did you see him?
Bobby S.
It was probably around 2013
Really odd, I am being blocked from watching the contents of this video by ‘SME’ whoever they are. I am in Moscow visiting my lovely daughter, which might explain things. 😐
OMG! Be safe! I didn’t even know you could get in or out of there right now. (I’m assuming you don’t mean Moscow, Idaho!)
😁 I’m certainly not in Idaho 😁 I travel to Moscow regularly, either via Turkey or via Belgrade. On my last visit a drone was shot down and landed two tower blocks from where I was sleeping. But everything is quiet on this visit. I can watch and listen to the MLT Now and Then video, and so all is well 😀
Oh, YouTube did say that this video is blocked in Russia due to some copyright rules 🙁 . You could watch it using a VPN.
No worries Lisa. I’ll be back in the Uk on Sunday and can watch then. It feels very safe here – people are happy to hear my English accent (with a trace of Scouse 🙂). This is my 4th visit this year to see Sofia (who rocks! 😀 ). Tomorrow we finish our gingerbread house, the next day we will try to learn to play the Ukulele together 🙂.
Many thanks for introducing me to the music of traffic, a band I don’t know much about. However, I do have a more recent Steve Winwood album – Roll with it which I bought back in the 1980’s.
Also, I have just heard a version of “Dear Mr Fantasy” by Dave Mason and Joe Bonamassa. I have always loved Joe Bonamassa’s guitar playing, so I think this version is great.
Thanks for another WOTT. I was fortunate enough to see Spenser Davis play at the Harvard Commons in 1969 or 1970. Gimmie Some Lovin’ was the encore and it was great. I have always love Winwood. He has such an interesting voice. I could never sing above middle C with any confindence (thus I could sing very few Beatles songs well) and Steve seemed to be able to sing in at least 3 octaves. And it isn’t all falsetto, though he has a great falsetto. Such a wonderful musician. I loved Mr Fantasy but their second album (Traffic, with Dave Mason), still ranks as a contender for the best album of the late 60’s. And last but not least, I have now listened to “Now and Then” by MLT at least 30 times and it is absolutely beautiful!!!!
You always give an interesting backgound talk to the records. Although Traffic was never a favourite of mine, Steve Winwood does have a fantastic voice (rocal?).
Wow, I only heard some of these songs in the 1970s. It does bring back memories.
You’re putting in some overtime this week. Here I thought we had our Friday fix with Now and Then. But this is awesome, thank you. I love WOTTs.
I love Traffic, and followed Winwood’s career, and loved all of it, but 1967 was a little too early for me to have known it at the time. I was 11 years old, and the Detroit Tigers almost won the pennant that year. I’ll never forget losing in the last weekend of the season to the Angels. That Jim Fregosi did us in! Baseball was more accessible for me than tunes at the time. Fortunately we won the Championship the next year.
But later I caught up a bit with Traffic and Winwood, and Dave Mason’s solo career too. But I knew the 2nd iteration of Traffic better than the first. My older sister’s boyfriend in high school was a musician, so John Barleycorn album was around, and at university I heard Traffic’s later albums, but I never had the first album. But I certainly am familiar with the title cut anyway, although that may just be a function of it being on the classic rock station playlists.
We used to play some Traffic and Winwood songs, and one or two from Dave Mason as well. Songs like Glad, The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys, We Just Disagree.
Interesting that in looking around, I see that Wikipedia thinks The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys was jazz rock fusion. Really? I never did.
So I remember this album, but I don’t own a copy. I listened to the entire album last night on YT, and I am pretty sure I don’t have it. I’m not sure if I have any of their other albums either. That usually means I was close to someone who did own them, or that they really are somewhere in that pile of vinyl behind me and I’m just not remembering. That has happened before since I joined the Club.
The only Traffic song that I can actually remember playing in public was Feelin’ Alright, but most people associate that with Joe Cocker more than Traffic. Thanks so much for this!
Thanks for sharing all that, super interesting! You might not have owned the album but you mentioned some albums that I haven’t even listened to 🙂 Lots of great music by these guys to catch up on!
I haven’t listened to them in a long time. I guess I do have some Traffic after all, I just found 3 albums. Time to take inventory and write them down.
Wow! You should definitely cover the title track! Mona, you’d absolutely nail those drums, and Lisa, you could guitar the heck out of it. Rudi could give it a Hammonding it’d never forget…
That’s an idea! It’s going in the list 😉
Oh, and could you pass on a heartfelt ‘get well soon’ to Mona?
Thanks Roger P, I haven’t thought about that album in years. The band I was with at the time, we loved Gimme Gimme Good Lovin and tried to play it, however, we didn’t have a organist, so we tried with guitars and that was ok, it was the Groove of the song that really inspired us…..Wow, taking me back, a whole lot of time has gone by. Stay Groovy!!!!
My first “What’s on the Table”.. Steve Winwood, an important part of the British music scene of his generation. Never explored Traffic – well apart from the singles, so this feature is a very retrospective introduction! Thanks ladies!!
You’re welcome! Glad it introduced you to something new!
Wow. Not 4 hours after watching this and posting, I’m in the Supermarket and what comes on the PA? “The Finer Things,” which I haven’t heard in years. I started to LOL and people wondered what was wrong with me. Good one, universe.
That’s funny! The universe is listening in 😉
I only got to see Traffic live once (as a trio) but always considered them one of the all-time great bands. I’d love to hear you guys cover some of their songs: Mr. Fantasy, Smiling Phases, You Can All Join In, No Time To Live, Cryin’ To Be Heard, Shanghai Noodle Factory, Medicated Goo… I had the US versions of their early albums on vinyl, but picked up both the US and UK versions on CD. [PS. Powerhouse actually came before Traffic; the three songs they recorded were released in 1966 on a great Elektra Records compilation called “What’s Shakin'” which also featured early tracks by the Lovin’ Spoonful and Paul Butterfield Blues Band plus Al Kooper and Tom Rush.]
I have always loved Winwood. He was kind of hard to follow around through all his bands and collaborations. I learned to love the Hammond sound from his epic Gimme Some Lovin’ when it first came out and it really stuck. When I first listened to If You Raise Your Head I was beside myself with excitement. Then, when you revealed your present to Papa Rudi I was ecstatic. First thing I did was start streaming everything Winwood and was totally in that groove again. His work in the 80’s were real pearls in a decade of what was otherwise a pile of poop (IMO). Can’t wait to hear what you all come up with for the C3 in the future.
Btw, your Now And Then cover is absolutely phenomenal!!!
My 2nd favorite segment from the MLT Club. It’s like a personal musical history tour with Mona & Lisa, I always learn something new to me to listen to . I’ll give it a listen this weekend Thank you for sharing. Have a nice weekend everyone.
And I drink my tea with a straw as well……lol…who’s influencing who on that trend ….Drinking Tea/Coffee with a straw ….. 🤣😂🙃😉🫖☕️🥤🧋
Oh yeah…..forgot that Steve Winwood was with this band , and remembered him more so with his solo stuff from the 1980s especially, his duet with Chakka Khann – ” Bring Me A Higher Love “
This was cool … I love and have the CD of Dave Mason when he colaberated-duetted with Cass Elliot ( Not Mama Cass at this point as she hated being referred to as such in her solo career ) and her younger sister, Leah Kunkel helped on backup vocals with Dave and Cass on a few songs on the CD, I’m referring of here that I have …..
Thankyou for another rousing edition of WOTT , Awesome Album Choice 🤘🏻🫶👍🏻👌😎
I had just finished my first semester in college when this album was released. Traffic was not a group I followed and I don’t remember much about this band, but these WATT’s are always interesting, no matter what album you pick.
That was two videos released in the last two days. All of you must have worked your behinds off to finish “Now & Then” as quick as you did, and you still managed to release a WATT. Sounds like time for some R & R (Rest and Relaxation).
Ah, Traffic…Steve Winwood is 100 pounds of talent in a 20-pound bag, just no way to contain it. Mr. Fantasy is a great tune, but when I think of Traffic my go-to tune is “Light Up Or Leave Me Alone”. The musicianship all around is excellent. Jim Capaldi never seems to get much mention in the annals of drummers, but he’s amazing. Whenever I have this one in the player, I run this tune at least twice. Sort of like “If You Raise Your Head,” also two times minimum. Must be the Hammond connection…
Great job again Mona & Lisa, I expect by now I don’t need to reiterate on where I stand with What’s On The Table!
Yes, I love “Light Up…” too and now I have it stuck in my head. LOL.
Mr. Fantasy is one of the best albums of the 1960s.
Great album Roger! Really enjoyed hearing the backstory to the band Traffic and the this album. I am familiar with Steve Winwood from his hits back in the 80s, but was not aware of his association with Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendricks etc… The song Mr Fantasy is great, I felt a little Hendricks “Hey Joe” feel to it, and I could also feel some similarity to the clip “Massive Attack” by Tear Drop you played. Always enjoy hearing your take and analysis of the songs and album you provide. Thank you for another enjoyable and informative WOTT! I learn so much from these WOTT, and increases my appreciation for the music, albums and bands you feature.
As we get into the 70s I’m playing Badfinger…The Raspberries featuring Eric Carmen…The Hollies and solo efforts of the Beatles…so while I’ve heard of Traffic I never really paid any attention to them but as usual this is why WOTT is such a great part of being an MLT Clubber because we all get a better understanding of You and each of these artists that you feature….that song Gimme Some Lovin I recognized from the 60s but the rest didn’t ring a bell 🔔 but I truly enjoy WOTT because I’m going to learn something ❤️🧡Thank You !
You never paid any attention to Traffic, Rick? My mom taught me about the importance of that when I was little. I’m impressed that you’re still here!
😂😂😂😂and I’m a truck driver !
My favorite version of Dear Mr. Fantasy. This is from 2007, and it shows how adept at guitar Winwood is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmoL-qXAr5o
That was amazing David, I’ve never seen that before, thanks. He sounds better than ever. The whole band is great.
I was thinking of Crossroads too, thanks for the link. I think Winwood was at more than one of them, yes, he was at 2010 as well, I see at YT. And there are other songs from 2007 that YT has as well. All great stuff.
Wow, thanks for that ladies, I didn’t really think you’d actually do a WotT with it; there are just so many albums! But I’m glad you did because you mentioned several things I didn’t even know, which is usually my favorite part of these – your research and production insights. I have to agree about Winwood’s voice, although I have to admit that I never liked it early on and it had to grow on me. I was first introduced to him in the 80’s and I agree I wasn’t a huge fan, except for Valerie, which has always been one of my favorites. Never really liked Higher Love but that version with Lilly is haunting! I love it! But as my musical interest expanded during high school and I got more into prog rock, and went back and listen to all that stuff that came before and gained a whole new appreciation. Low Spark of High Heeled Boys still sends me off into a musical reverie.
Phil: in terms of other guys with as distinct a voice, I agree his is in the top ten for sure, but there are actually many others, and always number one for me would be Jon Anderson (Yes). Some others are Ian Anderson, Axl Rose, Rod Stewart, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Barry White…I think I’d better stop now….
Lisa: “Goosebumps!” I laughed out loud because I feel the same way! And you two lip-synching the background vocals just made my day. And you’re totally right about Massive Attack – I never made that connection!
And finally, that photo of all of you with the organ that you showed – you really need to sell that as a full-sized poster in your shop! I’d buy that in a heartbeat (if you all signed it, of course 😀 )
Well, what a trip, two videos in two days!
Traffic, I suspect, was pretty esoteric material for most of us, but Steve Winwood less so over the course of his career. A friend of mine gave me a copy of The Low Spark Of High Healed Boys (1971), which although little played, is still on the shelf.
I guess my preference was more for the bluesy/soul material of the Spencer Davis Band.
I see Traffic was on Island Records, which has an interesting back story in its own right. Island Records was started by Chris Blackwood, in the 1950’s, in Jamaica, then moved to London in 1962, where there was already a burgeoning expat Carribean culture. One of Island’s artists was Jackie Edwards, who did the original versions of Keep On Running, and Somebody Help Me. Blackwood started to cast his net a little wider, and in the course of time signed a number of British bands such as Traffic, Fairport Convention, Cat Stevens, and King Crimson. Toots and The Maytals, and of course the legendary Bob Marley and The Wailers, from Jamaica were in the mix, as reggae gained in popularity. Altogether, a very successful venture in the history of early indie labels.
Can’t wait to hear Papa Rudi on his Hammond C3. That was such a thoughtful gift! This album is new to me, and it was nice to listen to something classic, and new at the same time.
Bring back forgotten memories. I always liked Steve Winwood’s voice and I can’t think of anyone with a male voice as distinct as his.
BTW, I loved your version of the Beatle song “Now And Then”!👱♀️👩🦰🎤🎸💖
Traffic and Steve Winwood are new to me. Thank you for introducing me to their music and expanding the set of music I currently listen to ! Steve Winwood’s voice is really something.
I never had the album but I do remember the song Mr. Fantasy and of course Gimme Some Lovin’ which still gets played a lot on classic rock radio stations. I do remember Steve Winwood’s solo hits, namely the two you mention. I think Higher Love was my favorite. I seen him play it live on David Letterman’s Late Show once and it was amazing. He was absolutely a powerhouse singer and keyboardist. One of a few artists who’s vocals adapted well from the psychedelic 60’s to the pop music of the 80’s and between and beyond. Thanks for another informative WOTT video, always interesting.
I saw that Letterman performance too, Tim, back in 1986. He did both Higher Love and Gimme Some Lovin’. He really made an impression on me!
I remember Paul Schaefer saying he only let two people play his keyboards and that was Steve Winwood and Billy Joel. Paul was pretty good himself.
Yes, and he still is. Hey Tim, I try never to correct fellow clubbers in the comments, but a funny thing happened. I am a big fan of Paul, and I looked up to see how old he is now. Well, Paul Shaffer, the musician, was born in Canada on Nov 28, 1949 – he’ll be 74 on Tuesday.
While Paul Schaeffer was a hockey player who died in 1989. He played only for a short time in the NHL with the Chicago Black Hawks.
Tricky spellings of names lol. It confused me.
Take care,
Bobby S.
Haha, I didn’t know about the hockey player Bobby, sorry. I tend not to google much info unless I think it’s necessary, so my statements are probably about 75% accurate. If I use google the accuracy only improves about 10% so I don’t bother, Lol.
Hey, I get the first comment. I should watch the video first. I’ll be back, Lol.
Hey Tim best comment right there…gotta luvit. !😂😂
Yeah Rick, I get a kick out of people on YouTube that are so proud to get the first comment but don’t actually say anything. Just my attempt at being silly, sorry all.