Canned Heat Play Woodstock, Bowery Bums Drink Canned Heat

MUSICAL MOVEMENTS MAX and wane – but the boogie goes on. And if it’s boogie you’re after, check this near-on eleven minute version of Canned Heat’s driving On The Road Again, recorded live at Woodstock on August 16, 1969. Within their feel for a pop song meets the drawn-out blues workout philosophy of gob iron man Bob ‘The Bear’ Hite – who quite reasonably reminds the crowd, “Don't y'all forget to boogie” – and by the end the performance seems, if anything, too short.

And while we’re on the subject, the 1956 drama-doc On The Bowery has made it to YouTube; within is a graphic demonstration by three street drinking, desperate men of the making of your actual canned heat from Sterno jellied heating fuel. As blues methuselah Honeyboy Edwards revealed back in MOJO 168, “You put in a handkerchief, and squeeze all the juice out of it until in the handkerchief there wouldn't be nothin’ but wax... then you get two orange pops and pour it in. Two cans of canned heat you got a half a gallon of liquor there!”. Please don't try it at home!