The blues of guitarist Albert King shines with a keening, metallic glint. He builds solos like a welder, carefully measuring each phrase for its shading and intensity, then laying another atop or alongside it, often with unexpected drops and variations in tone and timbre, all the while working toward the inevitable climax. He dangles the […]
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Replacements–All Shook Down
ALL SHOOK DOWN Replacements Sire Records 926298-2 Paul Westerberg, sturdy and talented, burst into the record business with a snotty and loud foursome, the Replacements; he’s been trying to live it down ever since. The bashing and crashing have given way to sensitively constructed songs, and the band’s bad attitude has smoothed out into a […]
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Sonny Boy Williamson–Keep It to Ourselves
KEEP IT TO OURSELVES Sonny Boy Williamson Alligator AL4787 Rice Miller–“Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2”–is one of the blues’ most important, yet enigmatic, figures. An acknowledged harmonica master, he seemed obsessed with keeping the details of his life and his intimate feelings hidden from the world. He delighted in giving conflicting information about his name, […]
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Boogie Bill Webb–Drinkin’ and Stinkin’
DRINKIN’ AND STINKIN’ Boogie Bill Webb Flying Fish FF 506 New Orleans guitarist Boogie Bill Webb is an anomaly: born in 1924 near Jackson, Mississippi, Webb moved to New Orleans with his family when he was still a young boy; but his playing is rooted in the venerable cadences of Delta blues. Webb’s mother was […]
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Young Fresh Fellows on the outer limits of rock ‘n’ roll foolishness
At some point we all stopped caring about the rockin’ enchilada that makes the best eating in rock ‘n’ roll–good drumming, killer guitar riffing, shimmery melodies, hooks galore. These things were all just stock-in-trade for some bands, bands like the Beatles, the Kinks, the Hollies, the Rolling Stones. There are still groups like that out […]
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Bringing the noise: Public Enemy on the front lines
If you want to talk contributing factors, the Public Enemy mess has three of them. Those who would participate in the debate about the group ignore them at their peril, so it’s probably worth spelling them out at the beginning: (1) Professor Griff, the group’s former minister of information, is an anti-Semitic dickhead–a somewhat tragedically […]
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Anthems away: Midnight Oil runs out of gas
The 80s was the decade of the anthem. Springsteen started it, of course, but between feel-good cheerleaders both passable (Peter Gabriel) and intolerable (Sting) and a wheelbarrow full of long-haired singers with their chins jutting out, from crazy Bono to the clowns in the Alarm, we kind of got our fill of prancing guitars and […]
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The rural rock of the Silos
Silos leaders Walter Salas-Humara and Bob Rupe closed their recent show at Cabaret Metro with a strange cover–a thumping, cheerfully undifferentiated take on “One After 909,” the very early (1963) Lennon-McCartney composition the Beatles disinterred for Let It Be. A lot of what the Silos are about these days is the Salas-Humara-Rupe partnership: their rhythm […]
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Mandy Patinkin in concert: show tunes as performance art
In his current engagement at the Goodman Studio Theatre (which is not entirely sold-out despite reports), Mandy Patinkin redefines the musical-theater concert from the moment he walks onstage. Dressed in black slacks, a loose-fitting coral-colored T-shirt, and gym shoes, he pops out from the wings carrying two pots of flowers with which to decorate a […]
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Wild Child Butler–Lickin’ Gravy
LICKIN’ GRAVY Wild Child Butler Rooster Blues R7611 They’ll never pin George “Wild Child” Butler down. The Alabama- born harmonica player, who claims that his mother gave him his nickname after complaining, “Boy, you wild, you wild, you wild, you just wild, you crazy!” has been living up to the moniker for most of his […]
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Hubert Sumlin–Heart & Soul
HEART & SOUL Hubert Sumlin Blind Pig Records BP 3389 The best blues and jazz soloists are both earnest about their craft and deeply committed to having a good time. The histories of these two interrelated forms are peppered with a colorful cast of flamboyant free spirits whose art and life-styles refused to remain within […]
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John Mayall–John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers: A Sense of Place
JOHN MAYALL’S BLUESBREAKERS: A SENSE OF PLACE John Mayall Island Records/842 795.I We owe a lot to John Mayall. His Bluesbreakers, the prototypical 60s British blues band, helped open the eyes and ears of an entire generation of white, middle-class American rock-and-roll lovers to the origins of their music. These days we tend to disparage […]
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Serious partying
It’s always interesting to see how musicians who’ve been successful on record come off live. The transition between bandstand and studio can be tricky, and some of our most important blues artists have had trouble with it. In some cases–Howlin’ Wolf comes to mind–an artist’s stage presence has an excitement or intensity that can’t be […]
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Ska story: the sound of angry young England
“Forget about punk. Forget about the new Mods marching to the beat of ‘My Generation.’ In the England of 1980, ska is the word.” That’s how Rolling Stone critic David Fricke began his March 23, 1980, article on ska, the latest music craze to sweep the U.K. A decade later, the record label most responsible […]
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Liberating the blues
There’s a famous film clip of Billie Holiday toward the end of her career singing with tenor saxophonist Lester Young. Holiday’s not doing well: her voice is ravaged, she looks haggard and hollow-eyed, you wonder if she can even finish the show. But at one point, when Young takes off into one of his dreamlike […]