In July 1974, Muddy Waters was chosen to host the inaugural episode of Soundstage, the beloved live concert series broadcast by PBS stations around the country for thirteen subsequent seasons. Waters was the first in a long run of talented performers to appear on the acclaimed TV show, and he brought some friends with him, resulting in what the producers called a “Blues Summit In Chicago.” The King of Chicago Blues brought along his Queen, the phenomenal Koko Taylor, and a full suite of acolytes and admirers, including Junior Wells, Michael Bloomfield, Johnny Winter, Buddy Miles, and Dr. John, among others.
Muddy Waters’ Soundstage Blues Summit In Chicago 1974
After a solid performance of Waters’ “Blow Wind Blow” that’s interrupted by introductions, the show gets down to business with a sizzling take on “Long Distance Call.” Muddy is in fine voice, belting out the lyrics with perfect timing and emotion, accompanied by Wells’ icy harp and Bloomfield’s twangy guitar licks, with Pinetop Perkins banging the piano keys. Singer/songwriter Nick Gravenites joins Wells on his signature “Messin’ With the Kid,” the pair ripping the roof off the sucker with an energetic performance, Bloomfield’s wiry solos underlining a smiling Wells’ lively vocals.
Waters returns to the stage for a raucous read on his “Mannish Boy,” the band delivering a white-hot groove for Waters to croon above while Winter and Bloomfield swap licks. Taylor is joined by Willie Dixon for a romp through “Wang Dang Doodle,” guitarist Phil Guy receiving a well-deserved spotlight while Koko outshines her male colleagues with an electrifying performance. With his usual modesty, Johnny Winter introduces “Walking Through the Park,” leading the band on a livewire cover of the Buddy Guy tune featuring three dueling guitarists and Wells’ raging harp play.
An extended take on Waters’ “Got My Mojo Workin’” literally has the audience on its feet as everybody hits the stage. Wells offers a freight-train solo, Winter lays down a finger-blistering lead, and Pinetop hammers the keys alongside Dr. John. There are other solid performances here, ten in all for this first Soundstage release, the DVD a definite “must have” for any old-school Chicago blues fan! (Legacy Recordings, 2015)
Review originally published by Blues Music magazine, 2015
Over the past decade,
ZZ Top – that little
ol’ band from Texas – has largely relied on their electrifying live show to push
their career forward as it enters into its fifth decade. The trio of guitarist
Billy Gibbons, bassist Dusty Hill, and drummer Frank Beard has been together
since the beginning and the band’s 1970 debut album, a raucous amalgam of blues
and rock that took both genres into new territory. They would build on that
sound with subsequent landmark releases like Rio Grande Mud and
Tres Hombres, reaching their commercial peak with 1983’s
Eliminator.
The band has been absent from the studio for much
of the 2000s, though, ZZ Top’s last studio album also the fourth release under a
reported $35 million deal with RCA Records. When 2003’s Mescalero met
with diminished commercial returns, however, the band was left in the
hinterlands without a label deal, and save for a couple of well-received live
releases – including Live In Germany 1980 – ZZ Top has done much of their
talking from the stage. Changes were afoot, however, and around 2008 the band
broke with long-time manager Bill Ham and signed with producer Rick Rubin’s
American Recordings, the result being La Futura, the band’s first studio
effort in over nine years.
ZZ Top’s La Futura
Four years in the making, La Futura takes ZZ Top recklessly into
the future while unashamedly drawing upon the band’s storied past. Gibbons and
gang delve into a bit of what Chris Thomas King calls the “21st century
hip-hop blues” for the album-opening “I Gotsta Get Paid.” The song is based on
a 1990s track by Houston rapper DJ DMD (“Lighters”), and the ZZ crew dirty it
up a bit with some Rio Grande mud, drawing out the groove to a monolithic
drone while Gibbons’ guitar screams and stutters like James Blood Ulmer’s
Harmolodic blues. More of a greasy Texas blues-rock vamp than anything
remotely hip-hop, it’s an interesting and edgy direction for the aging
greybeards in ZZ Top. By comparison, “Chartreuse” is a mid-tempo boogie-blues
tune firmly in the band’s wheelhouse, a rolling, rollicking beat punctuated by
Gibbons’ fuzzy, frenetic guitarplay.
La Futura also takes ZZ
Top onto new musical turf with the emotionally-raw and darkly elegant ballad
“Over You.” Co-written with roots ‘n’ blues musician and songwriter Tom
Hambridge, “Over You” is a slow-paced, smoldering, and heartfelt ode that
levels Gibbons’ rough-throated, heartbroken vocals over a swelling crescendo
of sound. His fretwork here evokes the best of every blues guitarist that
comes to mind, but especially Albert King for its raw strength, and Otis Rush
for its understated beauty. Gibbons’ shaky, slightly distorted tone adds to
the mournful resonance of his solos. Revisiting the twelve-bar blues of their
youth, “Heartache In Blue” is a torrid, mid-tempo rocker with Hound Dog Taylor
roots, Gibbons’ torn ‘n’ frayed vocals complimented by rolling blasts from
James Harman’s harmonica and his own switchblade guitar notes.
Big Shiny Nine
Another Hambridge co-write, “I Don’t Want To Lose, Lose You,” treads
similar lyrical ground, but with a bigger, bolder sound, the double-tracked
machine-gun guitars reminding of the band’s Tres Hombres era, Gibbons’
blustery vocals backed by a choogling rhythm (think “Beer Drinkers & Hell
Raisers” on steroids) and sonic blasts of razor-sharp guitar licks. “Flyin’
High” sounds more like the Eliminator ‘80s, but with less emphasis on
synthesizer hum, the song copping a melody from a vaguely-remembered minor hit
of the era and embroidering it with classic rock chops – soaring guitarplay,
riffs that circle back around on you, a mean-as-hell backbeat, and a heavy
bass line.
The trio visits Nashville for a cover of country-folk
duo David Rawlings and Gillian Welch’s “It’s Too Easy Manana.” Much as they
did with the aforementioned rap song, ZZ slaps layers of bluesy grime and grit
onto the song like cheap paint at Earl Scheib. Slowing down the pace to a
dinosaur plod, texture is provided by Gibbons’ electronically-enhanced guitar
sound, a big drum blast, and world-weary vocals. It’s a great performance that
bears repeated listens. Ditto for “Big Shiny Nine,” possibly the best…or at
least the most fun…song on La Futura, a blues-rock romp from the 1970s
with flamethrower guitar and driving rhythms. Gibbons’ guttural, growling
vocals (think Howlin’ Wolf with a cold) are matched only by his jagged git
solos and the song’s fluid groove. Down ‘n’ dirty in the pocket for “Have A
Little Mercy,” the band closes with another throwback to the early ‘70s, the
song bringing to mind “Waitin’ For The Bus” but with a slightly-funky,
slow-boiling groove and shards of deep-cutting, raw-boned
guitar.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
Bringing a fresh perspective into the studio in the form of producer
Rick Rubin – the first person not named “Gibbons” or “Ham” to sit in that
chair since 1970 – has paid off in spades for ZZ Top, the band delivering its
most inspired work since 1983’s Eliminator, and possibly its most
blues-oriented album since Tres Hombres, nearly 40 years ago. The band
has never strayed far from its Texas blues roots, but the synthesizer overkill
that characterized its chart-topping tunes of the 1980s has been dialed back
to a mild buzz, allowing Billy Gibbons’ joyful guitar playing to dominate the
performances and lead the band back into the blues-rock spotlight. (American
Recordings, released September 11, 2012)
Roy Buchanan is probably the best guitarist that you’ve never heard.
Although he found a modicum of success with the twelve albums he released during
his lifetime, two of them achieving Gold® sales status (a heady accomplishment
in the 1970s), his influence reaches far beyond the meager commercial returns of
his work. The “Master of the Telecaster” provided inspiration for fellow
guitarists like Jeff Beck, Gary Moore, Danny Gatton, and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons,
among others with his heady brew of blues, roots-rock, R&B, and country
music.
After an amazing string of eight studio and a single live
album recorded and released during the brief space of nine years, by 1981
Buchanan was burned out. The vagaries of the recording industry, and his labels’
attempts to conform his talents to a saleable commodity had left him disgruntled
and disillusioned. The guitarist would virtually disappear for a spell, taking a
four-year hiatus to re-think and re-charge his batteries. Lucky for us,
Alligator Records’ Bruce Iglauer convinced Buchanan to return from his
self-imposed exile, giving the guitarist artistic control in the studio that
would result in some of the best recordings of Buchanan’s career.
Roy Buchanan’s Live At Rockpalast
Live At Rockpalast is taken from a February 1985 performance by
the guitarist and his band for the popular German TV show Rockpalast,
and would mark Buchanan’s return to music…and what a return it would prove to
be! Buchanan’s performance here, prior to the recording of his Alligator debut
When A Guitar Plays the Blues, shows an artist and musician back in
fighting form and shaking off the ring rust. Leading a band that included
(seldom used) singer Martin Stephenson, keyboardist John Steel, and bassist
Anthony Dumm – all members of U.K. pop/rock band the Daintees – as well as
drummer Martin Yula, Buchanan cranks through a baker’s dozen of original
blues-flavored roots-rockers and favorite covers, much to the delight of the
enthusiastic German audience.
The set kicks off with the spry
“Thing In G (Short Fuse),” a funky instrumental romp that sounds not unlike
some of the material Stevie Ray Vaughan would be vamping on a couple of short
years later. While the band provides a supple rhythm, Buchanan embroiders the
song with his red-hot fretwork, the guitarist firing on all cylinders as he
throws in sly blues, jazz, and rockabilly references throughout the
four-minute firecracker. Buchanan’s subsequent take on Booker T & the
M.G.s’ classic “Green Onion” is unlike any you’ve ever heard…while the band
offers up a standard take on the song’s keyboard riffing and swaggering
drumbeats, the guitarist stomps all over tradition with his wild-ass
flamethrower solos, which bounce off the arrangement like a madman careening
off the walls of his rubber room. It makes for an energetic and unpredictable
performance, and a heck of a lot of fun.
Blues In D
Buchanan was well-known and revered for his ability to fuse blues, rock,
and country music into an earthy, organic sound, and nowhere did he ever do it
better than with “Roy’s Blues (Roy’s Bluz).” An intricate instrumental
backdrop frames the almost whispered, briefly spoken lyrics as Buchanan’s
fretwork ranges from low-key blues and roots-rock to jagged shards of angular
jazz licks and twangy, barbed-wire country tones. It’s not blues as we know
it, but it’s breathtaking nevertheless, the song stretched out to ten minutes
by Buchanan and band so that by the time he hits the crescendo almost six
minutes in, when the raucous vocals fly out of nowhere, you’re left exhausted.
By contrast, Buchanan’s instrumental “Blues In D” is a more
traditional blues shuffle, with the guitarist showing his mojo hand through a
number of passages throughout the song. Above a standard Chicago blues
bass/drums rhythm, Buchanan tacks on an incendiary display of six-string
pyrotechnics, emotion pouring from his fingertips in a performance that is
pure instinct and adrenalin. He takes much the same tack with songwriter Don
Gibson’s “Sweet Dreams,” Buchanan’s mournful, tear-jerking solos echoing the
song’s heartbreak lyrics, adding a bit of blues hue to this instrumental take
on a beloved country classic.
Foxy Lady
Like just about every other guitarist that came of
age during the 1960s, Buchanan was touched by the incredible sounds that
issued from the instrument of the late Jimi Hendrix. Buchanan’s take on
Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” – the song a garage-rock standard first hit big by the
Leaves in 1965 and later adapted by Hendrix as the Experience’s first single –
skews more towards Hendrix’s vision in this performance. Although Stevenson’s
vocals are unremarkable, it’s Buchanan’s mangling of his instrument that draws
your attention, his solos incorporating scraps of blues, rock, and some
otherworldly sounds that even Jimi couldn’t reach. The following version of
Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady” soars even further into the stratosphere, the vocals
overshadowed and hidden beneath Buchanan’s unbelievable, high-flying guitar
and the muscular rhythmic soundtrack provided by Dumm and Yula.
Buchanan’s
“Messiah (Messiah Will Come Again)” is provided a truly ethereal performance
here, the song’s unlikely fusion of blues and rock with classical music
overtones unique to Buchanan’s particular experience and perspective. His
haunting guitarplay here is elegantly beautiful and tragically dark, the
guitarist wringing every bit of energy and emotion from his fretboard. The
mood is heightened greatly, however, by the upbeat “Night Train,” a
rockabilly-tinged instrumental with a ramshackle framework that rocks and
rolls like the wheels on a freight train. Buchanan closes
Live At Rockpalast with “Wayfaring Pilgrim,” another haunting
instrumental that showcases his immense abilities, great tone, and masterful
blending of musical styles.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
The 1985 release of the acclaimed
When A Guitar Plays the Blues represented the beginning of a fertile
period of Roy Buchanan’s career, the guitarist quickly recording 1986’s
Dancing On the Edge and the following year’s Hot Wires before his tragic death
in 1988. Returning to the trenches after a four-year break, Buchanan sounds
recharged, revved-up, and ready-to-roll on Live At Rockpalast. There
are few live documents of this unique and influential guitarist available, and
this one is well worth your hard-earned coin. (MIG Music, released March 6,
2012)
Nick Lowehas been making great music for so long that we often take him
for granted. Over a career that has spanned nearly forty years, Lowe has
released around a dozen albums of consistently entertaining and adventurous
songs that venture into sounds of pop, rock, country, and all things in
between.
As member of early ‘70s pub-rock pioneers Brinsley Schwarz,
Nick Lowe earned a reputation as a snappy songwriter with a skill for turning a
phrase. The band’s roots-rock sound never caught on far beyond the streets of
London and Camden Town, however, and Brinsley Schwarz broke up in 1975 after
recording five now highly-collectible albums. The independent spirit of Brinsley
Schwarz, combined with the band’s part in convincing British pubs to feature
live music, paved the way for the back-to-the-basics movement of punk rock and
helped spawn the legendary class of ‘77 that included the Damned, the Clash, and
the Sex Pistols.
Nick Lowe’s Jesus of Cool
Lowe had a direct hand in shaping both punk and new wave, working for
Stiff Records as a producer on important and influential records from talents
like Graham Parker, Wreckless Eric, Elvis Costello, the Pretenders, and the
Damned. During this post-Brinsley period, Lowe also toured the U.S. as part of
Dave Edmunds’ band, opening for Bad Company. Lowe released an initial single –
“So It Goes” – on Stiff in 1976, and would subsequently launch his solo career
in earnest in 1978 with the release of Jesus of Cool, a whip-smart collection
of pop-rock gems that welded contagious melodies with Lowe’s often-demented
lyrical tales.
Because the album’s original British title was
considered too “edgy” and controversial for the United States, Lowe’s debut
album was released stateside under the wonderfully descriptive title Pure Pop
For Now People with different sequencing and songs. Under either title, the
album won no little amount of critical acclaim. Although it has sadly been
out-of-print for better than a decade, this situation has recently been
remedied by Yep Roc Records. The label has reissued Jesus of Cool in a 30th
anniversary edition with its original schizo cover art and track sequencing,
with a wealth of bonus material and a swanky package that includes a nifty
annotated booklet with liner notes and lots of photos. The entire package
folds out into a cool stained-glass cross-type thingie in keeping with the
whole “Nick Lowe is the Jesus of Cool” theme.
Pure Pop For Now
People
What has made Jesus of Cool a cult favorite for three
decades, though, is the undeniably entertaining music contained within. Lowe’s
talents aren’t contained by any single pigeonhole, and musically the songs
here run the gamut from the hard-edged martial minimalism of the anti-industry
“Music For Money” and the twisted ‘50s-styled rock ballad “Little Hitler” to
the whimsical casual vandalism of “I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass.”
The swaggering “Shake And Pop” features a Jerry Lee-styled
piano-bashing as its musical signature, while the song’s lyrical doppelganger,
“They Called It Rock,” is an equally breathless exploration of the rock ‘n’
roll lifestyle, supported this time around by a rollicking rhythm and stabs of
Duane Eddy-styled guitarwork. “So It Goes” is a popish new wave roller with an
infectious chorus and a bit of vocal gymnastics by the good Mr. Lowe. The
finely-crafted power-pop construction and lighthearted vocals of “Marie
Provost” barely cover the dark humor of the song’s sordid subject matter.
“Nutted By Reality” offers up a funky bass groove and lively rhythm before
dropping into an unlikely bit of McCartneyesque pop surrealism. A live version
of “Heart of the City” is a driven slab o’ rootsy rock with squirrely guitar,
rapidfire vocals, and a perfect bash-and-crash drumbeat.
There are
a number of gems thrown in amidst the ten bonus tracks afforded this deluxe
edition of Jesus of Cool. The uber-groovy instrumental “Shake That Rat” is a
Dick Dale inspired walk on the beach while “I Love My Label” is a delightfully
tongue-in-cheek observation of recording industry expectations. The Phil
Spectorish “Halfway To Paradise” is an understated, ‘60s-style flight-of-fancy
with delicious harmonies and lofty instrumentation. The fan-tastic “Rollers
Show” is a fab slice of teen-beat adoration for the Bay City Rollers,
delivered with a Britpop beat and a heart of gold. An original take on the
classic “Cruel To Be Kind” is faster-but-slighter than that found on Labour of
Lust, but no less fetching with its beautiful pop sheen.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
Beneath all of the bluster and genius, however, Jesus of Cool is
a wonderfully concise collection of songs that evince as much anger and
vitriol as anything recorded by new wave’s “angry young men” like Graham
Parker and Elvis Costello. Unlike either of those talented artists, however,
Lowe – a veteran tunesmith with better than a decade of performing and
recording beneath his belt – learned how to mask his venom with a spoonful of
sugar. The result is a timeless classic of true rock ‘n’ roll music –
intelligent, witty, clever, angry and, most of all...cool! (Yep Roc Records, 2008)
Review originally published by the Trademark of Quality (TMQ) blog
