Friday, March 28, 2008

Actual Blues

*Yawn* Clapton? He's got those pale lily white blues again? Sorry but Clapton hasn't had anything that resembled an edge since 1970. Dude's a technician. He reverse engineers the blues and for all of his studied tone and practiced licks, he just never had the fire. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to John Lee Hooker and Hound Dog Taylor. No bullshit here.



6 comments:

jazzizbest said...

One of my favourtie topics...and then there is Elvis who remade Big Mama Thortons "Hound Dog" or Janis Joplin who re-did BMT's "Ball and Chain"....now Big Mama Thorton..there was a blues singer!!

andrew said...

Amazing what Hound Dog Taylor could do with his six fingers.

For those who agree with psa (as I do) that Clapton's been a pretty weak bluesman since Cream (although unplugged, for all it's overplaying, was pretty good) check out Elmore James, Howlin ' Wolf, Albert King, Alberta Hunter, Nina Simone (although jazzy), Ledbelly , R.L. Burnside, ...

BTW, here's a classic combo.

CC said...

Um ... kids? I wasn't so much holding out Clapton as the pinnacle of blues brilliance, so much as just providing counterpoint to PSA's infliction of Scott Stapp and Creed on you.

And, really, pretty much anyone would have done fine as counterpoint, if you catch my drift.

LuLu said...

Youtube war!!

jazzizbest said...

no counter points...just love the blues..and of course, jazz. What can I say, easily sidetracke :-)

Lindsay Stewart said...

just as a point of clarification, i never inflicted creed on this esteemed readership. that was actually creed shreds, a total mocking slam at creed. i believe the artist is of finnish origin, he's taken all manner of live video and replaced the original sound with his own comic piss take on the originals.

and i stand by the girlschool cover of the trex tune, '20th century boy'. girlschool was the first all girl rock band that actually rocked. they weren't manufactured by a&r weasels, they could play their instruments and they wrote a few decent tunes along the way. they didn't get props from lemmy and tour with motorhead for no reason. as a note, kelly johnson, who sang the trex tune and played a pretty smoking lead guitar, passed away last year after a long fight with spinal cancer.