Johnny Winter 1944 to 2014

On 16 July 2014 Johnny Winter died at age 70 on tour in Europe.

Johnny came from the Texas blues guitar tradition, which is what he practiced for most of his career except for a digression into hard rock in the mid-Seventies, aided and abetted by Rick Derringer after overcoming a heroin addiction and leaving behind the grandstanding hard rock Winter was an integral part, as producer and musician, in the revival of the fortunes of Muddy Waters in the late Seventies. After that brief interlude of brilliance he kept going as a journeyman blues musician, releasing a number of albums and touring regularly, without much further distinction other than as becoming a grand old man of the blues.

As a teenage White, albino blues aficionado in Texas he must have been a strange sight with his huge talent and fierce ambition to carry him through. There are some photographs of the young Johnny looking very cool with his white-haired crew cut and Ray Ban Wayfarers. He could have been part of Booker T & The MGs. By the late Sixties he was known for his ultra-long, very straight hair and almost invisible eyebrows that gave him a true otherworldly presence.

In 1968, and when Johnny Winter was 24, Columbia Records signed him to a recording contract with the largest advance paid to any blues or rock act at that time. He played at Woodstock, though he is not in the movie. Like Eric Clapton, Johnny Winter sunk into heroin addiction in the Seventies, and was then guided into rock and roll stardom by Rick Derringer's hard rock nous and "Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo" and blistering live performances with plenty of white hot lead guitar.

Johnny had a brother Edgar, a keyboardist with leanings towards jazz rahter than blues, and with whom Johnny recorded a couple of albums over the length of his career. The two brothers chose quite different career paths.

I knew of the Edgar Winter Group, a glam rock, jazz-funk-metal outfit, featuring guitarist Ronnie Montrose, long before I ever heard of Johnny Winter. The Edgar Winter Group's album They Only Come Out At Night was in the record racks of Sygma Records in Stellenbosch and the striking cover of Edgar in make always caught the attention. Twenty five or thirty years later I found Edgar Winter's debut album at Cash Crusaders and bought it because it was very cheap. I did not like it because it was full of progressive jazz that did not appeal to me at all. There was no blues, or funk or glam rock to it.

Johnny Winter came to my attention with the reviews of Hard Again, the Muddy Waters album from 1977 that revived his fortunes and made him a star again. Johnny Winter produced the album and played guitar on it, and also with the Waters band during the subsequent tour.

A couple of years later I bought White, Hot & Blue, Johnny Winter's return to the blues, recorded at about the same time as Hard Again and with the Muddy Waters band backing Winter. Both Hard Again and White, Hot & Blue were my introductions to the Chicago style blues pioneered by Muddy Waters.

By this time I'd also heard Winter as rocker with "Rock and Roll. Hoochie Koo," and his loud, rocking versions of "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Jumping jack Flash" and did not care much for them. Winter's piercing, fast fingered turbo boosted style of playing on these tunes, particularly live, showed an astonishing ability but dragged after a while. The short, more concise and more fluid playing on the blues albums was much more to my taste.

I have not been able to replace White, Hot & Blue in my CD collection as the original LP seems not to have been released in any digital format yet. I have bought Nothing But The Blues, the follow up album with the Muddy Waters band, and an anthology of blues tracks from the Nineties. Winter continued to release blues albums on Alligator Records, Virgin Pointblank and other labels, and none of them appealed to me. I imagined that the music would be based around Eighties production techniques with an emphasis on a rockier rhythm section rather than a swinging blues rhythm section with Johnny Winter's flamethrower guitar on top. Alligator Records, in particular, made an effort in the Eighties to bring blues up to date with contemporary production techniques and simply produced a great deal of stodgy, lumpen music. An anthology of the best of his releases made much more sense for the collection.

In the late Nineties there was a sudden slew of very early Winter blues recordings on low budget CD compilations, often with the same tunes reshuffled from CD to CD with different covers and titles. I believe that these tracks were recorded in Texas during the dues paying years before the big Columbia Records contract. The truth of the matter is, despite somewhat dubious production at times, that these early blues performances are quite tasty and satisfying and a good record of the state of blues in the early to mid-Sixties, before the major boom that led to Columbia showing interest in Johnny Winter, otherwise no more than an albino, White blues guy on the chitlin' circuit.

Johnny Winter has the distinction of releasing two debut albums in 1969 because the small company with whom he was contracted before the Columbia Records signing had a album's worth of tracks in the vault and they obviously decided that it was time to cash in on a guy who had unexpectedly been pushed onto the big stage. This small label record was The Progressive Blues Experiment. The big label debut on Columbia Records was called simply Johnny Winter.

On the first of these two albums Winter leads a power trio, with Uncle John Turner on bass and Tommy Shannon on drums, and plays a set of blues standards mostly electric but also some solo acoustic guitar tracks, in what can only be called blues with amplifiers turned to 11. One could compare the Winter band with Cream, the original blues power trio, and the main difference would be that Cream's rhythm section is far more interesting to listen to in its own right where Turner and Shannon simply stick to the basics and keep it together for Winter's guitar pyrotechnics. Johnny plays a Gibson Explorer where Clapton plays a Gibson Les Paul and Winter emphasises piercing high notes and a style where a dexterous flood of notes drives the music and Clapton plays with a greater melodic fluency and a less shrill tone. Overall Johnny Winter sounds like a guy playing deep blues really loudly and Cream sounds like a heavy blues band with ambitions beyond the blues.

On Johnny Winter the man leads a larger ensemble, with the core rhythm section, and, amongst others, his brother Edgar on keyboards and with a horn section. The set mixes Winter originals with blues standards and the feel is that of late Sixties heavy progressive blues (more so than the probably ironically named The Progressive Blues Experiment, which was experimental only in the volume at which Winters played) and the production values are clearly far higher than on the other album. Although the blues tropes are present and correct the roots of the later hard rock sound are already in place. Having said that, Johnny Winter still plays the blues with feeling and his trademark rolling cascades of notes.

The rock and roll version of Johnny Winter did not appeal to me because he just seemed to play too much loud, unsubtle guitar, in keeping with the post-Clapton, post-Hendrix overlordship of the guitar hero in rock. Where Winter once covered blues standards with a sense of understanding of the blues, he now selected prominent rock songs by Dylan and the Rolling Stones to showcase his furious attack and basically started jamming on stage for as long as possible to get through his sets with minimum attention to quality. It seemed to me, from the live albums, that he could pretty much just set himself on cruise control and solo for as long as he could while his rhythm section kept the beat going. He was on junk and his audiences were stoned as well and it must have made a lot of sense in the context. Listening to those albums now are nothing but a trial.

For my money, the Muddy Waters band has produced the best, most sympathetic setting for the Johnny Winters blues experience. The band swings behind him; the veterans know when to lay back and when to push and never overwhelm or sound workmanlike. The tunes ate mostly well-known and have actual tunes to them, and the ensemble playing suits Winters well because he can be as fluid or as sharp as he likes, while seamless fitting into the groove. It is an ensemble, with each instrumentalist playing a part and not one overpowering the rest or showboating.

The later blues albums tend to be too much of Johnny Winter with rhythm section that is always solid and dependable yet seems to be designed to be a backdrop for the guitar and voice and not part of a band of equals. It is all very well to have a distinctive style as your trade mark but you gotta alleviate it with actual tunes and enough variations on the theme to keep the listener's attention.

There is a YouTube clip of Johnny Winter playing four numbers in a small club in Copenhagen in 1970 that illustrates the point. He is backed by bass and drums and plays a blues set, with a detour to "Johnny B Goode." His main ax is a Fender with a humbucking pick up and for "Mean Town Blues" when he plays slide he switches to a 12-string electric. The performances are extended and he plays plenty of guitar all over the songs. The audience seems rapt, or maybe they are overwhelmed by the extended solos. Although the fluency and talent of the guitar player are not in doubt the performance is curiously enervated. There is no spark at all and the guitarist could have been any local body with the technique and the repertoire and at the time the world must have been over supplied with blues bands. I can only imagine that the Danes came to hear Johnny Winter because he was an American and something of a legend and not because he was a certified genius of the blues.

This is why I maintain that the substantive legend of the Winter legacy will not rest on the totality of the body of work he's left us but principally on his first couple of albums from the Late Sixties, where the style was introduced and defined, and records with Muddy Waters and the Waters band in the late Seventies. Johnny Winter had to reign in his natural tendency to over play and to go on far beyond the bounds of necessity or pleasure when playing guitar solos and rather to rely on the strength of the song he was performing and the ensemble playing of the band to carry the entire tune.

No doubt Johnny Winter will always be held in high regard by blues lovers, lovers of blues guitar and all round rock fans who appreciate the craftsmanship, drive and talent of someone like Johnny Winter. I cannot see myself investing heavily into the back catalogue except for Johnny Winter and Second Winter. And I would dearly love to find a copy of White, Hot & Blue to go with Nothing But The Blues and the Muddy Waters albums Hard Again, I'm Ready, King Bee and Muddy "Mississippi" Waters Live. These records represent the best of Johnny Winter and pretty much all you need to know about him.

 

The Animals

Back in the days of my youth "House of the Rising Sun" was the one tune every aspirant young guitarist wanted to play, learnt to play and usually played at parties. Perhaps because it was an intricate, memorable melody that demonstrated a skill that was of a higher level than merely strumming three chords. Anyhow, this song was the monster hit of The Animals, a traditional blues song, arranged by Alan Price with the distinctive organ motif, and the best known song by Newcastle's finest exponents of mid-Sixties R & B.

"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" and "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" were the other well-known tunes. None of them were written by the band, as was the case for most of their recordings. The first two are Brill Building pop re-imaginations of soul and the third is another traditional song, previously recorded by Bob Dylan for his debut album. Allegedly the Animals' electric R & B version of "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" motivated Dylan to go electric.

In the early Sixties, after the decline of the skiffle and trad jazz scenes, the UK pop scene was divided roughly into two camps, the poptastic beat groups following in the footsteps of the Beatles, and the rough and ready R & B groups like the Rolling Stones and The Animals who cared less for pop music unless it was Motown and who had something of a purist bent towards the blues that influenced them to play it in the first place. When one looks at the histories of a number of prominent British bands of the late Sixties, one will see how many of them originated as R & B or blues bands who eventually became more musically and artistically ambitious.

Apparently the Animals were called by such because of a wild stage show when the band sill had no permanent name and the group adopted the nickname as a badge of honour. Eric Burdon, vocals, and Alan Price, organ and piano, were the leading lights. Burdon had the voice and demeanour of the great White blues singer and Price was the musical genius. The band was pumping and if one closed one's eyes you could imagine you were listening to a Black bar band somewhere in the Deep South of the USA.

The Animals, in common with the Beatles and Stones, and many other contemporaries, liked R & B because it was a tough kind of music and had a pop edge too. The Stones and The Animals might also have had blues roots but these were sublimated to a degree as the music was somehow more serious than the party flavour of the R & B styles they preferred.

I knew the history of the Animals from The Story of Pop and I had heard "House of the Rising Sun," without knowing much more about the music before I bought a double album of The Animals' greatest hits from Sygma Records in Stellenbosch. I was a regular browser in the record store, with as much knowledge of the inventory as the sales guys, and one day I saw this Animals' double album there at a good price, always a motivation to me.

I asked the sales guy to play me some of the tracks on the turntable on the counter. In those days it was almost de rigeur for a prospective buyer, or even just a browser, to ask to listen to records before putting money down for them.

"I'm Crying" was the opening cut on the album. I had never heard this song before and within 30 seconds of listening to it I was hooked. I only listened to this one track, took the headphones off and told the shop guy that I wanted this record without further ado. Just that first track convinced me that it would be worth the asking price of the record.

This collection was great. The music was exuberant organ driven R & B with Eric Burdon's knowing, sly Britblues voice on top, sometimes almost goofy, sometimes just giddy with excitement at the pounding beat. This was by no means deep blues; this was sweaty, smoky club music for dancers.

The guys mixed Ray Charles ("Talking 'Bout You" with gospel fervour), John Lee Hooker ("Boom Boom" as a blues twist), Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and stomped with gusto, verve and brio; all that good, good stuff. I could understand why their wild onstage antics, fuelled no doubt by Newcastle brown ale and pills, and this outrageous energy could have brought them the nickname "animals."

More than thirty years later I've bought a similar album from iTunes, with some tunes I'd not heard before, such as "Gonna Send You Back To Walker", "I Believe To My Soul" and "Let The Good Times Roll" and with the omission of "For Miss Caulker" and "The Story of Bo Diddley." It is still a splendid collection of tunes I've loved for a long time. The album represents a joyous and fiery pleasure.

In the early years of building my record collection I bought blues albums by the greats like John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and others alongside records by White blues and R & B artists and got to know a number of blues standards in their interpretations by the White guys before I had a chance to hear the original versions and in some cases I yet have to hear the original. The Animals provided one such education. Although, for example, "Boom Boom" and "Dimples" are made over as blues influenced pop dance tracks fit for a mid-Sixties discotheque, the Animals do something really special with "I'm Mad Again" in a way that I have not heard John Lee Hooker improve on.

The purist blues approach was much more prevalent in the late Sixties British blues boom especially with the rise of the superstar guitarist, than at the time the Animals and their peers came up. The early bands were not built around, nor relied on, virtuosity and star soloists and followed a pattern closer to that of the classic Chicago Southside electric blues ensemble template. The R & B guys were also more into entertaining in dance clubs than playing to audiences who preferred paying respectful and rapt attention to their idols.

The Animals played the kind of blues that defied you to stay still even if the lyrics somehow portrayed some sad situation typical of the blues. One could therefore argue that the likes of The Animals were far closer to the spirit and reality of the Southside of Chicago than the more purist bands that followed.

 

 

 

Jammin With The Black Cat Bone

A couple of months ago I was searching the South African iTunes Store for the latest, or any album, by local blues rock act Black Cat Bones, given that it is one of the many bands whose CDs, if they ever release albums, are not available at Musica or even The African Music Store, but did not find anything by the South African outfit. Instead I came across music by a short lived British band of the same name whose main claim to fame seems to be that Paul Kossoff and Andy Kirke, later of Free, and Rod Price, later of Foghat, were briefly in the band.

I also found reference to various albums with songs called "Black Cat Bone." Finally I came across the Jammin' album of The Black Cat Bone. The tracks start with "Mannish Boy" and run through a veritable greatest hits of blues. The album cover photograph shows the band members posing in what can only be a parody of a Fifties rock and roll album cover. I had to have it, and bought it.

I could not find any other info on The Black Cat Bone, the time period within which the band was active or even the release date of Jammin'. The singer's accent sounds European and I would not be surprised if the band were of Dutch origin, or perhaps Belgian. There has been, and still is, a significant blues scene in the Lowlands and the Dutch in particular has had a number of excellent blues bands particularly from the Sixties blues boom era.

The production values are quite high and the song selection is excellent. The band comes across as dedicated to honouring the tradition and to do justice to the standards they perform. It is your basic Chicago Southside electric blues combo with the blues harp player being for the most part the most prominent soloist. The artists covered include Muddy Waters ("Mannish Boy", "Hoochie Coochie Man", and "Catfish Blues."), Magic Sam ("All Your Loving"), Buddy Guy and Junior Wells ("Messing With The Kid"), Little Walter ("My Babe"), Jimmy Reed ("Got Me Running"), Robert Johnson ("Me and the Devil") and, as finale, a cool, jazzy interpretation of B B King's "The Thrill Is Gone." There is one nod to rock 'n roll with Dale Hawkins' "Suzie Q" and instrumental "Guitar Rag."

I would imagine that The Black Cat Bone could have held their own against any White blues combo of their time. They are as authentic as one could expect from a band that does not give note perfect, awestruck renditions of the tunes they cover nor go out of their way to do something progressive with their blues. The Fabulous Thunderbirds or George Thorogood, for example, were exposed to the real thing, the old time blues guys who were still alive and performing in the formative years of the respective younger musicians who eventually carried on the tradition and also stamped their own brand on it, not only by writing their own blues classics but in the angle at which they approached the tradition and its tropes. The Black Cat Bone are the kind of bar band that play blues with a gritty enthusiasm and the earthy twelve bar joy yet are not out to challenge the tradition or reconstruct it. I would guess that groups like John Mayall, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Fleetwood Mac would have been contemporaries or near contemporaries of The Black Cat Bone and the other bands were absolutely not only regurgitation bluesy their idols and mentors but also bringing something new to the table. Most of the blues influenced musicians from the mid Sixties eventually found their way to hard blues rock or progressive blues in any event that took the genre to somewhere different than the Southside or the Delta mostly because of some artistic drive that forced the musicians to move beyond imitation to creativity and because progression was the name of the game back then, all kinds of fusion with blues followed. On the evidence of this one record I could not imagine The Black Cat Bone moving on from cover versions. A superior bar band will not necessarily make a good progressive band. On the other hand, it is not impossible or improbable to think that The Black Cat Bone would not have become another version of Living Blues or even Golden Earring. Fleetwood Mac mutated in to an AOR band within the space of 10 years after starting from a pretty much purist blues base.

There are plenty of albums by White blues acts who do their earnest best to do homage to their blues heroes, with greater or lesser degrees of success. Jammin' would not count amongst the top ten of those but it is on the whole pleasant and entertaining to listen to. If there is not much innovation there is no wholesale desecration of the material either. And, best of all, though the material is perhaps over familiar there is never a sense of the tedium that can destroy the soul through having to listen to yet another version of "Hoochie Coochie Man."

 

 

 

 

Mean Black Mamba

Mean Black Mamba is a South African contribution to the contemporary trend of guitar and bass duos as well as one of the slew of bands that form part of the South African neo-blues scene of the past five years or so. The Mean Black Mamba sound is pretty much influenced by, and sounds like, the somewhat primitive gutbucket electric blues that can still be found in the rural backwaters of the USA where the musicians often still have day jobs to support their families and play in back country juke joints for pocket change. Any number of these bands also consist of only a guitarist and drummer.

The feral sound of Mean Black Mamba is in stark contrast to another such contemporary neo-blues duo, The Parlor Vinyls, from Stellenbosch, who worship at the feet of Jack White, although both of these bands may well owe a debt of inspiration to early Black Keys.

The current (as of mid-2014) South African blues rock revival or resuscitation is an interesting development away from the prevailing modern rock, dance pop and folky sounds. After the heady days of the early Nineties when the Frick brothers made an effort to establish a blues scene in Cape Town, and the number of blues bands that sprung up at the time, there was a long dry spell where blues kind of went underground and became unfashionable. The kids wanted to rock in a contemporary fashion. With the neo-blues scene the emphasis is less on purist blues and more on blues rock or music on which blues is an influence if not always the primary influence. This new interest in an old-faithful genre that often sinks below the commercial radar but has never disappeared, is probably a reaction against the somewhat clinical, bloodless, predictable and commercially calculated music of so many other local bands. At the very least blues rock really rocks and at its best relies not only on catchy riffs and fluent guitar solos but also on strong tunes and a massive spirit of good times.

Guy Collins and James van Minnen, respectively guitarist / vocalist and drummer of Mean Black Mamba, write their own songs in the spirit of the Mississippi Delta filtered through the modern urban sensibility. The music is heavy on amplified and distorted blues licks and slide guitar with shouty vocals. It is not exactly the current Black Keys mix of blues and soul and maybe country, possibly because the South African musical experience would not include these different though complementary genres as a matter of course, as it might be for an American musician. The sound of Mean Black Mamba is basically visceral boogie and would go down a treat in a small, hot, sweaty backwoods juke joint.

The opening track on their eponymous debut album is also called "Mean Black Mamba," which is their Africanised take on the venerable "Black Snake Moan" or "Crawling King Snake," and In fact, the nearest overt influence on these guys would be the primitivist old-time blues of the typical Fat Possum artist. Guy Collins has a serviceable voice for the blues yet does not strain to sound like some old Black guy from the Delta (or even an American) and that is great. Blues are everywhere and can be sung in all manner of local accents. The lyrics do sound like modern urban blues, without slavishly trading on the folk clichés that may have meaning in Mississippi yet mean jack shit in South Africa.

Collins rings a number of changes on the African roots hypnotic blues boogie without sounding too much in thrall to any particular tradition and provides enough innovation and variation on venerable themes to give us a guitar sound that is at the same time like nothing out there and yet keeps bringing back echoes of bits and pieces of my own record collection.

"Poison In My Head" is a particularly good example of Collins combining a traditional South African mbaqanga guitar style with a blues boogie, with lyrics to match. In the Delta they sing of gypsies. In South Africa one sings of Sangomas.

I must confess that I am a sucker for this kind of music. Simple, infectious and rocking. Unfortunately I have this niggling dissatisfaction with the album because so few of the tunes are good enough to linger in my head. To paraphrase Robert Christgau's comment on The Dead Weather, the songs will make no sense or impact separate from their parent album even if they have a vigour, a brio and an idiosyncrasy that is rare on the South African musical scene. The worst part is that the individual tracks are somehow diminished by listening to the album in one go because there is little to distinguish the one from the other over the duration. For example, "Fire on The Floor" (the 10^th track) is the first one since opening cut "Mean Black Mamba" to have a really good catchy riff or, at least, a riff that will stick in my mind. I guess it is down to failure to write catchy songs and simply putting words to a bunch of blues based riffs. Penultimate track, "Staring At The Sun," has a shouted chorus that makes one sit up and take notice again though the instrumental track is a tad too much of the same as heard before.

Final track "Sacred Ground" is sung in a somewhat different tone of voice than all the other songs and if the sleeve information did not credit only Guy Collins with vocals I would have guessed that James van Minnen finally got a chance to crack a tune. The song sounds more like a gospel folk song with fuzz blues guitar backing than the basic boogies of the rest of the album and is a quirky ending to a collection of gutbucket blues tunes.

Will Mean Black Mamba have a future on the local music scene? Hard to tell. They make a tough blues noise but have not yet written great tunes and over forty or so minutes of a CD the songs start losing their impact, muck like with Seasick Steve's albums. Guy Collins is going to have weave a radically different tapestry of new and innovative ideas into his boogie blueprint if he wants Mean Black Mamba to thrive in places other than small clubs or bars.

 

 

Dan Patlansky Has Some Wooden Thoughts

In 2013, a year after the electric album 20 Stones, Dan Patlansky released Wooden Thoughts, an album recorded with an acoustically inclined group. He reprises "Bright Lights Big City" and "Bring The World To Its Knees" from 20 Stones. The rest is previously unreleased material, heavy on covers.

From True Blues onward Patlansky has always leavened his testosterone-fueled, amped up electrical sound with acoustic tracks. Some are country blues, some are "atmospheric" instrumentals. A whole album full of acoustic music is an intriguing prospect from a guy whose fretboard prowess has writ his name large on the South African blues and rock firmament. Also intriguing is the choice to record so many cover versions when Patlansky is quite clearly capable of writing enough original material to fill a CD. Perhaps he wanted to pay homage to a few influences, perhaps he wanted a rest from song writing.

Some of the covers are blues but there are also compositions by Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Robbie Robertson and Jimmy Page and Robert Plant and it seems the song selection is intended as some kind of nostalgic journey to the Sixties or early Seventies folk and slightly off kilter rock that may have more or less direct influences from the blues without being straight blues. Or maybe these are just songs from Patlansky's father's record collection that Patlansky was exposed to during his youth.

As usual the opening track is strong and sets up the anticipation for the rest of the album. "Miss Oowee" has a funky acoustic riff and Wendy Oldfield wails in the background. The lyrics are about a woman running wild. Good fun.

Son House's "Preachin Blues" has been covered by Fleetwood Mac and by Delta Blue, both of whom stick pretty much to the template. Dan Patlansky does an almost acoustic metal version of it, backed by stomping bass and drums. The menace inherent in the song is done justice here by a performance that is both restrained and furious and with some really tasty bottleneck playing.

I am not familiar with the Bob Dylan song (written with one K Secor) "Wagon Wheel," which is a kind of old-timey country folk number with a rollicking, catchy chorus that could come from the weird old America celebrated by Greil Marcus. This is the kind of deceptively simple and tuneful song that emphasises how bad Dan Patlansky is at writing simple, tuneful songs. Patlansky abandons his signature hoarse singing voice for a lighter, airier tone that is affecting and touching. Great performance.

"Bright Lights Big City" was absolutely scandalously mutilated on 20 Stones and for some unfathomable reason Patlansky does another dubious version of the song here. Although this performance is more palatable, it still falls far short of the insouciant groove of Jimmy Reed's original. At least the more laidback singing style is less grating and the acoustic picking is pleasant to listen to. Even so, it is a bit of a downer after the joyous romp of "Wagon Wheel."

"Hallelujah" seems to be one of Leonard Cohen's most popular songs to cover and Dan Patlansky gives us his spiritual prayer take on it and again demonstrates that restraint often works out better than bombast and that where one respects the material and infuses it with emotion, the performance can be a gem. I do not know whether the genre of folk blues gospel exists but if it does, this rake on "Hallelujah" belongs right up there with the best.

Patlansky likes his instrumentals and "KwazI' is another installation in the Patlansky oeuvre of well-arranged, dextrously played, pleasant and anodyne pieces. The song is quiet and even beautiful in places and makes no lasting impact when it passes. Page and Plant's "Kashmir" is an instrumental take too and at least has the recognisable motif and there is plenty of tasty guitar playing and once again one asks the question what the point of this exercise was. It is not a track one would want to play on repeat.

There is a misjudged take on "The Weight" where Patlansky does not seem able to sing the famous tune and produces a version that just drags. This slow, prayerful type of interpretation enhanced "Hallelujah" but here it sucks the guts out of a song that needs to be sung with glee and sly innuendo. This is by far the weakest track on the album. It has no redeeming features.

The quiet, reflective mood is carried through to "Big Things Going Down," an instalment in the age old story of a guy who leaves his home town to make his fortune elsewhere and, if the singing is too low key to give the song depth of emotion, the playing saves the day. Patlansky should perhaps just put away his electric axes and stick to the acoustic ones.

The storming "Bring The World To Its Knees" is the opening cut on 20 Stones and the big riff is easy to replicate on acoustic guitar. The less bombastic singing style serves the song far better and I reckon old Dan has a bit of a classic here, in either version but pretty much nailing it as an acoustic take.

Clint Falconer, who backs Patlansky on bass and guitar, wrote the last song on the record, "Kaynin," yet another mercifully brief, "atmospheric" and pointless instrumental. Surely Falconer could not have spent actual time on writing this type of fluff?

Wooden Thoughts is not without its flaws. The acoustic textures and greater subtlety of the playing and singing makes it a far more palatable proposition than 20 Stones or Real yet the album still carries too much filler. In truth I am not keen on listening to any Patlansky album more times than it takes to write a review of it. It takes only a few spins to extract the meat. Thereafter and with familiarity it just starts to annoy unless it simply disappears in the background because I've tuned out the irritation. There are so many better South African rock or blues albums to listen to, not to mention old school blues albums, that I would not want to waste too much time on the kind of disappointing albums Dan Patlansky puts out.

Patlansky should do more good acoustic songs, and fewer anodyne instrumentals, and work on his singing, and he may yet deliver a masterpiece. Even if he doesn't, I guess I'll still be buying the CDs just to see what he's doing and for my collection. If he released records, though, the grooves on the vinyl would be hardly be in danger of wearing out.

 

Dan Patlansky Can’t Quite Carry 20 Stones

Frankly I am getting a little tired of listening to the latest Dan Patlansky album and being disappointed yet again because I just do not hear anything particularly engaging on it. Each time I have to concede that the man can sure play his guitar and then qualify that concession with the observation that technical expertise alone does nothing for a performance if there is no song to start with and there is no real emotional element to whatever the guitar genius is playing.

Blues is all about emotion and feel and not so much about the technique or, to put it another way, the technique should be a given and almost off-hand and should not be the main and overbearing component on show. Dan Patlansky seems to be all about technique. Over the course of his career he has progressively sacrificed feel for technique and good song writing in favour of arrangement. I just do not understand why he is even playing blues.

It is hard to believe that Dan Patlansky is driven to write songs and release albums by some inner creative demon. The songs themselves do not demonstrate a rare talent or even expression of things that need to be said. This point is borne out by the godawful cover versions he records. My guess is that Patlansky records albums to sell at his gigs as an additional source of income.

20 Stones (2012) is no exception. In fact, its defects are in many ways even more exasperating than the predecessor, Move My Soul, where Patlansky obviously attempted to make a big statement by incorporating pop elements and anthemic instrumentals into the Stevie Ray Vaughan homages. My first reaction to 20 Stones, from the opening track onward, is that the focus has shifted to emulating Jimi Hendrix and Rory Gallagher and, as modern influence, Joe Bonamassa, who seems to be the current darling of the mainstream blues rock audience.

It seems to me that Dan Patlansky is now truly inclined more towards tough blues rock than to deep blues. This is a rich enough vein to mine and can be as rewarding as blues, mostly because the music still relies on the bedrock of blues and melody. With sufficient inventiveness and dexterity the musician can still supply a wonderful experience. Just write some damn tunes and sing them as if you mean it, man!

Jet Black Camaro, Black Cat Bones and Crimson House Blues, to name but three local acts in the same ball park, run rings around Patlansky and not because their guitarists are better than he is. The bands simply have more emotional punch and better songs. Gerald Clarke makes properly soulful blues albums. Albert Frost has a gift for melody, arrangement, sings well and is every bit as good a guitarist as Dan Patlansky but has the most important gift of all, the intuitive understanding that subtlety is a more powerful tool in the musician's kit bag than over the top soloing.

Patlansky should have a major rethink about what he wants to do with his music. Most probably he should find a collaborator who can help him write actual songs with tunes that he can sing with commitment. The inflammatory guitar prowess can be a wow onstage, though even there it pales after a song or two when one realises what a one trick pony this show is, but over the long run dazzling virtuosity can never take the place of real feeling and storytelling.

The opening cut, "Bring The World To It's(sic) Knees" is a loud, brash, bravura statement of intent with an echo of Jimi Hendrix's staccato, choppy "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)" riff and his solo style. The immediate optimistic hope is that this album could be something special. The optimism soon fades. After that rousing opening there is just too much more of the same and the songs do not hold up. When I listened to the album for the first time, admittedly while doing something else, I soon found myself in a situation where the songs went by without sign that one was ending and another one was beginning. The rhythm section does not swing much, in fact the drummer plods and almost sounds like he is playing for a different band altogether. It is all very well to play a simple backing to a complex guitar part but not where the drumming is so basic and so prominent in the mix that it becomes noticeably disturbing. I'm not saying that Patlansky's drummer should play like Ginger Baker. I'm saying, if he wants to play that simply and pedestrianly, his drum parts should be buried in the mix.

Three of the songs are covers: "Bright Lights, Big City", "Lost Your Good Thing Now" and "Call Me The Breeze." I am no purist who says a cover of a well-known tune should be a perfect imitation but the first and last of these refried versions do absolutely nothing to enhance the originals and are not noteworthy at all except for the way Patlansky fucks up the groove of each.

"Bright Lights, Big City" opens promisingly with some big fat chords before the disconnect between the loping beat, charged guitar and excruciatingly mannered vocals starts grating. This version is not a slavish copy of the Jimmy Reeds style and yet does not actually repurpose a standard either. Perhaps Patlansky dearly loves this tune; perhaps it somehow fits into the theme of the album, perhaps it was just the throwaway studio jam it sounds like.

With "Bye Bye" and "Daddy's Old Gun" Patlansky strides out with some heavy riffing, fast fingered solos and big, rousing choruses. These are not great songs by any means yet they shine by comparison to the rest of the fare on offer here.

"20 Stones" was inspired by Patlansky's "lady" and is a sweet, affecting acoustic number without much tune but it is a welcome break from the loud, electric bombast that precedes it. Sadly, it fades from the memory as soon as the last note is struck. It is an arrangement and not a song.

The acoustic respite is followed by the slow blues "Lost Your Good Thing," a BB King co-composition. I actually quite like this version. Patlansky's hoarse voice does not have much gospel in it but he sounds sincere and his guitar playing is for the most part a tad more restrained and sensitive than elsewhere. Even the plodding rhythm section makes sense in the context. Ultimately there is just a lack of genuine emotion in the voice and, now that I think about it, this is probably the greatest weakness in Dan Patlansky's performances on record. The lyrics speak of emotional pain and trauma that the timbre of the voice cannot emulate or portray.

"Slap In The Face" is a band instrumental, possibly so named because of the "slap" style of bass playing that forms the rhythmic bedrock of the number, which is as forgettable as "20 Stones" and less interesting except as a master class in guitar technique. I would imagine that the arrangement is carefully worked out and the parts assiduously practiced and I ask myself: why?

"Call Me The Breeze" is so excruciatingly bad it must be a studio jam outtake. Why on earth would Patlansky choose to release this atrocity? It's all very well putting your own spin on a classic if you can improve on the original. If you do not have the nous or actual inventiveness to do so, and are above doing a note for note cover version, just leave it the hell alone. The lazy, sexy groove of the original is glaringly absent and the sly braggadocio of Cale's version is replaced by a very young guy's impatience. This track just plain sucks.

Penultimate track "Too Late To Cry" is possibly the best track on the album with a fast punchy riff, really strong chorus and some fierce soloing that melds Hendrix and Gallagher to good effect. If the album had ended with this tune, it would have been topped and tailed by two very strong performances. As it is, Patlansky chooses to close with yet another pointless instrumental called "Cross Country Limping" and blows the good work of the previous track. There is riffing, jazzy rhythm and soloing, and more riffing and more soloing that this time fuses Vaughan and Hendrix before just kinda folding. Again, probably a masterful arrangement and yet also a blandly efficient performance that is just filler.

In my assessment there is half an album of worthy tracks here. Dan Patlansky can play like a virtuoso. He sings his own songs with more commitment than he brings to the blues standards he records. He likes putting together intricate instrumentals with no emotional core. His songs are serviceable but he has not yet written a standard or even just a memorable song.

Dan Patlansky bestrides the SA blues scene like a colossus purely for reason of his amazing talent for playing the guitar well and his work ethic. He is universally praised and nobody looks beyond the empty sound and fury of his technical ability. Patlansky works very hard and must be commended for his success as a journeyman who will always dazzle the audience at his gigs by playing loud, fast and at length. That is only half the story, though. The technical excellence means that Dan Patlansky is a great craftsman. If he wants to be remembered as a great artist as well, he will have to learn to write and perform tunes with hooks and some emotional depth that will stick in the mind and make you want to come back for more. At this time Patlansky is a very, very long way away from that status.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SA Bluesbreakers Breaking Out

I have it on good authority that the SA Bluesbreakers (2013) album was conceived as a project to showcase the recording studio and production facilities where the artists on this album recorded their respective takes on the blues, rather than as a genuine sampler of contemporary local blues or blues influenced acts. At least 7 of the 16 acts on offer here have made no previous impression on me as part of any blues scene or even as blues inspired in the first place, such as Piet Botha, Jesse Jordan and Akkedis, not to mention Nick Forbes, Kevin Floyd and De Wallen, of whom I'd never even heard before. On the other hand, the Blues Broers, Ballistic Blues, Boulevard Blues, Gerald Clark, Albert Frost, Black Cat Bones and Crimson House Blues are present and correct as working ambassadors of the blues or blues rock. Natasha Meister and Ann Jangle are affiliated with the local blues scene though their respective solo albums are respectively blues flecked pop and folky-country rather than deep blues.

Most of the acts perform a blues standard. Ann Jangle chose a Tom Waits take on gospel ("Jesus Gonna Be Here") and De Wallen cover Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Pride and Joy." Jesse Jordan selected as Tracy Chapman song. Somehow the Boulevard Blues version of Freddy King's "Someday After A While" is credited to Eric Clapton who recorded it on his 1994 blues covers album From The Cradle. As egregious an error, is the crediting of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" to Stevie Ray Vaughan and not to Buddy Guy. So much for a deep knowledge of the blues canon or just simple fact checking. On reflection, this kind of ignorance or sloppiness just irritates the hell out of me. If you don't really know what you're doing, get the hell out of the kitchen.

In fact, from Natasha Meister's take on "Crossroad" to "Pride and Joy," the nagging feeling, with a few exceptions, is that these musicians know the blues through third or fourth generation blues and rock artists, and not even necessarily from the Sixties blues boom, rather than from the source. As far as I can tell from personal knowledge, about only Blues Broers, Albert Frost and Gerald Clark have a deep and abiding interest in the old school blues of the originators and not only in the music and blues revisionism of the White acts that followed in the footsteps of the forefathers. Blues has been rejuvenated over the years and today the likes of Joe Bonamassa is regarded as the shining example of how to refresh a hoary old tradition. Having listened to some Bonamassa tracks I have realised that I do not like what he does even if (allegedly) B B King anointed him as successor of sorts. Bonamassa, and others who walk that particular walks, are possibly genuine in their interest in the blues or maybe it is only in the formal musical structure of the blues, and very earnest about their craft yet do not bring much more to the table than technical mastery and that earnestness. Turning up the volume and playing lengthy, deft solos does not bring feeling and depth into the blues and certainly does not enhance the standards.

Natasha Meister's album opening cover of "Crossroad" is a perfect illustration of my gripe. I have no idea whether Meister has ever heard the Robert Johnson original. She chooses to redo Eric Clapton's arrangement from his Cream days and does a creditable job though not a mind blowing one. It is just amped up pub rock blues at its core, perhaps done in this way for commercial appeal. It tells me nothing about Meister as musician, unless it is that she can play the guitar well, or her insight into the blues. I can see where this performance would be a crowd pleaser, though.

And that is the short and the long of this compilation. The musicians most likely had some fun recording these songs and one cannot doubt the professional competency but when you get right down to it the album is a just showcase of tracks that would sound good on the jukebox of some watering hole for blokes who like their beer and shooters and enjoy shooting pool. Where there is drinking to be done, blues rock is just about the perfect rock soundtrack. The backbeat is exciting, you can dance to it and white hot guitar solos always excite.

The production values on the album are high. The performances are in general workmanlike and get the job done. The album is not a revelation and there is not much here that would make me rush out to find albums by the acts I do not already have in my collection.

Now that I've listened closely to Natasha Meister doing "Crossroad" I am struck by the palpable lack of passion or engagement in her voice. She has a good grainy soul type approach that would fit in with any number of US female blues guitarists / vocalists and her guitar playing is absolutely storming but she truly sounds as if she is phoning in the vocal track.

Black Cat Bones take on "The Hunter" (perhaps most famously, other than Albert King himself, done by Free) and bludgeons the riff something fierce. Like the Natasha Meister track, it is in fact just powerful hard rock when it is playing and yet quite forgettable once the last notes fade out.

I really like the raw, infectious ferocity of Albert Frost's take on "Parchman Farm." I've seen YouTube clips of him doing the same number backing himself with the aid of some kind of tape repeat device on which he plays the riff on one guitar before switching to another to play the lead parts. It is a riveting performance. Frost sings with passion and feeling and his guitar playing is fierce, intricate and well arranged. A very good version of this song.

"Hallelujah, I Love Her So," one of Ray Charles' big hits (and a tune I know best from a version by The Blues Band) is unaccountably abbreviated to just "Hallelujah." Sloppy fact checking again? It is clearly a well-loved song for Gerald Clarke who's recorded it on a video of a West Coast show as well as on his Black Water album. He still toils in the soul-blues-rock field of late period Delta Blue and does a great job of interpreting this standard. Clarke has one of the best blues / soul voices in South Africa and it is always a pleasure to hear and feel his commitment to whatever he is doing.

Ballistic Blues does a sturdy job on "Mary Had A Little Lamb," sounding enough like Stevie Ray Vaughan to bring home the connection and just different enough not to be slavish copy band, and then Ann Jangle, who really has a splendid voice, makes "Jesus Gonna Be Here" her own. The gospel influence of the tune and her take on it are closer to the blues than some of the earlier bombast on the album. Jangle is quite clearly in the emotional moment when she sings. Great song, great performance.

Wouter van de Venter performs "29 Ways" with some real gusto and a sense of gleeful enjoyment. He was one of the first Afrikaans rockers and who seems to have faded somewhat because his old school Superstrat shredding style probably no longer found the young audience who doted on Fokofpolisiekar and the abundance of Afrikaans rock bands that followed in their footsteps. He is a prime mover behind this collection as engineer and producer and probably band leader and on "29 Ways" (once da live staple of the Blues Broers, if I am not mistaken) he does a credible job as born again bluesman and actually produces a version that sounds like power blues and not just blues rock. A rousing performance.

The Blues Broers follow with "When My Baby Left Me" and showcase their strengths in blues harp, blues piano and blues guitar in an energetic romp. Once they were the industry standard for local blues and they are still that as a live act thought their recent albums have a far more diverse sound than just blues. The unique selling point of the Blues Broers has always been that they seem to esteem, love and respect the genre and know the value of laying back on occasion rather than amping it up all the time. Simon Orange's virtuoso keyboard playing also sets the band apart from the rest who still rely on big guitar solos.

On this album the hoary old set-closing classic called "Mojo Working" here, is performed by Crimson House Blues, a band that mixes up all kinds of roots sounds and has a gruff, gritty vocalist who sounds as if he's shredding his vocal chords on every song. The song is always a top favourite, regardless of who plays it, and this almost traditional version is great fun. In fact, this almost the most authentic blues performance on the album. In my mind's eye I can picture these guys on the porch of some country store in Mississippi playing the King Biscuit Flour show on some hot, muggy Delta afternoon.

For some odd reason Piet Botha has elected to give us his version of the well-known blues standard "Cars Hiss By My Window" by noted blues band The Doors, from LA Woman, which was their blues album. Perhaps the song is from the Riders of the Storm covers band project in which Botha has participated. Anyhow, over the years he has recorded his take on the blues, notably with "Blues vir Louise" and an Afrikaans version of "House of the Rising Sun" and "Cars Hiss By My Window" is not completely out of place in that company. Botha's laconic, talk-singing style works well and the performance has a good deal of slow burning authority.

Nick Forbes does a workmanlike, raucous shuffle-and-slide-guitar take on "Kansas City," followed by Jesse Jordan performing Tracy Chapman's "Gimme One Reason," which I recognise as something of a hit from her debut album, back in the late Eighties when she was briefly bigger than Colossus, and turns it into a blues, if it wasn't one to start with, and quite successfully too. It is not a completely rethink of the song but it is sufficiently different that it took me a listen or two before I recognised a song I had not heard since about 1988.

Led Zeppelin was one of the first and best proponents of heavy blues and "Since I've Been Loving You" is a fair approximation of a blues standard and Kevin Floyd does it respectful justice and, barring the absence of a Robert Plant sound-alike, his version is solid and enjoyable enough, if not adventurous or inventive.

Surprisingly Boulevard Blues, who tend simply to rock the blues, does a good, sensitive job on Freddy King's (and not Eric Clapton's) "Someday After A While." It is restrained and quietly authoritative. In fact the highest praise I can give it, is that it is a blues and that this is one of the album tracks I'd have on a mixtape.

Akkedis has been around for more than a decade now, and has teamed up with Piet Botha in the tepid Lyzyrd Kings project, but is not a notable blues band. Originally they sounded like country rockers and lately they seem to mine a White reggae groove. "The Thrill Is Gone" is B B King's greatest hits and his interpretation is definitive. One approaches it at one's peril. To the credit of Akkedis they don't replicate the King version and do a jazzy, slow blues version with some really tasty guitar licks. Oddly, this performance makes Akkedis sound like a late Sixties Dutch blues band such as Livin' Blues or The Black Cat Bone.

De Wallen close the album with the second Stevie Ray Vaughn inspired tune of the set, albeit one he wrote. Unfortunately the guitarist does not have Vaughn's subtlety and overpowers the song with extreme soloing.

The album goes out with as much power as it came in. Unfortunately this also means that the album opens and closes with the least impressive performances.

SA Bluesbreakers is a worthy collection and a good starting point for anyone who wants to investigate the current South African blues and blues rock scene. The acts on the album are not the only practitioners in the genre and not even necessarily the best but each of them is probably worth some attention, however fleeting. Natasha Meister has, or is about to release, a second album and I would be interested in finding out whether she remains on course as sophisticated AOR singer songwriter or whether she will dig deeper into the blues. Albert Frost is also about to release a new album by his blues trio and that is a record I am definitely looking forward to.

Compilations like SA Bluesbreakers are usually simply a snapshot of a time and place in rock history. It will be a good keepsake to remind us that fads come and go, as will surely be the case with this one, yet the blues will endure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Blues Broers Return Out Of The Blue

(Caveat: I wrote this piece in July 2014; before I'd listened to the Blues Broers' 2014 album Into the Red.)

Out Of The Blue (2011) is the first studio album from the band since the late Nineties and also the first without original drummer Frank Frost and without vocalist John Mostert, and on this record the band is a four piece with song writing and vocal duties divided between veteran band members Albert Frost, Rob Nagel and Simon Orange. Tim Rankin, whose name appears on lots of albums recorded in the Cape, plays the drums.

The Blues Broers must soon be celebrating their 25^th year in the South African music business and that is a significant milestone. This longevity is especially pleasing because this album is pretty much the best thing they've ever released.

The album title is probably taken from a recurring phrase in the Simon Orange song "Everybody Knows" but given the sense of humour and love of a pun evident in the songs of Rob Nagel and Simon Orange, the album title could also be a reference to the possibly unexpected return of the band to the concert stage and recording studio after a very long hiatus following on the death of Frank Frost in 1999. The blues is an influence that underpins the music yet a significant number of the songs (for example, all of Simon Orange's tunes) are not your average 12-bar blues.

As I understand the tale, the Blues Broers were reconvened because of the motivation of John Frick, founding guitarist, who rekindled his own love of the blues in about 2010 and flew out to South Africa from the Netherlands where he lives, to meet up with his old muckers and to persuade them to rake to the stage once more. John's brother Clayton, one of the mavens of the Cape Town blues scene of the early Nineties, came to South Africa from Australia and also played in the reunion shows, which were receive rapturously by the old faithful who were younger when the band was younger, and a whole bunch of new converts. After all, there is currently (as of 2014) a bit of a blues and blues rock revivalist boom in South Africa.

In these circumstances it was only right and proper that the band would write new songs and head to the studio to record them for posterity.

The first impression of the album is that the production values are high and that the band delivers the strongest and most consistent studio set of its career with finely tooled, blues influenced playing in a variety of styles, with highly enjoyable tunes.

Rob Nagel is the most prolific song writer, with 7 out of the 13 tracks either written or co-written by him, Simon Orange has 4 tunes and Albert Frost the rest.

Opening track "It's On Me", written and presumably suing, by Rob Nagel, is a marvellous, wonderful surprise, being a richly melodic cautionary tale about how life works, nestling amidst an organ driven groove reminiscent of mid-Sixties imitations of Al Kooper's organ on "Like A Rolling Stone." My first reaction was an immediate surge of anticipation. This song is an unequivocal statement of intent that the Blues Broers are about to give us something we ain't never heard from them before.

In quick succession we have an Albert Frost riff driven rock track "Mountains" (that seems to have a strong link to Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile (A Slight Return)", and is another cautionary tale; a poppy Simon Orange tune about coal trains (unfortunately probably the weakest song on the album); a lovelorn, jazz lounge blues sung by Frost and written by Nagel; and then yet another bluesy pop, jazz-lounge tune by Orange celebrating a musician called "Mr Fingers." Five tracks in and the band have laid out their wares: a pop sensibility with jazz chops and blues foundation.

On "Inside Woman Blues" Rob Nagel (with a sly reference to "Outside Woman Blues") gives us the first out-and-out, stomping, harp driven blues number on the album. This is pretty much industrial standard gutbucket, juke joint blues of a kind so few local so-called blues bands ever get right. Or even attempt. This song and performance illustrates how one can take a venerable example, update it and do something deliciously different with it. The song sounds at the same time as old as dust and very contemporary and that is the hallmark of a blues standard.

This rousing little gem is followed by the Nagel / Frost tune "Writing on the Wall" where a horn section and Simon Orange's organ support Frost's B B King and Lowell Fulson style leads. I can see where this song would make a fine tear-jerking set closer with extended soloing.

The next Frost tune is "Ladies Blues" where he proves that he can take as much from the Stevie Ray Vaughan guitar style as Dan Patlansky and do something far funkier with it without slavishly imitation, and at the same time write a hook so strong you could catch whales with it. The guitar solo is concise and to the point and there is yet another superb Simon Orange organ solo to lift the tune into that space beyond the stars, and a female backing chorus. Man, this is a truly wonderful piece of work.

"Everybody Knows" follows and this is a song that proves how good a songwriter Simon Orange is, able to blend a sublimely catchy tune with some intelligent, old-fashioned (in a good way) pop lyrics. It surely deserves a wider audience, as does most of the music on this album, than just the people who have this album. Out of the Blue is the most radio friendly record the Blues Broers have released, across a couple of radio audience demographics, such as rock, blues and easy listening pop.

Rob Nagel has a combo of two songs following each other, in "Stoned Cold Sober," a slyly humorous song celebrating the virtues of not drinking but rolling a joint instead, and "Bring It On," a blast of blues defiance. The first is another fine addition to the tradition of blues songs about drinking; the latter is an addition to the tradition of blues songs about giving life the finger.

The penultimate track of the 16-song set is another excellent Simon Orange pop tune, "Over My Head," and that is followed by Rob Nagel's instrumental "De Aar" which sees out the album in suitably atmospheric fashion. This is only the second song I know that name checks this northern Cape railway town, the other one being "Bar op De Aar," by Andre Le Toit (this was written and recorded before he became Koos Kombuis) and by all accounts De Aar is not the most attractive or bustling town in the country, especially not after the demise of the South African Railways empire. Nagel obviously thinks of De Aar as some Wild West frontier town because he gives his song a whimsical, wistful, haunting spaghetti Western treatment. The people of De Aar should be proud that someone has taken this much trouble to honour their dusty, moribund hometown in musical form.

So, once again the Blues Broers have played to their individual strengths and have delivered a record that is a highly entertaining, never boring mixture of good tunes and tough playing. This is a unique skill set in local music in general and in the blues scene in particular where very few of the local acts in this field have any clue of how to write an actual tune or how important it is to knew when to lay back and when to roar.

I've not seen the Blues Broers live since the reunion and reactivation shows with John and Clayton Frick and so I have idea whether any of these songs ever made it to the band's live repertoire. Most of them should. Obviously the audiences at their shows want to hear the blues classics, mostly because audiences really only appreciate songs they already know, but these songs are so strong they could rock the house anywhere. My only reservation would be that Simon Orange's songs, excellent as they are, do not squarely fit the blues band template and would be better suited to an audience in a concert setting and not so much at a festival or in a sweaty club where subtlety is hardly ever required.

I'm going to put it out there: The Blues Broers' Out of the Blue and Delta Blue's Inbluesstation are, in no particular order, the two best South African blues, R & B, soul and blues rock albums I've ever had the pleasure of owning.

 

 

 

Four Recent Releases

The other day, on a single visit to The African Music Store, I was able to buy the four debut CD's by four diverse local acts from, loosely speaking, Cape Town, All of them are independent releases too. To me this is a positive indication of the robust state of health of the local music scene and the ambition of the musicians within it.

 

At least two of the albums have been reviewed in the South African edition of Rolling Stone and no doubt all four of them would be reviewed there in due course. Attention is being paid. And deserved.

 

The four acts are: December Streets, The Great Apes, The Bone Collectors and Lucy Kruger.

 

The Rolling Stone reviewer did not care much for This Is by December Streets because the songs are too samey at mid tempo with pop "ooh oohs" that grated on the reviewer's ears. My take on the album is that it fits in with the current trend of twee, jangly British pop typified by Two Door Cinema Club and Bombay Bicycle Club, influenced by the Eighties, with echoes of Teardrop Explodes and Haircut One Hundred. Even stranger: I hear reminders of local band Karoo, one of my favourite Nineties bands of the first wave of the South African Music Explosion that followed the regime change in 1994, and now that I think about it: also more recently local band, Cassette, particularly their debut album before they got too dark and serious.

 

This Is comes in
a fancy cardboard fold out sleeve, which by now seems to be the obviously preferable hip alternative to the plastic jewel case of most major releases. We are also given a booklet, tucked into an inner pocket of the sleeve, with lyrics on one side and some photographs and inspirational slogans on the other side. The impression is that someone has spent a bit of money on making the product look good on the shelves and to give the buyer a little visual distraction. All good and well though I have never been a fan of printed lyrics. The listener should be able to make up his or her own mind about what the singe is telling us, if the lyrics are not that clear in the first place.

 

That the album is distributed by Sheer Sound must be some kind of stamp of approval and expectation that the music will reach more than a cult audience.

 

The feel the band aims for seems to be a breathless adrenaline rush for each song, with choppy guitar, trumpet filigrees and driving drums. The nagging sense of a missing wow factor is a bother. The production values are high and the record sounds good; the problem is that it seems the kind of collection of songs one would have to listen to in tandem to make sense of them. Very few tracks stand out sufficiently to become memorable. The album picks up speed and finishes strongly with tunes like "Thief", "Got That Feeling" and "Wazungu" with a nod to other local act, Hot Water.

 

The Rolling Stone reviewer is right, though. Every damn song contains its fair share of Tristan Coetzee going "woah oh oh" as if he just cannot contain himself. In one song this exclamation would signify excitement. In so many it simply becomes an irksome, calculated mannerism.

 

December Streets is a thoroughly contemporary guitar pop band. I cannot distinguish them conceptually or sonically from their peers that have attracted favour on the radio or on MP3 playlists and for this reason they should be equally popular. On the other hand, if nothing much distinguishes them from the competition, what's the point? This Is does become quite likeable in a frothy pop kind of way. A good, solid debut album with merit. Now they need to find some genius move to get ahead of the pack.

 

Lucy Kruger's album, All Those Strings, is presented in the traditional plastic jewel case and on the face of it looks like your standard big label release, though it seems to be as independent as the rest. I always wonder where the money comes from to record and release an album like this, especially when one sees the names of the session musicians who are the cream of local talent, with Albert Frost, Schalk Joubert, Melissa van der Spuy, Kevin Gibson, and local star chanteuse Inge Beckmann on backing vocals on one track. Obviously the presence of these names puts the seal of approval on Kruger's appearance on the local scene.

 

Apparently Kruger studied drama at Rhodes University and has now settled, or returned to, Cape Town, to pursue whatever her muse might be and has become an instant next big thing on the local scene. Or maybe it is just a Twitter thing. The enigmatic, arty photographs on the inner sleeve reinforce the suspicion that the album is something of an art project. This record did not come about from a bunch of mates sitting around jamming until they come up with a tune or two and then recording the results in someone's bedroom. Perhaps Kruger was writing poetry and noodling away on an acoustic guitar in her dig in Graham's Town, between lectures, until she got some songs out of the experience and then played in the local equivalent of a coffee house.

 

Anyhow, the music on All Those Strings is also the most traditional adult pop / rock sounding of the four albums. The arrangements are tasteful, sweeping, dynamic and well produced; all of the adjectives one would apply to a project of the highest professional quality.

 

Vocally Kruger reminds me of Josie Field with the same kind of lisping affectation in the pronunciation of certain words, especially the sibilants. The refrain of "it's cdatchy phrases that sell" in opening track "Littel Puppet" is also so very Field. Kruger is not as expressive or as passionate as Field, though, and that lack of brio is the major drawback of this performance. Kruger sounds a tad too reserved and careful not to fuck up than totally committed. There is not actually an ice maiden thing going on, because the voice is too warm for that, but it is not a totally relaxed, exuberant performance either.

 

If Lucy Kruger is a drama student, this may be just a role she is trying out for now. The songs are not bad, with the kind of deep pondering one would cynically expect from this kind of young woman, and there are some decent tunes but for a pop record, even a high concept one, there is remarkably little about it that stands out on first listen or even on repeat. It is likeable yet not adorable. I would not say it is a vanity record but it sure sometimes plays like it. There are no really big tunes or quirks to the songs that are really driven by their arrangements. "Muse" is a highlight, and so is the catchy guitar hook in "Heaven" and the soaring melody and heartache of the refrain "crying out for more" on "Four White Walls."

 

The Bone Collectors is a collective operating on the new blues scene in Cape Town, where the emphasis seems to be on rootsy, old-timey, pre-electric sounds rather than the lead guitar histrionics that have been the tendency. The obvious antecedents are the jug bands and string bands of the 1930's, whether in the Mississippi Delta or in the Appalachian mountains. There seems to be an equal fascination with back country blues and hillbilly country. Murray Hunter of Sixgun Gospel plays harp on a couple of tracks, presumably because the main honcho of Bone Collectors, one Roland Hunter, is his brother.

 

Black Love suffers from the serious and unfortunate disconnect between the sprightly, energetic music on the one hand and Hunter's less than engaging histrionic vocal style on the other hand. He sounds weirdly like Hugh Laurie on some tracks but mostly reminds me of the guy who used to front the Honeymoon Suites. And the latter is not a good thing.

 

The tunes tend to have little variation from song to song and kind of sound like so many reworkings of the same basic thing. Hunter has a degree of skill with words but he has neither a blues voice nor a country voice. Worse: he does not have an interesting voice nor does he use it in interesting ways. The effect is that Hunter sounds a trifle studied and forced – a white guy from South African doing his utmost to emulate music he probably loves yet cannot get to grips with. This album is a disappointment to me. I like the type of music The Bone Collectors play and had high expectations of it. In a live situation the flaws would most likely not matter too much. In the pristine setting of high quality digital audio the flaws are exposed, exaggerated and bothersome. In fact the flaws are so irritating I cannot see myself giving this album much time on my CD player.

 

The Great Apes are hard rockers with influences that range from mid-Nineties grunge to Iggy & The Stooges, and basically loud and fast garage rock.

 

One should also make special mention of the packaging of their debut album. The CD is almost lost in a very elaborate fold out cardboard and paper sleeve with black and white geometric or Kabbalistic symbols. I can believe that each sleeve might have been hand made. There is even a paper covering sleeve that fits tightly over the main sleeve and there is a real danger that this paper sleeve will tear sooner or later if one keeps taking the CD out to play it. The band has seen fit to have no words anymore on the packaging. Either you know this is the Great Apes album or you have to prize open the barricade to check out the CD itself to find out which band this might be.

 

The band performs 8 songs in about 35 minutes, which makes this an excellent old school garage record. Loud, relentless high energy guitars, shouty vocals, lead breaks. What is not to love? Who knows what they are going on about and who cares. The sugar rush of this album is an undiluted pleasure. .

 

Of the four albums the Bone Collectors' release is the weakest and the greatest disappointment and the Great Apes' record the most viscerally exciting and the most joyous experience. December Streets and Lucy Kruger have both given us their respective takes on what constitutes contemporary pop music and although their efforts demonstrate care in the making and attention to detail, they appeal more to the head than the heart. The Great Apes make what I think of as silly smile music. It is almost a guilty pleasure to delight so much in unpretentious faster louder rock that makes you want to put the CD player on endless loop. Lucy Kruger, for one, just seems to damned serious about her music. She is not the first, and will not be the last, young woman with issues she wants to discuss aloud as songs.

 

All of these acts have a place in South African music and the diversity is a good thing. I hardly ever buy albums by "international" rock acts anymore because pretty much all currently popular genres and variations can be found locally. To my jaded, older musical ears, there is nothing so wonderful about the Bombay Bicycle Clubs of this world that compels me to buy that type of music when I can get basically the same style form a local act that is more deserving, or at least equally deserving, of support.

 

South African rock has come of age over the last 18 years and these four albums are proof positive of this proposition that our rock acts can match whatever the rest of the world has to offer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bob Dylan’s Tempest

I've bought each new Dylan album, except for Christmas in The Heart (which may not have been released in South Africa) since 2006, which is more than I did in respect of his precious output, especially the Eighties stuff. With Modern Times (2006) and Together through Life (2009) my first impression was of an immediate thrill, soon followed by a feeling of being let down. On repeated listening the songs just did not seem compelling. The Dylan voice was ragged and hoarse to an almost uncomfortable degree; it was a distraction. The lyrics were trite and perhaps deliberately clichéd to the nth degree. The music saved the day. The band was sharp, worked the groove and obviously knew the blues and American roots music backwards and was not afraid to have fun with it.

 

Dylan is now past 70, and like his peers, The Stones, is still rolling and still rocking. The Stones will release their new product this November. They too, have made music over past couple of decades that can rock quite well but seems lyrically trite and almost rock by numbers. They have really gotten good at what they do yet lost their edge, resulting in music that no longer has any real spark or vitality.

 

The first point of interest about Tempest is that Dylan's voice starts out almost rehabilitated, with only an echo of the discomfiting rasp of earlier albums yet over the length of the album, as if it had been sequentially recorded in real time, the voice deteriorates and by the end of the record the sandpaper vocals are in full effect.

 

The opening track, "Duquesne Wind", is also in its way the most interesting performance here, featuring an old timey string band sound, jaunty and joyous, that reminded me of the spirit of John Wesley Harding, if not the actual sound, and I was wondering whether this would be Dylan's take on old-fashioned hillbilly country music, much as Neil Young's Prairie Wind was. The string band soon makes way for the electric band and we are more or less back with the blues tropes Dylan has relied on so much over the last six years. In fact, "Early Roman Kings" has a stop time riff similar to "Hoochie Coochie Man" or "Mannish Boy".

 

Most of the songs are quite long, and seem over-long, with lots of verses and relying on a relentless groove to push them along. The title track is by far the longest, being over 13 minutes, in the tradition of "Desolation Row" and "Brownsville Girl", because Dylan has a tale to tell and wants to take his time about it.

 

My first impression was that I liked this album, and probably more than Together through Life. Modern Times was great and Tempest could be a companion piece. Who knows whether Dylan sees these records as part of the same body of work, or as unique each time out? In the Sixties and early Seventies he was restless and, like a lot of artists of the time, did not want to be categorised, boxed in or stultified and progression was the name of the game to the extent that each album was to be different from the one before and each album had to break new ground and almost alienate the fans of the preceding one.

 

On closer listen the main positive about the album is that the music is engaging and highly joyous. The main negative is that the songs tend to sound the same and do not have discernibly variations in tune.

 

Today Dylan is apparently more careful to retain continuity from record to record and there is no progression in any real sense from Modern Times to Tempest. I've not heard Time Out Of Mind or Love & Theft or much of the preceding output from the Nineties and so I cannot tell whether Dylan has been treading water over the last 20 years but I would believe that he may well have been. It kind of comes with the aging process.

 

Like Neil Young, Dylan writes a lot of songs but releases more selectively, where Young still puts out a record a year. To my mind Dylan's most innovative work since about 1990, has to be the two solo acoustic blues albums he released early in the Nineties. The voice was still good though heading towards the one we know today and his selection of covers was excellent and the performances energised and full of the vigour his studio releases during the Eighties, for all their studio polish and sheen, lacked.

 

I do own a lot of Dylan's music but I am not a completist and have pretty much avoided everything between Blood on The Tracks and Modern Times, except for the Unplugged album and Good As You've Been To Me, one of the acoustic albums. Of course I would like to hear most of the unknown records but I doubt that I would want to spend money on them simply for that pleasure.

 

Lots of rock critics have written a lot about Dylan, such as Greil Marcus and his tomes on "Like A Rolling Stone" and The Basement Tapes, and Michael Gray, Paul Williams and Clinton Heylin, but my challenge to Marcus would be to do for the gospel period Dylan what he did for The Basement Tapes, whether or not he can get the born again religious fervour. Surely that period and that body of work are worth examining too? Anyhow, I am of the opinion that not much beyond Desire is worth examining in depth.

 

Dylan has become an elder statesman; the guy who made us believe that rock lyrics could be more literate than the triteness of pop lyrics. Now he has nothing left to prove and nothing much that is new to dazzle us with. He does what he does with an easy facility; perhaps too easy. Some of his songs sound like he made them up while he was singing them. He can still slip in any number of mystical, mythical or reality based allusions, references and quotes. Yet the overall effect, as is the case nowadays with Neil Young, is of a lyricist who delights in the banal, possibly ironically and mordantly so, and therefore ostensibly is now no different to the traditional pop lyric that he supposedly put to shame. The art has given way to the craft.

 

I suppose, if one is once a genius, that you are always a genius. To my mind, though, there is not much of the genius present in the recent new product from Bob Dylan. I cannot even believe that he has a driving, burning desire to make records although, as Keith Richards said, a songwriter is always writing songs and therefore always seeks an outlet for them. An unsung song is not worth much and it is probably for this reason that you would want to record it for posterity, and for the money. The Bootleg Series could be quite rich and after Dylan's death it will most likely be expanded into infinity but the best part of the previously unreleased material is probably out already. I am really only interested in the golden mid-Sixties period. Who cares for outtakes from Empire Burlesque or Infidels?

 

To a degree the three most recent albums represent easy listening Dylan. They seem a tad too glib and too polished to have any significant impact and there is nothing much in the lyrics that stick in the mind in the way the earlier words did. People may still quote the old Dylan. I do not think they will ever quote from anything he has done over the last 30 odd years. Would these records warrant major interest if they were by any other artist than Dylan? I guess not. On the evidence of Tempest he is a good roots guy with a sentimental streak and a love of words, nothing more.

 

The title track, "Tempest," is a very long account of the sinking of Titanic and the theme and the length echoes "Desolation Row" but where the latter song, by the young Dylan, is a wild poetic and dramatic ride of surrealistic imagery with an oddball cast of characters, the newer song by a much older Dylan is simply a straightforward narrative ballad with virtually no poetry or interesting images that one has not heard before. In fact it sounds as prosaic as to be a piece of hackwork that could have been written shortly after the ship sank. Obviously Dylan must have believed that this performance is deeply meaningful and heavily significant and that is why it is not only on the album but also the tile track. For my part it is not even on par with earlier narratives such as the various movie scenarios on Desire, or for that matter "Desolation Row" itself. Perhaps the answer is that "Desolation Row" demanded the weirdness and drama because Dylan was creating an imaginary landscape whereas the story of Titanic is very real and well-known and it would not do to over-dramatise an already dreadful disaster. The prosaic and almost banal details add up to the horror of the real life event.

 

Would this album have attracted as much attention as it has, if it had been released by anyone else? I dare say not. It is afforded attention and closer scrutiny because it is Dylan and because he is supposedly a genius. He still writes clever and sometimes interesting lyrics but the poetry is long gone. The prosaic narratives are not much a substitute for the fanciful lyrics of the early years.

 

One should not get stuck in an artist's past to the exclusion of present work but if the present work is not all that stimulating or awe inspiring, why should one not revert to the past glories that meant something? It always helps to get into an artist when either you are young or the artist is fresh. Rock is meant to be a young person's game and the old practitioners are doing it simply because they know nothing else and because it is their career en source of income. Tempest is once again a good example of a record that is made by professionals at the top of their craft but without particularly excitement. It may not be blues or country or rock by numbers, exactly, but that is the overall impression one gets. Craftsmen doing what they do very well yet with the professional's attitude. It's a job and I am going to do it well and nothing more. These people may as well be the musicians backing Miley Cyrus or Salina Gomez.

 

I did not come to Dylan or engage with his music because I needed a spokesperson for my generation, given that I was of the punk generation. I was impressed by the expressive lyrics that somehow were both seated in reality yet also in a world of his own imagining. Maybe it was the "rock poetry" that got me amidst a bunch of songs that seemed to have anodyne lyrics, if not completely idiotic pop. With Dylan you wanted to pay attention to the words. With just about everyone else the words were simply the necessary element to keep the song from being an instrumental. Now the music on his albums is still quite wonderful and obviously more in tune with a current vision of Americana yet his words are not so great an in his case I am now also simply listening to the entire thing and not only picking out what he is saying as important in and of itself.

 

Having said that, I am still comfortable with having bought the last three Dylan studio albums and have enjoyed for what they are: competent, well-crafted and mildly exhilarating American roots rock. I believe that these albums are minor works for those reasons. There is no apparent genius present here. The guy is a professional and is doing well at what he has been doing well for so many decades. No more and no less. Leonard Cohen is touring again at age 78 and has released one new album, since a financial disaster that robbed him of his life's savings. Dylan has never stopped touring and has never stopped releasing albums.

 

Some of the most interesting work comes from the series of archival recordings that have been released over the last 20 years. Stuff that were originally never meant for official release at the time and in a different world would never have seen the light of day as they show the artist in less than previously approved form, with demos and songs that at one time were not deemed fit for commercial release/. Nowadays there is a vast appetite, or so it seems, for the juvenilia or the failed experiments and surplus production of major artists. Neil Young has a similarly ambitious programme of archival recordings. Some of this must be hubris. Why would we want to hear old shit that was not good enough to release at the time? On the other hand, why not?