MACHINERI THE ALBUM

(first draft written in 2013; additions in 2013; finished off in July 2014)

I bought Machineri's eponymous debut album (2011) at the African Music Store in 2012, a couple of months after its release. I stacked it in a shelf along with a bunch of other CDs, with the vague plan of sitting down with it one day and listening closely with headphones for full sonic effect, in order to do the work justice when I wrote about it. Somehow I just could not get it together. The CD was usually on top of the stack so that supposedly I would not forget about it but for one reason or another it always ended up underneath something else end I would forget about it until I saw it again when I was looking for another album and had to pick up every CD in the stack to find the object of my curiosity.

The first part of this piece was written when I got the album and before I'd listened to it. The second part was written after listening. The curious thing was that I had uploaded the album on both my iPhone and iPad and often played the music on shuffle yet for some cosmic reason Machineri simply never came up, at least not recognisably, as the two devices carried a bunch of music that was unfamiliar to me. These days I hardly have the time to get to know any new album I buy. Firstly there is not much opportunity for listening and secondly I keep buying new stuff before I've become fully acquainted with the older stuff. When I owned 10 records I knew every word, chord and note of every song of every group intimately. Now I barely know who I'm listening to at any given time, unless it is a digital version of a record I used to own.

Anyhow, it's been a long time coming, but here are my considered thoughts on Machineri's debut album.

 

(Probably about March 2012)

Great cover. A naked woman, I guess, squats on a phallic looking rock with her back to us. Her back is painted with psychedelically styled cogs, no doubt an unsubtle allusion to the band name. My guess is that the Sannie Fox is the naked woman, as the inside section of the cover insert, which forms a single, large picture when folded out, features an equally naked man also squatting on a rock with his back to us with similar cogs painted on his back and chances are that he is the other band member, Andre Geldenhuys.

This is the type of great album cover that should feature in a coffee table book of classic album covers. Should have been an LP with gatefold sleeve. Reminds me of the work of Hipgnosis, and that is not necessarily a bad thing, even if Hipgnosis did some Pink Floyd album covers.

On the back cover there is a nice sepia, Photoshopped photograph of the band members, with Sannie Fox front and centre in her silky flowery top and mini skirt, left hand firmly on the headstock of het Fender. Andre Geldenhuys gazes dreamily at something we cannot see. Sannie Fox raises her chin slightly and stares us straight in the eyes, not necessarily confrontational but definitely direct and challenging. Maybe she is thinking about what I may write about this album, bearing in mind that I think Machineri does not quite work out as a stage performing proposition. There is a third, ghostly presence on her left and slightly behind her, looking away to the right of the viewer. Who he? Must be the drummer.

I have listened to MP3 versions of some of the songs on this collection and was quite impressed with the tunes. I must confess that I had been eagerly awaiting my acquisition of this debut.

By early 2012 this album had been out for a couple of months and I'd been idly looking for it in various branches of Musica without finding it. I suppose I could have made a real effort by going to the very large Musica at the V & A Waterfront or looking for it online, or even attending some Machineri gigs on the chance that the album would be on sale there, but that is not the way I do these things. I do not seek, I find. On my first visit to The African Music Store in 2012 I found Machineri and bought it without hesitation.

I am not exactly a huge fan, particularly not of the live Machineri. It has perhaps been my misfortune that I saw them live well before I heard any recordings, unlike, say, with Pretty Blue Guns whose album I'd bought on the strength of a teaser track on a SL Magazine sampler CD, years before I saw them play live, coincidentally headlining a bill with Machineri in support. Petty Blues Guns were great; Machineri grated.

The description of Machineri's musical and other influences on their website indicated that we should have a lot in common and that, all things being equal, I should like their music. This suspicion was confirmed by the MP3 tracks I listened to, yet as a live proposition the band did not do it for me. The riffing was ponderous and dull and Sannie Fox wailed and exuded rather than sang. The songs also seemed formless and tuneless.

Machineri does have good PR though. The band has appeared in magazines and on local television and has gigged quite regularly. Sannie Fox is a striking front woman that certainly advances the cause. Machineri must be successful if one judges solely by media attention.

Over the last 14 years I have bought a lot of local music of various genres. For my money South African rock, to use only one example, is on par with the best the rest of the world has to offer, even if South African has not yet produced a huge, dominant international success even if many local acts do tour overseas and may even make a decent living from their music. There is also a lot of mediocre, and sometimes flat out crap, music. Local boosters insist that we must support "local is lekker" regardless of the quality on the premise that all local music is almost by definition good simply because it has been released on CD. This is not so. In these days when independent releases are as much a norm as record company support, it takes only money and time to record, print and release a CD of one's own music.

 

(I9 September 2012)

I finally listened to the album only about six months after I'd bought the thing. Not only did I have a weird resistance to listening to the album but I'd also bought so many other CDs in between that I almost had no time to do it. Now I'm sitting at Arnold's restaurant in Kloof Street, having breakfast, listening to the album on my iPad through headphones, making notes on the iPad's word processing app, in-between mouthfuls of muesli, fruit and yoghurt.

Opening track, "Soul People," is Sannie Fox accapella over a drum brat.

Second song, "Stranger On The Water," starts "standing on a beach like a stranger now" which sounds like a restatement of the opening lines of a Cure song.

By the third tune the Sannie Fox vocal schtick has settled in. She has a good voice, and on "The Searchers" reminds me of Grace Slick with less histrionics, and perhaps some unknown folkie, yet the tunes ain't present much. The musical backing is subdued, perhaps mixed too low, and Fox rambles. Later on the guitars surge into a power rock finale.

Fourth tune, "Spider Suitcase", has a boogie intro that's closest to the blues they claim as influence and one hears a good twist of Canned Heat here. Fox is still wailing without much tune, double tracked on the chorus. First proper Hendrixoid guitar solo, albeit brief.

Fox goes for smouldering and sensuous, holding back on the full throttle roar.

"Drop Us A Line Ladder Operator" could be the early Black Sabbath homage albeit with less punch. This is one of my main concerns about this album. The music is just not powerful or dirty enough. What the hell is it all about? Could be that Sannie is just making it up as she goes along.

"Blood On Our Hands" sounds the most like a blues, particularly the lead guitar, and Sannie Fox sounds kind of committed to her complaint about not being good enough for the significant other in her life. With a little work this is a room filling live anthem with hot guitar solo to boot. Actually, this guy just plays lead breaks, not proper solos, but they are fiery.

Next up there is another spiffy, snappy riff, possibly the best of the album. Fox chants about a "Big Bad Machine" and mentions a broken engine, perhaps a reference to blind Willie McTell's broke down engine. Absolutely the best track so far. When I listened to the track again, on my iPhone, I got it that Fox was singing about a working engine. Oh well, the best lyrics are often the misheard ones. I hardly ever read the printed lyrics. Rough and tough little number though.

"Lovers Whim" is a rocking, wailing, lament. Sannie goes big voice in what sounds like soul diva meets metal. Good stuff.

Penultimate track, "Cold Sister," has another plodding would be heavy riff and some soaring lead guitar and a good vocal hook.

Album closer "Father Gun" illustrates the serious weakness in the Machineri musical template. The track revisits tuneless Sannie shouting about something or another she takes too seriously backed by some tasty Hendrixy guitar that seems to have no connection whatsoever with her vocal histrionics. It is dysfunctional and disconnected and irritating.

 

(July 2014(

By July 2014, when this outro is being written, Machineri has either broken up or is in hiatus and Sannie Fox has a solo career. It is probably typical of the modern music industry that bands are mostly just projects with limited life span and no expectation of, or even desire for, career longevity. Hit, git and split. The debut, and possibly only, album may then well be the only record we will ever have of the music Sannie Fox and Andre Geldenhuys made together.

Machineri was part of the South Africa blues rock revival and to their credit came to it from a completely different angle to the rest of the more traditionalist bands. The main ingredient in most in the music of their contemporaries is some element of heavy blues boogie and if Machineri employed some aspects of the heavy riff it was always just slightly skewed and off-centre. The main difference, thought, would be Sannie Fox as a female presence in an otherwise male dominated genre, barring Natasha Meister and Ann Jangle, perhaps, and the fact that the band either refused to or could not write tuneful songs with strong hooks. The performances on the album are strong and also forgettable. There are perhaps two, maximum three, really good songs on the album and the rest are no more than superior filler. Sannie and Andre had a high concept and presumably achieved their specific goal and made the record they wanted to make but I cannot see it on the list of "1000 South African rock albums you have to listen to before you die."

 

 

 

 

 

 

NATASHA MEISTER GOES ONLY HALF WAY

(first draft written in 2012; finished off in July 2014)

On Friday 20 January 2012 there was a full page article on Natasha Meister in the Top of the Times entertainment supplement to the Cape Times. My impression was that she was some kind of young, beautiful Canadian blues guitarist, now settled in Cape Town, who could not only trade blues riffs with the likes of Dan Patlansky but who was a serious songwriter too. Meister was due to support Patlansky at a Kirstenbosch gig on the weekend following this feature. I then looked her up on YouTube.

There were a handful of Meister clips on YouTube, including some of a solo performance for some internet based radio station, in which she is seated on a high stool and accompanies herself with her Stratocaster.

My first reaction to these clips, after the reinforcement of how young and beautiful Meister was, was that she was not in any particular way a blues guitarist or blues singer. She sounded more like a folkie with an electric guitar, writing pop melodies with deeply meaningful lyrics. So much for the hype, I thought. The chick toted a mean looking Strat yet made music that was soft at the centre and pointless in the bigger scheme of things.

On one day of madness, not long after, at The African Music Store in Long Street I bought Sixgun Gospel's debut EP, Peachy Keen's debut EP and the full length album, Half Way, credited to the Natasha Meister Band. I guess Meister had both more ambition and more money than the other two bands, hence the full length album. The band is ostensibly a trio, with the rhythm section comprised of veterans Roger Bashew (bass) and Paul Tizzard (drums), but Bashew and Shari Meister also contribute guitar parts.

Half Way is definitely not a blues album. The set is a mixture of bluesy singer=songwriter pop and some tougher soul-blues tunes. Meister has an affecting voice, at times reminiscent of Nora Jones or a less soulful, less gritty Bonnie Raitt, that is a tad too smooth but she sure can sing. The pop songs are low-key, melodic and sang in an understated manner. The more soulful songs are sung in an altogether more assertive tone without actually giving us any of that old soul fervour or burning passion that would make all the difference between efficient and glorious. Along the way one does hear a good deal of jazzy blues chord progressions and tasty blues licks. Natasha Meister can play guitar – if the most prominent guitar parts are her contributions. Even better, she has a voice that bears repeated listening.

"Winter Storm," "You're So Good For Me" and "Good Thang" are the toughest blues inflected tunes on the album and are agonisingly brief glimpses into what Meister is capable of beyond the anodyne pop of the general trend on the album.

In the USA, at least, there are currently a number of women who are taking on the traditional male dominance of guitar blues as singers and guitarists of no mean ability. Meister is still young enough to have a long, hard, dues paying road ahead of her and in due course she may well achieve a tougher blues approach but on her debut she seems to be hedging her bets. She writes, and seemingly wants to make, radio friendly music in late period Bonnie Raitt territory. Unfortunately there is not much on this record that is memorable beyond the moment the CD stops playing. The tunes are just not strong enough and there are no catchy riffs or definitive moments. Even if Meister would just sing with more abandon and get a little crazy the album would have been more interesting.

This collection of tunes is what one would call an assured debut, an album that makes one look forward to the next one, which hopefully will be an album that will be more assertive musically and with more memorable tunes. The production is excellent but, as is customary with producers (and studio savvy backing musicians) who are more keen on eliminating flaws than retaining a bit of looseness, the edge has been taken off and sophisticated production values win out over a the necessary modicum of rawness or quirkiness that would have made a nice enough album a powerful album.

I like this record yet I am not moved by it. Too much care was taken with it and it is too careful. Pleasant is not always pleasing. The blues have to be at least a little dirtier than this. This is a late night, quiet hours, kind of album, which is not a bad thing, just a subdued thing and background music will never grab your attention. Next time Meister should not merely go half way but dare to strut it all the way.

THE PARLOR VINYLS

This band sounds uncannily like the White Stripes to the extent that one really has to check the CD to make sure you did not mix up the discs. To be precise, the heavier, less quirky, side of the White Stripes or perhaps Jack White singing for the Black Keys in their earliest heavy blues style.

There has been a real revival in blues and blues rock in South Africa of late and the number of bands ploughing this furrow seems to have increased exponentially over the last few years. Most seem to align themselves to the ponderous heavy blues rock of the late Sixties and early Seventies with few actually playing anything like straightforward blues.

I've been going to Mabu Vinyl (currently in Rheede Street, Cape Town) for a number of years now, not to buy second hand records (nowadays commonly referred to as vinyls) but to search for cheap CD albums by South African rock acts. On one such visit early in 2014, when I was looking for Crimson House Blues' debut album (having just bought their second release) and met Brian Currin, who told me he has a blues radio show, but could not assist me with the Crimson House Blues album at the time. I ended up buying albums by a couple of other blues related acts, like Mean Black Mamba.

On another such visit Brian showed me the debut albums by Ann Jangle and The Parlor Vinyls, describing the latter as acoustically based old timey blues. Perhaps Brian had never listened to the album. It is most definitely not acoustic based traditional blues at all. In fact, if I were to give a pithy sound bite description of the record I would say the tracks sound like a White Stripes cover band playing their own material. Singer Niel Smit, who plays all the instruments except drums, must want to sound like Jack White and the fact that Parlor Vinyls is a duo brings the comparison closer to home.

The band is from Stellenbosch. I'd never heard of Niel Smit. Riaan Nieuwenhuis, the drummer, is probably best known as the former drummer of Delta Blue.

On reflection Brian Currin might have been guided by the album cover in his assessment of the music. The cover photograph is styled n sepia to look like something from day of old, featuring an acoustic guitar and a general vintage feel, with Nieuwenhuis dressed as a caricature of a small time Brooklyn mobster and Smit looking like a guy who has fixated on the Indiana Jones look.

I was quite excited to hear that these guys were delving into really old school blues, as it is not really a thing on the local blues scene, and I was relatively disappointed to find a wholly electric album and a rather heavy one at that. Not to mention a pseudonymous Jack White album.

One must recognise and salute the ambition and enthusiasm of the two guys or perhaps really just Niel Smit, as the songwriter and prime mover behind the project. He knows his way around a riff, and really and truly gives it a go. According to the sleeve notes the tracks were recorded over three days in late June 2013 but there must have been some extensive rehearsals to evolve and perfect the intricate riffing.

Although each song is individually crafted they tend to start sounding the same once you get past the first three tracks. There is no single stand out cut. The songs sound pretty much alike in style and tune. The intensity of the attack is also the same from song to song and eventually one longs for something simpler and softer, like the acoustic blues Brian Currin promised me, or that Jack White can write. Okay, right at the end of the album there is the staccato piano on "Inner City Blues" (not the Marvin Gaye song nor even the Rodriguez song), and there is the acoustic guitar of the clumsily titled "Ringing of a Clock Bell." I guess the consistently applied concept of the album makes sense though greater variety would have made the record more compelling. I cannot quiet see myself listening to this album a lot.

The production values are high and the technical abilities and skill of the musicians cannot be doubted but production values and technical skill do not make a record. One needs actual song writing, with tunes and hooks and one needs some quirkiness, some unique selling proposition that will make the listener return again and again. The Parlor Vinyls do not have that quality or advantage. It is a project and, like most projects, will quickly disappear into history once it becomes apparent that the project was fatally flawed.

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN FRICK BAND AT THE URBAN CROSSROADS

John Frick was a founder member, guitarist and vocalist of the Blues Broers, still an institution on the South African blues scene, staring as part of the vanguard of the new blues scene in Cape Town in the early Nineties and now the grandfathers of the current revival of blues and blues based rock.

Frick left South Africa in the mid-Nineties to settle in the Netherlands where he has kept his personal blues flag flying. As far as I can tell there has always been a thriving blues scene in the Netherlands, since the Sixties, and it seems to be as alive and well today as ever. Certainly Mr Frick is doing his best to vibe it up and give it fresh, sustainable life

As a musical form blues is always described as deceptively simple and yet intricate and full of complications at the same time, with the infinite variations on the basic tropes a skilled bluesman or woman can work. The changes are well known and not difficult to master as such but it takes someone with real feeling and talent to innovate and to refresh the clichés. One can try to replicate the blues standards as closely or as loosely as possible or one can try to bring a new twist and interpretation by writing one's own blues.

John Frick does a bit of both. He knows and loves the standards and he writes his own tunes with an urban contemporary infusion of what the blues means today to a musician and an audience that did not grow up in the Mississippi Delta or the Southside of Chicago yet have troubles, trials and tribulations of their own, even in the Netherlands.

Most blues seem to be about a woman. You could write a song about the issues you're having with the woman in your life or you could disguise the issues you're having with your employer with the metaphorical reference to your boss as a woman who gives you shit. You could also write about generic tough times, such as the Great Depression so many of the original Delta bluesmen had lived through or the similar economic woes the world has been suffering from since the great stock market meltdown of 2007. Virtually any blues theme that was relevant in 1927, 1937, 1947 or 1987 can still be relevant today

John Frick wrote all the songs for the John Frick Band's latest album Urban Crossroads (2014), sings them and plays guitar and is backed by bass (played by Rob Nagel, John's old mate from the Blues Broers, who also contributes mouth harp) keyboards and drums, and with horns on a couple of tunes.

I would say that Frick is influenced by both the electric downhome style of the Southside and the more sophisticated Westside style of the Chicago blues school, with a bit of Texas blues too. He likes melody and punchy yet lyrical guitar solos and his slide playing does not seem to be influenced by any particular school, being neither completely as raucous as the Elmore James or Hound Dog Taylor approach nor as sweetly soaring and subtle as the Duane Allman way of playing. Inevitably it is an amalgam of influences that produces a strong, striking alloy. To top it all, the songs are masterfully arranged with all kinds of intriguing musical business going on to make each one an individually engaging experience that is not only rewarding listen after listen but also reveals new quirky twists each time. A lot of modern blues consists purely of a competent, if one is lucky, rhythm section, running through the tropes to allow the lead guitarist to play long, loud and technically intricate solos with almost no emotional depth in support of workmanlike songs designed to be no more than the excuse for the excessive guitar playing. That John Frick writes good songs is what truly makes it rewarding to take the time to listen to Urban Crossroads.

Urban Crossroads is what I would call a grower of an album, the kind that really settles into our psyche only after a few spins and then won't let go. I knew a few tunes from YouTube clips and they made the most immediate impact. In fact, my first thought on hearing the album for the first time in the car, was that "Blinded," the slow, loping opening cut, was misplaced as the kick off number and that the record started engaging me completely only from about the halfway mark. That just goes to show that the first introduction to a new album should not be via the car stereo.

By and by I sat down in my easy chair, hooked up the headphones and really listened to the damn thing carefully and with due attention and, damn, it revealed a whole bunch of cleverness and delights! The second and third cuts, respectively "Get A Load" and "Same Way Too," set out the brilliant wares of John Frick's stall in their different ways. "Get A Load" is a slide and horn driven, pounding, shuffle thing with one of the many intricate arrangements on the record. The interplay between the horns, the guitar and the rhythm section gives the track an infectious bounce that is hard to resist. Then Frick digs down deep into his melodic blues box for "Same Way Too," which is a deep Southern soul blues that echoes Little Milton to me. This tune is THE killer track on the album and the showcase for exactly how good Mr Frick is as songwriter, arranger and performer. You can absolutely not beat heartfelt emotion expressed through the medium of a solid tune.

The next 6 tracks alternate slow and fast blues, each one as inventive as the other. There is never a sense of same old, same old or of the band sitting back to jam on the hoary old changes. With "Sadder And Wiser Man," another slow blues lament for missed chances, the band pulls back on the reins for a little breather before gearing up for peaking on the last three tracks and a climactic set final. Penultimate cut, "She Got Ways," is so flat out good it could be an undiscovered Willie Dixon composition and once again has that wonderful interplay between slide guitar, horns, and tuneful chorus, and a fiercely melodic slide solo. The final track, "Gotta Be Worth It," is by far the shortest track on the album, apparently in order to secure airplay, and is a good, positive, funky shot of energy to say goodbye on.

There are a number of South African bands and duos currently giving themselves out as blues bands but hardly any of them actually play blues. The accrual trend leans towards heavily rocked up blues, blues rock or eclectic blues influenced roots music. Even John Frick's old band, the Blues Broers, nowadays is an adult rock band infused with the spirit of the blues rather than direct from the Delta. Their albums mix in blues with whatever else they have to offer. John Frick Band is the real deal. There is no mistaking the music for anything else than stone blues with the infusion of contemporary influences and attitudes, which is just what blues has always been about. No contemporary bluesman, whether in the Mississippi Delta or on the Southside of Chicago, or elsewhere, every thought of themselves as playing old-timey, traditional music. Each and every one was as hip and as modern as he could be, reflecting contemporary mores and woes rather than being stuck in some moribund folk tradition. In The Hague Delta this is what John Frick is doing. He mixes the tradition of blues with his view of life as he lives it, writes great tunes to go with the words and plays brilliant guitar parts that are understated when required and brash when required. The rhythm section swings solidly and Leo Birza's keyboard parts are the filigree detail. Tom Moerenhout's horn parts are proof that brass and blues should live in symbiosis.

By the way, by now I am also quite impressed with "Blinded" even if I still believe that is a very low key opener for the album.

So, I love this album. It is a good collection of blues. There are at least killer cuts that deserve to become standards over time. Can't wait for the next album.

 

 

 

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.