Grrrtings and Salutations to everyone this crappy monday. I woke up feeling like a bucket of turd and couldn't bring myself to run and promised myself I'd do it tonight. I won't, and judging by the pound of fruit I just ate, I probably won't break a brisk walk for the rest of the day. Enough about that crap though.
I've got a hell of a busy month ahead of me, though I guess June is always like that for everyone.
Wth a lof of artists, they really don't feel confident in their playing until they get some highly regarded piece of equipment, and they refuse to record a note unless it's with a premiere piece of eqipment. I can't really blame them, what with the lineage that you can trace yourself back to by playing a Pre-CBS Stratocaster or an original Les Paul, or even to a lesser extent a Flying V or SG just to be an all around badass. But still, I find it endearing when an artist sticks with the piece of crap model guitar or whatever they're playing not only out of a sense of loyalty to the instrument they cut their chops on (I can't believe I just wrote that), but also because it's worked for them so far, so what the hell. The two most notable instances I can think of here are Johnny Ramone's Mosrite guitars and Hound Dog Taylor's Kingston. Hound dog Taylor is probably among my 3 favorite blues artists in history. He's not the most talented slide guitar player, and he tended to repeat himself sometimes verbatim on different songs, but that doesn't make a difference as soon as you hear he and his band just rip into shit. The Houserocker's were a 3 piece (including Taylor) comprising of 2 guitars and a drum kit, but they have the sort of sound that could fill a crowded bar and even overpower the rowdy drunks and raucous shouting that this music surely attracted (or caused).
His sound-made from using a sawed-off table leg and his tiny Japanese guitar- is one of the most grating, distinctive sounds on the planet, and it meshes well with the more subdued sound of Brewer Phillips' Telecaster. Sometimes they would swith off on lead and rhythm (as all great guitar duos do, and as heard here on "Phillips Screwdriver"), but there's absolutely no mistaking on who the leader of the band is. That holler alone tells you that, and just thinking about how he could get such a frenetic sound out of his guitar wile sitting down (he had notoriously bad feet) amazes me. After all, Alligator Records was started just for the purpose of recording this band.
I can't seem to dins my copy of "Give Me Back My Wig", so I'm gonna post "Gonna Send You Back to Georgia" which is essentially the same exact song with slightly modified lyrics. I wanted to post "All Down the Line" by the Stones (just as a slide guitar trifecta), but I forgot to bring it in today so maybe I'll get to update that tonight.
"Phillips Screwdriver" - Hound Dog Taylor & the HouseRockers (YSI link)
"Gonna Send You Back to Georgia" - Hound Dog Taylor & the HouseRockers (YSI link)
Buy his first S/T album here
2 comments:
It's always a learning experience, Cotton. I'm confident in saying, I know nothing about blues especially after reading this.
The genre spans pretty far, and I don't know enough about them myself, but I knows what I likes, darlin'. and oh, I like this.
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