BLUES S NEWS

Rip It Up, Issue 34, 1 May 1980, Page 18

BLUES S NEWS

Reviews by Ken Williams

THE BLUES BAND OFFICIAL BOOTLEG ALBUM ARISTA The blues may.go in and out of fashion, but it doesn't go away. The ska revival in Britain seems to be accompanied by renewed interest in R&B. In the vanguard is the Blues Band, a new band of old hands. Bassist Gary Fletcher is a youngster. The others are Paul Jones, Tom McGuinness, Highie Flint and Dave Kelly, all veterans of various 60s British R&B units, Including Manfred Mann and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. It could have been absolutely horrid. A bunch of old musos churning out the 12-bars for drinks money. Far from being a travesty, this album is a lot of fun, in the way that George Thorogood is a lot of fun. Things are taken at a fast clip, the band is right on time, no room for introspection and, perhaps most importantly, there is much humour in the music. Paul Jones always had a good comic delivery and this lightness contrasts nicely with the rougher vocal approach of slide guitarist Kelly. The "bootleg” quality of the album (title and blank cover) results from the initial apathy of record companies to the group and its decision to finance its own recording. Don't be put off. There’s nothing homemade about the recording quality. The Blues Band is reported to have developed a strong following in Britairr. I would -prefer to think it’s because of the band’s "rocking for fun” approach and not because of some unrequited hunger for the past. KW THE FABULOUS THUNDERBIRDS CHRYSALIS JOHN LEE HOOKER THAT’S WHERE IT’S AT! STAX The Fabulous Thunderbirds are a new American four-piece who look like and play like the mid-fifties. The sound is barroom blues, vigorous, solidly swinging, suggesting a rawer version of Paul Butterfield’s first band. Singer-harmonica player Kim Wilson, a pudgy greaser, sings and plays with conviction. Best of all, he writes original songs which sound fresh while working within the blues tradition and framework. The album is more or less equally divided between originals and covers (notably Slim Harpo's "Scratch My Back") and one is grateful the Thunderbirds have looked beyond material by the half dozen or so Chicago stalwarts whose names appear again and again on records by white blues bands. You may feel you’ve heard the Thunderbirds before. To an extent that’s true. It’s oldfashioned, but when bands rock as the Thunderbirds do, as if they mean it, it isn't out of date. The earthy music of John Lee Hooker was an early favourite with British blues bands. The Animals recorded several of his songs and he was a strong influence on Van Morrison. His influence faded as the followers of 8.8. King put more emphasis on instrumental technique, but he never went away. In fact, Hooker has been recorded more often than just about any other blues singer, with inevitably variable results. This recording (apparently from 1953, origins obscure) has an intensity often absent in later work and shows to good advantage the Hook’s hypnotic, idiosyncratic guitar style and brooding voice. KW

ELMORE JAMES / EDDIE TA YLOR STREET TALKIN’ MUSE MUDDY WATERS BAND MUD IN YOUR EAR CHICKEN SHACK MUSE While we are talking blues, Terence O’NeillJoyce, who has done such a fine job of keeping the catalogues of Vanguard (Buddy Guy, John Hammond, Skip James etc) and other specialist labels alive in New Zealand, has released on the Muse label three blues albums of more than passing interest. Street Talkin’ features mid-50s recordings by the guitarists Elmore James and Eddie Taylor. James is the better-known. His "Dust My Broom" riff is as unmistakeable a signature as any Chuck Berry intro. As bluesologist Pete Welding says in his excellent notes, "Elmore James' music was like homecooking nothing fancy but damned good." The comment applies equally to Eddie Taylor who has spent most of a long career backing most of the Chicago stars. As a front man Taylor isn’t spectacular, but is consistently satisfying. His "Big Town Playboy” which is included is rightly regarded as a classic of Chicago blues. Mud In Your Ear and Chicken Shack derive from 1967 recordings of the Muddy Waters Band. Despite the deceptive packaging of Mud, they are not Muddy Waters albums. Rather they feature the work of Waters sidemen Luther "Snake” Johnson, a whiskey-voiced

guitarist, and the mellower harmonica player George “Mojo" Buford, whom I recall as an engaging rascal on the 1973 New Zealand tour by the Waters band. It is hard to choose between two albums so similar in intent and content, but Chicken Shack may have the edge overall. It's high voltage Chicago blues with the rest of the Waters band giving driving support. Otis Spann’s tower of strength piano playing only serves to remind one what an unfillable gap was left by his untimely death. KW

DR FEELGOOD LET IT ROLL UNITED ARTISTS DUTCH TILDERS DIRECT STOCKADE

THE INMATES FIRST OFFENCE RADAR

The Inmates are one of the newer groups waving the R&B flag that gets run up the pole in Britain every so often. They play the sort of music the Stones and a multitude of others were playing around 1965-66, a mix of bluesy rock and roll and soul music. At their best, the Inmates attack with the ferocity that epitomised the British R&B of the sixties, seldom a subtle music. Especially notable is Jimmy McCracklin’s "The Walk”, but the killer is a rewrite (location changed) of "Dirty Water", a mid-sixties classic by the Standells, one of those American garage bands who had one great song in them. Their failing is a tendency to tackle too many of the songs in the same four-square fashion and a sloppiness, which on the Pretty Things’ "Midnight to Six Man” blows what might otherwise have been an outstanding track. The Inmates start strongly but there’s not enough going on to sustain interest. Dr Feelgood represent an earlier era of public house rhythm and blues. Only the fanatic would deny the Feelgoods' spotty recording career. Despite production by Mike Vernon, the godfather of British blues, Let It Roll is pretty lacklustre. The boys bite down hard on a couple of blues cuts, the slow "Shotgun” which they featured on stage here and an old John Mayall tune, "Riding on the L&N”, but by and large even the better songs (there are few) merely echo past successes. A more restrained and traditional brand of blues is offered by Australia’s Dutch Tilders. Direct, recorded direct-to-disc, shows him playing acoustic and electric guitars in a syncopated finger-picking fashion akin to Brownie McGhee. Like McGhee, Tilders’ gen*ly swinging style can lapse into predictability. KW

PEARL HARBOUR & THE EXPLOSIONS WARNERS SUE SAAD & NEXT PLANET I often wonder what became of Chunky, Novi and Ernie, who made one-and-a-quarter memorable albums back there in the 19705. The 1973 album, which formed seven-eighths of that one-and-a-quarter, really was a record to hold on fo. The front lady for San Francisco's Explosions is one Pearl E. Gates, and she sounds more like Chunky that anyone else I’ve ever heard. Rock’n’roll abounds in congenital liars, so Pearl (I’m 22) may have been Chunky. What she does admit to is being Leila of Leila & The Snakes, a Tubes spin-off band from whom the Explosions also took their rhythm section of John and Hilary Stench (brothers). These two are an important part of this excellent album, especially on such tight noexcess catchy-but-far-from-dumb gems like "Drivin’ ”, “You Got It", "Shut Up And Dance” and the quite irresistible "Get A Grip On Yourself". A reviewer into dancing would conclude these songs are as funky as hell. And if Pearl and her Explosions can peel off such exacting little rockers as the aforementioned "Grip” live, without error, then I think you can pencil them in for the 1983 edition of the NME ■Book of Rock (anyone notice The Troggs aren't in the current one?) Sue Saad & the Next on the other hand use far more conventional weaponry and producer. Richard Perry did this one, and he excitedly told the person writing the band’s bio that this was not only the fastest album he’d ever done (20 days) but also the first time he’d ever allowed anyone to share the production credit. Extremists might have it that Pearl and Sue’s bands sum up the difference between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Where the Explosions leave holes through sparse and tasteful instrumentation, understating hooks always, the Next plunge sledge-hammering into every gap they can find. Fast, homogenised, slick, marketable, disposable American new wave. All their cards are played on the first hearing Pearl and her boys still have tricks hidden after ten.

Roy Colbert