 |
| Track list: 1. Boogie Chillen 2. This Is Hip 3. The Healer 4. I Cover The Waterfront 5. Boom Boom 6. I'm In The Mood 7. Burnin' Hell 8. Tupelo 9. Baby Lee 10. Dimples 11. Chill Out (Things Gonna Change) 12. Big Legs Tight Skirt 13. Don't Look Back Released: 1998 Running time: 63 minutes |
It's another long one, darn it.
Basil Brush must have liked this guy, Shahid Afridi too. Other famous names associated with Boom Boom out of the way in crappy uninspired fashion (see I know I am bad at this writing lark), John Lee Hooker's classic track figures here, but not on the 6 discs of the eponymous Big Box I have coming up far too soon for my liking. Not sure why I have so much of Hooker. Whilst iconic, my impression is one of conservatism and staid music, if backed up by good vocal. Still we'll see how misguided I am, or not, here.
This album has Hooker playing with others; I don't remember who, and though Carlos Santana is listed as composer in some of the track data I couldn't vouch for the accuracy of that (and I suspect I wouldn't recognise his style to confirm it later). Whilst I have the disc somewhere, I don't find myself motivated to check.
A whole month's rain fell in a summer's day yesterday, today is brighter, but it comes at the end of a week that felt long, with two cancelled social events and work that picked up towards Friday afternoon rather than winding down into the weekend. That last weekend I did not get enough sleep to catch up on the prior week leaves me feeling washed out. Boogie Chillen is actually fairly upbeat, pacier than I would have expected, so helps to shake off the reticence with which I approached starting this hour-long blues fest. This is Hip feels formulaic, slower by a touch, but falling into repetition fairly early with a hook that does little to inspire me. To be fair, whilst the rhythm of the piece stays rutted fairly well there is more variation around it over the course of the track and it is never an unpleasant experience, just never a particularly engaging one either.
OK, I was wrong, Santana is easy to pick out. Just think M&S food ad. I actually find this sort of overwrought virtuousity tedious, high pitch, minimal accompaniment because the guitar has to be the star. It lends itself to boring situations, and therefore ends up boring me right back even as the stage light is shining on the lead. It feels to me almost as if this particularly masturbatory playing comes with a derision for musicians playing other parts. I know that can't truly reflect any of the masters of this craft, and that actually it says more about my preferences and prejudices than anything else but... yeah. Not a fan.
So why, you might ask, if I have had two nights of social engagements fall through, did I not get to this during the week rather than wait for the weekend? The answer in two words: Rocket League. The most fun game I thought I wouldn't like I can imagine, and one of the free PSN freebies for July. Both cancelled evenings turned into RL nights. Confused, is that Van Morrison? Sounds like him, and now I am motivated to get the disc to check... yes it is. Saw a couple of other recognisable names whilst I was at it but I am not clear what it might mean for my enjoyment of the album. I Cover the Waterfront is very VM in tone musically as well. This does not feel like Hooker's blues. I find it soothing, soothing enough that it has reminded me just how tired I was immediately before starting this post.
Ah, there is Afridi. It is impossible not to like this track. Hard to love it, but impossible not to like it. Classics are generally considered classic for a reason. This recording has a busy arrangement, much more going on than my memory typically associates with the song, and a sort of swampy air to the main guitar line, is it deliberately slightly off key? Not sure, but it works well enough, organ blaring as we get into the denouement, the song closing off before it can get old.
Old is how In the Mood starts and I would guess how it stays too. It's an age-old song subject but more usually younger and more vitally approached. Works a bit better for being a duet, the female voice (Bonnie Raitt) offsetting Hooker's well. That said, this is precisely the staid and conservative approach to blues that I mentioned in the introduction. Pedestrian-slow, strictly formulaic, and simply arranged. It has its time and place, but for me that time is past. I don't mean that blues like this belongs in the past, just that appreciation of it is behind me now. The track that follows addresses one of the issues I had - the pace is much higher - but despite a more animated guitar style the rigid structure reinforces the impression that even when tracks are being reworked with different players the dominant direction of the effort is keeping things in check. A conservative nature showing through. You would expect that, for all that others are involved his name above the door. The others are just guests in Hooker's house.
Tupelo is stripped right back, and actually here is where the more formulaic approach works better, the gentle riffs and foot-tapping presenting just enough of a stage for the basically spoken vocal. My first impression as the track began was a weary one, but as it progressed I got more into it and it is unquestionably the most enjoyable number heard today. For all the negativity that readers might pick up on here, I don't really dislike anything on this album, and perhaps tellingly I find myself more willing by this point to nod my head along with the patterns of Baby Lee. I wonder, then, how different the first half of this post would be if I were to start the listen afresh. My mood has changed a little, and maybe it is adjusting itself around my environment - the most significant part of which is the music that is now my main focus.
Dimples - I would never have recognised the track by name, but musically and lyrically it is distinctive as another straight up classic. Isn't it funny how through popular culture we can develop intimate familiarity with things without ever knowing them by name? Marketing bods have worked that out, of course - hence jingles like that soddingly annoying hook they play at lots of cricket matches and everyone cheers. Happily I couldn't tell you what it's for. I was happy when, earlier in the summer, I heard Graeme Swann railing against it on Test Match Special and pleading for people not to engage with it.
Back to more Santana-isms. For the record, the change of mood hasn't made this style any more appealing. It just makes me think of delicious looking ice cream and over-priced pre-prepared meals. And hairy old men pleasing themselves in ways I would really rather not think about (and I say that as a hairy soon-to-be-middle-aged,-but-by-outlook-already-old man). Thankfully that is the last of that. For lead out we have two longer numbers. 6 minutes is an awful long time for blues songs that rely on the exact same rhythmic approach for their duration. There are limits to what can be done to alleviate the tapping away that such strongly structured rhythms do to the skull - variation in the treble is massively important, variation in lyrics too. Alas, Big Legs, Tight Skirt has none of the latter and this really kills the track for me as it lets the constants of the composition wear me down. I think my energy for this task is almost used up, but like the cyclists over in France the key is having the tank run empty at the point the stage is broken.
The last number has more of Van Morrison's looser, organ-driven background fodder and laid back vocal. Very different from the tracks more immediately Hooker's but constructed under similarly predictable formulas. In the right mood... anything can be good. It feels like a closer so it is appropriately located and it sways by slowly, waving goodbye as the album slides out of time and into memory.
Time and a place; some of these tracks transcend that, others feel like that is somewhere I might visit on another day. A third set, the casualties of this listen, are either rooted somewhere I cannot see myself going or set off down a path to somewhere I never wanted to go in the first instance. What a convoluted pile-of-tosh sentence that was! Oh well, we've reached the end, the pruning hour and about 50% of tracks are cut loose. Up next... a weird one.
Basil Brush must have liked this guy, Shahid Afridi too. Other famous names associated with Boom Boom out of the way in crappy uninspired fashion (see I know I am bad at this writing lark), John Lee Hooker's classic track figures here, but not on the 6 discs of the eponymous Big Box I have coming up far too soon for my liking. Not sure why I have so much of Hooker. Whilst iconic, my impression is one of conservatism and staid music, if backed up by good vocal. Still we'll see how misguided I am, or not, here.
This album has Hooker playing with others; I don't remember who, and though Carlos Santana is listed as composer in some of the track data I couldn't vouch for the accuracy of that (and I suspect I wouldn't recognise his style to confirm it later). Whilst I have the disc somewhere, I don't find myself motivated to check.
A whole month's rain fell in a summer's day yesterday, today is brighter, but it comes at the end of a week that felt long, with two cancelled social events and work that picked up towards Friday afternoon rather than winding down into the weekend. That last weekend I did not get enough sleep to catch up on the prior week leaves me feeling washed out. Boogie Chillen is actually fairly upbeat, pacier than I would have expected, so helps to shake off the reticence with which I approached starting this hour-long blues fest. This is Hip feels formulaic, slower by a touch, but falling into repetition fairly early with a hook that does little to inspire me. To be fair, whilst the rhythm of the piece stays rutted fairly well there is more variation around it over the course of the track and it is never an unpleasant experience, just never a particularly engaging one either.
OK, I was wrong, Santana is easy to pick out. Just think M&S food ad. I actually find this sort of overwrought virtuousity tedious, high pitch, minimal accompaniment because the guitar has to be the star. It lends itself to boring situations, and therefore ends up boring me right back even as the stage light is shining on the lead. It feels to me almost as if this particularly masturbatory playing comes with a derision for musicians playing other parts. I know that can't truly reflect any of the masters of this craft, and that actually it says more about my preferences and prejudices than anything else but... yeah. Not a fan.
So why, you might ask, if I have had two nights of social engagements fall through, did I not get to this during the week rather than wait for the weekend? The answer in two words: Rocket League. The most fun game I thought I wouldn't like I can imagine, and one of the free PSN freebies for July. Both cancelled evenings turned into RL nights. Confused, is that Van Morrison? Sounds like him, and now I am motivated to get the disc to check... yes it is. Saw a couple of other recognisable names whilst I was at it but I am not clear what it might mean for my enjoyment of the album. I Cover the Waterfront is very VM in tone musically as well. This does not feel like Hooker's blues. I find it soothing, soothing enough that it has reminded me just how tired I was immediately before starting this post.
Ah, there is Afridi. It is impossible not to like this track. Hard to love it, but impossible not to like it. Classics are generally considered classic for a reason. This recording has a busy arrangement, much more going on than my memory typically associates with the song, and a sort of swampy air to the main guitar line, is it deliberately slightly off key? Not sure, but it works well enough, organ blaring as we get into the denouement, the song closing off before it can get old.
Old is how In the Mood starts and I would guess how it stays too. It's an age-old song subject but more usually younger and more vitally approached. Works a bit better for being a duet, the female voice (Bonnie Raitt) offsetting Hooker's well. That said, this is precisely the staid and conservative approach to blues that I mentioned in the introduction. Pedestrian-slow, strictly formulaic, and simply arranged. It has its time and place, but for me that time is past. I don't mean that blues like this belongs in the past, just that appreciation of it is behind me now. The track that follows addresses one of the issues I had - the pace is much higher - but despite a more animated guitar style the rigid structure reinforces the impression that even when tracks are being reworked with different players the dominant direction of the effort is keeping things in check. A conservative nature showing through. You would expect that, for all that others are involved his name above the door. The others are just guests in Hooker's house.
Tupelo is stripped right back, and actually here is where the more formulaic approach works better, the gentle riffs and foot-tapping presenting just enough of a stage for the basically spoken vocal. My first impression as the track began was a weary one, but as it progressed I got more into it and it is unquestionably the most enjoyable number heard today. For all the negativity that readers might pick up on here, I don't really dislike anything on this album, and perhaps tellingly I find myself more willing by this point to nod my head along with the patterns of Baby Lee. I wonder, then, how different the first half of this post would be if I were to start the listen afresh. My mood has changed a little, and maybe it is adjusting itself around my environment - the most significant part of which is the music that is now my main focus.
Dimples - I would never have recognised the track by name, but musically and lyrically it is distinctive as another straight up classic. Isn't it funny how through popular culture we can develop intimate familiarity with things without ever knowing them by name? Marketing bods have worked that out, of course - hence jingles like that soddingly annoying hook they play at lots of cricket matches and everyone cheers. Happily I couldn't tell you what it's for. I was happy when, earlier in the summer, I heard Graeme Swann railing against it on Test Match Special and pleading for people not to engage with it.
Back to more Santana-isms. For the record, the change of mood hasn't made this style any more appealing. It just makes me think of delicious looking ice cream and over-priced pre-prepared meals. And hairy old men pleasing themselves in ways I would really rather not think about (and I say that as a hairy soon-to-be-middle-aged,-but-by-outlook-already-old man). Thankfully that is the last of that. For lead out we have two longer numbers. 6 minutes is an awful long time for blues songs that rely on the exact same rhythmic approach for their duration. There are limits to what can be done to alleviate the tapping away that such strongly structured rhythms do to the skull - variation in the treble is massively important, variation in lyrics too. Alas, Big Legs, Tight Skirt has none of the latter and this really kills the track for me as it lets the constants of the composition wear me down. I think my energy for this task is almost used up, but like the cyclists over in France the key is having the tank run empty at the point the stage is broken.
The last number has more of Van Morrison's looser, organ-driven background fodder and laid back vocal. Very different from the tracks more immediately Hooker's but constructed under similarly predictable formulas. In the right mood... anything can be good. It feels like a closer so it is appropriately located and it sways by slowly, waving goodbye as the album slides out of time and into memory.
Time and a place; some of these tracks transcend that, others feel like that is somewhere I might visit on another day. A third set, the casualties of this listen, are either rooted somewhere I cannot see myself going or set off down a path to somewhere I never wanted to go in the first instance. What a convoluted pile-of-tosh sentence that was! Oh well, we've reached the end, the pruning hour and about 50% of tracks are cut loose. Up next... a weird one.
No comments:
Post a Comment