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| Track list: 1. Sally Mae 2. Hobo Blues 3. Poor Joe 4. Maudie 5. Landing Blues 6. Huckle Up Baby 7. She Ain't Good for Nothin' 8. The Road Is So Rough 9. Hoogie Boogie 10. Love Blues 11. I Had a Dream 12. I'm Gonna Kill That Woman 13. Whiskey and Wimmen 14. Forgive Me 15. Dusty Road 16. 609 Boogie 17. Queen Bee 18. Union Station Blues 19. Questionnaire Blues 20. My Baby's Got Somethin' 21. It's My Own Fault 22. Louise 23. How Can You Do It Running time: 68 minutes Released: 2013 |
Crappy joke out of the way, on with the show. Sally Mae is sung in a way that does not sound like John Lee Hooker to me. There were hints at variation on the first disc, and this song reminds me of some amalgam of bluesmen rather than any particular individual. Something in the communication of the lyrics is lighter, more open than I would have expected. The recording is also quite clear - no crackle, which I would expect to be there (on evidence of disc 1) for very early stuff.
Hobo Blues follows a similar pattern, the voice perhaps a shade back towards the familiar, before the imperfect recordings show up - there is a hiss and wheeze about Poor Joe, a sense that the guitar is perhaps slightly out of tune; the latter is likely an illusion created by the former. All three of these first few tracks are failing to set my ears on fire. I am off work today - planned leave to recover from the 500 mile round trip at the weekend for which I was behind the wheel - and it has taken me until gone 17.00 to get around to doing anything productive. Well, aside from shopping that is.
I am hoping that, as with disc 1, the breezy nature of the disc with short songs coming thick and fast, will override my apathy and inure against the boredom of the long player. That might require some more interesting tracks though. Maudie is the first to show promise but it ends too soon, fading out whilst it seems to continue on. Unsatisfying; as is the number following it. Despite a nice muting distance between the voice and its support and the recording - giving an impression of 50's radio - the song itself makes me feel more like sleep.
Whilst not being productive, I have played through episode 2 of Life is Strange and hot damn that has one great scene that justifies the season purchase price on its own. Could any of the tracks here do similar for this disc (if not the whole set)?
Huckle Up Baby and She Ain't Good for Nothin' appear to share a very similar approach to the guitar and structuring the support for the words, albeit at very different tempos. They are a strange pair to put back-to-back like this as the similarities are so strong. In a random link, it reminds me of two tracks from disc 1 of the Microdisney anthology Daunt Square to Elsewhere (Michael Murphy and Love Your Enemies) which also evoke very similar patterns in two consecutive tracks. Similarity like that is the last thing I need when I am still failing to fully engage with a listen, so I am glad when the next tune in sequence is more distinct. The Road is So Rough is also the first track on this collection that has me thinking I will hold on to it. Not sure what works here - the slightly deeper sound (a bit of additional support?), the positive bias because of the change-up, or something else?
It doesn't really matter but it seems to have been a watershed. The intro to Hoogie Boogie already sounds better for following on and despite the fact the pattern of play feels like it was employed earlier on the disc it maintains that freshness. High tempo, low volume guitar, the air is as much formed by the tapping or clapping as by the guitar and very distant voice that occasionally mumbles something. Yet as quickly as the interest zipped in, it rushes out with the arrival of Love Blues which returns to a plodding approach which sounds a little stale. Hooker's vocal here is warm, though and again has a timbre that I would not associate with him. It is not enough to save the song for me but there we go.
Most of the journey back yesterday was taken up with discussion of music tastes, favourites and sharing influences - it probably accounted for two thirds of the total on the road time, discovering interesting touch-points and much-expected divergences. After two tracks of engagement, I find myself again diverging from the contents of this disc. I find too many of the tracks over-repetitive, a fault which becomes less excusable when that repetition is in evidence between tracks as well as within them. This sort of sameness was bound to be a problem for me at some point over the Big Box and I am not surprised to run into it here.
Of course, no sooner have I mentioned that, than a track that steps away from the themes that have repeated comes on. Whiskey and Wimmin seems to be more a classic 12-bar structure to my untrained ear, or at least identifies easily with that form of the Blues. This constitutes a bit of a change-up for Hooker though, and it is a welcome little insertion. The problem is again the fact it seems to end mid-stream, fading out whilst continuing unheard as the next song plays. Worse, it is a one-song interlude as Forgive Me immediately returns to as good as the exact same pattern to the guitar as was present on the tracks preceding W&W. As soon as I hear the little riff I switch off out of the over-familiarity born from boredom rather than knowledge.
These tracks generally come across better when there is more obvious band support. Dusty Road is a case in point, as the clear presence of drums and some form of treble (the fuzzy recording and the background noise of a washing cycle finishing up prevent any attempt at identification) immediately elevate the track. It is gone before it begins, but I am fine with that, and welcome its brief and bright burn along with the fact the follow up has a better tempo. The recording really is terrible for clarity, but the buzz and crackle and enforced softness on certain elements give a sense of place and context to 609 Boogie that I rather like. There is also a familiarity to the scale-based keyboards here that gives me a nostalgia for when I used to learn.
After a couple of enjoyable tracks we return to the predictable and over-used hook structure. It is not the same hook each time - there are differences in the precise notation from track to track - but the overall form is the same. Burst of playing, tapping out a rhythm, emphasised downbeat. I lack the words to really describe the nature of these things but I am positive that most would know what I mean if they heard these particular tracks back-to-back, side to side like I am - even if they appreciated the result more.
I suspect that this response of mine hits, again, upon an oft-mentioned limitation of the format I am using: lack of lyrical focus. I suspect that what differentiates Blues songs like these are the images they conjure lyrically, layering different stories over a common base to create pieces that feel more different than they do from a solely musical standpoint. There isn't a lot to be done about that. Listening without typing and writing up afterwards wouldn't work and wouldn't set what I am doing out from reviews. I would lose any real specificity that way, not to mention take twice as long over posts. I do wonder, though, what difference actually being able to interpret and comment on words might make. Alas - as came up in the car-based discussion when it turned to music to work to - it is difficult to concentrate on more than one stream of words at once.
In some ways the most interesting thing about these last two discs in combination has been the impact of the different recordings - massive differences from track to track really throwing up some discussion points. On Its My Own Fault for instance there is a really striking echo effect that hits the vocal in particular, and the guitar a little, but the keys are untouched. They are also really distant and quiet in comparison, and it is hard to know whether the soft sound is intentional, or whether they just messed up the vocal takes or what. I rather like the result, not because it is a pleasant contrast to hear, but because it is so very different to the flawless leveling of more modern music.
Either the end of this disc is much better than the start, or I have adjusted to the Blues and am being more forgiving now. The final 4 tracks are all engaging and enjoyable in different ways and as the listen winds up I am feeling far more positive about it than I was at half way. Yes, I am jettisoning over half these tracks, but retaining a nucleus of short bluesy numbers that might crop up in my future listening plans too. I am one third through the Big Box now and unlikely to manage another listen until the weekend, so I should make it half way through without breaking the order at least.
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