Bardo Pond guitarists, brothers John and Michael Gibbons revive their long-term sonic sparring side project Vapour Theories for a genre-shattering new release ‘Celestial Scuzz’.
Six years after a split LP with Loren Connors, and 15 years after ‘Joint Chiefs’ the duo have assembled a brand new Vapour Theories album that sees their symbiotic union travel deeper, shaping and re-shaping itself as the harmonious power struggle unravels…
Michael: “The balance of power definitely shifts. When the record is put together it is equal parts from me and my brother. The collaboration is complete and represents both sides of our taking the lead on material.”
‘Celestial Scuzz’ is a monumental sound piece created from hours of jam sessions and crafted into a cohesive mind-blowing trip. Featuring their take on Brian Eno’s ‘The Big Ship’ (‘Another Green World’, 1975), the album has a heavy ambience like Eno locked in a dark room with Sunn-O))))) rehearsing next door.
“When we play together there’s a kind of connection to vibrations for us. When it happens, we become vehicles for some unknown forces that work through us to create the music. A kind of spiritual. Most of the time it leaves us stunned; the more stunned we are the better the jam.”
While Bardo Pond’s trajectory takes them deep into rock music’s ever-imploding sound, the brothers Gibbons surf a more ethereal and eclectic plain; from a heady and consuming space, a “sanctuary; balm for the soul.” Released on limited edition gold vinyl, ‘Celestial Scuzz’ is available on 26th February on Fire Records.
The latest installment in Turntable Kitchen’s series of releases featuring artists covering a full album of their choice is one of its most curious: The Pains of Being Pure At Heart tackling Full Moon Fever, the 1989 solo effort by Tom Petty. It’s a novel, unexpected choice for the band considering their core sound, but it’s also one that doesn’t make for the most gentle transition to a shoegaze/dreampop format. The otherwise sturdy songs have been made wispy and empty at their core, with even The Byrds’ “I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better” turned into something dippy and fey. The key downfall is Kip Berman’s vocal performances throughout.
He didn’t need to try and replicate the twang-y tones of Petty but Berman makes the wrong choices throughout. He opts for his breathy croon when he should growl, and growls when he should get dreamy. It upends the more inventive moments like the band’s rendering of “A Face In The Crowd” as a synthpop dance classic and “A Mind With A Heart Of Its Own” as Beatles-esque blues. A pleasant diversion that will only inspire revisits to the Petty original. Maybe that was the point all along. Pains’ Kip Berman announced his debut solo EP Know Me More under the name the Natvral. Last year, the band released The Echo of Pleasure.
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have covered Tom Petty’s 1989 solo debut Full Moon Fever in its entirety. It’s due out October 25th as part of Turntable Kitchen’s ongoing Sounds Delicious series—a monthly vinyl subscription of full-length cover albums, Full Moon Fever was Petty’s solo debut record and it is absolutely packed with hits. No less than 5 tracks charted on the Billboard Top 100: Free Fallin’, I Won’t Back Down, Runnin’ Down a Dream, Yer So Bad, and A Face in the Crowd. But even the tracks that didn’t chart could have been hits: Love Is A Long Road,Depending On You, A Mind With a Heart of its Own. The same could be said for so many of his albums. This dude’s catalogue is deep.
As the leader of the Only Ones, a band that drew fans like Johnny Thunders, Richard Lloyd, and Keith Richards, Peter Perrett was a musical force on the London scene of the late 1970s. After a few rocky, drug-filled, drug-fueled years, Perrett got sober but never hit the straight and narrow, and he’s still making great music. Many of you have probably heard The Only Ones’ best-known song, “Another Girl, Another Planet.” I consider it the most romantic punk rock song, even though most speculate it’s about heroin. A friend of mine gave me a mix tape with the song on it almost twenty years ago and I fell for him right then and there.
With singer Peter Perrett’s unique vocals and guitar sounds that lend to the feeling of shooting through space on a pink cloud. “I’ll always flirt with death, I’ll get killed, but I don’t care about it. I can face your threats and stand up straight and tall and shout about it. I think I’m on another world with you.” -Lyrics from, “Another Girl, Another Planet”.
The Only Ones came roaring through the scene in 1976, playing pubs and venues around London. Peter’s natural charisma brought about fans as well as praise from fellow respected musicians. New York bad boy Johnny Thunders, who was a New York Doll as well as a Heartbreaker, even felt compelled to approach the skinny, British singer to compliment him on his voice. A strong friendship continued after that fateful night. After the Only Ones’ demise in 1981, Peter and his wife, Zena, made a full-time job of selling dope out of their house. Was he worried they would be robbed or shot, he replied that even the worst thugs wouldn’t dare out of respect for Zena. She was the best cook in town—the item on the menu being crack. I’m surprised at how transparent and affable Peter is. It’s usually hard to get to the dark parts of a musician’s history as they want to highlight their best moments. This isn’t the case with Peter.
These days, Peter makes music with his two sons who were formerly involved in the Libertines as well as other hot London groups. In June of this year a remote show put together by Jesse Malin and NYC’s Bowery Electric in honour of Johnny Thunders’ birthday. Peter and his son played an acoustic song called, “Thy Will Be Done,” which was written long ago by Peter with help from Johnny Thunders to an audience of rock n’ roll fans worldwide watching through their computers.
The solo discography of Sonic Youth co-founder Thurston Moore is littered with limited run work released on small indie labels amid his more blue chip LPs like Psychic Hearts and Demolished Thoughts. This 1995 recording of the guitarist making a free form racket with drummer Tom Surgal, for example, was originally issued only on CD in New Zealand by Bruce Russell of The Dead C. Did this need to be brought to a larger audience by U.K. label Glass Modern on a white vinyl pressing? Maybe not but we should still celebrate it.
Moore is as great an improviser as he is a songwriter and this explosive session is all the proof you’ll need of that. He sticks to a series of ringing tones, peppered with small sprays of feedback that builds and recedes with intensity as the mood and Surgal’s drums strike him. By the end, during the closing piece “Phase II,” he’s releasing little notes and squalls while the drums take control and drive them both toward infinity. Follow them into the light, brothers and sisters.
An extract from the Glass Modern Vinyl Reissue. First time on Vinyl. Originally released on CD only in New Zealand by the Dead C’s Bruce Russel’s label Corpus Hermeticum. New Liner notes by Bruce Russel too. “A 1995 release from the famed Sonic Youth guitarist, this recording sees him paired with free jazz drummer Tom Surgal for a blistering noise set, in keeping with New Zealand noise label Corpus Hermeticum’s aesthetic. The listener should not expect the sweet psychedelic pop of his Psychic Hearts album of the same year; rather, Moore explores his interest in freeform improvisation on this live set recorded in 1994. The recording is lo-fi, but that adds to it’s candid charm, as his guitar thrashing reaches peaks of noise only hinted at in early Sonic Youth. The duo works along lines that are more akin to the Blue Humans — with whom drummer Surgal began — and also seems influenced by such underground acts as Fushitsusha and the Dead C. Moore’s guitar is so distinct, however, that many parts here could be mistaken for a live Sonic Youth recording from that band’s more heady and chaotic ’80s period”
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard return with new album “K.G.”, their sixteenth since forming in 2010. In the wake of a global pandemic, it’s a collection of songs composed and recorded remotely after the six members of the band retreated to their own homes scattered around Melbourne,Australia. “K.G.” is a pure distillation of the King Gizzard sound, one that cherry picks the best aspects of previous albums and contorts them into new shapes via defiantly non-western rock scales. Over a ten-year span spent releasing an album every few weeks (or so it seemed) King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard never repeated themselves, always pushing forward and trying new things whether it was lengthy jazz excursions, gloom-and-doom synth prog, or thundering thrash metal.
That changed some on 2020’s K.G., where the band revisit the approach used on Flying Microtonal Banana, the group’s 2017 album built around the avant-garde sounds of their custom-made guitars and altered instruments. Stuck in their various homes during the global pandemic, the band gravitated toward the unique instruments and built a batch of songs using their non-Western tunings and tones. Unlike that album, though, where that almost felt like a (mostly successful) gimmick, this time the guitars are more fully integrated into the songs. “Automation” and “Some of Us” kick and twist like classic King Gizzard-style psychedelic rockers, the acoustic guitars of “Straws in the Winds” have a snarling bite that matches the evil sneer of the vocals and sentiment of the lyrics, “Oddlife’s” guitar solos are pure prog, and “The Hungry Wolf of Fate” revisits the blown-out metal attack of their most recent studio LP with a nice mix of restraint and explosive power.
Even though much of the record transverses familiar sonic territory, the band still find some room for surprises. The acid house synths percolating behind the wall of guitars on “Minimum Brain Size” are a nice touch; the group work up a sweaty groove on “Ontolgy” and in the process sound something like Talking Heads butting heads with Kid Creole & the Coconuts; and in the album’s only real shocker, they drop some bubbly Madchester grooves on “Intrasport.” The sound is so slinky and giddily elastic, it makes one wonder what a full album of King Gizzard songs made for dancing would be like. Judging from this, and the band’s track record, probably pretty great. Apart from this one song, King Gizzard don’t break much new ground on K.G., and while that in itself might be something of a let down, the result is still quite pleasing. Listening to them tread a little bit of water is still better than listening to the fresh ideas of 99.9 percent of other groups, especially when it’s done with the energy and passion the band exhibit here.
Creating an immersive world in which to transport the listener to another plain, the songs meld into each other through percussive transitions that lead you through their world. Whether it is the stripped back Straws In The Wind, the jutting Ontology, or the pop-infused Intrasport, the band are firing on all cylinders to create a truly special album. Innovation, as ever, is the order of the day and, while the band are relying on the one concept of instrumentation, the variety of rhythms and grooves that they produce is dizzying.
They blend the mellower tracks with those that stomp and growl, songs that implore you to close your eyes and drift on their beauty with those that wrap you in swirling menace. Closing song, The Hungry Wolf Of Fate, distils all that down into one five-minute summary.
Sixteen albums in and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard show no sign of slowing their sonic experimentation and, with this album, again show that they have many avenues to choose from.
Another band we count as friends are Toronto’s PUP, who play a more aggressive, shout-y form of punk. Widerman credits Sum 41 guitarist Dave Baksh for giving invaluable help during Monster Truck’s early years; their 2011 EP Brown is named for the swarthy guitarist, who lent a ton of gear for its recording. While there isn’t necessarily a well-defined Canadian sound, one thing many players have in common is a focus on subtlety rather than pyrotechnics.
“One of the things I’ve noticed with Canadian artists in different media is there’s a lot of individuality,” Wilcox says. “Everyone from Neil Young to Joni Mitchell to whoever. Partly because there’s a certain feeling of isolation in winter. I don’t know.”
“I prefer guitar players who are able to tell stories through what they play,” says PUP guitarist Steve Sladowski, who cites Mitchell and Bruce Cockburn as some of his favourite Canadian players.
“Even someone like Alex Lifeson is somehow an understated guitar player. Playing in Rush, in a power trio, he’s happy to play what needs to be there. There’s some way of playing this really technical music and really proggy but never overplaying.” This guys have great pop sensibility and a penchant for great melodies, all dressed up in a jagged suit of chaos and energy.
For PUP, a band whose breakout album begins with the all-time great kick off line “If this tour doesn’t kill you then I will,” the only thing worse than being trapped on tour for a year is being trapped without the possibility of touring for a year. Innumerable great young bands have seen their touring careers stalled by the pandemic, and PUP is one of them: Instead of seizing the momentum of 2019’s phenomenal Morbid Stuff with another round of shows, the Toronto punk band is trapped at home and getting their aggression out with a characteristically misanthropic EP, This Place Sucks Ass. Titled after a routine tour refrain-turned-pandemic commentary (“at this moment in time, it feels so fucking real—wherever you are, it sucks ass right now,” frontman Stefan Babcock explains), the 17-minute release compresses the band’s infectious feel-bad punk energy into five new ragers and one cover.
While the sounds might vary, one thing that unites guitar bands is the hours they spend slogging it out on Canada’s endless highways (when you calculate the distance between Canada’s big cities, it starts making a lot of sense that Tom “Life is a Highway” Cochrane is a canuck).
Sladkowski points to two other highly aggro bands who have managed long careers in the north as examples of the creative risks bands can take in Canada
Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder has unveiled a pair of new solo singles. Entitled “Matter of Time” and “Say Hi”, the songs were initially premiered during a livestream event benefiting Eddie and Jill Vedder’s EB Research Partnership.
“Matter of Time” is paired with an animated music video directed by Matt Finlin and Jeff Lermire, while “Say Hi” is accompanied by a live performance video. The latter track is especially noteworthy as it was written for Eli Meyer, a six-year-old boy whose affliction with Junctional Epidermolysis Bullos inspired the Vedder’s to launch their charitable organization in hopes of finding a cure for the disease.
Both songs are also available on now and will be released on limited-edition 7-inch vinyl (pre-orders are now ongoing).
Wednesday night’s Venture Into Cures livestream also featured appearances from Billie Eilish, David Letterman, Bradley Cooper, Jimmy Kimmel, Adam Sandler, Willie Nelson, and Judd Apatow, among others. You can also find a replay of the entire livestream below.
Earlier this month, Vedder sat down for a lengthy interview on the Howard Stern Show and spoke openly about Chris Cornell’s death and the grief he still feels to this day. He also revealed the one piece of advice he gave Bradley Cooper prior to filming A Star is Born.The official live performance video of “Say Hi” by Eddie Vedder. Written for Eli Meyer, a brave 6-year-old afflicted with Junctional Epidermolysis Bullosa.
The song is inspired by the “ComeSayHi” movement, an initiative started by Eli’s siblings to “Come Say Hi” to Eli to learn about EB. To help fund research aimed at treating and curing EB, please donate to the EB Research Partnership
Through their on-again/off-again existence, the post-punk band Pylon may not have found the commercial success of their Athens, GA compatriots R.E.M. and the B-52’s, but their wiry dance funk sound has continued to carry forward, influencing the likes of Le Tigre and LCD Soundsystem. And while the original line-up will forever be shattered due to the untimely death of guitarist Randy Bewley, vocalist Vanessa Briscoe Hay has, since 2014, keeping the group’s legacy alive with her project Pylon Reenactment Society. Until now, this outfit has been content to play the music of Pylon, but this week they are releasing their first bit of new music with a 7” single featuring two freshly written jams. Both are very much in keeping with the original Pylon spirit, with the agitated rhythms of “Cliff Notes” sitting nicely alongside the glowering “Messenger,” and Hay’s vocals sounding like she hasn’t lost a step in the four decades since she first stepped onstage at the 40 Watt Club with Bewley, Curtis Crowe and Michael Lachowski.
The Orchard Enterprises “Cliff Notes” · Pylon Reenactment Society
Born Riley B. King, he was nicknamed “Blues Boy” during his time on the Memphis radio station WDIA in the late 1940s, later abbreviated to B.B. But to the many millions who heard him in the years that followed, he was the Blues Man. Sure, others played faster and with greater fury; others may have sung better (and he was happy to share the stage with one, Bobby “Blue” Bland, on a number of tours together). But few if any blues artists (or rockers for that matter) did it all with the regal mix of majesty, gentility and heart implied by his surname. B.B. King earned his crown and wore it well. And though now no longer with us, his music will live on eternally.
From his beginnings on a cotton plantation in Mississippi in 1925 to duetting at the White House with President Obama in 2012, BB King certainly witnessed some changes in his lifetime. But one thing that remained largely unaltered during the course of his 70-plus years as a performer – a career that saw him release 59 albums, 138 singles and pick up countless awards (among them 18 Grammys) – was the essence of his music. If the ultimate goal of anyone who picks up a guitar is self-expression, then BB King is among a very select group of elite musicians who, through countless hours of work, not only perfected the art, but dug ever deeper without feeling the need for reinvention. Eric Clapton said of him: “The character of any great musician is usually identifiable by the individuality of their vibrato. Most players are recognisable by that particular facet of their playing… I can tell BB from one note – most of us can, I think.” Carlos Santana echoed the sentiment: “I can hear BB King with the sound off on the TV, just by looking at his face.” Buddy Guy also summed it up: “The way BB did it is the way we all do it now.”
B.B King gave his all to blues music, and as a result became its preeminent ambassador the world round. A kind, warm and dignified man, it seems he never forgot his rural Mississippi sharecropping roots and how music raised a boy who was on his own from age 14 out of abject poverty, exploitation and racism. But rather than let the pain of his past fester into anger and resentment, he channelled it into his music. Sadness and anguish suffused his voice, and it could be heard in the sting, sad howls and tearful quivering tremelo within his clean, economical and eloquent guitar lines. His music always bore his own immediately recognizable stamp, yet it blended not only both rural and urban blues but R&B, jazz, big band, classic pop and much more to fuel his wide appeal. Dynamics, phrasing, timing, improvisation, targetting chord notes, vibrato… BB King’s unique playing has influenced countless players and in its finer details, still holds innumerable lessons for guitarists. But the most important one is sadly the least-often heeded: “Notes are expensive,” King once said. “Spend them wisely.” You could spend many words summarizing all his awards, honours and accomplishments and listing the scores of classic rock guitarists who King influenced and inspired – all that is easily available elsewhere. But the best way to honour him is simply to listen to his music. We look at a mere 20 of BB King’s greatest guitar moments only scratches the surface of an exhaustive catalogue of playing; each entry aims to show a different facet of why the playing of the King Of The Blues will always have the power to excite and delight guitarists, regardless of genre and musical style.
20. Lucille
The title track from this 1968 album shows BB King finally putting on musical record what his beloved guitar – or actually a succession of ES-family guitars, all with the same nickname – means to him. Every BB King song foregrounds an aspect of his musicality, and over this laid-back spoken-word blues, it’s how intertwined his voice and guitar playing are. Mixed with King’s crystal-clear tone way out front, rather than the forced showcase of fancy licks that 99 per cent of other players would have indulged in – although there are a few choice jazzy nods here and there and a masterclass in BB’s approach to bends – Lucille’s contribution here is that of the ever-faithful sidekick, purring like a kitten throughout. The original Lucille can be heard on vinyl on the raw, energetic concert LPs Live at the Regal (1965) – recorded before a lively crowd at a longstanding black Chicago nightspot, and the perfect match between performer and audience, fire and enthusiasm – and Live at Cook County Jail (1971) , both classics of the genre.
The song’s off-the-cuff feel was captured when producer Bob Thiele ran tape as BB was telling him the story of his guitar: “He was idling through some runs and started to tell me the story of Lucille. I grabbed the switch, signalled the engineer, and flipped him on live”
19. The Blues Ain’t Nothing But A Woman Crying For Her Man (Live In Japan)
Two musical titans for the price of one on this 1990 guest appearance in Japan, which features Ray Charles, BB King and a ‘Super Band’ laying down a finale to an evening of perfectly crafted big-band schmaltz. Spectacular enough is Charles dusting off his keyboard’s pitch-bend wheel to skilfully imitate the character of King’s guitar, but when Gene Harris’ big band is eventually unleashed, King takes the spotlight, rolling off the tone control and letting rip over When I Get The Blues I Sit In My Rockin’ Chair with a series of cascading jazz-tinged improvisations that not only show his ability to morph his style to the occasion, but also offer an extended glimpse of the sophistication in his note choices that he would allude to throughout his career.
Charles and King often shared a stage during their careers; to hear them together in the studio, listen to the emotive jamming on Sinner’s Prayer on Charles’ final studio album before his death in 2004, Genius Loves Company
18. Instrumental (Live In Stockholm Konserthus)
With a minute of charming but starchy retrospective interview before the action, this clip from Swedish concert in 1974 is an absolute must for an appreciation of what made BB King’s playing so timeless. Over an extended three-minute solo, he creates mood by varying the dynamics of his solo from tender to strident, perfectly controlling the band’s accompaniment through the nuances of his playing and through subtle gestures: at one point, he unexpectedly silences them, embarks on a stunning jazzy exploration, then smoothly changes key, seemingly at random, before they come back in without missing a trick. Dynamic playing and musical telepathy with his fellow musicians are two qualities BB understood better than perhaps any other blues player before or since – and it’s all here.
At 7:00 in this Guitar Clinic, King explains how horn playing defined his approach to sustain in his phrasing
17. Japanese Boogie
A tireless tourer, King found time in his hectic schedule to record three albums in 1971 while also capitalising on the peak in his popularity – the unimpeachable Live At Cook County Jail, B.B. King In London, unfortunately lacklustre despite its stellar cast of musicians, and Live In Japan, recorded in Tokyo’s Sankei Hall – where this fiery up-tempo boogie is from. It’s a sprawling nine-minute instrumental that begins with a single-string take on the Chuck Berry lick before spending the majority of the rest of the song in the so-called BB box: having an area of the guitar neck named after you proves how much time BB spent in this territory, and this stomping instrumental, with its interlacing horns and piano, shows the endless variation King could summon out of the position on the fretboard he’d claimed as his own.
It’s not all down to B.B King – there’s even a rasping distorted bass solo, courtesy of King’s erstwhile low-end merchant Wilbert Freeman
16. Goin’ South (Calypso Blues)
1991 instrumental compilation Spotlight On Lucille is oft-lauded for illuminating King’s material from the Kent label vaults, from 1958-62, particularly the outstanding version of Louis Jordan’s Ain’t That Just Like A Woman which is an early tour-de-force of his jazz-inflected, horn-influenced and fluid lead style, and Jumpin’ With B.B., where he rides roughshod across an alternate time signature from the rhythm section in his phrasing. Yet its this shapeshifting Calypso instrumental that shows an undercelebrated side of King’s wide-ranging musical sensibilities. Listen out for the diminished runs and the outro, where he really loses himself in the tune, adding rare rhythmic double-stop stabs and controlling the song’s dynamics with a twist of his volume control.
B.B King was an ever-present in the studio in his early days; a boxset of the complete RPM-Kent recordings features over 400 tracks, including alternate takes
15. Days Of Old
2000’s Riding With The King saw 75-year-old B.B king rolling back the years on a collaboration with Eric Clapton that had finally come to fruition after years of mutual appreciation. The record featured five vintage B.B King songs, and on the uptempo Days Of Old from 1958, an elite band with Andy Fairweather-Low, Joe Sample et al offer a perfect substitute for the horn stabs of the original. Clapton pulls out all the stops throughout the record, mimics the intro line and staccato Q&A licks that leapt out of the original, and when it’s Lucille’s turn in the spotlight, King soars above the mix with a push-and-pull solo soaked in expressiveness that draws on all of his years of experience with the song – a highlight from a record brimming with mutual admiration from two guitar greats.
Fans of Texas blues should give Riding With The King a spin for the guest spots from Jimmie Vaughan and Doyle Bramhall II; the latter’s songs Marry You and I Wanna Be are covered
14. Guess Who
The cover image from King’s 1972 album Guess Who shows him laid out on the beach hovering in a state somewhere between relaxation and exhaustion, Lucille by his side – it was his 21st album, after all. But the title track shows there was still plenty more to come, and King transforms the smouldering sentimentality of this piano-blues into a consummate lesson in how his vocal and guitar were two sides of the same coin when it came to dynamics and phrasing. BB uses his full vocabulary of first-finger bends, string slides, passing notes, his magical vibrato and more to subtly transform the song’s basic melody into something only he could play.
King’s oft-imitated rapid vibrato technique relies on lateral movement of the wrist; unusually, the tip of his finger is the only part of his hand touching the fretboard, which contributes to its uniquely vocal quality
13. Don’t Answer The Door
This 1966 single, a cover of a Jimmy Johnson composition, was King’s highest-charting song for six years on release, but its success was modest compared to the smash that his signature song, Thrill Has Gone, became three years later. Undoubtedly, though, guitarists around the world were listening – just as important to the song’s success as the brooding electric organ and King’s impassioned vocal are the bursts of ghostly lead guitar, drenched in pools of sumptuous amp reverb, an effect also put to spine-chilling use by King’s favourite UK bluesman, Peter Green.
Listen also to the brooding live version on the outstanding half-live, half-studio Live & Well album from 1969, part of a set which King proclaimed was the best he’d ever played
12. Chains And Things
“I know the critics always name Live & Well or Live At The Regal as my best albums,” King once reflected, “but I think Indianola Mississippi Seeds was the best album I have ever made artistically.” The record came on the heels of his breakthrough hit Thrill Is Gone, from the Completely Well record, and young Bill Szymcyzk (who produced that album and would later go on to produce Hotel California) gently nudged King away from his well-trodden formula into fresh territory, with exceptional results. Chains And Things, also featuring Carole King on Fender Rhodes, is a case in point: simmering with world-weary minor-key indignation, BB delivers a haunting vocal and his guitar solo, embellished with interwoven string lines, seems to emanate from deep inside him.
The solo’s opening note was a mistake, according to BB: “I played the wrong note and followed it as best I could… then we got the arranger to make the strings follow it”
11. Gambler’s Blues
When you summon BB King’s playing to mind, chances are you’ll hear it floating serenely above a bed of horns of the kind that characterised Live At The Regal. But on the 1966 live album Blues Is King, BB took to the stage in Chicago with a stripped-down band featuring only organ, alto sax and a trumpet in their place, and the results were grittier and far more visceral as a result. There are many six-string highlights, including the stark, spiky lines of opener Waiting On You and the spills of feedback threatening the reverb-coated licks on Night Life (there’s also an unfortunate string break on Blind Love). But Gambler’s Blues is the guitar highpoint – a prowling beast of a performance, so real it feels as though he’s in the room with you.
BB King was in debt at this time due to a bus crash incident that left him personally liable and claims for back taxes from the IRS, hence the stripped-down line-up
10. How Blue Can You Get (aka Downhearted)
A crowd pleasing staple in King’s live sets on account of its clever wordplay, BB recorded the 1949 Jane and Leonard Feather composition twice; once in 1963 as Downhearted, and then in a revamped version the following year, which made the Billboard 100. This version – from a 1979 tour of Russia, filmed in what looks like an aircraft hangar, in Tblisi of all places – is a great watch, firstly for the extreme-close-up camerawork offering us an almost uncomfortably intimate view of his guitar technique, secondly for the noodling in the intro, and finally, for an appreciation of BB King as an out-and-out showman, acting out the lyrics as he goes.
There are many to choose from: definitive live versions are a toss-up between those on Live At The Regal, Sing Sing, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! and Live AtCook County Jail
9. Blues At Midnight
A towering track included on King’s ABC-Paramount debut album Mr Blues, from 1963 – a record that combines the output of three separate sessions with a variety of groups into a stylistically varied but not entirely satisfying whole – Blues At Midnight enjoys the distinction of having an uncommonly great guitar tone that’s different from much of the rest of his output. Articulate, nasal and sounding almost-out-of-phase, how exactly he came across it remains a mystery. King had a famous preference for Gibson’s Lab series L-5 amps and used Fender models, but beyond that, was seemingly far from a gearhound.
It’s speculated that the tone on this record may be the product of one of the settings on King’s custom-ordered stereo ES-335 with Varitone switch, pictured on the cover
8. Hummingbird
The BB King/Bill Szymcyzk partnership bore further fruit with Indianola Mississippi Seeds’ closing epic, a most uncharacteristic, shapeshifting musical exploration written by singer-pianist Leon Russell, who contributes gutsy piano to the record. Beginning with a loping Albert King-esque strut and morphing into an ambitious rock-ballad arrangement, Hummingbird would’ve been a standout in King’s discography even without its closing section, where, over a chorus of angelic backing vocals from Sherlie Matthews, Merry Clayton, Clydie King and Venetta Fields, King offers his own unique take on the epic Layla-esque 70s rock outro, wringing almost Stones-y licks from Lucille’s neck for a satisfyingly bitter and earthy contrast to the song’s emotive crescendo.
The surreal cover image, featuring a watermelon guitar complete with pickups, neck and bridge, won a Grammy for photographer, Ivan Nagy and cover designer, Robert Lockart
7. Rock Me Baby
This early BB King song, recorded sometime between 1958 and 1962, was his first to hit the Top 40 in the US, and both it and Muddy Waters’ Rock Me share a common ancestor in Lil’ Son Jackson’s Rockin’ And Rollin’. King’s take is a prowling monster of a recording, bleeding into the red, that pairs a deep, barrelling piano bassline with a manky stray cat of a main lick; but what elevates it is the perfectly formed guitar solo, with its sophisticated manipulation of space, its visceral string rakes, mix of major and minor and its microtonal bends. It’s a rare glimpse of BB King in unadulterated macho-swagger mode and it’s since entered the blues canon.
Hendrix revamped the song somewhat for his mind blowing 1967 Monterey Pop Festival performance and BB King re-recorded the song in 2000 with Clapton for Riding With The King
6. Every Day I Have The Blues
A 1935 song by the Sparks brothers, updated by Memphis Slim, Count Basie And His Orchestra and others, King’s version of Every Day I Have The Blues recorded 20 years later became his “theme” on account of its novel DI’d guitar sound (resulting in extra cuthrough and twang) and “crisp and relaxed” horn arrangements from Maxwell Davis. It was a regular concert opener, opening both Live At The Regal and Live At Cook County Jail, and for all the charm of the original, it’s in performance that it comes to life. Here’s a great hyperactive version from circa 1969-70 where BB slickly sorts out his guitar issues before peeling out a stinging solo that dances around the horn lines and takes advantage of the sustain from his cranked amp.
Though King’s first version was recorded in 1955, it had to wait until 2004 for a Grammy Hall of Fame Award and until 2019 to be inducted into the Blues Hall Of Fame as a Classic Of Blues Recording,
5. Why I Sing The Blues
The closing song on BB’s classic 1969 album Completely Well catalogues the historical and contemporary racial injustices of US society head on, and with simmering dignity. Though the original is a cool slab of funk, driven by a propulsive bassline from Gerald ‘Jerry’ Jemmott, it’s best heard in the sweltering heat of the Zaire 74 concert: 80,000 people watch on as his band up the tempo and the bandleader closes his eyes and coaxes Lucille to sing. When describing his guitar phrasing, BB would often explain his approach in terms of a conversation, constructing complete sentences by repeating themes while varying the dynamics, bends and sustain in his licks; and this is a prime example of how he did it, with a bonus funky outro thrown in just for the hell of it.
King’s right-hand technique is an essential aspect of his sound: he played with a heavy pick and used mostly downstrokes to strike the notes, sacrificing the speed of alternate picking for more control and consistency of emphasis. He also exclusively damped the strings with his right hand
4. Three O’Clock Blues
BB had his first chart appearance in 1951 with a brooding take on Lowell Fulson’s Three O’Clock Blues, restlessly alternating soulful crooning with restless, barbed guitar licks over a bed of soporific horns. The influence of T-Bone Walker on King’s early style shines through here, in the emphatic use of bends and the abrupt, unexpected pauses for thought interrupting the flow of his lead lines to convey emotion through the power of silence. King’s raw and authoritative playing when he revisited the song for 2000’s Riding With The King makes for an interesting comparison: half a century of blues playing is a lot of water under the bridge, but his expressive power is completely undiminished
Beginning life as a Gibson L-30, Lucille took many forms before King settled on his iconic choice of centre block-equipped ES-355 and its less bling sister models, the 335 and 345. At this point in his career, Lucille was an ES-125; a hollow body model with a single P-90 pickup
3. Worry Worry Worry (Live In Cook County Jail)
Johnny Cash’s prison concerts (1968’s At Folsom Prison and 1969’s At San Quentin) set the precedent for BB King to accept an invitation to perform at Cook County Jail in Chicago in 1971, and the experience had a lasting effect on him: B.B King would go on to co-found the Foundation for the Advancement of Inmate Recreation and Rehabilitation (FAIRR) in 1972. The Cook County performance has many fine moments, but Worry Worry Worry, its 10-minute centrepiece, finds him using everything in his power – from spoken-word soliloquys and hummingbird falsetto to band dynamics and verse after verse of spectacularly emotive blues lead – to make a connection with the lost souls staring back at him.
BB King was a passionate advocate for prison reform, and played around 70 prison gigs over the course of his career, including the subject of the 1972 documentary AtSing Sing Prison</strong
2. Sweet Little Angel
Live At The Regal is forever praised as one of the greatest live albums of all time and even though its timelessness ultimately lies in the connection with the crowd and the ensemble performance, it’s also littered with exceptional, enormously varied guitar playing. An undoubted high point for many is King’s playing onSweet Little Angel, a reworking of Lucille Bogan’s1930 song Black Angel Blues. While B.B King had refined his guitar style on singles towards a more minimalist approach out of necessity, onstage, it could be a different story, and so it proves here: from its authoritative, melodic opening phrase onwards, his brief off-the-cuff solo covers so much ground, it’s virtually a song in itself.
At one point in his 60s career, Eric Clapton listened to this album every night before going onstage
1. The Thrill Is Gone
King’s signature song was a hit forRoy Hawkins, its co-writer, in 1951, but B.B King’s ground-up reworking of it reached No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1970 and took his popularity to a new audience, and a new level. Its dramatic arrangment – immersing King’s angst-ridden vocals and laconic, reverb-shrouded stabs of guitar in a sea of heartbreak made up of pensive strings and atmospheric Wurlitzer, provided the established bluesman with an entirely fresh sonic setting. The song was masterminded by Bill Szymczyk, an up-and-coming staff producer at ABC Records who had lobbied hard to allow executives to pair him up with King in the studio. The result of their first collaboration was 1969’s Live & Wellalbum: a half-live, half-studio test exercise. For its follow-up, Completely Well, Szymczyk recruited session players Herbie Lovell on drums, bassist Gerry Jemmott, keys player Paul Harris and guitarist Hugh McCracken and set up in New York’s Hit Factory studio in September 1969. The producer asked string arranger Bert de Coteaux to come up with the song’s distinctive arrangement. Szymczyk told us “The thing I remember most vividly about that session was how BB smiled during it. This had never happened to him before – strings on a blues record. I’m not sure it had ever happened to anyone before.” The atmospheric backdrop stirred up an emotional response from King, whose terse, pent-up lines bristle with dynamic energy, swooping gracefully above and below the other elements in the mix before embarking on an outro that Szymcyk recalls went on a full eight minutes.
BB King recorded the song live with no guitar or vocal overdubs, using a Gibson ES-355 with Varitone through a Fender Twin Reverb, In 1980 Gibson began manufacturing the B.B. King signature “Lucille” model, a variation on the company’s combination hollow- and solid-body ES-355. But it was long before that the original “Lucille” got her name. After rescuing his $30 Gibson L-30 from a burning Arkansas dance hall in 1949, B.B. King learned that the fire was started by two men fighting over a woman named Lucille. He has used the name for each of his guitars since, and while they were all Gibsons, not all of his Lucilles were the ES-355 model with which B.B. is most often identified. The Gibson website points out that “As King’s career flourished, he got a fancier guitar. Launched in 1949, the ES-5 was then one of Gibson’sflashiest and sonically most versatile models – it had three P-90 pickups and came in blonde and sunburst, but B.B.’s was a blonde, with a trio of volume pots and a black pickguard. The ES-5 was discontinued in 1960.” Then came other Lucilles, including the ES-125, the ES-175 even a Gibson Byrdland was Lucille-ized. King has played ES-335s and ES-345s too, but the ES-355 was the one. By the time he became an international superstar, Gibson and King collaborated to create his own, exclusive Lucille model. And this one had to be fit for a King. As well as personalized pearl inlays, B.B. requested that Gibson remove the F-holes, to reduce feedback. In earlier years, King would often stuff his regular ES-355’s F-holes with cloth to inhibit feedback, so this was a much-needed modification for the bluesman.
When you’re stalking around Bandcamp on any given Bandcamp Friday looking to round up your already-packed cart to an even fifty bucks, Father/Daughter tends to be a great place to land.
Signed to the ever wonderful Father/Daughter Records, Anna McClellan is a singer-songwriter based out of Omaha, Nebraska. Anna’s latest album, “I Saw First Light”, is one of the year’s finest records. Among this interesting roster, though, you can also find the sophomore record from Omaha’s Anna McClellan, who’s also gearing up to release this Friday. “I Saw First Light” continues her experimentation within the contexts of lo-fi bedroom recordings and folk rock,
Anna McClellan began performing original songs in her hometown of Omaha, NE at the age of seventeen and has been actively recording and touring ever since. Her debut, Fire Flames, earned her an opening slot on a Frankie Cosmos tour. Through the doors that tour opened, McClellan eventually met Father/Daughter Records which led to the release of her second full-length record, Yes and No, in 2018. After a stint in NYC, several subsequent tours and meandering, Anna returned to Omaha and recorded I Saw First Light, her latest effort for Father/Daughter Records.
The album was recorded over two weeks with a multitude of local cohorts, and it documents Anna’s journey from the Midwest to the east coast and back again, probing both the roots of her creative impetus and her ongoing commitment to social issues. The process of composing and recording I saw first light has both reformed and renewed her dedication to exploration, be it inward or external, and to her own boundless creative energy.
The Fat Angel Sings 