CLIMAX BLUES BAND (ABO#422)

CLIMAX BLUES BAND
STANDING BY A RIVER
(1969-2003)

How funny things are. When I came to Baistophe there was plenty of great bands to compile. Some had already been done, some other are still not. Climax Blues Band was certainly one of those I really wanted to make for the simple reason that I only owned one album of theirs : FM-LIVE, a great live album that invited me to discover more from that forgotten band. For reasons completely unknown by anybody (especially me), I have never done such an exploration. So you may understand how happy I found myself to receive a mail from new part-time contributor GARY who was sending me this compilation. As it is becoming an habit (you may think it's a good one, or not) this is a 2CD compilation which second one can be considered like a bonus CD. The firt one is a simple CD compilation exploring the almost complete CBB discography. Not exactly complete because the very first album and the very last one is not included in it. I think that the very first CBB album is not particularily as enjoyable as the other, but I think that I will give it a listen to make my own opinion. The last one is more understandably put aside : this is an exclusively tribute to Willy Dixon. Some classical blues that does not really fit with the rockier songs they used to record. In the contrary, Rich Man is unarguably the best represented.
As I said earlier, the second CD can be considered like a bonus one. It's indeed a live CD consisting of only bootleg tracks. The sound is good from the beginning to the end at the exception of one track where there's a bit of saturation. Well, it's good first attempt from Gary on our dear blog.

I simply hope he won't damn me for having made my own artwork. His was good anyway but in a too low resolution. I couldn't find his pix on higher resolution so I made my own one, respecting the title he had chosen for this Baistophe...

Extracts :

Rich Man
(from Rich Man, 1972)


Couldn't Get It Right
(from Gold Plated, 1976)

GARY MOORE (ABO#413)

THE
GARY MOORE
ANTHOLOGY

It's a mammoth of a baistophe I'm delivering today. Actually, it's a lot more than just the finest tracks of an artist as it takes us through Gary Moore's entire career starting with his "Cream", Irish Psychedelic-Blues Rockers Skid Row. From there, I considered every album Gary Moore ever laid his divine axe or his soulful vocals on.
And here it is! Six CDs worth of blues, hard rock, fusion, progressive rock… and more! To tell you the truth, I was rather surprised as how varied and good Gary Moore career had been. Obviously, I knew of his participation to Irish legends Thin Lizzy, and so did I know about his progressive/fusion endeavors with Colosseum II. Also, I was no stranger to both his Hair Metal and Blues Rock career. I even had the chance to see him live twice: first supporting the “Still Got the Blues” album, then with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker promoting their BBM album. Both concerts had been memorable experiences with Mr. Moore shining as the true Guitar Hero he was. Alas, his (failed) return to commercial music of the late 90’s and early 00’s (with “Dark Days in Paradise” and “A Different Beat”), made me lose sight of his music. Like I said, I knew almost every trick up Gary's sleeve but, considering it as a whole, it's amazing what the man has achieved. And so, naturally, I have been utterly shocked by the news of his death and decided it was time to pay the man tribute on this very blog.
I hope you’ll appreciate the work I’ve put into this Gary Moore Anthology and that it’ll lead you to want to know more about each and every step this dearly missed musician has taken on the Stairway to Heaven.
We miss you Gary. R.I.P.

GOV'T MULE (ABO#408b)

GOV'T MULE

COVERS

(1998-2010)

Here's The Little Surprise. At the beginning there was PAPS (formerly HotBear) who was thinking of making with me a great Mule compilation. I would have done the studio recording, with only self composed songs and a live one with only cover versions. Things went differently : When I finally began my Gov't Mule compilation, I've had no new from him for a long time a then decided to only make a single compilation with both studio and live recordings and also with covers. The result was ABO#408a.

Then, a few weeks ago, I recived a mail by PAPS who sent his BAISTOPHE. I couldn't refuse his hard work. The only solution was to rework my BAISTOPHE. But, finally, as no songs were on both two compilations, I finally decided two post both as is.

This one is PAPS' one and you'll have the chance to listen the Mule as if it were a complete two hours and a half live show with only cover songs.

wait if it's temporarily unavailable

GOV'T MULE (ABO#408a)

GOV'T MULE

FROM THE ARCHIVES

(1995-2010)

This project is a long awaited Baistophe on our list.

I have discovered Gov't Mule back in 1999 when a friend of mine, record seller told me of them. He sold me their Live with the little help from our friends CD and I was really impressed that that kind of music was still played at that time. I didn't even know Haynes was one of the major member of the Allman Brothers Band. I wasn't surprised to know that because the spirit of both bands are similar to each other. However, Mule's one is harder, heavier ... and maybe more soulful.

What is notable in Gov't Mule is their capacity to cover other songs but in their own language. You'll find some on that Baistophe but many many more exist. If are well-behaved, maybe you'll get a surprise soon. ;-)

The best album : Dose (1998) I think few people will disagree with me when I say that the best studio era for the Mule lasts until their 2003 Deepest End ablum. After that, the albums are not very worse but are less surprising when you know the band (excepted one album, see third column). In my opinion, Mule's best is Dose simply because it has got lots and lots of great tunes so that, compared with other albums, I had too much songs from it on my first choice list for this Baistophe.

The album that will make you admire them : Live, With The Little Help From Our Friends (1999) Recorded during a New Year's Eve show, in the same tradition of the Grateful Dead, this live album (4CDs !) will outblow you by the quality of the songs, the performance and covers chosen (Jimi Hendrix, Free, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, ...) If you don't like this show, no doubt you're not ready to assist any of the Mules'

The worst album Mighty High (2006) When I tolf on the first column that Gov't Mule did not really surprise anymore in the second part of theur carreer, I remembered that there was an album that contradicted this. With Mighty High, Gov't Mule went another way and made a reggae oriented album. That's not that I dislike reggae (even if ...) but this album is pretty boring. Gov't Mule has not really assimilated the reggae spirit. The only song I kept was the first one and is the only one that is not a reggae song. If you want a reggae album, try a real jamaican band first.

The best live album : Live At Roseland Ballroom (1996) That's not because it is their first live album that this is my favourite one. My choice was for this one because I found that the performance was more instinctive, more aventurous, more psychedelic maybe... The album opens with Trane which is a masterpiece and includes in this version, winks to bands like Jimi Hendrix Experience, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Grateful Dead... The album is short compared with its followers but is much more dense. I think it is the best way to blow your mind

wait if it's temporarily unavailable

HOUND DOG TAYLOR (ABO#403)

HOUND DOG TAYLOR

POLYDACTYLY

(1969-1976)

"Cain't no Negro sing no love song; cain't no white man sing the blues."

This can't be the Blues, these people are having fun! It's hard for me to imagine someone not liking this music, even if they don't like the blues. Hound Dog Taylor and his band were joyful and uninhibited, as though they were playing in a garage just for themselves. They usually were sloppy drunk and on the edge of collapse before gathering it all together again. This is the punk rock of the blues.

Mississippi-native Theodore Roosevelt 'Hound Dog' Taylor was born in 1915. His fate as a slide guitar player seemed pre-determined, as he had a vestigial sixth finger on both hands. When he was only 9, his stepfather put all of Hound Dog's things in a grocery bag, grabbed a shotgun, and told him to get out. He learned to play guitar while in his teens but didn't play seriously until 1936.

The Klu Klux Klan found out that he was having an affair with a white womanchased him out of Mississippi in 1942. He headed for Chicago and never went back. He spent the next 15 years working various factory jobs and playing clubs at night. In 1957, he decided to become a professional bluesman. He became one of Chicago's favorites; usually just sitting alone in a folding chair in front of the club, guzzling Canadian Club, puffing on a cigarette and exhorting the audience to get up and dance. Playing through a cheap Japanese Kent guitar and a Sears-Roebuck Silvertone amplifier, he made as much with distortion and feedback as Jimi Hendrix. He picked up the name Hound Dog because he was always hunting for some action with the ladies. One drunken night in those early days, he decided to cut off the small extra finger on his right hand with a straight razor.

In 1959, he became friends with guitarist Brewer Phillips. They began to play together and the Houserockers were formed. Although the two singles they put out didn't gain them any fame outside of Chicago; Freddie King became famous with a tune called 'Hideaway' that was mostly stolen from Hound Dog. In 1965, Ted Harvey joined the Houserockers, replacing their previous drummer. This trio of two guitarists and a drummer were Hound Dog Taylor & The Houserockers until Hound Dog played his last chord. The story remains mostly unchanged for the next ten years. Night after night of drinking and chasing girls and jamming on stage for six or seven hours straight.

Bruce Iglauer met Hound Dog in 1969 at a club called Eddie Shaw's. Hound Dog was jamming with another band. Skip ahead a year, and Bruce was a 22 year old shipping clerk for Delmark Records in Chicago. One night he stopped into Florence's Lounge and Liquors on Chicago's South Side and heard Hound Dog with his band. He was awestruck. After failing to get Delmark to sign the band, he took a $2500 inheritance and created Alligator Records in order to record the band. In the spring of 1971 the band spent two nights recording their debut live in the studio.

A master tape was cut for under $1000 and the remainder of Iglauer's inheritance was spent to press 1000 copies. Within a year the album, titled Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers, was the biggest selling blues record on an independent label, selling 9,000 copies. In late 1973, the band released 'Natural Boogie', using songs that were recorded and mixed at the same sessions that produced the first album. Still playing that Kent guitar and Sears amp. It received a fair amount of attention from Rolling Stone and other music magazines.

Things were getting better. The band was at the height of their success, touring the USA and doing some shows in Australia and New Zealand. But remember, this is the Blues we're talking about. Taylor and his guitarist Phillips had been friends for over ten years, but even friendships have their rough spots. In May of 1975, Phillips was drinking in Hound Dog's apartment. Phillips said something bad about Hound Dog's wife, and Hound Dog grabbed his .22 rifle. He claims to have aimed for the sofa, but he hit Phillips in the forearm and in the leg. Phillips recovered but pressed charges and Hound Dog was charged with attempted murder. Instead of facing trial he landed in the hospital with lung cancer. Phillips visited him in the hospital in December 1975 and forgave him. Hound Dog Taylor passed away the next day.

His third Alligator album 'Beware Of The Dog', was recorded live in 1974 and released after his death. At least six more albums, mostly live, have been released since he died. Taylor was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1984. Brewer Phillips and Ted Harvey worked together and separately after Hound Dog's passing. They released a double album in 1995 called Good Houserockin'. Phillips died of natural causes in 1999. Bruce Iglauer turned Alligator Records into the top Contemporary Blues label in the world.

"When I die, they'll say 'he couldn't play shit, but he sure made it sound good!"

Picking the best albums is easy. Alligator did a superior job on all of theirs. Live albums on other labels like Wolf, New Rose and JSP suffer in comparision. I was unable to obtain a copy of 'Live In Boston' on Charly, but I expect it will sound muddy.

BAISTOPHE wants to thank FOURSTEPS for this great contribution to this huge monument of the Blues landscape. Go et find his blog, here

FOURSTEPS's HGT TOP 3 :

1. Hound Dog Taylor & The Houserockers (1971)

2. Natural Boogie (1973)

3. Beware Of The Dog (1976)

FOURSTEPS's HGT BOTTOM 3 :

1. ABC Radio Australia 1975

2. Live At Joe's Place

3. Freddie's Blues

JOE BONAMASSA (ABO#395)

JOE BONAMASSA

BLUES IN GOLD

(1994-2010)

NO, it's not over yet. As SFP said last july, we had to have a little break, just because we had gone too wild in our post frequency. So we're back and we'll post a bit rarer. One of the very first reasons why we wanted to go on was for those who had sent us their work. We felt it was unfair to keep them unavailable to you. Joe Bonamassa's BAISTOPHE is one of those works and we simply thank our new contributor Hot Bear to have done this artist. I had already known Joe for a long time because I was invited to buy his very first solo album. I wasn't really into blues at that time but that kind of blues really fit me, especially when I saw that the young guy (aged 23 in 2000) had covered Jethro Tull and Rory Gallagher, artists I really was found of. But, funily I didn't go forward in discovering this artist. Until Hot Bear sent me this. I found this was a really great idea to BAISTOPHE him, and I found it was a really great idea to begin this second life with him too, because he's worth it.

RIYL : KENNY WAYNE SHEPPERD, JONNY LANG

ETTA JAMES (ABO #387)

ETTA JAMES
BURNER'S CHOICE

Few R&B singers have endured tragic travails on the monumental level that Etta James has and remain on earth to talk about it. The lady's no shrinking violet; her autobiography, Rage to Survive, describes her past (including numerous drug addictions) in sordid detail.
But her personal problems have seldom affected her singing. James has hung in there from the age of R&B and doo wop in the mid-'50s through soul's late-'60s heyday and right up into the '90s and 2000s (where her 1994 disc Mystery Lady paid loving jazz-based tribute to one of her idols, Billie Holiday). Etta James' voice has deepened over the years, coarsened more than a little, but still conveys remarkable passion and pain.
In concert, Etta James is a sassy, no-holds-barred performer whose suggestive stage antics sometimes border on the obscene. She's paid her dues many times over as an R&B and soul pioneer; long may she continue to shock the uninitiated.

RIYL:
Mavis Staples, Ernestine Anderson, Bessie Smith, Dinah Washington

LONNIE BROOKS (ABO #386)

LONNIE BROOKS
SWAMP CRAWLER

Lonnie Brooks is a minor star in a minor genre, the blues. This is a quick and dirty collection culled from two favorite albums (Hot Shot and Roadhouse Rules), and filled out with four tracks from the Alligator Records compilation called Deluxe Edition. It isn't intended as a complete view of the man's work, but it does give you a good idea of how he sounds.
He was born Lee Baker Jr. in Louisiana and began his career playing zydeco music in Clifton Chenier's band under the name Guitar Junior. After moving to Chicago in 1959, he found that there was already another Guitar Jr. in town and changed his name to Lonnie Brooks. The next decade was a struggle but like many American jazz & blues artists, Lonnie finally found an appreciative audience in Europe. His career began to pick up steam in the mid-Seventies and reached a crescendo in 1979 with the album "Bayou Lightning'. Being a blues star is a hollow victory, you're still only pulling in about 200 people a night in a dive on the dark end of the street.
This collection features songs from 1983 to 1996. It has similarities to the Midwest boogie blues/rock that's been posted here recently, but leans more towards the slow soul grinds of Memphis and the South.

RIYL:
Luther Allison, Son Seals, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown

HUMBLE PIE (ABO#379)

THE DELIGHTFUL

HUMBLE PIE

(1969-2002)

It's been a long time since I haven't listened to Humble Pie early when I began this Baistophe. I didn't remember how heavy was their rock. One of the very best Hard Rock act in the 70s with Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, for sure!

in 1969, Steve Marriott was already a star with his previous band, The Small Faces. Peter Frampton, at the guitar became famous after he left the band with his solo love LP "Comes Alive". In between, Humble Pie recorded what is their most essential songs. Unfortunately, they only became famous for a restricted audience who wanted more than the two bands I wrote lines before.

My Humble Pie TOP3 :

1. Humble Pie (1970)

2. Rock On (1971)

3. As Safe As Yesterday Is (1969)

My Humble Pie Bottom3 :

1. On To Victory (1980)

2. Back On Track (2002)

3. Thunderbox (1974)

WILLIAM ELLIOTT WHITMORE (ABO #378)

WILLIAM ELLIOTT WHITMORE
AND THEN THE RAINS CAME

William Elliott Whitmore is a bit of an anomaly. He’s got the slim, tattooed body of a punk rocker and the voice of a 90-year old black bluesman. He’s a musician who has toured with the likes of Murder By Death and opened for the Pogues, but off the road he spends his days as a horse farmer in Iowa.
Reviving the outlaw concept in quality country/folk/acoustic blues, William's may seem a tad depressing and it indeed is, in its own haunted beautiful way and it’s quite addictive that way, don’t say you haven’t been warned.
This compilation is just an introduction to an artist that hopefully has a long career ahead of him at only 32 years old.

RIYL:
Ben Nichols, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Von Till