Forgotten King Snakes

Buddy Guy, This Is Buddy Guy(Live)(1989)

This Is Buddy Guy (Live)

I jammed this fucking album sooo hard this summer. Listen to ‘Sweet Black Angel.’ In Alaska I bet I smoked a joint to that song out on the docks, every night for 3 weeks straight. Buddy Guy is often credited with being the bridge between the Blues and Rock n' Roll, that’s a sticky proclamation, and it could be argued against but its not entirely untrue. He had traditional Delta Blues technique mastered, but what made him unique and a harbinger of ROCK was his fast aggressive guitar playing when traditional blues had a lot slower tempo. Instead of fighting distortion and feedback, he used them to create a belligerently hostile sound with shifts of volume and texture completely driven by impulse and desire. Buddy is a master of tension and release and loves extremes: sudden drops from loud to soft, or a sweet melodic lullaby of a sustained guitar solo before he kicks it into freight train-skull fuck-overdrive, with high raspy vocals, that drop off and disappear just as quickly as the UFO that landed in your parents front yard last year that stole your sister and erased your memory... (my sister?wtf), trust me it happened. Clapton has let it be known that he got the idea for a blues-rock power trio, during his teenage years while watching Buddy Guy's trio perform in England in 1965. 

Something important to know about Buddy is how much of an influence he and Hendrix were on each other. They met at an Electric Flag gig in 1964, 3 years before Hendrix had a solo career. On Hendrix's early stuff you can really REALLY hear Buddy’s influence, on Hendrix’s crescendo’s and cascades. But as the years wore on and Hendrix started to explode Buddy started borrowing from Hendrix, and in the documentary Festival Express(1972) Buddy has some live scenes that not only emulate Hendrix's sound but also his body language and mannerisms. The teacher becomes the student. This dude had a profound impact on Hendrix and to the trained ear, you can hear Buddy's voice come through Hendrix's amplifier on a regular basis. Before I digress off this page you must understand that this album is primal, elemental, violent and frustrated beyond all limits. And what does that mean? It means nothing except this guy had a life, and apparently it was pretty unpleasant, and he wants revenge on the universe, and he gets it every time he assaults his instrument.