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.

Thank You Benjamin Disraeli

Cream, Live Cream, Vol. 1(1970)

Live Cream, Volume. 1

I never liked Clapton when I was younger. Probably because I always had a hard on for Jimmy Page, and they were opposites in style and ideology. I never even liked Cream back in the day. It just never made sense, never clicked... Until I heard this album. It didn't leave my turntable for 3 weeks. It’s always been hard for me to appreciate artists that I haven't heard live and the first time I heard this album I freaked the fuck out and bought every single god damn Cream album I could get my hands on. Live records say a lot about an artist’s dexterity, stamina, improvisational ability and creativity. And by that measure this album is out of fucking control. Cream is a big goddamn deal to say the least. Their sophomore album, Disraeli Gears came out in 1967, when NOTHING sounded this heavy. This was HEAVY HEAVY HEAVY shit, nobody sounded this raunchy, so raw and original. They were psychedelic and heavy metal and the craziest fucking thing was that there were only 3 of them. Jerry Garcia said in an interview that I read once 'nobody in America could figure it out, how 3 guys could make that much noise.'

Vastly different from their studio work, Cream’s live performances earned a reputation for freewheeling, collective improvisation still grounded in the blues, but flirting dangerously with jazz and never crossing entirely into that sub-genre's frequent chaos. The free form of jazz that is embraced most whole-heatedly by Ginger Baker on this album, gives the boys the luxury of capricious unrestrained signatures that really expanded the definition of Rock.  They create a vortex of syncopation, the wind is howling, the masts just snapped and Hydra’s are about to eat your mother, but the inevitable destruction that has been anticipated never comes, Clapton’s strict, and timely executed scale successions drive this thing onwards… cruising… total control now, his momentum propels the band through the chaotic vortex and right back to the bridge, where your soul is shoved back into your body, and for the first time in 9:00 minutes, you realize that you still have a physical manifestation, and this cyclical, interplay, tug-of-war between Jazz and Blues that you have been riding upwards towards intergalactic destruction, gives way to that familiar, restlessly British, pop hook, which began the song, eons ago.

Download Live Cream, Vol. 1   -Donnie Feclor

Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio."

-Hunter S. Thompson