Buddy Guy

Can’t Quit the Blues

Silvertone/ Legacy

originally published November 8, 2006

Compiling a box set that sums up blues guitarist Buddy Guy’s career thus far couldn’t have been an easy task. Since his debut with the Chess label in the ‘50s, Guy has recorded for a host of different major and fly-by-night labels and went several years without a recording contract at all. However, Can’t Quit the Blues, a three-CD-one-DVD set, succeeds at providing a thorough overview of the man with the polka-dotted guitar.

Guy’s wrenching, distorted licks made a impact on several would-be icons, including Clapton and Hendrix, but his playing is a melting pot. Originally from Louisiana, Guy eventually relocated to another blues hub in Chicago, while still keeping one foot in the Delta with tracks like “One Room Country Shack” and such albums as 2001’s Sweet Tea.

With Can’t Quit’s three discs weighing in at almost 50 tracks, it's a full-steam-ahead blues primer. It all kicks off with early Chess sides, like “First Time I Met the Blues,” on which Guy has frequently bemoaned that his bosses wouldn’t let him turn up his guitar to the fabled "eleven," touches briefly on the partnership with outrageous harp man Junior Wells and boasts a few unreleased goodies, like the soulful “Price You Gotta Pay” with guest axe man Keith Richards. The track listing is split evenly enough between Guy’s early sides and his latter-day comeback efforts like Damn Right I Got the Blues, though the later stuff gets a bigger push, which could simply be due to the sporadic nature of Guy’s early recording schedule.

More Buddy and Junior stuff - particularly a few from the overlooked Buddy and Junior Play the Blues album - couldn’t have hurt, but the set makes up for that omission with its stellar DVD component. Including a 90-minute documentary that features Guy reminiscing in his typically frank manner (“I didn’t even know who the fuck Hendrix was,” he recalls at one point). Also featuring several previously unreleased live performances, it’s better than the average box DVD and a smart way to cap off the set for longtime fans and collectors.

Today Guy is as revered as players like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf were when he was first coming up. Can’t Quit the Blues honors that respect and succeeds in providing a lasting look at Guy’s physical, emotionally-driven performances.

Michael Andrews

Josef K

Entomology

Domino

originally published November 8, 2006

Jittery tempos, ominous vocals and minimal arrangements were specialties of Scottish post-punk act Josef K - a band that undoubtedly inspired later acts like Franz Ferdinand and, with Orange Juice and Aztec Camera, was synonymous with the Scottish indie Postcard label. The 22-track Entomology compiles singles, B-sides, album tracks and otherwise from the band’s short but productive time together.

Like Joy Division and Bauhaus, Josef K was at its best when portrayed at its most miserable. No life-affirming feel-goodies here; rather, singer Paul Haig succinctly glooming it up through tight bursts of energy like “Radio Drill Time,” “ Sorry for Laughing” and “Final Request,” while his bandmates create an aural backdrop of treble madness and caffeine dance beats behind him. The band’s brief career actually makes for surprisingly good anthology fodder as Entomology pulls off a complete-as-possible retrospective that also highlights album outtakes and a rare 1981 Peel Session. They’re not as accessible as - nor did they mug for the femmes as much as - the Ferdinand boys, but Josef K’s cloudy-sky outlook and nonconformist attitude make for an informative history lesson, nonetheless.

Michael Andrews

Jackie Mittoo

Wishbone

Light In the Attic

originally published November 8, 2006

Reggae keyboard virtuoso Jackie Mittoo gets some deserved props with a dusting-off of his 1971 album Wishbone. Driven by the instrumental title track, which rides the riff from The Beatles’ “Carry That Weight” on into high country, the album is focused the least on the Studio One reggae sound that Mittoo helped develop. Rather, the unpredictable organist/ bandleader propels his crack session band through a lively set of songs like a Jamaican Booker T. as soul, R&B, gospel and pop flavors are randomly thrown in the hopper. Rarely, if ever, is a choppy reggae guitar lick even heard.

Tracks like the shuffling “Right Track” and the gospel-infused “Soulbird” make you wish for more of Mittoo’s rich vocals, but the instrumental compositions that outnumber them have enough bounce and hooks (not to mention a sharp horn section) to interest even the most casual listener. Long out of print, the re-introduced Wishbone unearths a brief but contagious slice of sunny soul from the revered Jamaican ex-pat.

Michael Andrews

Lou Reed

Coney Island Baby: 30th Anniversary Edition

RCA/ Legacy

originally published November 8, 2006

1976’s Coney Island Baby was one of Lou Reed’s more successful attempts at damage control. The follow-up to his disastrous industrial detour Metal Machine Music, it saw Reed reverting back to the insightful brand of street corner rock that populated such albums as the Velvet Underground’s shoestring-budget classic Loaded. Stripping things down to the basic ingredients was a wise decision, indeed, as the album marked some of Reed’s most relaxed and engaging performances in years.

The jangly “Crazy Feeling” could’ve very well been an outtake from the garagey Loaded sessions, while the arrangements of “Charley’s Girl” and the title track, in which a blue Lou longs to “play football for the coach,” hint at the sub-Brill Building songwriting stint that presaged Reed’s maiden voyage with the Velvets. The 30th Anniversary Edition tacks on six bonus tracks, including several album track outtakes and early versions of the more upfront “Leave Me Alone” and “Downtown Dirt” - which would later surface on 1978’s Street Hassle. Reed’s liner notes are another bonus, as he documents the atrocious record sales and impending legal burdens that led him to re-embrace simple, no-nonsense rock and roll.

Michael Andrews