WTF HAPPENED TO ALL THE GOOD BANDS!? IX

By J. MINOR

My opinion on blues music and feeling blue may differ from others that listen to the genre. Some say there are sad blues and happy blues. I call bullshit. In fact, I’m going to create a new pigeon hole in the music industry and rename Happy Blues, Yellow Music, because that is the color of sunshine. Yellow Music is pop or light rock music with a few blues style riffs and licks, maybe some sax tossed in. It represents good times, celebration and love.

The Blues is about pain, suffering and tortured souls. It is about loneliness and despair. True Blues music will make you drink liquor alone, straight from the bottle, not pass around the wine like Yellow Music.

Causes of feeling blue are many.

The blues, is getting twelve miles per gallon when you drive across the country to visit a sick relative.

The blues, is realizing that your best of times were actually the worst.

The blues ,is sitting alone, in a crappy motel room in Flagstaff, Arizona, writing an article.

The blues, is not losing the girl you love, but never having her in the first place, and wondering if you ever will.

Getting the blues is easy, especially if you don’t pay attention to life’s details, and neglect to do and say the things needed to make you happy. Ridding yourself of the blues is a tough mother.

Listening to real blues music doesn’t help alleviate the suffering, you’re just heaping someone else’s pain on top of your own, but playing the blues can help a little.

Grab a 1957 Stratocaster, plug it into a Twin Reverb, treble set at three o’clock, bass at one, scoop the mids and add  little bit of reverb. Bend a double stop on the G and B strings up a full step, and right when you get to the top of the bend add some vibrato. Let the notes slowly decay as they return to pitch. Repeat as necessary. If it doesn’t make you feel better, it will, at the very least, piss off your neighbors.

Instead of touching on the pioneers of the blues, Robert Johnson, Albert, BB and Freddie King, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, the list goes on and on, I’m going to give some examples of artists inspired by these and other old timers, who took the blues to the next level.

Johnny Winter and Rick Derringer getting extra greasy on  It’s My Own Fault, recorded live in 1970, and released on the album Johnny Winter And Live, in 1971. Johnny was hands down my favorite blues and rock player. Johnny died on July 16, 2014. RIP Johnny.

Humble Pie’s take on the blues is represented on the song I Wonder. Steve Marriott’s vocals and guitar bring on the pain in mass quantities. Good stuff from the Humble Pie Smokin’ album.

If anybody ever sold their soul or used magic to get ahead on guitar, it was Jimmy Page. Check out Jimmy tearing it up on Prison Blues, released on his solo album Outrider. Chris Farlowe  supplies the vocals while Jimmy gets soulful and a little bit sloppy on his Les Paul.

No matter what your take on blues music, if you are a purist, you will think I’m full of shit, there is no denying that modern guitar players can take the music up a few notches while still being faithful to the roots of the blues.

With music like this to listen to, I can enjoy feeling bad.

WTF HAPPEND TO ALL THE GOOD BANDS!? IV

By J. MINOR

Growing up in El Paso, Texas was probably about the same as growing up anyplace else in the United States during the late sixties and early seventies. I resided in a red brick, single story, ranch style home with a single Mulberry tree in the front yard.  A chain link fence to keep the neighbor kids out, and a street light, mounted to a telephone pole that reeked of creosote, bordered the property line. Erected by the city, the lights only purpose, to attract armies of cockroaches during the warm summer nights. Stepping into the illumination on the sidewalk would send these disease infested critters scattering faster than the Republican Guard during Desert Storm, returning to their place of congregation once the coast was clear.

Like all neighborhoods, there were the neighborhood girls.

Girls like, Tammy, the baton twirler who lived across the street. Really cute and smart. She used to beat me with her baton whenever I would try and flirt with her. My guess, she grew up to be an overworked, overpaid attorney.

Karen was the butter face at the end of the block. Her body was fine, butter face could make a freight train take a dirt road. I picture Karen swinging on a pole in a dimly lit strip club with sticky floors. Sending horny, frustrated, husbands home, covered in glitter, to their wives. Wives who would not doubt seek advice from, and subsequently put Tammy on retainer.

Then there was Glynis. Glynis, the girl from England, who lived on the next block. Glynis whose feet were always covered by a pair of Levis Big Bells. Who’s teary dark olive eyes refused to play second billing to her moist pouty lips, which when parted, released a deep, sexy, movie starlet timbre. Hair, that changed from brown to sepia, fell on milky white shoulders covered with peasant style blouses that stopped just above the waistline, giving a glimpse of the body beneath when passing from shade to sunlight.

Glynis tagged me with the nickname “Lizard,” after I slipped her the tongue during a game of Truth Or Dare.  Something she would come to appreciate a few years later. There was nothing I would not do, or give to this girl.

This included my new copy of Mahogany Rush, “Child Of The Novelty.”

Glynis and I found the album in the bins at Kmart when it was released in 1974. I bought it and we listened to it together. She really liked the record, and I really liked Glynis, so I gave her the album. I did not find another copy until twenty some odd years later in San Jose, California.

A lot of people think Frank Marino is just another Jimi Hendrix knockoff. Stories were circulated about Frank dying in an automobile accident, coming back to life with Jimi Hendrix, occupying his body.  Another tall tale about taking an overdose and encountering the spirit of Jimi while in a coma, was popular.

The truth of the matter is, Frank wigged out on LSD and ended up in the hospital. He learned to play the guitar while he was recuperating. Several of his album covers, created by Ivan Schwartz, depict the crazy assed trip he was on. The band name, Mahogany Rush, a description of sensations he experienced during his time away from reality. Marino pays a fitting tribute to Jimi Hendrix on the song, “Buddy,” written for the “Maxoom” album.

When the first song on the album, “Look Outside,” begins, you would swear it was Hendrix playing. Marino pulls  licks from his 1961 Gibson Les Paul SG that sound as if he were picking on Jimi’s upside down Stratocaster. The vocals eerily sound like Hendrix. One might wonder if the rumors were true.

The album’s namesake “Child Of The Novelty,” is reminiscent of “Bold As Love,” the title track on Hendrix’s “Axis Bold As Love,” and “Makin’ My Wave,” owes a lot to “If Six Were Nine,” another song on my favorite Hendrix album.

“Guit War,” recorded with a Stratocaster and a small Fender amp, has Marino leaning hard on the wiggle stick, sending the strings slack, bringing them back to pitch and beyond. Creating what sounds like a Luftwaffe air raid on World War Two era London, complete with sirens, explosions and Bible verse.

The final track “Chains Of (S)Pace,” is a spacey instrumental piece that reminds me of “One Rainy Wish,” another cut on Hendrix’s “Axis Bold As Love.”

I had the pleasure of attending a Mahogany Rush concert in 1977. Some of the performance may have been recorded for the band’s live release, “Frank Marino, Mahogany Rush Live.” The show was almost stopped due to assholes throwing beer bottles at the band. That’s what happens when you put on a concert in an oversized barn in a redneck town.

To put the bands talent in perspective, the opening act was Sammy Hagar, when he performed as the Red Rocker.

Whether or not you think Frank Marino is making a living on Jimi’s ghost, all I can say is I’m glad somebody picked up the torch and ran with it.

Marino writes all of his music, plays most of the instruments and produces all of his albums. He has talent in spades.

Most guitar players have a little bit of Hendrix in them. Marino has a whole lot, and I like it.