The Kids Are Listening to Rock Again
Heavy blues bands, like the Brought Low, are suddenly glamorous.
The Brought Low. Photo by M. David Leeds.
The kids are listening to rock music again. In Vancouver's remaining sticky-floor, live venues like the Cobalt or the Lamplighter, you can see 'em nodding heads in appreciation of the gonzo boogie machine that is Pride Tiger, for instance. Bands of less distinction are even climbing on stage in James Gang and Cactus T-shirts. They still sound like Alice in Chains -- they always will -- but at least they're trying. A friend predicted this six years ago. "Classic rock, suede coats, beards...that's the next thing," he said, "Back to basics. You won't have to listen to this new wave trash forever." He'd just come back from New York.
Which brings us to The Brought Low, who grew up listening to hip-hop in New York in the '80s, but sound like they should have signed on with the drawling misfits and badasses that made Capricorn Records the home of southern rock a decade earlier. The Brought Low are the Black Crowes gone right. Aerosmith, Humble Pie, Foghat, it's all in there: heavy blues, from weedy white guys on junk. All that turgid nonsense that came between Altamont -- the Rolling Stones concert during which the '60s and LSD's politics of ecstasy were stabbed to death by Hell's Angels -- and The Last Waltz, when the baton was passed to disco and punk. It's a time that seems weirdly glamorous all of a sudden, especially to pot-bellied rock pigs like me.
Right off the top, "A Better Life," could be the Allman Brothers' guitar star Dickey Betts goofing around with the underground blues-punk classic "Psychotic Reaction," while drummer Nick Heller spends the first chorus putting the kick on the second and fourth beat. Notice that? He reverses what most drummers would do, turns the whole pulse of the song around, and gives it a revival meeting feel. It brings to mind something Robbie Robertson says in Greil Marcus's book Mystery Train about how southern audiences clap on the off-beat. When the songs combust into the controlled rage and power groove of the second verse, it's the stuff of early ZZ Top -- as taut and muscular as a bulldog's hindquarters.
And it's the second verse that counts. The Brought Low might fool the vinyl nerds who are merely stuck in nostalgia -- people who habitually use a phrase like "Kossoff solo"...
...without even once considering how filthy it sounds -- but their pregnant explosiveness also places them in the here and now, which is why it works for everyone else. It's no coincidence that they sing, "the city lies in dust," and then bring up 9-11 in interviews.
Dance punk, freak folk, new rave, and now the Brooklyn Skynyrd and their angry pool hall gospel music. It's been a strange century so far, but it just took a turn for the bitchin'.
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bob the cat
4 years ago
I don`t really know
what your talking about but its all good I guess.
I`m into Blues-a-billy myself.
North of Hope
4 years ago
Blues and Jazz
Rock 'n' Roll is based on Blues music. These folks are getting back to their roots. Blues is also interwound with Jazz. The riffs you hear are not uncommon to tis style of music. It's not so much that these musicians have come back but it is that they are exploring the range that that their tunes offer. Musicians have done this I suppose since they started to compose. Many rock musicians, as well as blues and jazz musicians, have done this in their concerts. This is what makes live music so great, it's the play off each other that inspires their nexfellow musicians. When this haapens, the music is always alive, personal, contemporary and full of feeling.
The brain
4 years ago
Sultry crunch and punch
Oh, man... its all about the tones. The pickups, the amps, watching marshall and fender evolve with the tube amps they've put out over the years, as well as the preamps and modellers and effects.
The music went tinny there for a while. Hollow. Cheap effects, solid state, players got lost... but some kept looking for the holy grail sound. The sweet spot, yah, and it's never been far off from a flashback to the past.
Whether its been that plexi sound or fat tone from English Marshalls to american fenders, the JMP Mk II's and III Marshalls and the mods, to the fenders from the twin reverbs, bandmasters and the old music man's to a full on assortment of boutique amps and local amp building competitors of the big two.
Rivera, Bogner, inarguably two of the best built tube amps in the world today. Canada's own Wizards... and Budda's, Soldano's... and the super lead Marshalls... old tube Canadian built Traynors, Russian Sovtek 60's, Red bears, Carvers and Crates, Hi Watts, Peavey 5150's, Mesa Boogie's, all the old handwired tube amps... yah. That's what players want today. The handwired point to point tube amps. The secret is out.
Sure, the delays and running sterio amps and the stomps and tube pedals and midi preamps have all left their mark, but the old fashioned mono tube amps of the day are what is known for the sound of which we are all so familiar, especially with fat blues tones and full on tube tone power... cause when those tubes break and unleash!!!
There is simply nothing like the sound of Gibson's and Fenders pushing amps through glass. Its about the tone, always has been, always will be and until the hardware came along to deliver the tone we were looking for... music didn't evolve. But now its back. The bad old days are back!!! Whether one finds it with tube tone big fat gain or wildly compressed saturation death metal, the ear mellows and goes back to the old ways. Back to tone. As Gollum would say, "its juice is so sweet!!! :-)
notamused
4 years ago
Yeeeeehaaaaa!
Drive By Truckers... North Mississippi All Stars... The Brought Low... my 14-year old son is listening to (and playing) the music I listened to at his age -- Zeppelin, Hendrix, Neil Young -- and I'm doing my best to turn him on to beautiful new music like this. Thanks, Adrian!
thomas49
4 years ago
paul kossoff!!!!!!!!!!!
wow!!!!!!!!!!haven't heard that name since ????????? he died of an overdose....supposed to be a good guitarist???NEVER HEARD IT !!!!he was half assed at best,just like most of the bands out today,who try to copy ,or inadvertantly copy the early pioneers...
just bought the new ARCADE FIRE ,NEON BIBLE...what a piece of SH!T...two good songs that the CBC flogged unmercifully to the public while hyping the album....typical BS from the half wits that wouldn't know good music from ???????????
zappa,was one of the most brilliant rockers around,don't see anyone following his dream,taj mahal,jeff beck ???not hard enough...
no...just mainstream crap being...REGURGITATED...
hey!play stairway to heaven again dude ...
how about funk 49,hey got some crapton there dude...
bob the cat
4 years ago
tommy
tommy fortynines
Good to hear yopu again man..I wondered what happened to you..rumour on the street was your big brother Harald was on the bratwurst real heavy..and you were helping him through that...another story was you had gone on tour with Captain Beefheart..whatever man its good hearin` ya again
bob
Mr. Beer N. Hockey
4 years ago
Trailer Rockin'
Hope you are right about the resurgence of stinky, sweaty, spitting and vomitting young blues rockers finding a bigger audience. Heavy duty blues rock fits in real nice with our world at war.
Seems to me the bigger bang on the horizon will have a twisted teeny bopper flair to it - the Piggy's Palace Rollers perhaps. Young kids seem awful hungry for escapist stuff - they don't want any part of our world at war.
thomas49
4 years ago
beefheart ???
harald had a little heart trouble over christmas with all that BEEFHEART he was ingesting...clogged arteries and whatnot,so he is being a good boy and listening to some new canadian kid outta his basement...geez...i'm glad my kids didn't turn into musicians!!!
he's on tour in europe at the moment.
and me ??? i'm just sitting here with a beer looking at the screen and listening to lily allen singing about her young brother alfie...a real stoner ...geez,like my kids...
OH WELL !!!
bob the cat
4 years ago
Kids in the Basement
I can relate Tommy...my kid started hangin` with the didgeridoo crowd..they light a fire..mostly outside..and stand in a circle blowing on these things..I really don`t get it.
Good Harald got a handle on his arterial issues..that can really put the squeeze on a guy..and touring will be good for him..especially Europe..the europeans are so incredibly sophisticated aren`t they? If anyone can dig Haralds new sound it`ll be them.
Any chance you and Harald will be involved with the Olympic ceremonies?
massromantic
4 years ago
oh noes.
oh this is disappointing
i'd much rather listen to new wave than any aerosmith-derivative grungy rock band that's trying a little too hard to disinfranchise themselves from the fact that they KNOW they woke up in their parents' house that morning.
dave49
4 years ago
The Brain on Tubes
Interesting comments! Basically, if it were not for the steady use of tubes for music amps, they would have disappeared years ago.
The DIY tube revival in audio a few years back (especially single-ended, class A amps; high efficiency horn speakers; etc.) was obsessive about tubes.
An associate in the US had designed and built a single-ended transistor amp years ago. I talked him into building a limited run and I own one. Sounds great!
According to him, it's not the glass, it's the transformer. A tube is a voltage device, a transistor a current one. He claims if you listen to a transformerless tube amp it sounds the same as a good solid state design.
Enjoy your music. Set up your stereo/Home Theatre speakers properly or you are wasting your time!
Fight against the MP3s and other lossy data compression. I don't want 12% of the data, I want 100%!