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Posts Tagged ‘blues’

Hound Dog Taylor – Kansas City.wmv

September 3rd, 2011 2 comments

Taylor was born in Natchez, Mississippi in 1915 (although some sources say 1917). He originally played piano, but began playing guitar when he was 20 and moved to Chicago in 1942.

He became a full-time musician around 1957 but remained unknown outside of the Chicago area where he played small clubs in the black neighborhoods and also at the open-air Maxwell Street Market. He was known for his electrified slide guitar playing roughly styled after that of Elmore James, his cheap Japanese guitars, and his raucous boogie beats. He was also famed among guitar players for having six fingers on his left hand.[2]

After hearing Taylor with his band, the HouseRockers (Brewer Phillips on second guitar and Ted Harvey on drums) in 1970 at Florence’s Lounge on Chicago’s South Side, Bruce Iglauer – at the time a shipping clerk for Delmark Records – tried to get him signed by his employer.[1] Having no success getting Delmark to sign Taylor, Iglauer formed a small record label with a $2500 inheritance and recorded Taylor’s debut album, Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers, on his fledgling Alligator Records in 1971.[1] It was the first release on Alligator records, now a major blues label. It was recorded in a studio in just two nights. Iglauer began managing and booking the band, which toured nationwide and performed with Muddy Waters and Big Mama Thornton.[citation needed] The band became particularly popular in the Boston area, where Taylor inspired a young protege named George Thorogood.

Their second release, Natural Boogie, was recorded in late 1973, and led to greater acclaim and touring. In 1975, Taylor and his band toured Australia and New Zealand with Freddie King and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. His third Alligator album, Beware of the Dog, was recorded live in 1974 but was only released after his death. More posthumous releases occurred as well, including Genuine Houserocking Music and Release the Hound, on the Alligator label as well as some bootleg live recordings.

Taylor died of lung cancer in 1975, and was buried in Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois.[3][4]

Taylor was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1984.

Duration : 0:3:50

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MERCILESS DEATH on CAPITAL CHAOS 2008

March 3rd, 2010 25 comments

MERCILESS DEATH on CAPITAL CHAOS 2008 @ On The Y Sacramento, CA 6/16/2008 also on the bill were BONDED BY BLOOD, PSYCHOSOMATIC & DEVASTATOR.
Merciless Death is an American thrash metal band from Canyon Country, California USA.
Originally founded by Dan Holder and Andy Torres in March 2003, they were soon joined by Andy’s brother Cesar on Drums and Mike Griego on Rhythm/Lead guitars in September 2003. Mike eventually quit due to personal differences.
http://www.myspace.com/mercilessdeath
In an interview with Dan Holder in 2007 and available here, Dan said it all began when he met Andy during their sophomore or junior year in high school. They had a class together and Dan had just received a leather jacket for his birthday and Andy took the opportunity to say “hey, nice jacket man”. After that they started hanging out and slowly started the band. Before Dan met Andy and Cesar he wrote music and lyrics and saved them because he knew that one day he would meet someone who shared the same desire he had and that happened when he met them. Merciless Death played their first show on March 24, 2004 at the Chicago Bar in Santa Clarita, California.
http://www.heavyartillery.us/
After recording a self released Demo, Annihilate the Masses, and self released album Evil in the Night, the band soon signed to Heavy Artillery Records and re-released their debut album Evil in the Night with a new layout and cover artwork by Ed Repka (Evildead, Megadeth, Nuclear Assault, Toxik, Venom). Merciless Death appears on the Speed Kills…Again compilation with Avenger of Blood, Enforcer, Hatred, Toxic Holocaust, and Warbringer. They toured the US in August and September of 2007 to promote the critically acclaimed re-release of Evil in the Night and supported At War in October 2007.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merciless_Death
Some have guessed that the name “Merciless Death” comes from the song Merciless Death by Dark Angel. However, in an interview with Andy Torres in 2007 and available here, Andy said the band’s name originated from a conversation with Dan Holder in which Dan came up with a possible name for the band “Merciless Onslaught” and Andy asked him about replacing the word ‘Onslaught’ with ‘Death’. From that point on they called themselves “Merciless Death”.
http://capitalchaos.net/index1.html

Duration : 0:3:52

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Jared Grabb “Like Death, I Will Come For You” LIVE at Cal’s Bar in Chicago, IL on 12-11-09

February 16th, 2010 No comments

Jared Grabb “Like Death, I Will Come For You” LIVE at Cal’s Bar in Chicago, IL on 12-11-09 . Neal MacCannell on drums. Buy ON THE INSIDE or Scouts Honor’s catalog at www.interpunk.com or digitally on iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody, Amazon, and more! NEW ALBUM, “WHERE DO YOU HIDE YOUR LOVE SONGS?” TO BE RELEASED ON 3/9/10!

Duration : 0:2:17

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DEATH ANGEL interview on CAPITAL CHAOS 2008

February 16th, 2010 16 comments

DEATH ANGEL interview with MARK OSEGUEDA on CAPITAL CHAOS 2008 @ The Boardwalk~Orangevale, CA 5/28/2008
Death Angel is a Filipino-American thrash metal band from Concord, California. Initially active from 1982 to 1991, the band reformed at the Thrash of the Titans benefit concert for Chuck Billy in 2001.
Death Angel was formed in San Francisco, California, in 1982 by cousins Rob Cavestany (lead guitar), Dennis Pepa (vocals, bass), Gus Pepa (rhythm guitar), and Andy Galeon (drums). After considering a number of different names for the band, including “Dark Fury,” Cavestany and D. Pepa settled on the name “Death Angel” after coming across a book by that title in a book store. In 1983, the band released their first demo, Heavy Metal Insanity, with Matt Wallace serving as producer. According to Mark Osegueda, the group was then “more like a metal band, more like Iron Maiden, Tygers Of Pan Tang and stuff like that,” as the so-called Bay Area thrash movement was only just beginning to rise to prominence at the time, and make its influence felt. Osegueda, a second cousin of the other four members who had been working as their roadie, became the group’s vocalist in 1984 and performed his first show with the band on a bill with Megadeth in April of that year (at one of the four Megadeth gigs to feature Kerry King on guitar).
http://www.deathangel.com/
Death Angel continued to play club gigs in and around the San Francisco Bay area for nearly 2 years, writing songs and refining their stage show. In 1986, the band recorded the Kill As One demo with Metallica’s Kirk Hammett (whom they had met at a record store signing in 1983) as producer. Due to the underground tape trading wave of the early 1980s, the demo was distributed extensively and brought the band to the attention of a still-wider audience; Osegueda later recalled that prior to the release of the band’s first album, “we were playing in L.A. and New York, and the crowd was singing our songs, because there was this underground tape trading….That’s what keeps it alive, and I think that’s absolutely wonderful.
http://www.myspace.com/deathangel
The success of Kill As One led to a record deal with Enigma Records, who released Death Angel’s debut album, The Ultra-Violence, in 1987. The band recorded the album when all the band members were still under 20 years old, and the album sold 40,000 copies in just four months. A video was filmed for “Voracious Souls,” a song about a band of cannibals, but it never aired on MTV due to the nature of the lyrics. The group released the follow-up album Frolic Through The Park in 1988, which spawned the single “Bored” (which was also used in the 1990 movie Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III), the video for which did receive regular airplay on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball. Frolic featured more diverse material than the straightforward thrash of the first album; the album included a cover of Kiss’s “Cold Gin,” and the relatively light, playful “Bored” was written under the seemingly unlikely influence of U2, and the guitar playing of The Edge in particular. The band toured worldwide for the first time and found notable success in Japan, selling out 2 full Japanese tours.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Angel

Duration : 0:5:1

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Mississippi Highways and Crossroads ??

February 6th, 2010 8 comments

This is a video slideshow tribute to The Mississippi Delta region which is considered to be the birthplace of the Blues.

The most widely known legend surrounding Robert Johnson says that he sold his soul to the Devil at the crossroads of U.S. Highway 61 and U.S. Highway 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi in exchange for prowess in playing the guitar. Actually, the location Johnson made reference to is a short distance away from that intersection. The legend was told mainly by Son House, but finds no corroboration in any of Johnson’s work, despite titles like “Me and the Devil Blues” and “Hellhound on My Trail”. With this said, the song “Cross Road Blues” is both widely and loosely interpreted by many as a descriptive encounter of Johnson selling his soul. The older Tommy Johnson (no relation, although it is speculated that they were cousins) also claimed to have sold his soul to the Devil. The story goes that if one would go to the crossroads a little before midnight and begin to play the guitar, a large black man would come up to the aspiring guitarist, retune his guitar and then hand it back. At this point (so the legend goes) the guitarist had sold his soul to become a virtuoso (A similar legend even surrounded virtuoso violinist Niccolo Paganini a century before.)

Seventy or so years ago, a man who was then known as Robert Johnson passed away. He was poisoned, presumably by a houseman/barkeep whose wife had been flirting with him on an August Evening. Around the same time, a king pin of the then small, homely music industry sent out a middle man to find Johnson, in hopes of striking a record deal. It took until almost a year after Johnson’s death for word to get back to the industry that Johnson was, in fact, deceased. This is not a surprise, considering that the spread of news at the time, let alone in poor black Mississippi (or really, where ever he may have taken up residence at the time), was reserved to word of mouth.

Robert Johnson is arguably the most important, influential, and respected blues artist of all time. Back in the days when Johnson was still with us, recording equipment was sparse. Johnson recorded a grand total of forty one cuts, twelve of them alternate takes.

In 1900, Bill and Annie Patton and their 12 children took up residence at Dockery Farms. Their nine-year-old, Charlie, took to following guitarist Henry Sloan to his performances at picnics, fish-fries, and social gatherings at boarding houses where the day laborers lived. By 1910, Patton was
himself a professional musician, playing songs such as his own “Pony Blues,” often with fellow guitarist Willie Brown. Within the next five years Patton had come to influence Tommy Johnson, considered one of the best ragtime-blues guitarists of the day, who had traveled to Dockery. He had also joined the Chatmon brothers who recorded using the name the “Mississippi Sheiks” at their musical jobs throughout the area.

Even though there were no juke joints on the farm, Charlie Patton and other bluesmen, drawn to Dockery by its fame, used the plantation as their base. They would travel the network of state roads around Dockery Farms to communities large enough to support audiences that loved the blues. One of these roads, Highway 61, from Memphis to Vicksburg, was immortalized by 1960s folk/rock icon Bob Dylan. This was “blues country.” The plantation was located between the towns of Cleveland and Ruleville, just south of the state prison at Parchman and north of Indianola, the birthplace of the blues guitar great B.B. King. Shops in the area sold “race records.” These were typically blues sung by women like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and produced presumably for African-American buyers. In 1929 Charlie Patton recorded 14 songs for Paramount Records, featuring his gruff voice and rhythmic, percussive plucking. They immediately became top sellers, and resulted eventually in his second recording sessions, producing 26 titles, for the ARC company in New York in 1934.

But it was Patton’s live performances that inspired and influenced fans such as Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Ed ‘Son’ House, Chester Burnett (also known as Howlin’ Wolf), and Roebuck ‘Pop’ Staples. These important artists in blues history either lived at or passed through Dockery Farms. Bluesmen Sonnyboy Williamson and Leadbelly were among ‘guests of the state’ at nearby Parchman Prison during the same era.

Besides his blues guitar playing and singing, Patton was well known for his stage moves. He danced while playing and swinging his guitar around, often playing it behind his back. These crowd-pleasing antics imitated by rock stars including Jimi Hendrix have survived today in the acts of bluesmen such as Buddy Guy.

Enjoy 🙂
Quinoacat

Duration : 0:6:48

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2Pac, Suge, Dr. Dre & Chris Tucker on the Set of California Love [MTV , 1995]

January 20th, 2010 12 comments

For more…. Join TupacNation.net! Sick site, 2Pac discussions, exclusive interviews with the likes of Money B of Digital Underground, Mopreme Shakur of Thug Life and Young Noble & Fatal of The Outlawz , Lara Lavi (Former CEO of Death Row Records) + More. Exculsive drops of the best 2Pac mixtapes around including the renowned Tru Mixx series. 2Pac downloads, OG’s , instrumentals, acapellas. Learn about News regarding 2Pacs music. Download the Money B’s new album produced by TupacNation.Net …

Duration : 0:1:24

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Roots of Blues — Brownie McGehee „Death Of Blind Boy Fuller”

January 12th, 2010 7 comments

„Death Of Blind Boy Fuller” (WB McGhee) Recorded: Chicago, May 23, 1941 Brownie McGhee (g) (vcl) (acc) Walter Brown (“Brownie”) McGhee (November 30, 1915 – February 16, 1996) was a folk-blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry He grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee and suffered from polio as a child, which incapacitated his leg. His brother Granville “Sticks” McGhee got his nickname from pushing young Brownie around in a cart. McGhee …

Duration : 0:3:1

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Doctor Ross “The Sunnyland” – Fortune Records – Flint, MI blues!

January 3rd, 2010 1 comment

Doctor Ross “The Sunnyland”
(Fortune Records)

Isaiah “Doc” Ross was a throwback to a bygone era; a true one-man band, he played harmonica, acoustic guitar, bass drum and high-hat simultaneously, creating a mighty racket harking back to the itinerant country-blues players wandering the Delta region during the earlier years of the 20th century. Born Charles Isaiah Ross on October 21, 1925 in Tunica, Mississippi, he took early inspiration from the music of Robert Johnson, Blind Boy Fuller and Sonny Boy Williamson I; primarily a harpist — hence his nickname “The Harmonica Boss” — he only added the other instruments in his arsenal in order to play a USO show while a member of the army during World War II. (The “Doc” moniker was acquired because he carried his harmonicas in a doctor’s bag.) Upon his release from the military, Ross settled in Memphis, where he became a popular club fixture as well as the host of his own radio show on station WDIA; during his club residency he was witness to a number of brutal murders, however, and swore off appearances in such venues during the later years of his life. During the early 1950s, Ross recorded his first sides — among them “Chicago Breakdown” — for labels including Sun and Chess; in 1954 he settled in Flint, Michigan, where he went to work as a janitor for General Motors, a position he held until retiring. In 1965 he cut his first full-length LP, Call the Doctor, and that same year mounted his first European tour; as the years passed Ross performed live with decreasing frequency, however, and was infamous for backing out of shows to catch his beloved Detroit Tigers on television. Upon winning a Grammy for his 1981 album Rare Blues, he experienced a career resurgence, and played festival dates to great acclaim prior to his death on May 28, 1993.

Duration : 0:2:41

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Doctor Ross : “Thirty Two Twenty” – (Fortune Records) Flint, MI blues!

December 17th, 2009 5 comments

http://www.myspace.com/fortunerecordsdetroit
Doctor Ross was a one man band and blues master!

Doctor Ross : “Thirty Two Twenty”
1958 Blues straight outta Flint, MI

BIO:
Doctor Ross
October 21, 1925 May 28, 1993 “Doctor Ross the harmonica boss”,

Biography by Jason Ankeny
Isaiah “Doc” Ross was a throwback to a bygone era; a true one-man band, he played harmonica, acoustic guitar, bass drum and high-hat simultaneously, creating a mighty racket harking back to the itinerant country-blues players wandering the Delta region during the earlier years of the 20th century. Born Charles Isaiah Ross on October 21, 1925 in Tunica, Mississippi, he took early inspiration from the music of Robert Johnson, Blind Boy Fuller and Sonny Boy Williamson I; primarily a harpist — hence his nickname “The Harmonica Boss” — he only added the other instruments in his arsenal in order to play a USO show while a member of the army during World War II. (The “Doc” moniker was acquired because he carried his harmonicas in a doctor’s bag.) Upon his release from the military, Ross settled in Memphis, where he became a popular club fixture as well as the host of his own radio show on station WDIA; during his club residency he was witness to a number of brutal murders, however, and swore off appearances in such venues during the later years of his life. During the early 1950s, Ross recorded his first sides — among them “Chicago Breakdown” — for labels including Sun and Chess; in 1954 he settled in Flint, Michigan, where he went to work as a janitor for General Motors, a position he held until retiring. In 1965 he cut his first full-length LP, Call the Doctor, and that same year mounted his first European tour; as the years passed Ross performed live with decreasing frequency, however, and was infamous for backing out of shows to catch his beloved Detroit Tigers on television. Upon winning a Grammy for his 1981 album Rare Blues, he experienced a career resurgence, and played festival dates to great acclaim prior to his death on May 28, 1993.

Duration : 0:2:49

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Message From 2Pac #1

December 10th, 2009 15 comments

R.I.P Tupac

Duration : 0:0:51

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