Category Archives: Covers

Anacostia Delta: The Legacy of DC’s TeleMasters

The documentary Anacostia Delta: The Legacy of DC’s TeleMasters will be released this coming Friday.   If you love the electric guitar, get this movie.  If you want to see electric guitar played as good as it can be played, get this movie.

Anacostia Delta will clue you in to the careers of the late Danny Gatton, one of his major influences, the late Roy Buchanan, and DC’s rich guitar scene that extends to this very day.

Read my 2013 post on Gatton to see some of his virtuosity.   The best there ever was.  And enjoy this solo jam pulled from the 1971 documentary Introducing Roy Buchanan, a movie that helped take his career to the next level.

In addition to historical clips, Anacostia Delta is anchored in footage from a 2015 concert at The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia (I was there).   Here’s a bootleg of a full line up of DC guitar legends playing the jazz standard, “How High the Moon“.

If you want to kick back for awhile and hear more incredible guitar playing, check out this 1993 show featuring Gatton, Albert Lee and Vince Gill.   Lee and Gill are two more of the best guitarists ever to walk the planet.

Lachy Doley and Others Down Under

A couple of weeks ago a friend turned me on to the keyboard wizardry of Lachlan “Lachy” Doley.  Thanks, Rainer!  Doley is an Australian whose 2019 album Make or Break debuted at the top of the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Jazz and Blues Chart.   A solo artist and group leader since 2011, Doley has also been a session player since the 1990’s.

Here’s the 2016 live performance of “Stop Listening to the Blues” that got me going on this post.  Doley is known for playing Hammond organs, which are among the most incredible sounding and beautifully complicated electromechanical devices ever created.  It’s wonderful to hear artists like Doley keeping that sound alive.

The keyboard parked on top of the Hammond is a Hohner Clavinet (another amazing instrument with strings and pickups under the keyboard) equipped with a monster whammy bar.  Here’s Doley doing his best Hendrix imitation.

Digging into Doley’s past took me on a detour to the Australian band, Powderfinger.   Doley played on the band’s fifth studio album, Vulture Street, which won the 2003 ARIA award for Best Rock Album.  Doley then toured with the band from 2007 to 2010.  Here’s “(Baby I’ve Got You) On My Mind” from Vulture Street.  The song doesn’t feature Doley, but there’s a point.

While I haven’t seen Powderfinger compared to the legendary Australian band INXS, seems to me their lead singer Bernard Fanning is trying to channel a bit of Michael Hutchence in this video. And though Fanning is pretty good, Australia may never see another Micheal Hutchence.

 

This Week in Music

This past week in music covered an awful lot of ground – definitely music now and then.

Taylor Swift dropped a new album, Folklore, recorded in quarantine over the past four months.  It seems to have gotten more attention in two days than all other quarantine musical output combined, but hey, she is TSwift.  The album features suitably stripped down arrangements, Swift’s young woman, broken heart lyrics, and really nice, soft vocals.  The song that jumps out at me is “seven”.   Its vocal style and harmonies are different from other tunes on the album, and the first several lines remind me of something that I can’t quite put my finger on!  Call to Music Now and Then readers: help me out on this!

While TSwift was releasing 16 new tracks, the Rolling Stones excavated one unreleased track, “Scarlet”, from 1974 featuring Jimmy Page sitting in with the band.  I’m not sure Page and Keith Richards are a match made in guitar heaven, but it’s rock history.

While taking in these new releases, we should also take in a bit of the legacy of Peter Green who passed away yesterday.  Green was the co-founder of Fleetwood Mac, but left the band a few years before Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined.  Green was a highly respected guitarist, serving a brief stint replacing Eric Clapton in John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers.  He also wrote “Black Magic Woman”, covered by Carlos Santana a year after Fleetwood Mac released it as a single.  Here’s a live version of FM’s hit, “Oh Well” from 1969, with Green on guitar and vocals.

Chrissie’s Still Got It

The Pretenders will release their eleventh studio album, Hate for Sale, this coming Friday, 40 years after their eponymous first album.  And at 68 Chrissie Hynde is still one of the most compelling voices in rock & roll. We’re not talking “can still sort of sing the old stuff”, we’re talking “good as ever”.

The line-up for this album includes Chrissie and drummer Martin Chambers from the original Pretenders line-up.  It’s guitarist James Walbourne’s third album with the band since he joined the group in 2008.  Every one of the tracks released so far are great.   The title track has old school punk attitude,  “Didn’t Want To Be This Lonely” has the Bo Diddley beat, and “The Buzz” sounds like classic-era Pretenders to my ear.   But this post is about Chrissie’s singing, so give a listen to “You Can’t Hurt a Fool”.

Had it not been for the pandemic, the album would have been released earlier this year, and the Pretenders would be on tour. But making the best of a bad situation, Hynde and Walbourne took inspiration from Bob Dylan’s release of his new album to do some home recordings of Dylan covers.   This cover of “Standing in the Doorway” is gorgeous.  I think Bob should give this song to Chrissie and James for keeps.

After this year’s cancelled tour, the Pretender’s website teases at concert date in late September 2021.  To get you ready for their return, here’s Chrissie belting out the anthem “I’ll Stand by You” just 12 months ago.

Women in Music

HAIM just released their third album, Women in Music Pt. III.   Sisters Danielle, Este and Alana Haim arrived on the scene in 2012 with their first album Forever and the hit single “The Wire”.  It’s official video is an awfully entertaining girl power trip.  The video for “Summer Girl”, one of three singles released from the new album, adds new meaning to “layering” and gives a big boost to the baritone sax.

Forty years before HAIM released Forever, Fanny, fronted by sisters June and Jean Millington, covered Marvin Gaye’s hit “Ain’t That Peculiar” (click through to YouTube to watch the video and forward to 1:30 to skip the studio chatter).  If you want to compare Fanny’s version to the original, check out Marvin Gaye’s live performance at New York’s legendary club, The Bitter End.

About half way between the launchings of Fanny and HAIM came the formation of the best selling female group of all time, TLC. Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas joined forces in 1991. One of four #1 charting U.S. hits from their second album, CrazySexyCool, was “Waterfalls”.  It may be their signature tune, and the video won MTV’s Video of the Year.  It’s a very heavy song and video with a super-infectious chorus.