What do I know about Albert King? I know he's a blues singer. How? Because it says so on his Spotify biography (it also states that 'Albert King is truly a "King of the Blues," although he doesn't hold that title (B.B.King does)', which strikes me as a bit uncalled for, they just love to build them up to knock them down don't they these music journalists). I know that I quite like that album cover which I saw for the first time about four minutes ago, and I know that Homer Simpson once sang what I'm pretty sure is the definitive version of the title track, so I'm definitely open to suggestion here'
00:34 'Hard luck and trouble have been my only friend, been on my own since I was ten'- did I mention this was blues?
03:27 The great thing about Blues music is that, when done well, it can inject a strange euphoria into such miserable subject matter and almost become a celebration of suffering, or of surviving, that can be peversely uplifting. I'm not convinced that this is particularly great blues thus far though
05:03'Crosssaw Cut' is barely a blues song at all, full of Staz Soul brass and rock n' roll licks, this is obviously a very 'modern' blues album. Well, modern in 1967 anyway
05:32 Doodly-doodly-doodly-doodly-DUM-de-dum-dum. Do Blues guitarists ever get tired of playing that one riff every other song?
08:03 'Pretty Woman is just one note away from turning into the theme from Shaft. This is, of course, a good thing
10:27 Blues my aunt's anus, this just sounds like one of those Godawful funk 'work-outs' that were obviously great fun to play but are about as fun to listen to as EST
13:26My mind's starting to wander
14:10What effect would the early introduction of ecstacy had on the blues scene?
15:06 Would we have heard Blind Lemon Jefferson sing a bluegrass version of 'Everybody's Free (To feel Good)'
16:42 HowlingWolf adding a few blues licks to SL2's 'On a Ragga Trip'?
17:33 Call me a phillistine, but I just don't see how much of this differs in any real sense from about 1'654'982 other blues singers?
19:40'I Almost Lost My Mind' is pretty great though, and a very welcome change of pace (evrything up to now has followed the classic chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug scale), makes you yearn for that make-believe world where drunken barflies start singing slurred torch-songs on the pub piano, rather than trying to start a fight with ther own pork scratching while their urine soaked jeans slide slowly toward the floor
23:46 'I wanna be your personal manager baby', is he actually using the song to advertise his services as a PA? They have web-sites for that kind of thing now. I await his next song 'Data Entry Clerk' with baited breath
26:12 'Laundromat Blues'- well, Pauline Fowler will do that to you
31:55I must say I'm very disappointed with the lack of suicidal self-loathing and murderous tendancies on this record. When does he do the song where he shoots his wife because he finds her in bed with the family daschund?
32:14 The daschund then shops him to the police, and he's writing the song on death row, obviously
32:34 Ah, 'the slowie'
32:59 Slow song I mean, Eric Clapton hasn't made a guest appearance (yet)
35:18 'I see your face on every flower, your eyes on the stars above', oh come on
35:02 'Play it pretty'- I'd prefer them to play it 'slightly less deathly dull', but maybe that's just me
35:59 And that'll be it...
Not a bad album, not a good album; if the greatest album of all time (for the sake of arguements let's say 'Party Hard' by Andrew WK) was stationed on John O'Groats and the worst ('Just Enough Education to Perform by The Stereophonics) at Lands End, then 'Born Under a Bad Sign' would probably live just outside Coventry city centre. Underwhelming.
The album that is, not Coventry city centre...
D
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