Not for the feint of heart. An unrelenting trip through some of the best guitar solos of the late 60s and early 70s (some actually recorded later), with a few respites, notably some pysch blues-rock and N’Awlins tunes from Dr. John. Otherwise an onslaught of blues-rock guitar solos to quench your appetite.
Tag Archives: Mike Bloomfield
From The Vaults: Hidden Treasure No. 5
I saw guitarist Robben Ford play with Joni Mitchell during the Miles Of Aisles Tour at Woolsey Hall in New Haven in the mid-1970s. I’ve followed his career since, but not until the late ’80s did I start to take a closer look.
Even then, I wasn’t familiar with everything he released. In the past few years I’ve become more acquainted with his various projects and finally had a chance to see him live at the Infinity Music Hall in Norfolk, Connecticut, in August.
Still, it wasn’t until relatively recently I found that along with his major label releases he also put out a couple of tributes to one of my favorite musicians, Paul Butterfield, on an independent label in the early 2000s with the Ford Blues Band, which includes two of his brothers, Patrick and Mark.
Ford like many other young players who started playing in the mid-1960s was influenced greatly by seeing the Butterfield Band when they played on the West Coast, including at the Fillmore West. It was the same here in the East with musicians I knew and worked with. Butterfield was one of the major influences on my band Pulse in the late ’60s.
Tributes are sometimes a hit-and-miss proposition. When I finally had a chance to listen to A Tribute To Paul Butterfield (2001), though, I was pleased that Robben and The Ford Blues Band had stayed faithful to the material they had chosen but also brought something new to it that makes it as fresh, vital and relevant as it was in the mid-to-late 1960s. It’s our fifth Hidden Treasure.
One of the things that makes this tribute work so well is the choice of material, which hits all of the various phases and the evolution of the Butterfield Band, with tracks from Butter’s six best albums. Continue reading From The Vaults: Hidden Treasure No. 5
Ford updates the blues tradition
Acclaimed guitarist Robben Ford has an affinity with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band of the mid-1960s that featured the duo guitar lineup of Elvin Bishop and Mike Bloomfield. I can relate to that.
That was one of Ford’s earliest influences and he has kept that foundation of blues and blues-rock alive in his music, combining it with jazz sensibilities to form his own brand of fusion. Throughout his career, he’s played with many diverse, high-caliber musicians from Joni Mitchell to Miles Davis, and Ford’s varied skills have been consistently on display as a solo performer since the late 1980s.
At the Infinity Music Hall in Norfolk, Connecticut Sunday night he devoted a large portion of his approximately 80-minute set to his latest album Soul On Ten, released last week. All but three of the album’s 10 tracks were recorded live at The Independent in San Francisco. The rest were recorded live in the studio.
Ford, a multiple Grammy winner in the blues genre, is a virtuoso who has embraced recording his latest offering live with no overdubs because he and his band are fully capable of producing perfectly executed tracks in a single take that capture the spirit and feel of a live performance, something that is so often lacking in layered studio recordings. Continue reading Ford updates the blues tradition
Concerts Vol. 1
The first in a series that will focus on concerts I’ve seen and serve as companion pieces to the Connecticut rock ‘n roll scene posts I started with Connecticut’s Own and Pulse, Part 2.
I’ve been to quite a few concerts over the years, many influential, some inspiring. The earliest big venue shows were in the fall of 1965, both at the New Haven Arena. In early November, it was the Rolling Stones with Brian Jones on second guitar in the wake of their summer mega-hit Satisfaction. The Stones sounded and looked great, but it was a relatively sedate performance compared with ones for which the band became infamous. A side note on the Stones show is that the first time they were booked for the Arena, the summer of ’64, the show was actually canceled because of insufficient ticket sales. Amazing. The second show, the Beach Boys with Brian Wilson on bass, on Thanksgiving Day. The Boys wore yellow short-sleeved oxford shirts with gray slacks, not their customary black-and-white and white khakis (I guess because it was a holiday) and with Brian in the fold sounded like angels. Two rather different groups but both rode the singles charts and that’s what drove the music industry at the time.
But the earliest show that made a huge impression on me was in a much smaller venue, the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village in the winter of 1967. The headliner was the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. But let’s back up a little.
I had been playing bass since 1964 in a couple of garage bands, most notably the Vanguards with Gary Gerard and Peter Neri, whom I would later play with in Bram Rigg Set and Pulse. I also played with and learned quite a bit from the Aiardo brothers, Tony and Peter, from North Haven who played first as the Highlights and later as New England Jam. They played everything from weddings to proms to clubs such as the House of Zodiac on Route 34 on the West Haven/New Haven line. They were schooled more than most musicians in the area and worked constantly. I’ll never forget a few years later when working with them again temporarily, we played a wedding in the afternoon, a dinner-dance in the early evening and an after-prom into the early hours. This was pretty typical and I learned a great deal from both of them, particularly Peter, who was a brilliant guitarist and was my second bass teacher. Continue reading Concerts Vol. 1