Jotcamp is a pair of art students with some vague principles on media gluttony. We don’t want to just sit back and consume all the tasteful art we come across, so we’ve made this blog to compile and comment on that delicious media to keep our TV, music, and movies habit from becoming a one way conversation.
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60 posts tagged blues
Ramases - Life Child
As usual I didn’t post these songs in the right order. I really thought I’d done something from Ramases’ Space Hymns before, but as I haven’t, here’s the opening track, Life Child. It has about 50 seconds of ambient flute stuff, but after that, it’s one of the best psychedelic guitar pieces ever recorded, and it has one of my favourite guitar solos.
Though Ramases died in 1978, a significant fan network has built up around his two albums. If you want to read about him and his career, there’s an extremely detailed fan site here run by Brian Currin.
13 Plays | Download
Smith - You Don't Love Me (Yes I Know)
Smith, the late-60s act featuring Gayle McCormick’s fantastic vocals, is another band whose second album I’ve only recently come across. Their debut album, A Group Called Smith, is one of my favourite psychedelic records, and this one, Minus-Plus, has already claimed a lot of my listening time. They still had this weird tendency to under-use McCormick. The guys aren’t bad singers exactly, but it just seems crazy not to sub her in on a verse occasionally.
6 Plays
Michael Kiwanuka - Bones
Michael Kiwanuka is a soul singer based out of Britain whose career seems to be taking off. The record he released earlier this year, Home Again, is a fantastic showcase of his vocal talent. The backing instrumentation is great, featuring some seriously tasteful strings, but the band never really gets to let loose and so the album stays stuck at a pretty mournful pace. Despite that, I always seem to listen to the record all the way through, because, damn, his voice is beautiful.
31 Plays | Download
The Band - We Can Talk
Okay, so Levon Helm isn’t the only one singing on We Can Talk, but it’s probably my favourite song on Music From Big Pink, and it really showcases the versatility of The Band, with Danko, Robertson, and Helm each taking turns with the vocals. It’s probably worth noting that The Band was called Levon and the Hawks for a brief period during the mid-60s.
22 Plays
Shocking Blue - Love Machine
Shocking Blue was a Dutch psychedelic rock band that, once they scored the vocal talents of Mariska Veres in late 1968, made a huge impact on rock music. This record, At Home, was the Netherlands’ first to hit #1 in America. It’s serious rock heritage, containing the hit single Venus, destroyed by Bananarama and turned into a TV jingle, and the song Love Buzz, covered by Nirvana on their debut single. At this point in the band’s career their guitarist dabbled in sitar playing, but it’s his tasteful blues guitar work that’s made the biggest impact on me.
76 Plays | Download
Stray - Suicide
Stray’s 1971 effort, Suicide, didn’t stray too far from material covered in their debut, but who would really want them to? This album is British hard rock at its finest: lead guitar domination, hoarse vocals, heavy rhythm section, and blown-speaker distortion. This is the album’s title track, an 8 minute long riff-fest. Sabbath and Judas Priest fans should enjoy this a lot.
45 Plays | Download
Stray - All In Your Mind
Stray was hugely influential 70s psychedelic rock band that hailed from Britain. They get lumped in with guitar-focussed progressive rock bands like Captain Beyond and Wishbone Ash because some of their songs are similarly sprawling, but they just often wade through heavy blues riffs using as much distortion as possible like Toad or Leaf Hound. Iron Maiden fans might recognize this song, All In Your Mind, as the metal band did a cover of it on their Holy Smoke single, later included as a bonus track on No Prayer For The Dying’s reissue. This is the full on, 9 minute long meltdown version that kicked off Stray’s 1970 debut (Maiden covered the much shorter single version).
11 Plays | Download
Cactus - Songs For Aries
I read too many news stories today, making myself way too stressed out and angry, so I escaped into an old favourite, Cactus’ One Way… Or Another. Apparently the band’s never made it onto this Tumblr before, which is weird.
Cactus had kind of a false start to their career. Originally, Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart were supposed to join the band with Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice, but Beck got into that car accident and Stewart bailed to basically start his solo career. The other two signed up Jim McCarty (guitar) and Rusty Day (vocals) and made some of the best psychedelic blues albums known to man.
When the band fell apart, Bogert and Appice joined up again with Beck to form their short-lived, eponymous group. Rusty Day was shot to death in the early 80s, so when Cactus reformed in 2006, they plugged their singer spot with Savoy Brown front-man, Jimmy Kunes.
6 Plays
Leonda - Zono My Bird
Some crazy how Woman In The Sun, even through it was released through a major label, not only didn’t manage to catch on, but became one of the rarest records around. Leonda is a gorgeous 60s singer-songwriter. I didn’t really find our where she was from, just that she’s Native American and that her backing band were Canadian (The Paupers). The record just seems so freaking marketable, being a healthy mix of fantastic psychedelic folk and blues songs with just tinges of Native American folk influences. And she’s gorgeous!
11 Plays
Sarofeen And Smoke - Cream Of Nowhere
Sometimes it feels like my music library is a collection of crushes on 70s singers. Earlier this week I stumbled across this through whendeliverycomes (where you can also find great music posts) and Tumblr desperately needed more of this record.
Sarofeen and Smoke were a psychedelic blues band fronted by Anne Sarofeen, basically a boobed Long John Baldry. The album is in the same vein as Martha Velez’s Fiends & Angels (both albums containing a version of the song Swamp Man), so there’s some great guitar work, dirty horn section, and some of the strongest vocals you’ve ever heard. Unfortunately the band only managed to put out this one record in 1971.
10 Plays
