The Slingers Of The Six Strings (the millions of greatness)

“Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”― Emma Lazarus

I know that top ten lists….greatest ever lists…are inherently flawed…subjective…reactive. They can be stimulating…no doubt…even inspiring or a means of discovery. Hell, I utilize them with The Signal every once in a while….year-end lists…those Signals that gather several top ten lists from in-the-knows of a specific genre (the recent Free Jazz edition, the past Psychedelic record edition)…and I have seen their power both in readership (those newsletters are always the most read) and for me at least, education (I am always turned on to the best music through the process). But even with all of that, the stuff that does not make the list is as interesting/telling/complicated as the stuff that is featured.

Mississippi Fred McDowell

I usually take with a grain of salt when some highfalutin publication publishes some lengthy list of greatness as an attempt to help define what we all see as great. So, I am not sure why the recent Rolling Stone Magazine…which I think we can all agree is no longer the Rolling Stone that we might have subscribed to in the 70s and 80s (for those ancient of us who have been around that long)…why their recent ranking of top 250 guitar players of all time has really gotten under my skin. Maybe it was that big number 250…that seems like a hell of a lot…a definitive amount so much so that those NOT on the list…I mean…how could you be a slinger of note and not be on the list!

Dave Alvin

Last night I saw Los Lobos at The Fillmore. Dave Alvin opened up…and did some maniacal guitar shredding. Not on the list. Los Lobos, who were on their second consecutive night at the Fillmore…playing an entirely different set that found the band featuring more of their unique style of south-of-the-border blues…featured that sweet sweet guitar stylings of Dave Hidalgo (not on the list) and Cesar Rojas (not on the list). And when you look at the list (I look at it through a condensed version so I can see it all on one page), while there are obviously legendary players included…there are even more that beg the question: um, why them…and not others.

The great Jessie Mae Hemphill is on the list…oh yes (damn, she was great)…but where the hell is Mississippi Fred McDowell. Where is Luther Dickinson? Junior Kimbrough?

Lowman Pauling

Where is Kid Congo Powers, the guitar slinger who lit up The Cramps, The Gunn Club and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds? Or Blixa Bargeld, Bryan Gregory, Steve Turner, Dave Shannon, Ronald Jones, Tuck Andress, Michael Chapman, Mississippi John Hurt, Captain Sensible, Tony Joe White, Mickey Baker, Pee Wee Crayton…LOWMAN PAULING (cited by many to be one of the most influential guitarists of all time).

Kid Congo

I recently co-produced Ethan Daniel Davidson’s newest record…and got to witness Rayfield “Ray Ray” Holloman at work on the pedal steel and guitar. Woo-wee what an amazing musician. He is one solo record away from the world understanding why he should champion said list, already spreading his talent across the world playing with The North Mississippi All-Stars, Ne-Yo, and Eminem.

Rolling Stone: are we talking about guitarists who seriously impacted the way the instrument was played or guitarists who found big fame? Are some of those famous folks or the newest of hip up-and-comers really the greatest guitarists? Some of the entries seem to be trying to educate more than celebrate…what is the criteria Rolling Stone?

Luther Dickinson

I guess what really gets to me is the fact that The Rolling Stone brand still means something to enough people that these lists…these huge lists…attempting to define the field and leaving many of the great ones out seems irresponsible. And by the way…some of the slingers named: the magazine has never published a single word about them besides putting them on the list…no article…no soundbite. They are using the names to find a legitimacy that has alluded them for years.

Thank you for letting me get that out…

OK….top eight records (ha!) that have been helping me through a fairly dark month:

Evenings At The Village Gate (John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy): A newly found recording from 1961 that features the greatest, John Coltrane, with another great, Eric Dolphy, having a jazz conversation that prophesizes the future of the idiom. Expansive. Inspired. Anyone who already loves this Coltrane period will love the new translations of the music which Coltrane and Dolphy execute. With a 22-minute version of Africa that is worth the price of admission. The LP notes by Ashley Kahn are fantastic as well as added notes by Richard Alderson, who recorded the session.

A Tour De Force (Rolling Stones)
When at Amoeba to buy Evenings At The Village Vangaurd, I espied…a Rolling Stones bootleg in the bins!?!?!? And from the great 1973 touring era? You never know what you are gonna get with a boot….but this one: the sound quality and the performances are fantastic. One of my favorite Stones live recordings.

Mirage (Silver Apples & Makoto Kawabata): Pretty amazing whenever more Silver Apples artifacts bubble ‘n ooze upon us…this one featuring Simeon and Acid Mother’s Temple founder Makoto Kawabata. A mesh of electronics and guitar soundscapes, with occasional poetic readings as well as hints of the olde Silver Apples drum and synth groove (Future Reminiscence), this record is a beautifully strange, outer-worldly trip.

Until You Find Your Green (The Baird Sisters): There is nothing sweeter than a deep family musical connection, and Meg Baird and Laura Baird effortlessly create a deeply baked-in-the-American-folk duo tapestry of a record, that is sun-shiny golden while finding green. A perfect record for our local Live Oak friends.

Heavenly World (Mark Fry and Iain Ross): Mark Frye, who we interviewed for The Signal some time ago, is well known amongst psych-heads for the classic Dreaming With Alice that he recorded and released in the early 70s. But this multidisciplinary artist keeps quietly releasing top-of-his-game, airy, soft records, like this one from just a few months ago that he did with fellow musician Iain Ross (who I do not know anything about).

Blind Boy Fuller With Sonny Terry And Bull City Red: My friend Kevin Madera recently gave me a copy of this record, which stayed on the turntable for days. Oh, the Piedmont Blues…played so excellently by one of its most popular practitioners with his famous buddies in tow. No, Fuller did not make the Rolling Stone top 250 guitar list…but he still is one of the best…and most enjoyable…pickers to dig…and his songs are such classics (Pistol Slapper Blues! Step It Up And Go!).

In/Out/In (Sonic Youth): Ever since Ethan Miller/Silver Current Records released that live Sonic Youth record, I have been on a little bit of tear. This rag tag group of recordings begins with some meditative Youth meanderings that could be the next in line listen after The Spacemen 3’s Dreamweapon sessions. Perfect sunrise soundtrack. Over and over again.

5 (JJ Cale): By the time Cale recorded 5 (his fifth record….so imaginative), he had become a wealthy person, with Lynyrd Skynyrd and Eric Clapton having hits with three of his songs. Cale’s fifth is full of signature mellow, instantly memorable melodic grooves that has been a perfect antidote to a chaotic time.

***apologies for all the great records that did not make this list…more to come…

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Mystery of ‘Stick Man’ on Led Zeppelin album cover finally solved

Wonder who was on the cover of Led Zep 4? Well…now you will know!

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Eavesdropping on Ernest Hemingway at Finca Vigía

“In the middle of the 20th century, when Ernest Hemingway was living in Cuba, his friend and future biographer A.E. Hotchner got the man to record himself on a wire recorder…These off-the-cuff recordings, then, would give Hotchner hours of raw material from one of greatest literary minds in American history. Who, after all, would not think it an unforgettable experience to have plopped on Papa’s couch, listening to the man go off about war, writing, bullfights or fishing the Gulf Stream?”

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Missing Big Bill Broonzy Recording Found

78 collectors talk about being “out in the wild” when referring to hunting for platters in thrift shops, peoples basements…garage sales. And still, yes, they occasionally strike historic gold. A one-of-a-kind Broonzy recording? Amazing.

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San Francisco’s 24-Hour Diner Stops the Cosmic Clock

Back in bachelorhood days, I would often find myself late-night at the Silver Crest slooperly munching a caky doughnut will dripping down a cocktail. Blurry. Ladies and Gentleman: you want a glimpse of what San Francisco once was? There are still living memories like this one to experience. Thank you Alta for the spotlighting article.

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Justin Torres and Ned Blackhawk are among the winners of National Book Awards

“Justin Torres’ novel ‘Blackouts,’ a daring and illustrated narrative that blends history and imagination in its recounting of a censored study of gay sexuality, has won the National Book Award for fiction…the nonfiction prize was awarded to Ned Blackhawk’s ‘The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History’”

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Shepard Fairey and His "ICONS" Come Home to Subliminal Projects

“Icons have the power to shape culture when they become widely recognized and resonant reference points that are easily understood shorthand for a concept," Fairey says. "This exhibition is filled with images, symbols, emblems, and portraits that I classify as iconic and make up a portion of the iconography I’ve created throughout my career."

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Satan Says

By: Sharon Olds

I am locked in a little cedar box

with a picture of shepherds pasted onto

the central panel between carvings.

The box stands on curved legs.

It has a gold, heart-shaped lock

and no key. I am trying to write my

way out of the closed box

redolent of cedar. Satan

comes to me in the locked box

and says, I’ll get you out. Say

My father is a shit. I say

my father is a shit and Satan

laughs and says, It’s opening.

Say your mother is a pimp.

My mother is a pimp. Something

opens and breaks when I say that.

My spine uncurls in the cedar box

like the pink back of the ballerina pin

with a ruby eye, resting beside me on

satin in the cedar box.

Say shit, say death, say fuck the father,

Satan says, down my ear.

The pain of the locked past buzzes

in the child’s box on her bureau, under

the terrible round pond eye

etched around with roses, where

self-loathing gazed at sorrow.

Shit. Death. Fuck the father.

Something opens. Satan says

Don’t you feel a lot better?

Light seems to break on the delicate

edelweiss pin, carved in two

colors of wood. I love him too,

you know, I say to Satan dark

in the locked box. I love them but

I’m trying to say what happened to us

in the lost past. Of course, he says

and smiles, of course. Now say: torture.

I see, through blackness soaked in cedar,

the edge of a large hinge open.

Say: the father’s cock, the mother’s

cunt, says Satan, I’ll get you out.

The angle of the hinge widens

until I see the outlines of

the time before I was, when they were

locked in the bed. When I say

the magic words, Cock, Cunt,

Satan softly says, Come out.

But the air around the opening

is heavy and thick as hot smoke.

Come in, he says, and I feel his voice

breathing from the opening.

The exit is through Satan’s mouth.

Come in my mouth, he says, you’re there

already, and the huge hinge

begins to close. Oh no, I loved

them, too, I brace

my body tight

in the cedar house.

Satan sucks himself out the keyhole.

I’m left locked in the box, he seals

the heart-shaped lock with the wax of his tongue.

It’s your coffin now, Satan says.

I hardly hear;

I am warming my cold

hands at the dancer’s

ruby eye—

the fire, the suddenly discovered knowledge of love.

Painting by. Adrian Ghenie