Post by cellarfullofnoise on Aug 21, 2005 6:48:17 GMT -5
From the Nov. 2003 Blues Bytes CD review website (I missed this one at the time)
www.bluenight.com/BluesBytes/wn1103.html
I have almost as little info to offer you about Grandpaboy’s new release, Dead Man Shake (Fat Possum), as I did about the Warren Haynes release above. What you need to know, apparently, is this: Grandpaboy is the alter ego of ex-Replacements leader Paul Westerberg, and Dead Man Shake is a drunken, echo- and fuzz-laden '50s style rockin’ blues record, with a few classic country covers thrown in. Though the whole thing is more of an afterthought, a fun project, for Westerberg, and the songs are good but not exceptional, you can’t help but like this release for one reason, and one reason only: its glorious sound. The thing sounds EXACTLY like those poorly recorded, over-amplified (given the era’s amps' quality) and distorted singles that appeared at the end of the '50s and beginning of the '60s on tiny labels on both sides of the Atlantic, which would eventually be collected and named “garage-rock” on such compilations as the Nuggets box set. Think Jimmy Reed, as emulated by drunken 19-year-old imitators with absolutely no “artistic” goal except to play the music they love for the girls they want to take to bed, and you get the idea. Of course, Westerberg is a consummate professional, and this is only a pastiche; but when pastiches are so well done, I’m buying. (www.fatpossum.com)
--- Benoît Brière
www.bluenight.com/BluesBytes/wn1103.html
I have almost as little info to offer you about Grandpaboy’s new release, Dead Man Shake (Fat Possum), as I did about the Warren Haynes release above. What you need to know, apparently, is this: Grandpaboy is the alter ego of ex-Replacements leader Paul Westerberg, and Dead Man Shake is a drunken, echo- and fuzz-laden '50s style rockin’ blues record, with a few classic country covers thrown in. Though the whole thing is more of an afterthought, a fun project, for Westerberg, and the songs are good but not exceptional, you can’t help but like this release for one reason, and one reason only: its glorious sound. The thing sounds EXACTLY like those poorly recorded, over-amplified (given the era’s amps' quality) and distorted singles that appeared at the end of the '50s and beginning of the '60s on tiny labels on both sides of the Atlantic, which would eventually be collected and named “garage-rock” on such compilations as the Nuggets box set. Think Jimmy Reed, as emulated by drunken 19-year-old imitators with absolutely no “artistic” goal except to play the music they love for the girls they want to take to bed, and you get the idea. Of course, Westerberg is a consummate professional, and this is only a pastiche; but when pastiches are so well done, I’m buying. (www.fatpossum.com)
--- Benoît Brière
