Bo Diddley December 30, 1928 - June 2, 2008

It is with great sadness that I learned that rock and roll pioneer Bo Diddley passed on this morning. He was not only one of the inventors of rock and roll, but a legend that never outgrew his fans. I'm proud to have met him and shaken his hand.

I trolled him in much more depth here.

Rest in peace, Bo. You were awesome, you were necessary, and you will indeed be sorely missed.

Trolling the Studio - The Lost Double Trouble Album

I've given myself a monumental task recently. I'm finally figuring out what's in my collection, and making a list, as I should have done long ago. Well, to be fair, I started long ago, but the project was dropped.

Then came a period when my old burner went through a slow decline. I was hesitant to replace it because I knew that the entire computer needed replacing, and was saving up for that. First, it stopped burning audio discs, but it would still burn data DVDs. Thus I was able to continue downloading things, listening to them on the computer, and storing them for later burning. And oh, I did that a lot.

So now that I'm needing a snow shovel to move the discs out of my way as I negotiate the hallway, it seems like a good time to figure out what's what. And boy, is there a lot of what. Enough to keep me writing these things for the rest of my life. I've found a lot of things I had forgotten downloading, and haven't listened to yet. So I'm sure you can understand how much fun I'm having discovering exactly what I've been sitting on.

While I've been doing this and the collection as a whole has been taking shape before me, I realized that my Trolling the Underground posts have yet to address an entire subsection of my collection. Thinking I should rectify it with a post, I soon realized that I had enough material in this subset to do a few posts. After a while, I saw a new series starting.

You see, a recording doesn't have to be live to be underground. It only has to be commercially unavailable. That opens a couple doors.

First, you have demo recordings. These are simple tapes that artists cobble together to play for the record companies prior to recording an album. It's their "sales pitch" to the label for that material, and everyone does them. These can vary from being almost identical to the finished product to being wildly different, which is when they are the most interesting. Sometimes they are even released, as in the case of Pete Townshend's "Scoop" collection, but not normally. They get out, though, either as the result of some insider action or else some mishap. I recently acquired a small selection of the demos from Peter Gabriel's first solo album that were found on a reel of tape in a box at the bottom of a stack of boxes in the bathroom of an unused warehouse. Imagine what other gems are sitting forgotten in ancient cardboard on rotting tape next to a leaky pipe. It's almost enough to make me run screaming into the night. We'll hear a lot of interesting demos as this new series develops.

Another form of underground studio recording is the "alternate take", which is frequently used as a special bonus on CD re-releases. These will come from the same sources, and be much more in depth than the bonus tracks.

There is a third category, though, that is much rarer. I have, so far, only three examples out of 1150 entries (and still counting). This is the unreleased album.

These are usually big news when the band is already established, and the legal battles can go on forever before we found out that the album was better left unreleased anyway (take that, Boston).This one, however, came about four years before Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble ended up releasing their first studio album, with a different lineup than the one that first recorded.

For this lineup Stevie had Jack Newhouse on bass, Chris Layton on drums, and Lou Ann Barton singing. Since the album was relatively short (remember, the album was recorded with vinyl in mind, the bootleg was made as a CD) it was matched with a 1979 concert tape of the same lineup, with a lot of the same songs. After that, Lou Ann Barton left to go solo, and Stevie began singing for the band. After one or two more personnel changes, they were heard at the Montreaux Jazz & Blues fest by James Taylor and David Bowie. After recording with both and declining to tour with Bowie (although you can hear them rehearse together here) Stevie finally got Texas Flood recorded and released, and the rest was history.

The bootleg's liner notes contain two stories regarding the boot's origin. To quote:

"The one and only surviving test pressing was recently discovered in a cupboard in South Austin, Texas where it had lain for the last 19 years, all other recordings of the project have been destroyed after alleged contractual disputes arose. These recording, notable for their raw energy and rare slide guitar work are essential for all true collectors. Also featuring four early arrangements of songs that later appeared on the Texas Flood album. Due to the brevity of the Nashville '78 session the producers have added a live soundboard recording featuring Lou Ann Barton and three tracks featuring Johnni Reno on saxophone."

Notes: The above paragraph is the supposed story behind this recording as told on the cd inlay. The real story is that the band didn't like the way the album turned out and paid a large sum of money to keep it from being released. As you would expect, someone got their hands on a copy and bootlegged it.

Well, the important thing is that I can haz it, right?

I'll share two songs for two different reasons. One is called Rude Mood, one of four songs that this album has in common with the Texas Flood album. It's for the fans of Stevie's instrumental style, and shows how it grew in the years between this recording and the one that was eventually released. The second is called I Wonder Why and has Lou Ann's vocals as well as that rare slide guitar mentioned above. What do you think, upon listening? Were they ready, or was keeping this under wraps a good move at the time? These are definitely two of the best tracks.

At any rate, I doubt any SRV fan would want to pass it up now. After all, there's only so much to be had, eh?

Trolling the Underground : August 13, 1967, Windsor, England

In all of my prior Trolling the Underground posts, I've picked some of the finest sounding samples from my collection, with many more to go. The quality of the sound is not always the most important factor, however. I've been known to make compromises on sound quality for a number of reasons. It could be a special show where a guest artist played or a rare song was performed. It could be the only available recording of a show that I attended. Or it could be something thats very existence is a surprise.

Normally, a band needs to gain some popularity before anyone really feels like recording them. I mean, who wants to spend time and tape on a bunch of nobodies? That circumstance can be mitigated, however, if the band in question is debuting at a music festival like the 7th National Jazz & Blues Festival (Aug 11 - 13, 1967) where a lot of bands that people DO want to record will be playing. It also helps if the members of this band have been making the rounds as members of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers.

Mayall had recently fired his drummer, Mick Fleetwood, for drunkenness. Mayall's guitarist, Peter Green, had an affinity for Fleetwood and wanted to be a frontman, so they decided to form their own band. They got Jeremy Spencer to help on guitar, and began wooing Mayall bass player John McVie to join as well, going to the length of including him in the new band's name, Fleetwood Mac. McVie hesitated, though, since he liked the pay he was getting with Mayall. The band recruited another bassist named Bob Brunning, with the understanding that Brunning would go if McVie decided to join up, which of course he eventually did. It was Brunning, however, that played the debut Fleetwood Mac show with Green, Fleetwood, and Spencer on Aug. 13, 1967. Below is a photo of Green and Fleetwood on that very night.




Listening to this show, you'd think the only thing missing from this lineup is Elmore James himself. The bands sound was extremely James-ish, almost a direct copy of his style. The first song I'll feature this time around, titled I Need You, Come on Home to Me, is in fact Elmore's classic It Hurts Me Too with completely different lyrics. The short set that they played had other examples of this, and in fact ended with a rendition of Shake Your Moneymaker that is very true to Elmore's.

The second song, however, is very different. It's an instrumental written by Green called Fleetwood Mac and has much more of a surf sound to it, believe it or not, In fact, I may even play it for a guy I know who's in a local surf band, since it sounds like something that's right up their alley. The links below have the songs.

I Need You, Come On Home to Me

Fleetwood Mac




While I was researching this post and finding pictures, I noticed who else was playing this festival. Pink Floyd, who'd had to cancel because of Syd Barrett's decline (which foreshadowed Green's descent into schizophrenia and departure from Fleetwood Mac in 1970 ), was replaced by The Nice. Cream, The Small Faces, Donovan, Ten Years After, and many others were in attendence, as well as one of my favorite 60s bands, the Jeff Beck Group. As I surfed, I found a site that mentioned that Beck's appearance was on a bootleg recording called Beck to the Future. It was in my hands about 10 seconds later, as I had downloaded that one long ago. It seems I have two sets from the same night of that festival that I had never connected before! Of course, those of you who know me know that I can't slight El Becko, so we'll explore this as well.

This was the original JBG, with Beck on guitar, Rod Stewart singing (such as it is), Ron Wood on bass, and Mick Waller on drums. His spirit must have been in the air, because they also covered Elmore James that night, doing Talk to Me Baby and doing much more than the new kids up above to make it their own. I also felt that the next song should be shared, a sweet blues piece called I Think I'll be Leaving This Morning, because I really like the guitar work on it. When you listen to this song, I think you can understand why one Rolling Stone reviewer called Led Zeppelin's first album "Rehashed Jeff Beck Group." Links below.

Talk To Me Baby

I Think I'll Be Leaving This Morning

If this strikes your fancy, you may want to read this previous post about Jeff Beck with a couple more modern songs. There's pics of the JBG there as well, so for this post I'll leave you with a photo of Peter Green. He's past his mental problems and working again with the Peter Green Splinter Group - something that the modern blues fan may want to check out!

Enjoy the tunes, and let me know what you think!!

The Rules.

It can seem like a little bit of anarchy, the way I get most of my music, and I guess in a way it is. After all, just about anything is available somewhere, although I have little control over the specifics. It's free, and shared far and wide. I'm not dealing with stores or any hassles as far as acquiring music, as long as I keep my internet on and my computer working, I'm set. What's more, the fact that it's legal doesn't suck the fun out of it.

Keeping it legal, though, is what leads to the rules. They're pretty easy to deal with, although when a site gets to a certain size, like Dime - a- Dozen, it requires a lot of cooperation from the governed.

The main rule for keeping trouble at bay is to not step on the artist's copyright - that is, never torrent anything that is available commercially. Some sites don't watch for this at all, and they're generally the ones who get their plugs pulled by a team of lawyers. Others, like Dime, are ALL over that one, and with good reason. They've been closed before because someone did some dipshit, and learned how to avoid it. If something was ever released, anywhere, at any time for any duration, it is not allowed. That means that if a legitimate (not bootleg) label put out a limited release of 500 copies on prerecorded reel-to-reel in Budapest back in 1968, and the music has never seen the light of day since, it is still off limits. Period. If the official version is missing songs, you can post only the missing songs. If it is a studio recorded "alternate" version, it's still off limits (although demos are fair game, unless they are released later). They used to have a policy that you couldn't even have a 10 second sample of the record being played on the P.A. system before and after the show, but they eventually lightened up about that.

The other unbreakable rule is the Not Allowed Bands (NAB) list. This is the list of artists that have either contacted the sites or published a policy on their website or anywhere else to the effect that they do NOT approve of electronic trading. Of course, this means nothing as far as more traditional methods of trading go, but it stops the downloads right in their tracks. If you want to lose your uploading rights in a hurry, just go ahead and post someone who's on the NAB list.

Sometimes an artist understands the aims and the value of the trading community, but wants to protect their market as well, so they'll just put certain limits on. Little Feat is a great example, with links to bit torrent sites on their website, but they are on the NAB list in terms of soundboard recordings after January 1, 2004, audience video, and shows listed in their non-tradable shows list (which are shows they have made available for purchase). Anything else is fair game, and even though audience video isn't allowed, they have allowed some pro-shot video to spread.

Sometimes it only means one person in a band. Levon Helm's ban doesn't include The Band, but it goes the other way around, too - no Buffalo Springfield anymore because of Ritchie Furay. There are a lot of variations, and the list changes all the time - all it takes is an e-mail. I've seen things come off the list, as well, when fans work with the artist to make it happen, but that's not as frequent.

All in all, these are pretty easy rules to live with, since it's love for the music and respect for the artists that make it that drives us to do this, even more than disdain for the record industry does. Really, there is SO much incredible stuff available without stepping on someone's toes, that there's no reason to do it. I sure wish that Hot Tuna and the Allman Brothers weren't on that list, though.

I've had to reconsider the rules since making the recent change to Trolling the Underground. When I was just posting a song or two to listen to, I wasn't so concerned that anyone would care. Now that I am actually sending out the shows electronically, though, I feel a bigger urge to follow the same rules that keep my favorite sites safe. Unfortunately, that means that there's a few things that I can no longer share over bit torrent, but I think the things I can share will please a few of you.

This week, Trolling the Underground is back at its' original home. I'm featuring some of the fine old blues that Jeff was talking about last week, and of course it has a download. Go get you some!

Roots.

I've been spending a lot of time lately with the American roots of rock & roll music: blues and country (aka hillbilly or mountain music). I'm not talking about what passes for most blues or country today. I'm talking about the blues and country that began in the American South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These two styles share so many commonalities, yet back then they were worlds apart simply because of skin color.

They were both the music of the downtrodden and lower-class. They sang of heartbreak and bad luck, and praised Jesus. They dreamed of having more than they'd ever have, and arriving in Heaven an equal with everyone else.

As a guitarist, I've been drawn to both of these styles equally. And because of the wonders of modern technology, I've been able to recently bolster my collection of both musical styles considerably.

There are two collections I recently picked up that deserve much praise, and many, many listens.


The first, Goin' Mad Blues, is a 200-song compilation of the real roots of American blues music. It's got the Bigs: Big Bill Broonzy, Big Joe Turner and Big Joe Williams. The Blinds: Blind Boy Fuller, Blind John Davis and Blind Willie McTell. The John Lees: John Lee Hooker and John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson. Leadbelly, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, "Hot Lips" Page, Lightnin' Hopkins, the one and only Robert Johnson, and many, many others. Without this music, there would be no Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin or Beatles or Who or any rock & roll. This is where it all began.


The next collection is Friends of Old Time Music: The Folk Arrival 1961 - 1965. This three-disc box set of 55 live performances (53 previously unreleased) comes from 14 concerts in New York City in the early '60s. It's a wonderful cross-section of traditional American bluegrass and folk music, with performances by legends like Fred McDowell, Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, Doc Watson and Maybelle Carter (of the Carter family), as well as lesser-known artists Annie Bird, Joseph Spence, Fiddlin' Arthur Smith, Ed Young and Emma Ramsay, and Jesse Fuller.