EARL HOOKER - 2 BUGS AND A ROACH

So prior to this my knowledge of the blues was nothing beyond remembering to name check Robert Johnson when the subject arose. For whatever reason I have never had the slightest interest in the genre, as soon as the blues or a bit of the old boogie woogie crept into anything that did enter my statosphere it was instantly dismissed with a swift lifting of the needle.

I say 'for whatever reason', who am I kidding, I know exactly why I have given 'the blues' such a wide berth... Three words 'Gary Fucking Moore'. Now he was alright while he was busy pretending to be a guitar carrying soldier widdly diddling over marching drums but then he did his blues album and... well, it's fucking crud.


This happened when I was at an impressionable age, maybe fourteen or fifteen and I found it so utterly distasteful that it litetrally stained my pallette for decades to come.

Aside of Gary Moore, I have always associated the blues with badly scratched 'I'm playing from behinds the sofa' sounding 78's, John Mayall and, and the Blues Brothers. None of which would make it into the inner sanctum of my pyramid where I a dead pharoah.

I bought this at the magical junk fair that arrived on my doorstep over the weekend. I had heard talk of it but never been around to witness the power of half a city turned into a warzone of pasting tables covered in no end of worthless and over priced (a trait of Bavarians trying to expell their rubbish) shit. Anyway, there it was, the last Friday evening of Summer I stolled down into town and nearly drowned in broken computer parts, horse brasses and commemorative beer steins. Amongst said shit were a couple of semi-pro stores and it was on one of those that I picked this up.

i also picked up a good copy of the third? Popol Vuh album (Clouds or something on the front) for a very reasonable twenty euros. I bought it from a charming gent with a world class comb-over who took a couple of euros off and then directed me towards a copy of 'Sweet Smoke - Just a Poke' (dire album)

'Sweet Smoke...You know this?'

'Yeah, I don't really...'

'Sweet Smoke!' (Gestures with an okay sign towards his mouth suggesting a doob)

'Yeah, I get it.'

'Just a Poke!' (Begins to thrust his hips forward slowly in a movement that suggests sex)

'Right...So yeah, thanks but I'll just take the Popol Vuh'.

Although I wasn't buying I have no doubt that with that sales technique the Sweet Smoke album must have gone home with somebody shortly after I wandered off.

So 'the blues', what made me relent? Why the change of heart? I guess it really is as easy as a double necked guitar and whatever we call that font more readily associated with the French Metro. Musically, yeah, it's exactly what you would expect, Earl's woman done gone left him. yada yada yada. But what it has done is open the flood gates to Blind Bill Something, Willie Dixon, Robert Johnson and a slowly growing hoarde of other blues main stays. Do I get the blues? I defy anybody who wasn't born of slavery or opression to say the honestly do. I am however on my way to understanding the basics of how to apprecate the blues and for this Earl Hooker, cousin of John Lee, I am grateful.