In my first car I kept a shoebox full of 8 tracks (Part 5)
Today is Joe Walsh's Birthday (Thanx Dyedinthewoolliberal for posting the birthdays) and my plan for this post was to steal Nurse Jackie's idea and do a "Who did it better?" competition between my 3 favorite version of "Turn to Stone".
Instead, I started thinking about the record that contained my all time favorite version of that song. An Album that I probably bought more often than any other record in my life.
And yes, whenever the 8 track ate itself or was "Borrowed" I replaced it ASAP even if I had to prepay and order it at the back counter of Heads Together or Goody's Music.
The Album is "You're Not Alone" by Roy Buchanan and it was released in 1978. It was a marked departure for Roy who up to that point specialized in rather sparse blues and blues rock albums with just piano bass and drums backing him.
So imagine my surprise when I bought this record (I was already a big fan and had seen Roy live when this came out) and the opening sounded like THIS RIGHT HERE!
In 1978 there was a definite trend towards both a fusion of jazz R&B and rock and expansive free form "experimental" projects. This project definitely didn't come out in a vacuum.
But most of the other rockers who attempted to do it could never pull it off as well as Roy did on this record.
Truthfully, other than this record and Jeff Beck's late 70s output, the only "Fusion" records worth a shit were Jazz guys moving down the difficulty ladder into Rock music - Not the other way around. And good Lord most of the "Concept" or "Experimental" albums were dreck.
Let's face it someone shoulda told certain artists that if you don't have the chops -Just stay away, don't embarrass yerself.
Not an issue here though. Roy had the chops.
"Turn To Stone" was not the only cover Roy flat out owned, another high light was his version of Neil Young's "Down By The River"
There were 2 other long improvisational pieces (Both at about 8 minutes) but just so no one lost track of who this was he had two straight up Blues Rock boogie cuts in the mix as well
Another long improv cut:
And just because, a hardass blues rock shuffle to finish this post.
