The Mombums of Bottlemas - Part 2Part 2

On the second day of Bottlemas the Momler sent to me, a Joe Bonamassa CD. 


Tour de Force: Live in London at Royal Albert Hall, to be exact. He was a legit child prodigy and was gigging by the time he was 11, toured as the opening act for BB King when he was 12, and puts out all his music on his own label. 

This series is mildly insane. It's 4 concerts at 4 venues with different personnel and slightly different set lists published as a complete 7 hour audiovisual boxed set and independently as videos and recordings and a book. If you thought MC5 was decadent back in the day, this is a ridonculous chronicle of his entire career from a small 3 piece band in a smoky club, to a full Blues band with horns, to a rock-star wankfest with opening acoustic set, to this acoustic/electric greatest hits extravaganza. Am i being unfair with my not subtle snidish dog-fart nose crinkle? Yes, of course, that's what i do. I'm probably going to love it if i ever shut up long enough to start listening to it. He's a great musician, i'm a dork. He's doing a week of concerts in London with more vintage gear than i could afford in 3 lifetimes, i'm out recapping an old hog waterer that starts leaking every winter because i don't have the time or money or energy to dig down below the frost line to properly remove it. 

Do his $2,000 Alvarez Yairi's sound good? No. I mean, they sound good for piezos with several thousand more dollars worth of sound conditioning hardware filtering out the worst of the percussive mid frequencies, but they still sound unmistakably like rubber bands played ponticello with a parking lot rock. The miced banjos and mandolins sound a thousand times better. 

Does any of that make this unenjoyable? No, he's great, this is phenomenal. And, it has those genuine awkward little stumbles and clanks and fret buzzes of actually just playing. Oh yeah, Jockey Full of Bourbon is a fantastic song and it sounds absolutely atrocious. Love it. Still though, From the Valley starts up and my brain would rather turn it off and pull out Buffalo Nichols again. 

That's all i can do at the moment. I just can't sit here not doing anything for a full hour without a proper plot line, let alone disc 2, so i'll have to come back to it later, i guess. I expect the rest will be every bit as enjoyable. It's dumb, but i seem to be living in 40 to 50 minute chunks at the moment. 

Pause.

Next

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