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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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| The
House of Blues, New Orleans, October 5th 2008 |
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| It
could be the most disconcerting thing that’s
ever happened to me. I’m in the urinals, and
the gentleman next to me, eyes pointed purposefully
on the porcelain, says “Jeez, this one’s
gonna be the hottest I’ve had for years”.
What could I say? After all, I’m in a foreign
country. |
| He
turns to catch my eye. As they say in these parts,
I shoot him a glance. “I mean the gig. Jonny
Lang. Saw him when he was a boy in
St Louis. Man, he’s the hottest young guitar
player I’ve ever seen. Plays like a dream,
sings good too, like an old blues man. Me and my
buddies, we’re in town for the football game,
we’re from up state. Man, we’ve been
drinking like hogs since we got here Friday night.
Can you believe this place? Where y’all from?” |
| We’re
in New Orleans, thankfully a somewhat less blighted
city than when we last visited just twelve months
after the devastating Hurricane Katrina, but still
a shadow of its former glory. We’ve just feasted
Cajun-style in what seems to be the one busy Sunday
night restaurant - andouille, red beans and rice
with smoked sausage, alligator strips, blackened
fish and smothered turnip greens. And now we’re
in the House of Blues.
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| It’s
part of the chain originally set up by Hard Rock
Café founder Isaac Tigrett and actor and
sometimes Blues Brother Dan Ackroyd, which, you
may recall, famously rescued Muddy Waters’
sharecropper shack at Stovall Plantation from dereliction.
But now, like most things it seems, House of Blues
(but not the shack) is owned by Live Nation. For
many, HOB represents perhaps one of the worst manifestations
of Corporate Rock, including collaborations with
hotel chains and casinos, And
many might wonder at the expanding influence of
businesses like Live Nation, with through-the-line
interests from artist management, to promotion,
to venue ownership. Just read the slogan on the
back of the matching T-shirts worn by the two rather
militant ladies we saw somewhere – “The
home of the blues is in the Delta, not a restaurant’.
But the fact remains that they’re capable
of bringing medium-name headliners to venues such
as this, which local promoters would probably find
difficult to do. And despite the burgeoning economic
meltdown, which seems to dominate every restaurant
and breakfast table conversation we overhear, this
place is absolutely packed. But it is a football
weekend, and without doubt it’s a football
crowd. |
| Jonny
Lang is as described in the restrooms: a veritable
child prodigy of the blues. Having started to play
when he was around twelve, he recorded his first
major album, Lie to Me, in 1997 at the age of fifteen.
You have to listen to this one to understand just
how good it is – naturally razor-sharp guitar
playing from the school of Stevie Ray Vaughan and
an astonishingly mature voice with a soulful growl
reminiscent of Joe Cocker at his best. Fifteen?
Don’t believe me? Buy the record and see.
Sadly, in the ten years since then, during which
time Lang has toured the USA remorselessly, his
music has veered towards the sadly predictable watered-down
soul-rock so beloved of American audiences. |
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| It’s
not that Lang’s prodigious talents have diminished
in any way, rather that they have been somewhat
wasted on material clearly designed to seek out
a wider audience, and in particular to win airplay
time on the hugely commercially important but mind-numbingly
anodyne radio play lists. Just listen to ‘Red
light’ to see what I mean. But the songs from
his last two albums, Long Time Coming and Turn Around,
are just the stuff for a largely inebriated, arm-waving
and whooping New Orleans football audience. However,
I was prepared to give Mr Lang the benefit of the
doubt – on stage he’s a charming, modest
and genuine sort of guy, still with the winning
smile of a teenager, and when he plays (and my goodness,
how he plays) a grimace worthy of the finest blues
guitarists. But the predictability and blandness
of the material was wearing, and the balance finally
tipped against his favour after a lengthy cover
of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Living for the city’,
which in a sense gave the game away, and left your
reviewer and companion leaving in search of some
of Scotland’s very finest midnight wine. |
| Now,
Serge, we’re on the road heading for the Delta.
We’ve taken all the money that was left in
the special Whiskyfun Icelandic bank account (not
as much, I’m sure, as we deposited) and bought
a fabulous second-hand Whiskeyfun trailer for our
trip, though I have to admit it’s a bit of
a bugger to manoeuvre. We’re in the land of
real whiskey, and real food to match. And heading
north on Highway 61 and the Great River Road, past
the half-harvested fields of cotton and soya beans,
and through largely forgotten and impoverished communities
with isolated churches scattered on lonely roadsides,
I can’t help wondering whether, that in addition
to being the root of everything that’s best
in music, there isn’t a prescient and timeless
spiritual wisdom here, that can sort of see what’s
coming. - Nick Morgan (most photographs by Nick
and Kate) |
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the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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There's nothing more down there... |
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