Click images for desktop size: "Savage World" by Frank Frazetta This morning I woke up to music.
The first song was beguiling and interesting. It was raucous and lyrical with traces of jazz; a guitar solo version of the Beatles "A Day In The Life".
I didn't recognize it and in the tiny part of my brain that wasn't concentrating on the sounds I was wondering who the guitarist was. He was flash without being ostentatious and his tone and fingering were clean and remarkable. I was trying to track it down in my head. It has the resonance of Eric Johnson but the tone was too clean. It lacked the ostentation of Vai or Satriani. I was starting to think I discovered something new.
To my chagrin it was Jeff Beck "Live At BB King's".
I felt sort of foolish about this. Like the time I went into a club and watched a guitarist, an old guy sitting on a stool. After a bit I said out loud, "Hey, this guy is really good!"
The guitarist was Les Paul . . .
I've been a fan of Jeff Beck's for a long time. How could I not like a guy who spent two years working on an album he had to know would be a flop. A tribute to Gene Vincent, but more a tribute to Cliff Gallup and Paul Peek.
Beck spent a lot of time figuring out there styles and recorded an album that reproduced those old solos note for note.
Beck was proud of it. I was proud of him.
This was the guy who did "Beck's Bolero" with the Yardbirds, and then released a guitar version of that creepy chestnut, "Love Is Blue".
The only negative in all of his work was foisting Rod Stewart on the world.
Can't really blame Beck for what Stewart became . . . can we?

Click images for desktop size: "Running The Bath" by Michael Parkes It made me feel good that an old guy like Beck could still astonish me.
The next track was the one that kicked me out of bed: The Pyramids and "Sticks and Skins".
Not only is the song cool, a 2 minute drum break, but the Pyramids always bring to mind one of the great moments in film history.
It was in one of the Beach Party movies. The Pyramids were on stage dressed in tight black levis, baggy beach boy stripey shirts and outrageous Beatle's haircuts.
They do a quasi mod style number when suddenly the Beatles wigs are pulled off their heads revealing their shaved bald skulls and they launch into a pure surfer stomp.
Entertainment doesn't get much better.