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Review: "Bottleneck John"Hussets Café, Copenhagen Denmark It had been a long day, following an out late Thursday evening listening to some really good Blues at Denmark's Copenhagen Blues Festival. Invested were several hours on the Internet looking over the thirteen different acts on Friday night's festival slate, and visiting lots of web sites to listen to sample tracks/cuts. It was so difficult to settle on just one to hear live. (Or two at the most, since it might be possible to hear one and then squeeze into a later set at some other club.) Making a decision like that drives me crazy--I just know it might be the wrong one. But, with much thought the decision was made: we would give "Bottleneck John" a try. The room was claustrophobic in size and plain beyond words--no stage, just a few tables and chairs, a couple of speakers (not hooked up), and the sounds of uninvolved and uninterested people eating just across the way. The crowd for the music wasn't a crowd at all. At the appointed hour for the music to begin it was obvious that a mistaken decision had been made... there were a dozen folks (at most) ready and attentive for The Blues. Oh no! Surely the (maybe) tens of thousands of Danes who would hear live music that night couldn't all be wrong-- and just us few in the little ground level room at Hussets Café right. There wasn't even someone from the Festival there to introduce him. So the guy clutching the metal faced guitar walked over and stood before the chair centered between the speakers (still not connected) and began by saying "I'm Johan Eliasson from Sweden . . . ". He didn't talk long and I don't remember anything else he said because the only thing in my head was that little voice saying: "Oh man! You dummy, you should be over at Mojo's listening to SomeOneElse...look at this pitiful turnout...and, there are so few people here you can't even sneak out unnoticed." But, when Johan Eliasson stopped talking and he let "Bottleneck John" sit down...well... magic happened. I don't how, but suddenly the reincarnation of some now long dead Mississippi delta Bluesman was playing his Amistar Reso-Phonic guitar like it was an extension of his being... an appendage of his soul, a part of his being. And when he sang it was like some alien's mother ship had tractor-beamed that 35 year old Swedish born Johan Eliasson into its evil airborne lab...scraped out Johan and stuffed him with the insides of an old black man with bad teeth...fresh from a full day of back breaking pickin' in the hot and dusty cotton fields. [Now listen readers, I know what I'm talking about: Born a mile and a half from the corner of Beale Street and Main Streets in Memphis Tennessee. I grew up in a house less than 200 meters from a cotton field in West Memphis Arkansas. Hey, I know a little something about cotton sack breaking and acking back, toothless black men and their Blues--at least I have seen it.] Real Blues...the stuff that comes from the heartache and pain of real life in the fertile fields of the broad delta of the mighty Mississippi river back during those terrible times of inequality. John's were REAL Blues, or a so close substitute that it was impossible (for me) to tell the difference. "Bottleneck John" is not some slick, button-downed studio hawker with a digitized, synthesized, commercialized and focus group selected "unique and marketable sound". Nope, this is like what Robert Johnson actually played on the front porch of some Mississippi River delta grocery store, while sittin' in a rocker and singin' the roots of what has today become "The Blues". But, Robert Johnson was not in Copenhagen that Friday night--this was "Bottleneck John", and when I closed my eyes it became so real that I could almost hear the pops and scratches on the records of the 1950s...where I had first heard that soulful music. Mine was most often heard on the RCA Victor wooden cabinet, console radio and record player which was the centerpiece of our modest living room. Long before anyone in town had one of those new television things, we had a radio that was a lot bigger than a TV set is today. It had a speaker a full foot across and, during the day our "maid" (we didn't call her our "mammy", but she was) would tune in WDIA, the AM radio station over in Memphis which we all knew as "the Negro station". A station, which in the 1950s had a "Beale Street Blues Boy" singing live on the air. That name was later shortened to "Blues Boy" and, later still to a simple "BB". That is right, B.B. King played right into my living room, live, when i was kid--listening.) We would listen to "Negro music" until time for mom or dad to get home...and, then 'Louise' would re-tune to "yall's kind'a music". Yep, I grew up on Real Blues...and, through the magic of an alien mother ship (or something) you too can relive the experience. Do yourself a favor--if all you know about Blues is hard driving dancin' music you need to make the chance sit at the feet of "Bottleneck John" for an hour or two--more if you are really lucky. And enjoy a little time travel back to the roots of good, down home, cotton pickin', God-fearing, closely kin to church music, Blues...take the trip...and, don't worry about those tens of thousands of folks who are not smart enough to be exactly where you are. The one word review: Real! RECOMMENDATION:
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 Bottleneck John |