Cobb: Black Pearls

August 25, 2003

Black Pearls

eric Sardinas has a new album coming out. It's called Black Pearls. Just a couple days ago I went searching for guitar solos, and wound up once again digging on Sardinas. I should be picking up this CD, but I'm so broke it's pathetic. Meanwhile, here's my old review of Treat Me Right written April 2000:

So I was listening to KLON's sunday blues show several months ago, and the dj is slobbering all over himself talking about the new Eric Sardinas album.
I listen to the title track and I am hooked, but I forget the name of the artist! So I'm rambling around in a daze for weeks and nobody knows who this guy is. I finally hear it again, and bam, it's that sound, that technique!

Sardinas is one of those rare artists who makes you sit up and wonder 'how'd he do that with a guitar?'. After listening to him, everybody elses' improvisations seem commercial and cliche. He puts serious tricks onto old hillbilly rhythms that really flipped my top. It's like stuff you've never heard.

I'm not much of a highbrow blues guy. I bought the John Lee Hooker with Santana on it several years ago like everybody else. And I bought an old Muddy Waters just to bone up. I really love Blues Rock that you get every once in a while in your dive bars, but all that commodity House of Blues stuff left me cold. So basically all I had was SRV, but nothing where the rhythm throws you a curve with an extra bar like that old Hooker stuff.

Now yesterday, I put Sardinas in my changer and rolled down the windows and cranked it on Sunset Boulevard. I don't think those people in their black t-shirts and sunglasses knew what hit 'em, but they couldn't resist it.

Most every track on this album ROCKS! It's definitely intelligent musicality that you can bang your head to, and it's hella funny....What else can be said?

I can't wait to catch this guy live.

Posted by mbowen at August 25, 2003 07:08 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.visioncircle.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/548