So, what have you been listening to lately?

[Dave W]

[uwe]

That's a very unorthodox style of playing banjo - you can tell they didn't have lot of youtube tutorials back then.  Or maybe Tony thought it was a sitar.  (Or: Given that the song is about the charms of a belly-dancer, maybe he tried to recreate a sitar sound with the banjo because there was no sitar in the studio.)

Speaking of which, here in this live reording two years earlier (still with Graham Nash), Tony Hicks is using something sitar-like to play the song.



The vid Dave posted, here in better quality and with Allan Clarke's announcement,



is from 1969 (a performance in a Scandinavian TV show) and already features Nash's sucessor Terry Sylvester. Nash had left a year before having become estranged from the group serving only the singles market (and his music and lyrics being deemed uncommercial) - with the  The Hollies Sing Dylan project bringing things to a head. There is also another half-live (vocals live with studio backing track) version on youtube from 1968, shortly before Nash left,



where you can hear how much more dominant Nash's falsetto was compared to the (faultless, but less immediately recognizable) one of Sylvester. It automatically reminds me of CSN&Y when he joins in.

And this is The Hollies doing it live 7 years later (of course with Sylvester, I saw them live around that time and they were great) - also with the banjo.



And where is the Purple connection you cry?! Easy, Ian Paice is a great fan of Hollies drummer Bobby Elliott (and, unusual for a drummer who is often viewed as a more technical player, also of Ringo Starr) and cites him as one of his early influences.

[Dave W]

The first video you posted is outstanding.

I never imagined that a banjo was used on the recording.

[Pilgrim]

I thought the guitar in the first video in Uwe's post looked like some kind of multi-string Vox Phantom.  The body outline is similar. 

[westen44]

[uwe]

I thought the guitar in the first video in Uwe's post looked like some kind of multi-string Vox Phantom.  The body outline is similar.

It does, but didn't Vox do something sitar-like as well? Perhaps it was converted to get a sitar-like sound because they didn't want to lug a heavy Banjo around for just one song. Not that those Vox gadgets were exactly known for sitar-sound-endangering sustaaaaaaiiiin. 

[uwe]

Finally, Priest get some butts on the dance floor a movin'!

[Dave W]

[Dave W]

Marianne is 77 today.

[uwe]

People have said it before, but Bonamassa's singing isn't anywhere near his guitar playing. Him singing lead is a bit like Paul Rodgers being adamant about playing lead guitar on stage and not just sing and play some rhythm. Why he doesn't get himself a great singer, but continues in his quest to emulate all the great bluesmen who played guitar and sang, is beyond me. He doesn't have a terrible voice (not like Gary Moore) and hits all the right notes, but it's not naturally expressive and sounds learned.

And Derek Trucks is likley the greatest living slide guitarist today if not the - with all due respect to Duane Allman and Johnny Winter -  greatest one ever. Friggin' amazing.

[uwe]

Marianne is 77 today.

When did her voice change from so clean to so broken? She had that pure folkie voice, spent a couple or years with the Stones and all of the sudden it's ...



Is that what Mick and Keef do to you if you are not cut out for their life style?

It's a Shel Silverstein song covered first by Dr Hook in the mid-seventies (bonus track on their first Greatest Hits album), but Marianne's version several years later was of course the internationally successful one. I still think that Dennis Locorriere's version is the more emotionally gripping one though.



Has Marianne regained her voice? Last I heard she had lost it due to some failed surgery?

[westen44]

People have said it before, but Bonamassa's singing isn't anywhere near his guitar playing. Him singing lead is a bit like Paul Rodgers being adamant about playing lead guitar on stage and not just sing and play some rhythm. Why he doesn't get himself a great singer, but continues in his quest to emulate all the great bluesmen who played guitar and sang, is beyond me. He doesn't have a terrible voice (not like Gary Moore) and hits all the right notes, but it's not naturally expressive and sounds learned.

And Derek Trucks is likley the greatest living slide guitarist today if not the - with all due respect to Duane Allman and Johnny Winter -  greatest one ever. Friggin' amazing.

B.B. King said Derek Trucks was about the best he had ever heard. 

[doombass]

People have said it before, but Bonamassa's singing isn't anywhere near his guitar playing. Him singing lead is a bit like Paul Rodgers being adamant about playing lead guitar on stage and not just sing and play some rhythm. Why he doesn't get himself a great singer, but continues in his quest to emulate all the great bluesmen who played guitar and sang, is beyond me. He doesn't have a terrible voice (not like Gary Moore) and hits all the right notes, but it's not naturally expressive and sounds learned.

And Derek Trucks is likley the greatest living slide guitarist today if not the - with all due respect to Duane Allman and Johnny Winter -  greatest one ever. Friggin' amazing.

I'm not saying Gary Moore had the best of singing voices but to me Bonamassa does'nt come near him. Joe's voice mostly makes me cringe, he sounds like Kermit. Can't argue on Derek Trucks though, superb player.

[uwe]

As with his guitar playing, less would have sometimes been mo(o)re with Gary. Always max intensity on every note, whether singing or playing, very tiring after a while. And unlike his guitar tone, his lead vocals weren't that great to warrant being the center of attention all the time.

You don't have to be a great singer as a lead guitar frontman as long as your voice isn't unpleasant and has some expression (which does not mean you have to wrench out every vocal tone like Gary Moore did). I liked the voices of say, Jimi Hendrix, Alvin Lee, Rory Gallagher, Johnny Winter and even Frank Zappa.

[Basvarken]

People have said it before, but Bonamassa's singing isn't anywhere near his guitar playing. Him singing lead is a bit like Paul Rodgers being adamant about playing lead guitar on stage and not just sing and play some rhythm. Why he doesn't get himself a great singer, but continues in his quest to emulate all the great bluesmen who played guitar and sang, is beyond me.

That is because people like Joe Bonamassa surround themselves with personnel that does not dare to speak the truth.
If everybody around you constantly keeps praising every fart you let out, you start believing it's awesome yourself.

Same goes for the high squeels the Glenn Hughes keeps/kept belting out every third line in his songs, for years. Somebody should have told him to stop it and just sing.