KILLED BY DEATH: THE LONG AND BOISTEROUS LIFE OF LEMMY

"BLUE" JIMMY:  MOTORHEADBANGER

BLIND DOG OZZY:  NEUROTIC CHIHUAHUA

"BLUE" JIMMY:  I was on my way to the liquor store when a friend called me and told me that Lemmy had died.  Needless to say, I grabbed a little more adult refreshments than I had planned.  Not because I was so sad, but because I wanted to celebrate the life of a man who had given me so many blown stereo speakers, so much irreparable hearing damage and so much joy in my life.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Thanks,  Lemmy!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  I don't need to write any kind of long biography here.  The life of Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister has been well documented in books, film and the truckload of recordings he left behind.  He played in a few groups in his early days but it was as the voice and bassist of the band Motorhead that he and his bandmates took Hard Rock/Heavy Metal to another level in the late 70's and early 80's.  Sounding like Blue Cheer jamming with Iggy and The Stooges in the MC 5's garage, they scared the s**t out of a lot of people who thought Loverboy and The Cars were exceedingly hard rock.  They later opened the gates for New Wave Of British Heavy Metal bands like Iron Maiden, Saxon, Venom, Raven, Angelwitch and any others who dared to be heavy at a time when musical tastes were leaning toward more commercial sounds.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  When I heard the song, "Overkill" I thought the record player was stuck on the wrong speed!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  But Lemmy was a one-of-a-kind rocker even in an era of colorful personalities.  His voice was more Neanderthal Man than pretty boy pop idol and he was unique in that he played a Rickenbacker bass through a distorting Marshall amp and often played "lead" bass that often overpowered his guitar playing band members.  

BLIND DOG OZZY:  And you couldn't hear s**t except ringing in your ears for hours after the show!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Some memorable Lemmy moments I remember:  Watching  the original Motorhead open for Ozzy with Randy Rhodes on his first tour of America and blowing the first few rows off the face of the earth; Lemmy playing with a ripped speaker cone at the Santa Monica Civic and stopping the show and threatening to punch misbehaving skinheads and punkers at The House Of Blues.  He was older, wiser, uglier, nastier, meaner yet nicer, than any of his contemporaries.  He had a sense of style that everyone in Rock has imitated.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  And he made it cool to have warts on your face!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  But what I really respected about Lemmy was that unlike Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and others, he was no Rock 'N' Roll Casualty.  He had many women, smoked, drank, did hard drugs and hard tours yet paced himself, handled his fame, did what he wanted, lived a simple life and lived to be 70 years old while still recording and touring until the end of his life.  The only thing that could kill Lemmy was Death itself and he probably lived exactly as long as he was supposed to.  We will never have to see a video on YouTube of an old, fat, gray-haired, pathetic Lemmy trying to do a "reunion" tour!

BLIND DOG OZZY: Thanks, Lemmy!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Sake's Alive!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Wow!  Wow!

bluejames61@hotmail.com

ADVANCED BLUES 101: SLIDE GUITAR -- FORGOTTEN ART OF THE LOWDOWN BLUESMEN

"BLUE" JIMMY:  LOWDOWN BLUESMAN 

PLAYING SLIDE GUITAR WITH  THE NECK OF A WINE BOTTLE

BLIND DOG OZZY:  NEUROTIC CHIHUAHUA

"BLUE" JIMMY:  What it is?  The art of Blues Slide Guitar has been around in America for more than 100 years!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Longer than anyone YOU know!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Like any good thang, Lowdown Bluesmen adapted, improvised extrapolated, borrowed ...

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Stole!!!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  ... This technique of playing the guitar from Hawaiian guitarists who invented this style of playing and toured the United States in the early 1900's.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Most folks don't know that Hawaiian music was the most popular type of music in the U.S. at that time!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Traveling medicine shows which featured all manner of exotic entertainment (musicians; magicians; freaks; ventriloquists; strongmen; acrobats) kept the crowd entertained while smooth-talking snake oil peddlers sold their goods.  Down South, many early Bluesmen were in the audience and were mesmerized by the sound of Hawaiian guitarists in these shows who laid steel bars against the strings of their guitars and made some mind-blowing sounds!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Woooooooo!!!  

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Out of this tradition, came slide guitar playing Bluesmen like Charley Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson, Blind Willie Johnson and Tampa Red.  One of the most accomplished of  these early Bluesmen was The Great Muddy Waters, who came straight off the plantation with an acoustic guitar and a bottleneck and ripped through popular music history right up to his death in 1983, jamming with the likes of  Johnny Winter, Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  And had girlfriends young enough to be his daughters!!!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Slide guitar of course, made its way into the the Rock era with players like Johnny Winter, Duane Allman, Rory Gallagher, Jimmy Page and Joe Perry  raising goosebumps with some nasty slide licks on their recordings.  Contemporary  Blues players like Bob Brozman,  Sonny Landreth, Dave Hole, and Eric Sardinas take slide into places Robert Johnson would be proud of!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Don't forget the most famous slide riff of all time -- "B-B-B-B-Bad to the Bone!"--- George Thorogood!  He stole that s**t from Muddy Waters!`

"BLUE" JIMMY:  But starting around the 1990's, when rock musicians stopped listening to The Blues, slide guitar got reduced to a "sound effect" and became a novelty used by some alternative rock guitarists for a laugh.  

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Listen to those half-assed records from that era -- The joke is on them!!!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  My style of slide guitar is based on what the early Delta Bluesmen started and continued right on up to Muddy, Elmore James, Hound Dog Taylor, and J.B. Hutto, using mostly a cheap guitar with high action and a slide made of various materials.  The example in the photos is a Fender resonator guitar which is an inexpensive version of the National and Dobro guitars used by early Bluesmen who were lucky if they could afford one of these contraptions.  Made mostly of brass with a shiny chrome finish, these guitars were ingeniously invented with an acoustic speaker cone that amplified the sound of the guitar without the use of electricity.  This was a big deal for guitarists in the early days before electric guitar, who had to compete with vocalists, strings and big-ass, noisy horns in an orchestra setting!  My resonator used to be shiny like a mirror but after spilling beer, sweat and spit all over it for years, it kinda looks like something Blind Boy Fuller played back in the 30's!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  You should clean that goddamned thing!!!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  The slide I mostly use is a tapered brass slide which combines the nasty sound of a rusty jackknife early Bluesmen used with the slippery tone of a glass slide which gets you all these pretty boy tones that modern players use.  The photo below is just a sampling of all the types of  slides  you can use:   

           

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Left to right you got:  A Zippo lighter; a heart-shaped aluminum tube; a Pyrex glass slide; the neck of a wine bottle (why slide guitar is sometimes referred to as "bottleneck" guitar); a deep purple dome-end glass tube; a ceramic skull & bones slide; a spark plug wrench; an old Coricidin cold medicine bottle; a polished wooden dowel; a heavy brass slide fat on one end and tapered on the other; an old-fashioned jackknife.  

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Some folks have even used a dildo!!!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  My pick is a heavy, Herco thumbpick which is unique in that it's basically a flatpick with a thumb ring attached.  It allows you to let go of the pick for brief periods to mute the guitar's strings in artful ways.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  You ain't gonna play no slide guitar without being an expert at muting the strings!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  To get a good sound on slide guitar, you gotta use an open tuning that allows you to use open strings and get that big fat sound with sliding chords and what not.  Here is a chart of open E tuning:

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Looks like some math s**t a college professor uses to confuse students!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Once you get this tuning, which you can learn from you local certified Bluesman, a whole world of guitar sounds will open up to you and you can quit sounding like one of those British wankers who tried to copy slide riffs off of American Blues records back in the 60's without realizing that Bluesmen were using a slide and an open tuning!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  This really happened and they f***ked it all up and embarrassed themselves!!!  

"BLUE" JIMMY:  This lost art makes very few appearances on today's pop records but those like me who consider The Blues as a religion, have a sense of duty to keep it alive for God-knows-what reason.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  When you electrify it and play it through a blazing Marshall amp and you watch the first few rows of the audience lose control like they're at a holy roller church -- you know the reason!!!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Maybe some young boy or girl will read this blog and decide to carry on the tradition and keep this art alive.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  But beware, boogie chillun!!! ... When you play these type of Blues, you'll play 'em 'til you're dead ... You can't never stop!!!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Sake's Alive!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Wow!  Wow! 

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ADVANCED BLUES 101: BEND IT LIKE "BLUE" JIMMY!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  THE MAN WHAT PLAYS THE BLUES

BLIND DOG OZZY: NEUROTIC CHIHUAHUA

"BLUE" JIMMY:  So yeah, I bin getting a lot of requests to show how I do some of my amazing Blues Guitar Bends by some people just startin' out and even some veterans of The Blues!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  The Blues Is Alright!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  It ain't easy folks!  It takes practice, discipline, dedication to your art and a shot an' a beer don't hurt (but it don't help, neither!).  

BLIND DOG OZZY:  !!!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  In the first photo, you see my hand in the pre-bend position, relaxed, and probably doing a fill between verses.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Diddly, Dee- Dee- Daa!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  In the second photo, lookit my fingers!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  OH, F**K!!!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  I'm pushin' the B string upwards like a motherf**ker, and the fingertips of my fretting hand are digging up under the other muted strings like I'm mining for gold!  This is on a stiff-action, '89 Fender American Standard Stratocaster strung up with 11's in standard tuning.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  And he don't downtune like some 90's grunge-rock faggot, neither!  

"BLUE" JIMMY:  DUDE!!!  Who does this s**t besides THE MAN WHAT PLAYS THE BLUES, "BLUE" JIMMY?  It's like Me, Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, King Kong and God!

BLIND DOG  OZZY:  An' Hendrix In His Eternal Tomb!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  I'm just joking!  Any well-schooled, Bluesman worth his salt, will use this technique a hundred times during a typical set!  But let me tell you, this guitar technique is why today's rock bands don't sound anything like yesterday's hairy-chested, whiskey-voiced, guitar-slinging bands!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  I guarantee you, Maroon 5, Imagine Dragons and Coldplay never sat down in an empty room with a shot an' a beer trying to cop licks from a Freddie King album!!!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  That's why you don't see no mores bands like Humble Pie, Foghat, Bad Company, ZZ Top, Aerosmith and The Faces!  I remember I had to learn all these bands and  then learn all the peoples they learned from like Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and Big Bill Broonzy!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Young people with ADHD don't have the patience to sit down and learn the whole history of The Blues, so they just mess around and learn whatever they can off the latest video game!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  So gimme a pigfoot and a beer and I'll show you how to "Bend It Like 'BLUE'  JIMMY!"  

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Push those strings around, young man!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Sake's Alive!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Wow!  Wow! 
bluejames61@hotmail.com  

STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN & DOUBLE TROUBLE: SAVIORS OF THE BLUES

"BLUE" JIMMY:  BLUESMAN

BLIND DOG OZZY:  NEUROTIC CHIHUAHUA

"BLUE"  JIMMY:  Saturday, April 18,  2015, Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Thank you. You're welcome.  It was the Summer of 1983 when I tuned into Los Angeles radio station KLOS and heard a song by the name of "Pride and Joy" by a band called Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble.  I ain't never heard a guitar being played like that.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  And you still ain't!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  By the end of the Summer I had bought a guitar and was going to the public library to look through their stack of dusty, vinyl Blues LPs and was learning to play Blues riffs from old, scratchy recordings from the 1920's.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  CRACKLE, CRACKLE, CRACKLE, SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Yeah, I was aware of The Blues as an art form since I was a kid because I had seen B.B., Albert and Freddie King on TV.  But I never knew there were Blues bands like Double Trouble who could play this ancient American art form and rock the house down like Hendrix or Led Zeppelin or Aerosmith.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Or a Blues guitarist who could play a Stratocaster behind the back through a wah pedal, tube screamer and a melting down Fender amp turned up to Heavy Metal volume!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Dude!  Stevie Ray's exploits on guitar are legendary and I could write a whole volume on his technique, tone and one-of-kind equipment.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Like that bashed up Strat!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Or how he would play strings thick as piano wire and wear out a whole set of frets in one tour!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  F**k!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  But what I really want to talk about is the legacy of Double Trouble as a band and the mark they made in the history of the Blues.  In the early 80's,  The Blues was deep under ground and was kind of considered "old people's music" by the younger generation.  Old masters like B.B. King were still great but wearing tuxedos and playing ballrooms in Vegas to an older crowd.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  The Blues needed some sex appeal!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  That's where SRV & Double Trouble came in!  Looking like a Band of Gypsies  for the MTV generation, handsome, loud and reeking of cocaine & whiskey, they took the music world by storm and made it cool to like The Blues again.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  And everyone rushed to Guitar Center to buy a Stratocaster!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Including me, man!  But once SRV & Double Trouble opened up the floodgates, Bluesmen who had been long forgotten like Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Albert Collins and Luther Allison were getting gigs and recording again.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  The Blues was happening, baby!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  So now I see that Strat of mine standing in the corner and think how it was once shiny and new with the tags still on it.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  And it even had that new guitar smell!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Now, it's been played and abused and has decades of sweat and blood and beer all sunk into it and it's given me a lifetime of love and music.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  And it's even starting to look almost as beat up as Stevie Ray's!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  I would've never had all that if it weren't for that houserockin' band with the young man in a funky hat and cowboy boots.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Rock on Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Sake's Alive!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Wow!  Wow!
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BAND IN HELL SEEKS BITCHEN DRUMMER!!!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  MUSICIAN

BLIND DOG OZZY:  NEUROTIC CHIHUAHUA

"BLUE" JIMMY:  The same thing happens to me every year!   I see a list of people in popular music who died in the past year and I can't believe how many we lost.  Did you know last year we lost Pete Seeger, Tommy Ramone, Phil Everly of The Everly Brothers,  Paul Revere from Paul Revere and the Raiders, Bobby Keys of the Rolling Stones and Ian Mc Lagan of the Faces?  

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Not to mention Oderus Urungus from GWAR!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Dude!  But there are three musicians we lost last year that were a big influence on me and my music and I want to say goodbye to them in a fitting, rockin' manner.  First up is Jack Bruce, the virtuoso rock, blues and jazz bassist who played and jammed with, well, everyone  but first made his ( big and heavy) mark with Eric Clapton in the band Cream.  Bruce was one of the first to turn the electric bass into a lead instrument and his onstage battles with Clapton and other killer guitarists are legendary.  Check out the YouTube video of his spur of the moment jam with Irish guitar great Rory Gallagher on the Cream blues jam "Politician" or the entire DVD concert he played with ex-Scorpions guitarist Uli Roth.  But it's his performance on the Cream version of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads" that will make me play spontaneous air bass anytime, anywhere.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Even in public!

"BLUE"  JIMMY:  So now every time I hear thunder across the sky Mr. Bruce, I know it's really you tuning up!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  BOOM!  BOOM!  BOOM!

"BLUE"  JIMMY:  We also lost brother Joe Cocker.  Cocker was one of the greatest R&B singers of all time.  Influenced by Ray Charles and other American Blues, Soul and R&B greats, he was known for taking mellow pop songs like "You Are So Beautiful,"  adding his gritty, whiskey-drenched voice and turning them into raunchy, bluesy workouts that overpowered and outsold the originals.  Other hits included "The Letter," "Feelin' Alright" and a rampaging, live, Pentecostal Church-like version of "Cry Me A River" that was an exercise in wild, soulful audience participation.  However,  the song he will always be known best for is his show-stealing Woodstock performance of The Beatles "With a Little Help from My Friends" which almost made people forget that Hendrix was on the bill.  Just for fun, check out the YouTube video of Cocker on an early episode of Saturday Night Live where John Belushi stands right next to him and impersonates him while he sings.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Funny as Hell!

"BLUE"  JIMMY:  Thanks Joe, for the inspiration.  If a filthy, grimy, beer-guzzling polecat like you could sing so beautifully, I know I can do it too.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  In your dreams!

"BLUE"  JIMMY:  Last, I wanna talk about the cat who put the ooooo!  in Bloooooze -- Mr. Johnny Winter.  Winter was an albino guitarist out of Beaumont, Texas who was truly one-of-a-kind.  Going onstage with a big cowboy hat to shield his sensitive albino eyes from the stage lights and swinging his exceedingly long, white hair around his shoulders, he proceeded to play, since the late '50s, blues like no white or black or any other color man has ever played.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  And in bell bottoms and platform shoes!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  At one time, Winter was reportedly the highest paid musician in the world when in 1968 he signed to Columbia Records for more than half-a-million dollars before he ever played a note!  Like Joe Cocker, he was one of the highlights at Woodstock with the song "Mean Town Blues" and completely blew the minds of stoned hippies who wondered how the hell he was getting that sound ( he was playing with a slide on a twelve-string guitar strung with six strings).

BLIND DOG OZZY:  WEEEEE!  WAAAAA! WANGGGGG!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  By the 70's, Winter started recruiting some heavyweight rockers into his band (like Rick Derringer) and started blowing speakers with some of the hardest rock around, going head to head on tour with the best hard rock and heavy metal acts of the day.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  In the late 70's early 80's, he returned to pure Blues and realized his dream of playing with and producing the great Mississippi Bluesman, Muddy Waters which won him Grammy Awards but more importantly, produced some of the most expertly recorded blues of all time.

"BLUE"  JIMMY:  Dude!  But what made Johnny so unique was that he was the bee's knees and the cat's pajamas when it came to playing flat-out guitar guitar guitar.  He would often play rhythm, lead and walking bass lines all at the same time and would give the impression of more than one man playing all at once.  It made you think he could do the whole show by himself with no band.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  And don't get me started on his slide guitar!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  I'll get you started, man!  He was the first man I ever seen playing with a piece of steel on his finger and I stole every lick I could off his records.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  You do that with everybody's records.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  The cool thing is that he did it right and respected the technique of the original Delta Bluesmen.  He didn't just f**k around with it like most of the British players did.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  And then there's that voice.

"BLUE"  JIMMY:  His voice was a cross between a Texas hurricane, a plantation holler and a grumpy juke joint bartender yelling last call!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  (singing) "Rock And Roll Hoochie Koo!"

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Yes sir!  How can I even recommend any highlights?  If nothing else, try these:  "Johnny Winter" his debut on Columbia records (1969) ; "Still Alive and Well" album (1973); "Captured Live" album (1976); "Third Degree"album  (1986) "Let Me In" album (1991); the YouTube video of his entire performance on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert (1974) and anything he did with his idol Muddy Waters either on audio or video.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  We seen him rock the House of Blues in Hollywood before he died and I touched his ancient Gibson Firebird!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  God done broke the mold when he made Johnny, Joe and Jack. When one of the greats in music passes on, I always hear people talk about the angelic band that must be forming up in Heaven.  I can't imagine that three boys who smoked, drank, fornicated and made such a racket went anywhere near Heaven.  

BLIND DOG OZZY:  You mean they went ...

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Down South!  You got one of the best guitar men, bassists and singers to ever play die close together.  Now all they need is a drummer.

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Please, someone with a cow bell!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Sake's Alive!

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Wow!  Wow!
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