THE BLUES PROJECT: LIVE AT THE CAFE AU GO GO (1966)
1) Goin' Down Louisiana; 2)
You Go, I'll Go With You; 3) Catch The Wind; 4) I Want To Be Your Driver; 5) Alberta;
6) The Way My Baby Walks; 7) Violets Of Dawn; 8) Back Door Man; 9) Jelly Jelly
Blues; 10) Spoonful; 11) Who Do You Love.
Along with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the
Blues Project were one of the first American acts that consisted of young middle-to-low
class white guys playing the black man's devil music, wondering how the hell
it could ever have happened that they had let British young middle-to-low class white guys take this sort of
initiative a couple of years earlier. They were less successful than Paul
Butterfield about landing a record contract, only managing to have their first
album out in early '66. On the other hand, unlike Butterfield's, their debut was a live one, recorded in
November '65 at the Cafe Au Go Go in the Village — introducing the band at its
rawest and wildest, and drawing inevitable analogies with the Yardbirds, who
were also introduced to the world in full through a red-hot live session back
in '64.
The original Blues Project line-up included
Danny Kalb on lead guitar and vocals; Steve Katz on rhythm guitar; Andy Kulberg
on bass; Roy Blumenfeld on drums; and latecomer Al Kooper on organ (Kooper
originally played guitar, but ever since he first tried out the organ on the
sessions for Dylan's ʽLike A Rolling Stoneʼ, the instrument was promoted to his
personal good luck charm — not that he had any particular knack for that particular instrument). Last, but not
least, was vocalist Tommy Flanders, whose cultural and social background put
him somewhat apart from the rest of the guys (well, the names speak for
themselves) and may have been responsible for the tension that eventually drove
them apart even before the album was released.
The record is not fully representative of the
Blues Project onstage — like most of the other bands that tried out the live
album schtick at the time, due to format demands, they had to cut down on the
jamming and improvisation and concentrate on relatively short, compact
song-based numbers. Nor did they yet have much audacity in trying out their own
material: other than Andy Kulberg's instrumental ʽThe Way My Baby Walksʼ, all of
the tunes are covers. And for the most part, the Blues Project predictably
covers... the blues: Chicago stuff from Muddy and Howlin' Wolf, with a bit of
Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry thrown in for the extra energetics, and a Bobby
Bland tune for a little extra bit of soulfulness.
On the other hand, seeing as how this is the
Village, after all, it is only natural that the band's territory also extends
in the direction of folk — with a somewhat surprisingly modernistic slant, as,
instead of doing ʽIf I Had A Hammerʼ or at least ʽTurn Turn Turnʼ, they prefer
to popularize imported fellow Donovan (ʽCatch The Windʼ) and the Village's own
Eric Andersen (ʽViolets Of Dawnʼ), as well as redo the traditional folk-blues tune
ʽAlbertaʼ ("...let your hair hang low..." and all that) in
sentimental folk ballad mode (with a whiff of lounge jazz, perhaps). This certainly
gives them their own twist, since even Paul Butterfield, not to mention the
Yardbirds, preferred to stay away from the sissy vibes of folk balladry — but
the Blues Project, from the very beginning, showed that it was not going to insist
on taking its name too literally.
All fine and dandy, but how good are these guys, really? Well — they
certainly have enough energy to rock the Café (although, judging by the rather
limp applause, the house wasn't exactly jam-packed on those evenings), and they
are smart enough to introduce their own tempo, time, and tonality changes into
the songs, so as to limit the comparison angle between the covers and the
originals. The singing, more or less equally divided between Kalb and Flanders
(Al also gets to sing on the Chuck Berry cover), is competent, and the playing
is engaging as long as it is possible to think of it in terms of «honor duels»
between Al, trying to prove to Danny that his is the rocking-est organ in town,
and Danny, trying to prove to Al that his is the flashiest and speediest style
of playing on the other side of Eric Clapton.
The latter, in fact, is not that far removed
from the truth: Kalb's parts are expressive, fun, and technically stunning for
late '65, showing a clear interest in the jazz school of playing as well as the
expectable Chicago blues lessons. The weak side is the thin, limp guitar tone,
unfortunately, quite characteristic of all the pre-Hendrix era (and quite a few
of the post-Hendrix era) American R&B-ers — of course, you had to be fairly
careful with your feedback and distortion when playing in the folk-oriented
Village, but in retrospect, there may simply be too little «power» here to
properly capture the interest of the modern listener. Downplay that aspect,
though, and Kalb's parts on such blues snarls as ʽJelly Jelly Bluesʼ and
ʽSpoonfulʼ will indeed be second only to Mike Bloomfield (inasmuch as aggression-channeling
young American six-stringers from 1965-66 are concerned).
And yet, this rarely feels like an album where
everybody is doing whatever is the most suitable thing for them. The Rolling
Stones (not always, but often) and, say, The Doors (remember their ʽBack Door Manʼ?) were able to
capture and preserve the creepy-devilish atmosphere of these Muddy Waters and
Howlin' Wolf tunes. These nice,
bright kids from New York are not able to do that — they can host a friendly
rock'n'roll party, and they can let off some steam, but there is no sense of allegoric
«danger» coming from their renditions. In fact, the jazz-folk recreation of ʽAlbertaʼ,
in terms of soul and feeling, easily trumps almost everything else that they do
here — pointing out the general route which Al Kooper would soon start to take.
So, if it weren't for the notoriously exciting bits
of Kalb / Kooper interplay, and an overall good chance of assessing young
Danny's talents from several different angles, Live At The Cafe Au Go Go would not be much more than a valuable
historical document. In fact, even with Danny, it isn't much more than one — mainly a teaser, and certainly no match for Five Live Yardbirds, the album whose
model it loosely follows. Fortunately, the Blues Project still had some time
left to ripen and come into its own, before the whole mutual-tension and lack-of-perspective
thing would start tearing it apart.
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