BUDDY GUY: BREAKING OUT (1980)
1) Have You Ever Been
Lonesome; 2) You Can Make It If You Try; 3) Break Out All Over You; 4) She
Winked Her Eye; 5) I Didn't Know My Mother Had A Son Like Me; 6) Boogie Family
Style; 7) You Called Me In My Dream; 8) Me & My Guitar.
Apparently, this period in Buddy Guy's career
is so ridiculously understudied and underappreciated that not even the
Internet, our most trustworthy and loyal counselor in all things (especially
when it comes to the latest pop crap single that sold 100,000 copies in three
digital minutes), can be relied upon for cohesive information. The (current)
Wikipedia page for this album states, for instance, that it was issued in 1988,
and it probably was (still other sources say 1996 and/or 2008), but it was actually
a late reissue — the original date seems to be 1980 or 1981 at best. The
All-Music Guide review of the album, other than listing some of the credits,
gets away with one or two vague phrases that could be equally well applied to
99% of Buddy's output ("raw but applied talent and showmanship" —
what the hell does "raw but applied" even mean?), and gives no clue
as to whether the reviewer has even heard the songs. Who do you turn to for
comfort?
Well, at least the good old Only Solitaire is
here to tell you that Breaking Out
sounds nothing like anything that Buddy had put out prior to that — and only
partially like anything that he would put out after that. The oddity of the
record is that, while remaining firmly grounded in standard blues territory,
this time it's all about the tone. Yes, this is where Buddy falls upon a new,
rich, not totally unique or innovative, but seriously idiosyncratic electric
guitar tone — thick, trebly, distorted, echoey, crackling but melodic — and
proceeds to explore it on every single
song on the album. You might suspect it makes things monotonous and boring,
but it does not: since there is enough formal diversity (slow 12-bar, fast
12-bar, boogie, ballad, R&B), all it does is make every single song kick
major ass.
ʽHave You Ever Been Lonesomeʼ, presented here
as an «original» number, is really just ʽFive Long Yearsʼ (var.: ʽHave You Ever
Loved A Womanʼ) with new lyrics, but you could argue that the presence of this
tone is really the thing that makes it original, particularly when the man
shuts up and just plays his guitar — fast, passionate, thunderstormy,
irreverent, and with the guitar assuming the language of a raging bull. I would
still insist that when Clapton did the same thing on his From The Cradle fifteen years later (and seriously influenced by
Buddy), he would be able to come up with more inventive phrasing... but he
never had this kind of tone, and whatever be the case, Buddy got there first.
When he experiments with the same tone on
softer numbers, such as ʽYou Can Make It If You Tryʼ, the results are tasteful
but not quite as exciting — Breaking Out
is really all about «breaking out» on such rip-roaring tracks as the funky ʽI
Didn't Know My Mother Had A Son Like Meʼ, or the breathlessly fast ʽBoogie Family
Styleʼ, or the totally instrumental showcase ʽMe & My Guitarʼ that closes
the album with five minutes of fretboard assassination that seems to be delivered
in one uninterrupted blast, as if the player's brain were operating on a single
powerful charge/impulse that took that long to discharge: normally, these blues
jams tend to run out of steam pretty fast, but this here is just one
uninterrupted gulp, like watching somebody pick up a wine barrel and drain it
off in one go. Listening to this in headphones could indeed make one dizzy and
delirious, especially considering the potential psychedelic effects of that
treated tone, so be careful about this.
Little can be said about the virtues of
individual songs, melodies, or supporting instrumentation — and little needs to
be said, since it is all about that tone and the power to use it. Buddy would
go on using it in the future, but, strangely enough, never again would he make
an album of such stubborn consistency: Breaking
Out is indeed a stylistic oddity in his catalog, and a very welcome one,
I'd say. Definitely a thumbs up if you're in the mood for some serious
whiplashing.
I saw Buddy Guy in a 150-200 seat room in 1990. Ever since then I have looked for recordings to recapture that experience. I finally found it when I looked up Have You Ever Been Lonesome on youtube after reading this review.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much.