Seriously not stonewalling here, but I got another pop/rock/blues playlist for y'all. I'm a huge fan of Rory Gallagher's first two solo records. I first became aware of them from a Polydor compilation of the highlights of the first two released in America under the name Sinner . . . and Saint. I'd had records of his pass through my possession before, but this is the one that stuck, until I realized it was actually a comp & just picked up the first two on CD. I have to say that they were dead on with the track selections. I love the songwriting on this: after these albums, he mostly stuck to white boy blues and boogie, loosing the variety of songwriting that he demonstrated here.
For my money, he should have been the white blues boy who got all the accolades that fell into Eric Clapton's lap . . . part of that is I just never understood what made Clapton such a god-like guitarist to so many people, and part of it is about Clapton being a lazy, generally bad songwriter. On the last count Gallagher too ended up being a slacker, but this is some quality stuff right here. In the end, like all guitar heroes, he wasn't really called to account for his songs, as long as he played that guitar.
And indeed, while I consider the songwriting a couple steps above decent, the main reason I'm here is for the guitar. Despite all the dissimilarities, there is something about Gallagher's best solos that remind me of Coltrane . . . though for the life of me, I can't put my finger on exactly why. Perhaps it's the fact that the solos are simultaneously explosive and economical: that for all the notes, there doesn't seem to be a lot of excess.
Anyway, here's a playlist, essentially Sinner . . . and Saint re-imagined as a double LP. If you are interested, I have written about Rory at greater length elsewhere.
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