Customer Reviews

Snakebite

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This album is fantastic! It has great uptempo blues jams to boogie to, as well as the classic heart breaking stories that blues master Magic Slim tells.

"Key To Your Door" is a great track in the classic blues genre, and "Shake It" has that great blues shuffle made so popular by SRV's "Pride And Joy." Slim's "Please Don't Dog Me" and the instrumental (almost) title track "Snakebite" are classic jams as well.

But the stand out track is "Lump On Your Stump" which is a fun play on lyrical rhyming, guitar rhythms, and funky drums. You gotta listen to this song! Just great stuff that will get your feet tappin' and your lips movin'.

This album is a great record to drive to or have playing at your backyard BBQ. Magic Slim is a master and doesn't get the recognition he deserves (outside Chicago that is). He's brilliant. As he says on this album: "And you know that, man."

After losing guitarist John Primer from the group and with Slim's relocation to Lincoln, NE, the Teardrops floundered for a bit, but this is a very welcome return to form that puts them back on top as the best Chicago blues band. Whether you call it houserockin', Delta, or Chicago-style blues, the sound on this album is all Magic Slim, and synthesizes everything from country-western to storybook blues to rock & roll. Better yet, the clarity of the recorded sound is wonderful and will have you tapping your feet & growling along with the Magic Man from start to finish. This is right up there with "Gravel Road" as essential Magic Slim albums from Blind Pig Records.

When Dick Shurman produces a CD you know it's going to be a good one. "Snakebite" is no exception. From the opening call from Slim to "roll it" it is a blues-rock free for all with hard edged, raw tones emanating from Slim's guitar. There are some real gems here from Slim's slow burning "Please Don't Dog Me" to the Chuck Berry like "Shake It" down to Muddy Water's delta number "Country Boy." This is definitely Slim at his finest. If you haven't heard Slim before, this is the place to start.

The problem with a lot of blues acts is that when they get to the studio, they become quite tentative and lose a lot of the power and energy they produce on stage. A fair amount of blues guitarists water down their music with horns sections, shortened and polite (rather than aggressive and expressive) solos and somewhat derivative classic blues sound. For instance I bought a recent Otis Rush cd and it sounded like a lukewarm attempt to recreate the restrained sound of a lackluster early 1950's BB King or Muddy Waters B-side, rather than a quality collection of music from a classic Chicago bluesman.

No such worries on Snakebite. This cd bites and just won't let go. This is hard driving blues - like adding an extra bottle of habanero sauce to the average Chicago blues band - not just bluesy rock. I have only listened to the cd twice since buying it this evening and I love it already. The albums I have really fallen for on the first spin or two have been pretty few and far between for me, but, as I anticipate will happen with this disk, those albums have become classics for me.

Every song on this disk is strong, definitely no fillers. It's original stuff too (except for a cover of Muddy Water's Country Boy). What's Wrong is a great opening song and the title song is an excellent instrumental featuring slide works by Michael Dolton, the rhythm guitarist, although it wasn't as reminescent of Hound Dog Taylor as the liner notes indicated. I especially liked Mind Your Own Business, as well.

I bought this disk tonight after seeing the band for the first time live playing at a mid-sized community festival. Unfortunately, the show was a bit of a debacle. None of the festival's organizers had bothered to list in any local media or the web the lineup of bands and I stumbled into this show by accident, about halfway through it, speculating for the first couple of songs that it might have been any old local blues band rather than one of the strongest blues bands playing anywhere. Additionally, the sound equipment was very poor, with too much bass, and the sounds of the crowds socializing in the beer garden where the stage was located were too high and it was a weird combination of being too loud and being a bit hard to hear the music at the same time. To add insult to injury, Slim was either feeling poorly or his amp cut out entirely for at least half the half show I saw - it was mostly a threesome with Michael Dotson playing excellent lead on his Telecaster for about six songs. In spite of all this, it was still a great show. I bought my disk from the band and went back to the van to have Slim autograph it. He set down a classic blues player's dinner of fried chicken wings washed down with a bucket (literally) of beer and after searching five minutes for a pen, signed my liner notes, leaving large greasy fingerprints all over the plastic and the paper. Now that's real blues. I just hope this sort of diet doesn't kill him.

Anyway, if you are into hard-edged, guitar-based blues, don't skip this disk. It's a winner.

[Edit 1/31/08: More than six years and at least 100 spins of this disk later, it's still one of my favorite blues albums. I've seen Slim and the Teardrops another time since then and damn are they a fine live act. If you have any doubts about this, buy one of the Zoo Bar live albums (I believe there are around five or so - they're all good-to-great. I've got a Magic Slim station set up on pandora.com right now (great Amazon-affiliated website - you enter your favorite artist and they create a webradio playlist featuring that artist and other similar bands or performers. If you hear a song you like, you can click on it and you get linked to the page at Amazon for that album where you can either buy it right then and there or else Wish List for another time). They just played Lonely For Your Love off the Blue Magic album - outstanding, guitar solo-oriented classic Slim song. I'm going to have to buy that album and the several Zoo Bar disks I don't yet own. Anyway, if you enjoy electric blues with an edge (but it's not blues-rock) and/or houserockin' style blues, this is a must buy.

Magic Slim and the Teardrops' key strength is authenticity. These aren't a bunch of young white guys pretending to be blues masters (however entertaining that may be). These guys are the real thing. They don't do anything terribly original, here on any of the other CDs I've heard, but they cover familiar ground very well. All of the tracks here are highly listenable. The guitar work is raw and edgy and full of life, instead of being polished and honed into a frozen, lifeless perfection. If you don't like hearing the occasional goof, you may not like Slim's playing. I think it's the blemishes that makes him distinctive. About the only criticism I'd make is that several of the songs start to sound the same after repeated listenings. The Teardrops are very good at what they do, but their range is a bit limited. I haven't seen them live, but I suspect that they're even more enjoyable on stage than in a recording. Still, I pull this and my other Teardrops CDs out regularly.

And if you play guitar like I do, you will probably also find that this is an excellent CD to jam along with.

Have you ever seen Magic Slim and the Teardrops live? It'a a glorious celebration of music...it's impossible to feel down and out when watching and hearing this band! This CD catches that excitement on disc. Funky shuffles and foot-tapping boogies make this music hard to resist. Play it loud! Thanks Slim!

Tried to write Kicks &%@ but that didn't make it through the AMZN censors. Slim's best since Grand Slam. Essential.

In my mind, Slim is the greatest blues guitarist currently residing on planet earth. Not the most popular, not the most famous, not a whole lot of things... But, if you ever want to witness what a blues man does when a blues man does what he does, this is the man to listen to. While this is not my favorite Slim album (that's Black Tornado) I've yet to listen to a bad, or even not good, Slim album. When the funds permit it, I hope to eventually own every album he's ever recorded. Yeah, I'm a fan.

Slim is actually so good that it's gets hard to write reviews for his different albums. They are all so consistantly good. Go see him live while you still have the chance. He's the man!

CRANK IT UP AND LET THE FLOKS NEXT DOOR COMPLANE THIS ROCKS

This is another strong effort from Magic Slim. It fails to reach the moody heights of "Black Tornado", but it's tough to follow such a brilliant disc. The only problem is a relative lack of slow blues, which I consider to be Magic Slim's strength. Other than the great "Please Don't Dog Me" and a cover of Muddy Waters' "Country Boy" it's all up-tempo blues. That's OK, though. This is still a very fine disc that deserves 3.5 stars if I could grant it that rating. A merely strong Magic Slim CD is better than almost any other blues being put out today.