Bloggerhythms

One of the great things about used record/CD shops is the ultra-cheap obscurities a shopper can stumble on. At Princeton Record Exchange , located downtown and a block away from the historic university's campus, you'll find what I believe to be one of the best stores of its kind in America. While doing my usual perusing on a recent visit the employees were blasting music over the store's speaker system. It's what you do in a used record store. As expected, the young people who work there have highly eclectic and unusual tastes and what they play is frequently not to my liking. However, on this particular day they rang my bell. I asked the clerk what I was listening to and if it was for sale. He said it was a band named The Makers and, yes, the disc could be purchased for the too good to pass up price of $1.99 (plus New Jersey sales tax, of course). The Devil's Nine Questions is entirely instrumental and can best be described as a blending of two closely rel...

Any serious musician must have some knowledge and appreciation of the blues to have any credibility, even if it's a genre they don't work in regularly. As proof, you can hear the blues in the songs of a ton of musicians who don't have any real connection to the genre: stars such as James Taylor ("Steamroller Blues") or even Carole King. Surely you can hear Bessie Smith or Susan Tedeschi belting out "I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet" without a whole lot of effort. No blues satisfies my soul more than slow burning blues. These songs, many with extended, improvised guitar solos that often unfold at a snail's pace allow the finger-picker to stretch out and show off his chops. Intense but smoldering guitar work played by virtuosos, often supported by jazzy organ or piano fills and understated vocals, are a hallmark of the genre. Electric blues sounds like rock music to many people and acoustic blues is often thought of as folk music but real m...