Hell, yeah!

In the absence of that occasional sturdy variant, seemingly recently lopped, “best thing you’ve heard all month”, that hybrid of blogger takeover and nights in, here is a cracker on all fronts, John Scofield’s new work, and from best title like ever, “Country for Old Men”. Don’t run, Tiggs, this is no country like you know, especially this version of Hank Williams staple, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”. OK, this isn’t the album version, that being unavailable in this country’s youtube, but it is a slower lope at it than the recorded version. And it is OK, but you will have to imagine the version that nearly had me drive a nun over at lunchtime. Less lonely, more full on stir crazy, cabin fever demento I could scream. Or at least play such manic, marginalised guitar that even Hank might question his authorship, with barely scarce glimpses of any remembered sequence of notes, more the tunes of the synapses in Jack Nicholsons head as he went slowly mad in The Shining. A maelstrom of inventive brio, only finally nailing the tune in the final bars. I love it. And there’s more like that on the record. If you think jazz is hotel lobby muzak, well the only reference is that hotel in Vegas from, and during, Fear and Loathing. With Mr Scofiled displaying the billiest billy goatee in christendom.
Yup, quite like this. Barney Kessel? I don’t think so.

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