Barry Goldberg – Blasts From My Past

The title of this album hints at a retrospective collection or a rummage sale of outtakes garnered from here and there. The presence of three different studio locations provides further evidence that this is something of a quilt assembly, and it is a musical sewing job in which the seams sometimes seem to have worn thin. Fans of blues and rock will find sections of agreeable groove; in fact, there are listeners who will even find the opening track entitled “Jimi the Fox” to be an absolute charmer, although to others it might seem to be the musical equivalent of a black velvet painting. Tracks such as the Lazy Lester cover “Sugar Coated Love” are superb, glowing with an extremely warm and vibrant band sound and further lit up with the almost fluorescent sound of Barry Goldberg’s organ. As usual with this artist’s albums, liner credits are something of a mess. Goldberg fans are used to their idol Michael Bloomfield showing up uncredited or under another name due to contract restrictions — here he is just plain “Michael.” Yet no drummer is credited at all for any of the sessions, and there is no information about which guitarists play on which track. The drum seat could conceivably be held by “Fast” Eddie Hoh, who worked on most of Goldberg’s albums, but with recording sessions spread across both coasts and Muscle Shoals, AL, too, it is a good guess that more than one drummer is involved. Whoever is in the band on “It Hurts Me Too” provides a textbook example of lousy blues playing — two slide guitarists and the harmonica blower Charlie Musselwhite step all over each other throughout a performance that is painful to listen to, and not because of its deep emotional content.