Pink Floyd‘s A Momentary Lapse of Reason, alas, was no Dark Side of the Moon. Criticized then as now for being transitional and samey, though, it was far from the worst thing foisted on unsuspecting fans during the 1980s.

Missing in the eternal argument embodied in their 1970s lyric — Which one’s Pink? — was my idea that it was neither Roger Waters nor David Gilmour. Maybe there would have been no Pink Floyd, not really, without Richard Wright. That’s what I hear in “Live at Gdansk” with Gilmour and Wright, recorded in 2006, but issued just days after [...]

It was only a few years ago that I was lamenting the fleeting guitar talent in George Clinton’s early Funkadelic band who reached incredible heights as Clinton’s lead axeman on funk classics like Free Your Mind … And Your Ass Will Follow and Maggot Brain. Besides Eddie Hazel, there was another important guitar player in that group who also had [...]

by Nick DeRiso John Campbell was a bundle of contradictions. He wore cowboy boots and snap-button shirts, but played the blues. Campbell could darken the brightest day with this remarkable scowl, something deepened by criss-crossing scars across his face, yet would laugh uproariously through a friendly game of cards. He listened intently to Lightnin’ Hopkins, but befriended Hell’s Angels. Still, [...]

They are, these odds and ends, the last great treasure left by one Sam Maghett — better known as Magic Sam. This god of the tremolo embodied (just as fully, but with far less fanfare) the same gritty and adventurous West Side Chicago swagger more commonly associated with Buddy Guy and Otis Rush. Yet, we have precious little to go [...]

NICK DERISO: Started as another in rock star Eric Clapton’s celebrated CPR efforts for the careers of the blues legends he loved most, this one was almost lost to the Atlantic vaults. In the end, four different producers worked this thing at two different studios. Sessions were held in 1970, then again in 1972. Four different lineups perform, including one [...]

The late, and unjustly obscure Washington D.C. guitar guru Danny Gatton — known, quite simply, as The Humbler — finally got his splashy major-label debut with this one, and it sparkles in the white-hot spotlight. Good thing, too. By 1994, one of music’s most versatile, talented and electric performers had committed suicide. In the interim, Gatton’s recordings more often included [...]

NICK DERISO: It was payback time for ’60s-stars Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ringo Starr, and the rhythm section from the Rolling Stones. After all, vocalist and harmonica player Chester Arthur Burnett — you might know him better as Howlin’ Wolf – had been one of the chief architects, at least in spirit, for the decade of sound and fury that [...]

NICK DERISO: Peter Frampton’s first-ever instrumental release boasts a buffet-style diversity. And by refusing to settle into easy genre work — you just knew this would be jazz(zzzzzzzzz)y, right? — Frampton finally distances himself completely from a certain mid-1970s double live album. Well, almost anyway. No, familiar keyboardist Bob Mayo doesn’t appear. (He actually died of a heart attack on [...]

NICK DERISO: Guitar sideman projects can fall prey to several breeds of debut carnivores — virtuosity to the point of pedantry, a mysterious lack of lyrical depth, that unexplainable one-off looseness. Lafayette’s brilliant slideman Sonny Landreth played off all those pratfalls by delivering this terrific CD. “Outward Bound” sounds like something that needed to be made. Lyrically, Landreth doesn’t stray [...]