by Pico
There’s plenty of blues rock guitar gunslingers out there who only understand the blues as filtered by the likes of Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. Irish six string specialist Gary Moore has gone much further back than those guys to get his knowledge of the blues form, and it comes out on his highly amplified Les Paul or Gibson ES335 every time. The guy who legitimately should wear Rory Gallagher’s crown as the Emerald Isle’s foremost guitar practitioner of the blues, this ex-Thin Lizzy lead guitarist has for the last twenty years made record after record full of updated blues standards (and originals inspired by those standards) that most likely introduced these durable songs to a new generation of listeners. He’s done it with enough heavy metal rock oomph to lure them in and enough genuine blues feel to get them curious about the originators of this great music form.
We gave our thoughts to his last two albums Close As You Get and Bad For You Baby, and were happy to report that Moore still got the blues. There’s fewer spots where he makes the connection between his brand of hard rock blues and the vintage Delta stuff ever more clear than on his own original “Enough of The Blues” from his 2001 offering, Back To The Blues.
Starting out as a faux scratchy old recording that sounds like it was taped out of Room 414 of San Antonio’s Gunter Hotel in 1936, it’s just Moore and an acoustic slide guitar as he softly croons
Somebody help me.
Lord, I’m in misery.
Somebody help me.
Lord, I’m in misery.
I had enough of the blues,
but the blues ain’t had enough of me.
The second verse comes crashing in with an amped up guitar + full band attack and Moore’s voice ratcheted up to a full throated yell. The chorus is Moore growling along to his tubed up guitar. His scowling singing gradually gives up the center stage in favor of his combustible axe. After a very brief return to the acoustic sound, Moore comes roaring back with his guitar, and sadly, the fade out comes just as he’s beginning to hit the peak of his solo.
That’s not the case when he plays it live, though:
Oh, and here’s the studio version:
- Lydia Salnikova, “Christmas Means a Different Thing This Year” (2024): One Track Mind - November 19, 2024
- Darius Jones – ‘Legend of e’Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye)’ - November 15, 2024
- Rich Halley 4 – ‘Dusk And Dawn’ (2024) - November 13, 2024
