Saturday Matinee – El Twanguero, Hot Club du Nax, John Prine & Grandpa Elliot Small

Spanish guitarist Diego Garcia, aka El Twanguero, plays his original composition Minor Rag / Spanish Rag. Stay with this one; it starts out slow then jumps to amazing.

Austria’s Hot Club du Nax features talent from Innsbruck, Prague, London and Bologna, and do a damn fine job playing 1930s gypsy swing.

John Prine had the perfect voice for his style of songwriting and was “among the English language’s premier phrase-turners with music relevant to any age.”

Grandpa Eliott Small & his PFC Band pulled off a great version of Buster Brown‘s Fannie Mae (complete with some whoopin’ and eefin’). A New Orleans street performer, Small once said he doesn’t know what beer tastes like, he’s never touched drugs and the only thing he smokes is the exhaust from the cars that pass Royal and Toulouse.

As I was looking for some music videos for this post, I began searching my memory for loud, angry, pissed-off frustration songs to reflect the recent abhorrent events that have fallen upon our Republic, knowing that things are about to get worse.

Then I decided that I didn’t want to go there. Venting is wasted energy, at least for me, so I wandered off in a different direction. Hope you like it.

Have a great weekend, folks, and we’ll be back tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Tributes to Ben E. King, Johnny Cash & The B-52’s

Tribute to a great singer Ben E. King, who passed away 30 April 2015, as performed by an a cappella group featuring Grandpa Eliott Small.

Prior to his solo career, Ben E. King was a key member of The Drifters, a doo-wop group founded in 1953 and fronted by Clyde McPhatter. King replaced McPhatter as lead singer in 1958, and the New Drifters were born. Most of King’s hits were written by the team of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, prolific songwriters of the time.

Tribute to Johnny Cash (1932-2003) on beer bottles [via].

Tribute to the B-52s by Full Blown Cherry. Yeah, it’s a crappy video, but watch what they pull off. They’re not amateurs, and by 02:50 a roadie has to hold the amp down. Any three-man band that can pull off a Rockabilly Tribute To The Ramones gets my full respect.

Have a great weekend folks, be back here in a few minutes.