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Today's progressive blues mind sports The Soul of John Black, and "The Good Girl Blues" is the voice of reason playing inside. That's because the program traverses a shape-shifting world where the futuristic dreams of Muddy Waters commingle with soul's aphrodisiac tendencies, the crash of rock, and a beat bounce of hip-hop. Yet still ruminating at the dark heart of it all are the quintessential textbook blues themes -- problems, sex, and problems. It's just that their sonic manifestation severely veers off from overripe traditional forms while under the adventurous watch of the man known as The Soul of John Black.
Born John "JB" Bigham, the multi-instrumentalist played percussion for latter-stage Miles Davis, guitar and keyboard for Fishbone's rockfunkska blend, and sordid sideman duties for such current names as Dr. Dre, Nikka Costa, and Everlast. Now he's all about his own superfly band, cavernous grooves, and flickering guitars -- acoustic, electric, sludged and slidden. That combination delivers "Good Girl" like a punishing right cross, as opposed to hitting like a heat wave, all hot and heavy, for "I Got Work" and "Fire Blues". Faint flecks of Pop Staples can be discerned in a field-holler rave-up of "The Hole", while "Moanin'" wordlessly heeds its title as if the great, great hip grandson of Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was the Night". The DJ Phizz Ed gets downright lysergic dropping turntable trips as the backdrop to an instrumental "Slipin' and Slidin'." As blues revitalizers go, John Black is the nu vitamin man.
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