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3/1/2007

Randy Harward

On his second album, ex-Fishbone and one-time Miles Davis guitarist John Bigham achieves a real-right surreality, blending blaxploitation, black water and Blue Velvet. Working mainly in haunted blues but dipping freely into other harmonic honeypots, Bigham sings the love, lust and lamentations of a complicated cat: himself. When he says “I’m gonna put in some work on you,” it means somebody’s getting a righteous schtupping and a pretty good omelet in the a.m. He says he needs a “good girl, not just anybody gon’ rock my world”: he’s talking quality and disposition and talent. He might be kooky, saying a fishy-smellin’ skeezer was the best thing he ever had and bemoaning a good girl cum coke whore with a sunny country-gospel tune (singing “She landed in the gutter/What a waste of good butter” like he just don’t care), but that’s what makes The Good Girl Blues such an enthralling, entertaining listen. It’s a funky good-time and a glimpse of Bigham’s soul, warts and all.