PUB ROCKERS WHO LEARNED THE ART OF PLAYING THE BLUES

https://youtu.be/LvQaTBqk69A?si=A5FkStBViGihQt6K

There are two aussie rockers who have a special place in my heart because of their ability to cross genres and switch from being hard nosed rockers to practitioners of blues and soul in a moments notice. 

They have become.famous on the back of playing in pub rock bands, however they have increasingly over the years displayed
their instinctive admiration for the music which they always wanted to play more than anything else. 

The two fellas I am talking about is Johnny Diesel, who is also known as Mark Lizotte, and Jimi Hocking from the Screaming Jets and also the Angels, who is truly a great blues rock guitarist. 

To be honest, I have only listened to most of Jimi Hocking`s stuff on the internet, despite a dodgy speaker on my computer and the bootleg quality of what I have at times listened to, Hocking still has always sounded red hot and totally kick arse. 

I have got his latest blues offering which
is called ELECTRIC MOJO MACHINE from 2009 and it is a classic eclectic amalgam of various blues styles out of America. 

He has made so much of his blues music as a member of a band bearing his name, which is JIMI HOCKING`S BLUES MACHINE. 

I like Hocking a lot, I think he really knows how to mix his obvious inclination towards Screaming Jets rock with Texas and Chicago blues to awesome and clinically crisp effect.

I am definitely going to dig deeper to uncover more of Jimi Hocking`s blues stuff, and buy some as well. I think so highly of him that I went out and bought the Screaming Jets greatest hits, which means I must like him because I dont really like aussie pub rock these days, maybe it`s
because TRIPLE M play too much of it lol. 

Just dropping a hint OK. There is a strong hint of Phil Manning of seminal aussie blues group Chain in Hocking`s approach, not to mention a bit of the spitfire, unrefined approach of Western Australia`a Dave Hole. 

Manning and Hole, on the basis of the little bit I have heard of them, were really trying to market their music on the wrong continent, they belonged on the streets of Chicago a lot more than in the pubs of Australia where the nuances of blues was always lost on people who dug the Hoodoo Gurus and the Hunters and Collectors ect
ect. 

Hole hasn`t even garnished critical respect, Manning at the least has got that much.

Chain are a lot better band than what their record sales would indicate, thats forsure!

Johnny Diesel is someone who has grown on me over the years, I loved his first album with the Injectors, and then I guess I got a bit browned off him after about album number three when he started changing his name and all that, I think at the time I was getting him mixed up with Prince.

But when I look back in retrospect now, I really do admire some of the music he recorded as Diesel and not as Johnny Diesel and the Injectors. 

Diesel shouldn`t have recorded some of the songs he did in the early days, around the
time of his first two albums, because quite simply he was straining to sing the songs.

Wisely he decided to move in a more soul and blues orientated direction that allowed

him to sing within his capabilities and concentrate on the best asset he had, and that was playing guitar. 

Last year Diesel recorded a fair dinkum no nonsense blues album called `Project Blues Saturday Suffering Fools`. It is an album of originals and covers, slightly more of the latter, they include the standard `First Time I Met The Blues`, Diesel`s original `Walking The Blues` and a souped up slow motion version of Aerosmith`s `Sweet Emotion`.

I love it, Diesel is a better than average practitioner of blues music because he plays and sings from the heart and doesn`t try and be someone he isn`t. 

I really do think that is something that quite a few contestants on Australian Idol should keep in mind before they even step out on stage. Be yourself or dont bother!