Video of the Day 20 May 2015: Hermine Deurloo, Zanzibar
I hadn't heard of Hermine Deurloo before I saw this video. I wish I had. This performance was recorded live in 2014, and it's a very nice piece of electric jazz, with an unusual ensemble that includes strings, vocals, electric piano and synth, reminiscent of...
Video of the Day 7 May 2015: Carlos del Junco with Rick Fines
This video was recorded live in performance in 2012, and it captures the outstanding Canadian harmonica player Carlos del Junco in peak form on Muddy Waters's "Got My Mojo Workin'." The tempo is fast, the players know their business, and the full chorus Carlos does...
Video of the day 10 April 2015: Sleeping through a revolution
Sleeping Through a Revolution – Jonathan Taplin from USC Annenberg Innovation Lab on Vimeo.
Video of the Day 1 April 2015: Lowlands Unplugged
This live video is the first release from the show I played with Lowlands at Spazio Teatro 89 in Milan, Italy almost a year ago, on April 5 2014. Worth waiting for, methinks. The song is Ed Abbiatti's "The Last Call," one of my favorites...
Video of the Day 16 March 2015: Boris Plotnikov’s rig at work with Michail Bashakov
We've featured Boris Plotnikov on this blog several times. Why not? He's crazy good. Boris recently responded to a post of ours about our new rig with some comments on his own setup: "I prefer to combine analog and digital fx’s and to mix them...
Video of the Day 23 Feb 2015: Madcat Live and at Length
Peter "Madcat" Ruth has been one of our favorite harp players since we heard his groundbreaking hard-rockin' work with Sky King back in the 1960s. Madcat has plenty of blues in him, and this full-length set recorded August 12 2014 shows what he can do...
Video of the Day 10 January 2015: Marcos Coll and Reyharp Naufal
Marcos Coll is one of our favorite harmonica players. Check out the Video of the Day we ran not long ago featuring Marcos with Los Mighty Calacas playing a cover of Michael Jackson's "The Way You make Me Feel." He's also a longtime user of...
Video of the Day 30 Dec 2014: Larry Adler, “How High the Moon,” 1987
This recording of a performance by Larry Adler at the first World Harmonica Championship in 1987 just became available on YouTube. Adler is accompanied by a pianist (at whose expense he makes a joke at the beginning of the performance; Adler's reputation for narcissism was...
Video of the Day 18 December 2014: Tom Morello on “The Ghost of Tom Joad”
I love Bruce Springsteen's lyrics. I tuned in to a broadcast of the Springsteen tribute concert on PBS recently and saw this absolutely mind-blowing guitar solo by Tom Morello, who's done a lot of great work with Rage Against the Machine, on Springsteen's "The Ghost...
RIP Jack Bruce
Jack Bruce has died at the age of 71. I heard Bruce for the first time when I was 13 years old, at which point in time Cream released "Fresh Cream," their first LP. Bruce's harmonica work on that and subsequent Cream releases was something...
