
Casey Frazier – Evil Man
No matter how many times blues riffs have been played through arenas or its grooves borrowed for pop music hits, this music will never become pretty. It’s not designed to be. And that’s not simply because this is, by default, a type of music meant to depict sorrow and suffering. And it’s not because the people who play it have been doing the rounds of crossroads around midnight.
Most of the heroes of blues songs are bad, bad men. Stagger Lee was a cruel man who liked to gamble late. He shot Billy Lyons in the Lion’s Club and left the patrons having to slalom to his blood to get to the bar. John the Conqueroo cast spells. Howlin’ Wolf bragged about being a backdoor man. And Robert Johnson wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider when he got his superhero abilities to play the blues.
Casey Frazier is as interested in studying the blues as he is in playing it. But the minute he slips into his costume, he knows what kind of character he needs to play in order to be convincing. “Evil Man” is a modern blues number that flirts with the idea of the singer as the character meant to pay with his life for his evil deeds.
When it really gets cooking, it sounds like words that could be sung by the genre’s great bad guys. And, while it’s quick and fun at times, neither this track nor the blues are meant to be pretty.
Hide and Shine – Mindless Apparition
Country music, in one shape or another, has been integrating itself into youth culture for the better part of seven decades now. But it’s not like anybody wanted it. It’s not like anyone expressly requested it.
Like folk music from across the world, country was never cool per se. It was the kind of music played by grandmas, grandpas, and people in the countryside for some Summer celebration or other.
But it always had one thing going for it – the songs. The songs always told complex stories. Consequently, the ones that survived public scrutiny were really well put together. Consequently, the people who played these songs could really play.
Hide and Shine are is a new band that is also inspired by country on their first single “Mindless Apparition.” What the musicians like about this style of music is the thing that audiences haven’t been able to resist. They like the craft of writing the songs and the subtle, nuanced playing. Hide and Shine got the right map and are determined to try and go places.