Some crazy grungy modern blues

Sorry for not posting much last week. I'm knee deep in getting a bunch of stuff ready for a big deadline next Monday, and an opportunity came up at the last minute to go present science stuff at a big event in St. Paul on Saturday, and those two demands pretty much ate the week.

In and amongst all that, though, I discovered some really cool (modern) blues. I have a great collection of everything that Charley Patton ever recorded, plus an entire disc of related work by other artists, and another disc that's just interviews with other people talking about Patton's life and influence. The packaging is totally amazing, and it includes at least two or three books of information on Patton, his life and music (including transcriptions, modalities, and lyrics). Oh, yeah, I like it...

The aforementioned marvel is on Revanent Records, and I was looking at other stuff in their catalogue, and recognized several covers from Pandora. One thing led to another, and pretty soon I was buying the album Blue roots by the Bassholes (hoo-dee-hoo) from eMusic. This
is a totally noisy duo (drummer and guitar/vocals) doing a deeply grungy version of the blues. Think of those old guys from the video we watched, but young, angry, and with electricity. You listen to this stuff, and you can definitely feel (somewhere near your liver) the connections between punk and blues. "Titanic blues", for example, is yet another telling of the souls on that tragic voyage (this was a popular story in songs in the early 1900's), but with the volume knob turned up to 11 and more than a few bulls loose in the china shop. When he screams

First mate said look at this
"You see that great big iceberg?
WE AIN'T GONNA MISS!"

you know something bad is going down. And you gotta love an album with a song entitled "Bald headed woman blues"...

If you dig this sort of thing, it's absolutely great. If you don't, I'd look elsewhere :-).