R.L. Burnside – A Ass Pocket Of Whiskey

R.L. Burnside – A Ass Pocket Of Whiskey

Alright, how do you make Aaron blissfully happy? Well, there’s lots of ways. Clearly, Aaron’s enthusiastic about a lot of things. If you’ve spent any time at all in these pages (and if you have we thank you from the cockles of our hearts), you’ll likely have surmised this fact already. Woohoo! Yay! Give ‘er!

Aaron is also, apparently, writing about himself in the third person today. Well isn’t this fun!

But one sure-fire way to make Aaron tingle would be to take blues great R.L. Burnside and put him in a room with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and let them make an entire record.

In one afternoon.

(yeah you read that right.)

Hells yeah, that’d get Aaron’s rocks off. Over and over and over…

And that’s exactly what we have here. Burnside’s inimitable soul blues shout, rangy guitar (not always in tune and who the fuck cares?) and JSBX, rock solid as ever, backing him up. I love it. Love it love it love it to pieces. Love love love.

But enough about Aaron and his sloppy lovin’ crush on this record. Let’s see what Wiki has to say about this period of these two brilliant artist/bands:

“Burnside featured in the 1991 documentary Deep Blues. In a New York concert around the film’s release, he attracted the attention of Jon Spencer, the leader of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. He started touring with this group in 1995, both as an opening act and sitting in, gaining a new audience. The 1996 album A Ass Pocket of Whiskey was recorded with Jon Spencer’ band and was marketed for their audience, but was credited to Burnside. It gained critical acclaim and praise from Bono and Iggy Pop; while Billboard wrote “it sound like no other blues album ever released,” Living Blues opined it is “perhaps the worst blues album ever made.” His work with Jon Spencer was later cited as an influence by Hillstomp and covered on record by The Immortal Lee County Killers. During this time he also provided entertainment at private events such as Richard Gere’s birthday party.”

“…perhaps the worst blues abum ever made”? Living Blues, apparently, has a total doofus on their staff. Imagine.

How about the Amazonians?

“Recorded in one afternoon in the Holly Springs, Mississippi, hometown of 69-year-old blues great R.L. Burnside, A Ass Pocket of Whiskey documents a single noisy, spirited session with Burnside, his sideman Kenny Brown, and the punk-bred blues reconstructionist trio called the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. The pairing of JSBE, led by a white Ivy League dropout turned downtown New York scuz who poses as a hard-living blues rocker, and R.L. Burnside, the last of the real down-home badass bluesmen of the Mississippi hills, is strange–perhaps sacrilege to blues purists–but oddly appropriate. And the moments of pure musical chaos caught on this record–both cross-cultural and cross-generational–sound entirely within the realm of both acts. With its unorthodox accompaniment (including wheezy theremin and Spencer’s trademark shouts), the album is probably not the most fitting introduction to Burnside. But as the oldest man ever to record for the hip indie-rockers at Matador, no doubt he gladly sacrificed juke-joint obscurity for the chance to appear on MTV’s 120 Minutes. –Roni Sarig”

Sacrilege? Haha no. Also, Roni (if that even is your real name), I’m sure he thought it was a lark, not a late-life chance at being on fucking MTV. Or maybe he did, and good on him. If so, I hope he got girls and whiskey and whatever else he wanted.

Look, it’s simple.

If you already have this crash-bangin’ ass-kickin’ blues stomp of a brilliant record, you already know what I mean (and can I get a HELL YEAH? HELL YEAH!).

If you don’t have this album, Aaron just wants to know one thing: why the fuck NOT? Get in there and get it. Go!

Dammit, even the cover art is perfect: