Tappan King is…
December 3rd, 2006 by 
Rory Harper
One of the greatest blues shouters who’s ever lived.
I’ve spent my weekend editing my latest story, working on my scooter, and thinking about what to post on my Sunday. I was halfway through an entry triggering off of Caroline’s whiny masterpiece, with all sorts of examples of how horrid it is to be an elderly male. But it was gonna end up being uplifting and inspirational, in a weary-wise sort of way.
Unlike Caroline’s.
Then I had an insight, and said, aloud actually, “Hey, fuck it. I wanna play with the toys.”
I’ve been monkeying around, even more than usual, with a lot of audio-related software for the past couple of weeks. The damn stuff’s addictive. (We’ll talk about addiction in the near future…)
Anyhow, I pulled out the trusty Los Blues Guys tapes again, and played, as if I were a child.
This one is ArmadilloCon ’92. Toward the end of the evening, we were getting pretty loose and crazy.
I’d never met Tappan before that night, though I knew him from the old GEnie bulletin board days. (Yes, Virginia, there was on-line before the Web.) Tappan was also the editor of Twilight Zone magazine, but I never managed to sell to him. The bastard.
(Stevie Chuck, on the other hand, was delighted when we chatted this evening and I mentioned what I was planning, because Tappan is Beth Meacham’s sigoth, and Stevie still likes to suck up to her.)
We had absolutely NOT rehearsed this song ahead of time.
Which, considering LBG, may have been a blessing.
The tape is, as I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, incredibly messed up, and it took some intense and detailed processing to salvage this track. That’s why you hear the burbling noises at the front. They’re mutated crowd noise. I couldn’t get rid of them completely without destroying the rest of the spectrum, but I wanted to preserve Tappan’s intro.
Then the burbles go away, when we kick into the goddamnedest, sloppiest, finest blues song it has ever been my pleasure to be a part of. It starts slow and a bit inchoate, then drops heavily into the groove and crushes you like a….
Well, you know…..
We have Stevie Chuck on harmonica, Unca Brad on drums, Casey Hamilton on bass, me and Scott McCullar and Patrick Nielsen Hayden spanking the plank, as Billy Gibbons would say, and most likely some other folks that I missed.
But it’s Tappan who makes this one a classic.
He was like a unto a god at that moment in time and space.
Software Tools used:Reaper 1.47
GoldWave Audio Editor (Their noise reduction function kicks the asses of the other half-dozen apps I’ve tried recently.)
Voxengo VoxFormer
Voxengo StereoTouch
TLs Maximizer
ReaFir FFT EQ+Dynamics Processor
Kjaerhus Classic Master Limiter
Voxengo SPAN
Roger Nichols Inspector
Posted in Brad, Caroline, mp3, Music, People, Rory, Steve, Technology | 
17 Comments »
December 4th, 2006 at 12:42 am
That is some of the funkiest, skunkiest, down-home way-below the radar blues I think I’ve ever heard. Los Blues Guys will be treasured as the least-rehearsed band with the most writers in it ever. Stephen King’s Remainders never gnawed a bone as thick as this one!
December 4th, 2006 at 1:03 am
Hey, David Lee!! It’s great to see you here!
Glad you enjoyed the song. Incidentally, I liked your SufferBus album, ‘Marooned’, that you gave me at WF this year, you artist-musician-singer-cosmic dude-guy, you. You got a link to it or other David Lee Music that we can post?
…And I’m looking forward to the next jam with you, of course. I wish we’d recorded the one in Brad and Barb’s suite at WF, actually….
December 4th, 2006 at 1:35 am
Ohmigawd! You’re right, Rory, we did not totally suck!
And for all the berating I used to give myself for not doing anything more complicated than hammering away on the root note of a chord, sometimes that’s all that’s needed when you have Rory Harper on lead, and assorted other players swapping zings back and forth.
I really, really listened for the first time, and heard that I was doing an arguably good job of maintaining the beat, and feeling the music. Not completely shabby
December 4th, 2006 at 1:51 am
As a ProTools Widow, I can testify to the addictive properties of audio-crunching software. My spouse liked the product so much he went to work for the company…
And no, not hardly shabby atall.
December 4th, 2006 at 9:18 am
Groovy. I’m glad you hung onto all those old recordings.
December 4th, 2006 at 10:13 am
Was that Tappan King singing (or shouting, as it were)? I thought it was Brad in his Bland Lemon Denton voice. And Casey, you absolutely held the bottom down on those songs, as critical as you were of yourself. And a woman bass player automatically gives the coolness factor to a band. Right, Caroline?
December 4th, 2006 at 11:59 am
Definitely Tappan.
December 4th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Thanks, David Lee. I’m learning that I was often far too critical of myself in the past. And of course a female bass player gives a band a radical boost in coolness, as Caroline now knows.
December 4th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
Hmmmm, Rory, I think navel-gazing absorbtion in past activities is the very definition of middle-aged goofiness.
And female bass players do rock.
Our cross is that we just have to put up with the guitarists’ wanking.
December 4th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
1. I’m not middle-aged, Caroline. I’m OLD. You, on the other hand, are middle-aged. I would kill to be, what, thirty-five, thirty-eight, like you.
2. Speaking of the past, lemme tell you kids about the Sixties…..
3. Female bass players do rock.
4. You like the wanking. Otherwise you wouldn’t hang out with me and Warren and Brad all the time. For Ghod’s sake, you sleep with at least one of us, probably because of the wanking. And we all know that you secretly long to do an extended bass solo. We’ll break through this denial some day….
December 4th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Oh, stop it. You are not old, Rory. No one who’s willing to learn Ramones songs is old. Mmm ‘kay?
And I sleep with one if you? Jesus, when did this happen?
December 4th, 2006 at 11:42 pm
Rory, I forgot to give the Sufferbus URL, if anyone is interested in my original music; http://www.myspace.com/sufferbus.You brainiacs are SO entertaining!
December 4th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
I messed up the address. Try this: http://www.myspace.com/sufferbus
December 5th, 2006 at 11:08 am
If 50 is the new 30, then 60 is the new 40. You do the math.
December 5th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Well, I’ve felt (and mostly acted) like I was a very immmature 23 most of my life. Must be true.
And on another note–I want artists to get paid for what they do, but what the music industry does….
December 11th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
I had sporadic ‘net access while in Japan (borrowing Barb’s laptop for a few minutes in the evenings), so I’ve only just now (December 11) listened to the “Steamroller Blues” mp3. Man, that was so long ago that I’d forgotten about doing the number with Tappan, and how much fun it was. I’m a better drummer now . . . but I’m not sure I’ve ever played the blues quite as, er . . . shall we say, “funkily” since.
May 27th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
[...] We now present another LBG masterpiece, this one rescued from the tapes of the same night as the infamous ‘Steamroller Blues’. [...]