Texas Flood - Stevie Ray Vaughan
Love Struck Baby - the intro piece - is very basic and almost cliché. For someone expecting "amazing musicianship" after all the hype, they’re going to be let down. It’s a straight bar-band song. So I really wonder why he lead with this.Pride & Joy is one of my favorite songs of all time. So I almost wonder if he led with the "blah" piece so that this one seemed stellar in comparison. Which he doesn’t need to do. This has great rhythm, feel, emotion, everything. It’s a mid-paced, upbeat, sultry sort of dance-around-the-living-room song.
Texas Flood - if anything I would have led with this song, because it’s a good song, and it still "leads into" Pride & Joy. Most bands don’t want to put their best song in the #1 position for bizarre marketing reasons, I.e. they figure if people play the CD through a song or to to get to their "favorite song" that it sort of forces them to listen to songs 1 and 2 and maybe those songs will grow on them too. It’s a trick that has less and less meaning as more people buy single-songs on iTunes and rearrange songs on their own. But anyway, it’s something to keep in mind.
Tell me - back to another straight bar song. It feels like a filler piece. So it’s not one of the highlights of the set.
Testify - I like the funky rhythm on this one, and I always like it when a band includes an instrumental to highlight their playing skills without any words "getting in the way". So this deserves a special mention.
Rude Mood - There’s some nice technique in here, but it gets a bit monotonous especially near the end.
Mary Had a Little Lamb - another one of my favorite songs. It has a cool beat and nice playing. It’s a way to show that something "basic" and simple can really shine in the hands of a talented musician.
Dirty Pool - a nice slow, sultry tune, a good offset from the other songs
I’m crying - this song is a bit too much like Pride & Joy. It’s no surprise they separated them out on the CD but even so it feels like a cheat to have this on here.
Lenny - another slow tune, this one instrumental and contemplative, I love these types of moody, chord-progression songs and enjoy it a lot.
SRV speaks - on one hand I think it’s fun to hear a 40 second snippet of SRV talking, to hear about his musicianship. On the other hand, it’s in the middle of the CD and after a few listens you are rather sick of it. It would be nice to have this on the web somewhere, to hear once or twice. It wasn’t worth it to embed it into the middle of a music CD. It distracts from the music.
Tin Pan Alley - While I enjoy slow songs, I imagine there’s a reason they stuck SRV in between Lenny and this song. They both feel almost the exact same (although this one has words eventually). I’m not sure this one offers much that is new.
Testify - A live song, which I always enjoy. There’s often a different kind of energy in live songs. The talent of the band really shines in this piece, with the fast, lively fingerwork. A great fast-paced instrumental.
Mary Had a Little Lamb - OK this is really extreme. Two versions of the exact same song on one CD? They could have put a TON of other things in here rather than using the space for a second version. I don’t agree with this at all.
Wham! - The final song, also live. It’s got a fun almost rockabilly feel to it. Great for fast dancing and whirling around. It is a little repetitive, though. It has the ending "credits" which while not long do slightly draw away from having the song in a mix that you want to go non-stop dancing to.
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