Toneladas de Sollozos

Normally I'd still be in bed at this disgustingly early time on a Saturday morning, but I've been somewhat insomnia prone the last few weeks, mainly cos it ain't easy to sleep when it feels like some cunt is sticking needles in yr eyes everytime you close 'em. But anyway, the right eye's totally cleared up now and the lump on my left lid exploded in spectactularly disgusting fashion a couple of nights ago during the funniest night of druggery I've had for a while - salvia and the right company is too fucking funny, more of which later - it looked like I'd been shot in the eyelid with an air rifle at close range for a couple of days, but it's healing up nicely. It still hurts like a bastard, but then again, I've got a fucking hole in my eyelid so that's not too much of a surprise really. Apart from that I'm in a damn good mood 'cos I can once again rejoin the human race and not scream at the burning when daylight or some bastards headlights hit my retinas, I no longer have to wear sunglasses just to look at a monitor. Which is nice.

So instead of being fast asleep in a big comfy bed, I've been drinking serious tea and smoking some rather nice weed and working my way through the most unacceptable section of my record collection. Not the skullscraping psychedelic noise, or the black metal or even the free jazz. Nope, it's a blues-rock Saturday morning. The Groundhogs, early ZZ Top, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, Taste and Free at arsequaking volume. The first Free album, Tons Of Sobs, is a fucking masterpiece. Listening to it, I find it hard to believe that it's the same band who ended up churning out shit like All Right Now, but than again, in 1968 Paul Kossof hadn't discovered smack and was still one of the finest guitarists around, fiercely emotional in his attack, and with a sound to die for. They're still the only band who've got away with covering Goin' Down Slow (apart from Howlin' Wolf of course, but that's untouchable, possibly the single greatest blues recording ever) and that alone would redeem their later horrors, even if the rest of the album was shit. Which it ain't. If you like yr blues smothered in fuzz, drenched in sweat and crammed with some of the finest piano this side of Otis Spann or Laffayette Leake, then I suggest you go and get a copy pronto, and fuck anyone who thinks it's naff - life's too short to have guilty pleasures in music.