It must have been some time in the early 2000s when I was introduced to the music of Bob Log III. Though I'm focusing on his third CD, Log Bomb, for this, mostly because it's got some of my favorite songs, his first three albums hit me pretty much at the same time and I didn't really differentiate them until I'd managed to pick up actual copies for myself. What I found with Bob's music was something I'd been thinking was due for a post-modernist updated for quite some time, the blues.
I've always been fascinated by the idea of the "one man band". Nash the Slash had worked that vein with his one man shows and I loved the idea of someone working it all in one go. Bob struck a decidedly idiosyncratic figure with his motorcycle suit, helmet and old-style telephone receiver fused into his visor and used as a distorted, tinny sounding microphone for singing. Coupled with his manic slide guitar playing, some foot percussion and a cheap drum machine, Bob managed to fill up the sound in a way that had urgency and presence. He had succeeded in bringing the "blues man" into the 21st century in a way that sounded completely modern, but also fully authentic to the source material. So much of what tries to pass itself off as "blues", to my ears, only sounds like a white bread imitation, lacking any true feeling or spirit. It mimics the form without comprehending the feeling. Bob wrote songs that came from someplace more original and more believable. It wasn't just a rehash of broken heart sob stories. He was singing about drunk strippers and ragging hard-ons.
His range could go from sickeningly groovy funkiness to this sort of wild mayhem that made me feel like pounding back hard liquor and busting up a bar. I mean, this stuff really did make you feel like becoming a juvenile delinquent! It's music that got me thinking about the blues in a modern context and with a contemporary edge. He managed to capture that in songs like Boob Scotch, an entirely ludicrous concept which he managed to turn into a crowd pleasing ritual while somehow managing to not come off as sexist.
I got a chance to see Bob twice, but it was the first time when he played Richards on Richards here in Vancouver, on Sept 13, 2006, that will always stand out in my memory as one of the best live shows I've ever seen. He played a double bill with the late, great blue-funk superhero, Blowfly, who put on an incredible show himself. Between the two acts, I literally danced my ass off to ever single song they played. That's not an exaggeration. That's a fact. It was a night where I was possessed by the boogie bug from start to finish, and was mesmerized watching Bob do his thing. Between the Boob Scotch audience participation to his crowd surfing in an inflatable raft to simply marveling at the furious intensity of his playing, he blew my mind. And seeing him off stage was so bizarre because, out of uniform, he was such an unassuming, slight, diminutive man. You'd never put the two personas together.
Bob Log III is very much responsible for influencing me into exploring some new directions with my own music, specifically when I went into looking for ways to bring blues sensibilities into contemporary experimental music making, but not just as an academic exercise, but as an expression of FUN and MISCHIEF!
