BLACK CROWS AND BLUE

Rip It Up, Issue 157, 1 August 1990, Page 4

BLACK CROWS AND BLUE

Bored rigid with Guns n'Roses clones? Metallica’s too much for you? Never mind, there’s another hep category of rock band brewing in America.

Bands like the Black Crowes and Little Ceaser are spearheading a returnto honest-to-goodness, back to roots rock. From the sub-metal hoe-down of Little Ceaser to the bar room blues style of the Black Crowes these are rock bands who love the blues and who have taken their influences from artists like Ray Charles, Muddy Waters and Otis Redding, the people who influenced groups like Led Zeppelin in the first place.

The Black Crowes write about bad luck and retribution and play their songs with a blues lurch—‘Could I've Been So Blind', ‘Struttin’ Blues’, ‘Sister Luck’ — the emphasis is placed

squarely on soulfulness ratherthan sex appeal. Aslead singer and songwriter Chris Robertson putsitto me over the phone from America: “Decadence is a state of mind.”

He also calls computers in music “implements of Satan”. Twenty three

years old, Chris was born and bred in Atlanta, Georgia. Being from the South n'all | was expecting a man who spoke with all the urgency of molasses dripping over a plate of grits but Chris was sharp. Yeah, he flashed, and we all sit round sipping mint juleps just like you spend all your time chasing sheep. The Black Crowes have found instant success with the release of their debut LP Shake Your Moneymaker.lf's No. 17 on the US rock charts, the single ‘Jealous Again’ is N 0.5 and MTV loves them. Lately the boys from Atlanta have bowed to the inevitable and moved to Los Angeles (“the Black Crowes are a big family and a big family needs money”) but as Chris says, “being a true Southerner, you have to leave the South to appreciate it.” Growing up in Allman Brothers country, Chris and his younger brother Rich (also a Black Crowes guitarist) listened a lot to their father’s records— Joe Cocker, Sly and the Stones, John Lee Hooker— picking up on the rhythms and the phrasing.

Isthere a hint of 70s revivalism in the Black Crowes? :

Nah, says Chris, the drugs were better and people wore bellbottoms butotherthanthathe doesn't remember much. Exceptthat he liked the way the records sounded before they started using computers. The Black Crowes just missed getting signed to A&M a year ago because they weren't metal enough

forthe times. Their big break came when George Drakoulias of the Det American label was passing through Atlanta. Stopping for afeedinthe local Kentucky Fried Chicken shack he asked another diner whether there were any local actsworth checking out. The diner suggested the Black Crowes and the rest s

history. How does someone so young manage to tap into the deep dark emotions of the blues? Chris: “l dunno. You wake up and feel shitty, | don't care who you are. Asfar as lyrical input goes, it's not so muchwhere it'scomingfromas where doesn'tit.”