My, what a good time for an album review Writing about Jason Ricci has been on my agenda more or less since I started blogging on the Harp Surgery. It’s odd, really, that he doesn’t get much airtime here, considering he’s one of the most phenomenal players alive AND his unsolicited praise adorns our sidebar. [...]
Read more..Hey Negrita’s harmonica player teaches our Apprentice a lesson about tasteful playing Some time back I got my hands on this acoustic single, “Burn The Whole Place Down” by the British country blues band Hey Negrita, which features my friend Will “Captain Bliss” Greener on harmonica. I’ve mentioned Captain Bliss once or twice here, as [...]
Read more..Which record got you hooked on blues harmonica? This week the Harp Surgery team goes back to Original Spin… Elwood’s choice: I’ll never forget the day I decided to take up blues harmonica. I was 18 years old, doing a crappy internship in a run-down part of the most boring town in England, and I [...]
Read more..Last month we interviewed the Son of Dave. Here’s the second half of our chat with the beat-boxing harmonica man: this time, he rants about drum-machines, America, nun-raping pop songs, and why he wears sunglasses indoors. …So I asked some of our readers if they had any questions for you. Here’s one from Adam Gussow. [...]
Read more..An interview with blues harmonica man Benjamin Darvil Son of Dave found his coolness through the only legitimate means available to us skinny white guys: Wearing your granddad’s clothes and a creepy grin, and making bizarre, gut-busting music that goes oomph-a-doomph in the night. The one-man beat-boxing, harmonica-playing phenomenon has a new album coming out [...]
Read more..Elwood the Apprentice in conversation with the undisputed harmonica queen of YouTube. By turns bold as hell and surprisingly self-doubting, Christelle Berthon is one of the most closely watched harmonica players on the web (over 2 million pairs of eyeballs, according to her YouTube stats). She’s a different kind of harmonica hero: instead of gin-soaked [...]
Read more..Talk about the blind leading the blind! Elwood the Apprentice has a rant about amateur hour out there on the Internet It’s not in the Harp Surgery’s nature to be negative. The reason for that is the Good Doctor: he’s a relentlessly positive guy who’s always looking for the best in people. It’s kind of [...]
Read more..Download the podcast (19.7MB) As the world stumbles into a new decade, we at the Harp Surgery find ourselves contemplating the future. But we’re not thinking about jetpacks or three-course meals that you can take as a pill. No, we’re thinking about the future of the harmonica. Okay, jetpacks would also be pretty cool, but [...]
Read more..Last Wednesday Elwood the Apprentice attended a year-end performance with London Harmonicas, the informal collective that meets every other Tuesday at The Torriano Pub (7.15pm for beginners, 8pm for intermediates). What he saw was a glorious vision for the socialist future of harmonica. What he heard was a little less glorious… I’ve attended the London [...]
Read more..The Hoodoo Man would be 75 today. Harmonica great Junior Wells was born December 9th 1934. It’s remarkable to think that someone who played with Muddy Waters in the early days would have been so young today (he was 19 in 1952 when he joined Muddy’s band, and died in 1998, aged 63). I like [...]
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