CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
TOMMY BANKHEAD AND THE BLUES ELDORADOS (Deep Morgan) After 35 years as a professional, Bankhead is as authentic as blues gets and his first album sounds that way. I can even hear the harp-only prison song as a set-opener. I can even imagine checking out this hunch at some East St. Louis joint next time I’m out that way.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
ROBERT CHRISTGAU
TOMMY BANKHEAD AND THE BLUES ELDORADOS
(Deep Morgan)
After 35 years as a professional, Bankhead is as authentic as blues gets and his first album sounds that way. I can even hear the harp-only prison song as a set-opener. I can even imagine checking out this hunch at some East St. Louis joint next time I’m out that way. B
BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE “This Is Big Audio Dynamite” (Columbia)
Because he sang both their pop hits, Mick is always slotted as the Clash’s loverboy, but that was just his vocal cross to bear—he was really the intellectual, which is why he now specializes in what the handout calls “humor particularly irony.” Though “A Party” and “The Bottom Line” are wordy enough for Ellen Foley, their anger would surface instantly if Joe were spitting them out. He might even make something of the Nippophobic “Sony” and the loverboy’s lament “Stone Thames.” But as it is, only “E = MC2” laid down across cosmic keyb chords, lives up to Jones’s goofily internationalist spirit. B-
THE CLASH “Cut the Crap”
(Epic)