“Bob Log III – One-man band - Tucson, AZ. Lemme introduce the band. On the cymbals- left foot. On bass drum – right foot- Shut Up! My left hand does all the slide work, my right hand does the pickin’ My mouth-hole does most of the talking. And you’re looking at my finger. Don’t talk to my finger- My finger’s an asshole!”
- 'One Man Band Boom,' Log Bomb - Fat Possum 2003
In these tenuous concert-going times when formerly thriving juggernaut caravans like Perry Farrell’s Lollapalooza crash to the ground with a whimper, and the omnipresent Clear Channel is unmistakably your daddy- those with discerning tastes demand a live entertainer who gives the utmost bang for the buck. I can confirm that man is Bob Log III, from Tucson, Arizona. Mr. Log specializes in BANG! The first thing you notice is the tinted helmet. In a modern day troubadour, this is a good thing. No soulful gazes at audience members while gently strumming - instead an awe that an amazing Knievel-like stunt is about to occur. Then comes the beat and the slide. Remember the ‘Dueling Banjos’ sequence in the movie ‘Deliverance’ when Ronny Cox gets that’s smile of amazed excitement as he realizes just how well the in-bred prodigy can pick? I think that’s what Mr. Log’s face did when it first looked down and saw his hand (rumored to be a grafted monkey paw) playing the slide guitar- but it’s hard to tell cause he’s wearing a helmet. Log records for Fat Possum Records, the independent label that has made its mission to seek out elder unsung blues statesmen of the Mississippi Delta, such as R.L. Burnside, T-Model Ford and Robert Belfour, bringing them into the studio and putting them on the road in rooms usually reserved for scruffy rock bands. Cranking Delta blues riffs to pounding supersonic velocity, he bleats sweet nothings through a heavily distorted microphone inside a telephone mouthpiece. In true one-man style, his foot pounds the bass drum and drum machine pedals, the rhythmic spine to his mayhem. But maybe you’re the control group for this puff-piece and you know all this already. He’s huge in Japan, admired by Tom Waits- but why should you care?
If at first, it seems as if Bob has stepped from his own space capsule, he is actually the latest tricked-out model in a long line of idiosyncratic one-man bands, each connected by their lone wolf resourcefulness and their mutation of the blues for their own purposes. In the 1940s and 50s, former railroad and shipyard worker Jesse ‘The Lone Cat’ Fuller, an Oakland folk/blues singer and guitarist, devised his homemade ‘fotdella,’ a bass viol triggered by foot-operated levers to accompany his 12 string guitar, hi-hat cymbal and kazoo. Fuller toured for American and European audiences successfully and wrote songs that were later covered by those notorious dirty hippies the Grateful Dead. Later in a rural West Virginia shack, Hasil ‘The Haze’ Adkins bent rockabilly sounds into his own maniacal irresistible rants and spawned should-have-been dance crazes ‘The Hunch’ and ‘The Chicken Walk.’ His ferocious live act often featured him abusing a cymbal with the neck of his acoustic guitar and storming off stage. The one-man band is not only the most immediate way to make music, but also the purest transmission of mind to audience, with no band censorship process. It’s hard to imagine Hasil pitching a song about decapitating his girlfriend to a stone-faced session musician and calling it ‘No More Hot Dogs.’ As Adkins himself said, you don’t figure it out- you just sit down and do it.’ In the late 1980s, Bob Log played in a trash blues-influenced duo called Doo Rag before paring down to one member when his band-mate became ill. As a Fat Possum artist, Log toured with T-Model, Burnside and Adkins, forging his own stamp on the one man spectacle. Whether Log himself would admit these pioneering influences is only known behind his dark visor, but in any case he has lifted this musical tradition to a new level of accessibility for today’s discerning freak.
Bob’s lyrical concerns in his recorded output, much of it confusingly titled after vehicles (School Bus, Trike) often involve female anatomy- but one would be hard-pressed to accuse the man of sexist cliché. Sexual humor and precociousness is an essential element to his act, but it’s evident that his hand isn’t joking. Perhaps earlier songs such as ‘Clap Your Tits’ (helpfully explained as a mixture of tits and guitar) and ‘Ass Computer,’ might be construed as crude- the artist claimed in the liner notes to have collaborated with two ‘professional women’ on backup ‘percussion.’ But playful sexual innuendo has always been a tool of the blues, and there is a natural lineage from Robert Johnson’s ‘You can squeeze my lemon baby ‘til the juice runs down my leg’ right up to ‘Boob Scotch’ and ‘Bubble Strut’ from Log’s last opus Log Bomb (Fat Possum). Log’s sexual cosmology imagines a mutually beneficial arrangement- asking a girl to dip her boob in his glass of scotch, because he really believes that the combination will ‘make your drink a boob better, man.’ Somehow, that doesn’t seem to be a bad idea.
Log records are a mere springboard for the place that the man lives and breathes- the stage. Bob himself has credited warhorses like Chuck Berry and AC/DC as influencing his approach. In the three times I have witnessed the live Log experience, he has steadily raised the bar. As the first man on stage to open the inaugural Siren music festival at Coney Island, he performed while bouncing one woman from the audience on each knee. At a club show in Brooklyn, a young woman and then a man each doffed their tops on stage in an encouraging show of equal time, gyrating to the relentless Log beat. His last visit to my fair borough, an opening stint for sun-fried 1960s rockers Sky Saxon and the Seeds, featured choreography from the Australian female burlesque duo the Town Bikes who shimmied in magnificent unified style. Log also seems to have taken notes from his label-mate, juke-joint blues master T-Model Ford; the sweaty performer repeatedly asked the audience to remind him to ‘Take a Drink, Bob Log!’ Showmanship is key to the Log experience, and no one in the room could say they left bored or cheated out of their nine dollars.
Indeed, Bob Log III has a helmet and likes ‘boob-scotch.’ He is also a technically amazing musician who knows that his image is a hook, twisted just enough to keep people packing in and wiggling to 21st Century juke-joint music that won’t go away. Next time he rolls through your burg, I suggest you go get some. As the man himself said – ‘What helmet?’
Fat Possum Records:
www.fatpossum.com
Norton Records:
www.nortonrecords.com
