Yeah I know, betcha thought I had forgotten this week, nope, just had a lot of life to deal with. Well here we are, late, but nonetheless ready with this week’s Blues Album. This week we have Rory Gallagher, Live at Montreux. Released January 2006, Live at Montreux is a posthumous live album released by Irish blues guitarist Rory Gallagher in 2006. It is a live collection recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1975, 1977, 1979 and 1985. The CD contains the 12 highlights from those shows. I will credit Wikipedia with the last 3 sentences. As it sounded good enough that I didn’t need to paraphrase. So, anyway, for the past week or so I’ve been digging Rory on Amazon and I have one major question. How did I make it for so long and not gotten into Rory Gallagher, I knew the man’s name for decades but never pursued his music. For shame, for shame. Needless to say, I have been immersing myself with the man’s music. Everybody knows my affinity for the “live” album so this shouldn’t come as a shock. We start off with the driving boogie of “Laundromat”, nice crunchy stratocaster sound. Highlights, a splendid cover of “Tore Down”, followed by “The Last of the Independents”, “Too Much Alcohol”, and the very fun “Out On The Western Plain”. That last one shows off Mr Gallagher’s considerable acoustic chops. Speaking of chops Rory ain’t no slouch on the electric guitar as well. Great chops, great vocals, great songs, take a listen to Rory Gallagher and don’t wait as long as I did.
