The Long Beach Blues Festival 2008
Long Beach Blues Festival
Aug 29-30
The LBC Blues Festival is no place for the mainstream teens and twenty-somethings in search of the last killer all-day summer festival. You won’t (or you shouldn’t) be laying out those hot dance moves you’d learned watching youtube and perfecting all summer long, they would confound the soul man next to you (his reaction however, would have been quite the expressive one and would have made it worth trying), you won’t be asking for healthy vegetarian food options (but the stunning bewilderment behind Rayband Wayfarers would have made it equally worth your effort), you won’t be battling for front and center (they’ll just let you have it), and if you’re a cute girl used to the attention, you’re last on the list to get called up on stage to get a guitar solo rubbed on your torso. But you will most definitely be paying $8 a beer, perhaps falling asleep after your second beverage since you’ve now spent all your cash, relaxed after having flossed out the Kettle Corn from your teeth using world class down-home Texas BBQ, and sweating out your malt liquor in 90 degree weather.
What could be fun about this, you ask?
You would have effectively stumbled on a piece of Blues history, and in no way past its characteristic class and caliber in terms of energy and adept execution. Countless songs started here with blues legends like Chuck Berry, Booker T. Jones, Taj Mahal, British Bluesman John Mayall, 95 year-old keyboard player Pinetop Perkins, Eddie Floyd, Charlie Musselwhite; songs you’ve heard innumerable times, brought to you either by the source or by qualified performers channeling the greats. The quality and texture of which, never compromised.
One of the greatest pleasures of this 29th annual blues voodoo experience was the discovering of 20 year-old blues slide guitarist Robert Francis. Learned at age 13 by great blues shaman Ry Cooder, the killer performance by he and his band made plain that blues still has a future, yet.
Absolutely.
-Anna Webber
