Posted 3/14/2012 by cal
As rock stars other than
Paul McCartney age into their sixties, they tend to tone things down, stop releasing albums, mellow out and, if they’re still into playing live, strip down the performance to basically just sitting on a stool playing an acoustic guitar. This approach tends to work well if you’re, say,
Ray Davies or
Nick Lowe, and you have all these perfect pop songs that don’t need any additives to be amazing. It’s not so easy when you’re
Hot Tuna. These guys are better known for their cover tunes, long jams and other bands than their songwriting. In case the names of founding members
Jorma Kaukonen (guitar/vocals) and
Jack Casady (bass) don’t ring a bell: they were also founding members of
Jefferson Airplane. Yeah, they were at Woodstock? Rrrrright, let’s see…Remember the scene in
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas when Benicio del Toro is in the bathtub begging Johnny Depp to throw the tape recorder in when “White Rabbit” peaks? No? *Sigh* Well, there’s always Wikipedia.
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