Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
A taste is often all you need to appreciate just how beautiful, piercing, penetrating and soul enlarging a piece of art can be, gratifying certainly, passionate and easily rousing the mind to ask for more, to seek the obscure, to revel in the artist’s and creator’s minds.
To be shown the eyes of The Mona Lisa or the mouth of The Laughing Cavalier, both paintings holding a world of expression in those small details, a glimpse of the Loch Ness makes the watcher want to plough its depths and immerse themselves under the water as the scenery blossoms around them, and so it is to a song, delivered sweetly, the emotions not just of the tune, but what it makes you remember, which is important. A taste is but a flavour to come, the perception of what makes the world a more desirable place.
Such is the sheer power of Rory Gallagher that even the smallest sample can send you to the front of queue, Oliver Twist like, bowl and spoon quivering in hand, the ears prepared for an explosion of sound, the fingers moving in time to the beat, the only difference in this case is that Mr. Bumble, the pompous social climbing Beadle, will offer all extra helpings with thanks and without persuasion.
Following on the back of two other releases within the last year, The Best Of Rory Gallagher is to be seen as the ultimate summit in which the surveyors of taste have to climb, the blues undertaking is one though that offers the finest view, a panoramic and comprehensive vision which takes in views from his first outpourings with Taste and through to the final days before his untimely passing, with moments from the 1990 studio album, Fresh Evidence.
To understand the art one must always be prepared to explore the deed in depth, however as this phenomenal piece of music shows, sometimes that taste is all that is needed, and with the unearthed achieve offering up the glorious outtake of the Rolling Stones classic, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, with the King of 50s Rock ‘N’ Roll, Jerry Lee Lewis.
It is with inclusion and with tracks such as Shadow Play from the album Photo Finish, Daughter of the Everglades from Blueprint, It’s Happened Before, It’ll Happen Again from On The Boards, Loanshark Blues and Seven Days from 1987s Defender recording, the haunting Ghost Blues from the aforementioned Fresh Evidence, and I’m Not Awake Yet from Deuce, that the double C.D. really kicks down the doors of time and reawakens the senses of taste, of sensitive blues and driving tones that perfectly, and astutely, proclaim what we knew in our hearts, that Rory Gallagher remains the epitome of Blues.
A taste, a simple moment as you lick your lips in the presence of accomplishment and musical exactness, The Best of Rory Gallagher is the art form at its most revealing, the cream of the crop for all to sample.
The Best of Rory Gallagher is released on Friday 9th October via UMC.
Ian D. Hall