THE ORIGINAL PANTHER BURNS "Rock Me" 7inch


What started as a performance art thing to confuse and confound the Memphis intelligentsia and uptights alike in 1979, Panther Burns have been around for close to four decades now. Over all that time, the people in the band back Tav Falco have changed many times as has the music, slithering through a gamut of weirdo rockabilly and the swampiest of rock to eventually stabs at the great American songbook and straight up tango music.

If one wants to hear something close as they can to something that sounds like the ORIGINAL Panther Burns lineup that's happening in the right here/right now, most would probably not expect to hear it would be from two of cats from that original trio (the third being LX who of course has been gone from this world since 2000) but here we are.

Recorded in one day, this is sound of two old souls hanging out in a laidback setting and laying it down unadorned and pure. The Baron Ross Johnson's work on the traps is lackadaisically sublime as it has ever been, keeping time in a loose manner and always putting booms and crashes where many might not think they belong but they definately do when he does it. Tav's guitar work sounds like the south. Swamps and hills. Humidity and pig fat. It all comes out in the snakey blues string work and his croon is just as blurry eyed and velvelty as his devotees dug it for decades.
Get it from Spacecase Records.

Comments

Anonymous said…
LX passed in 2010 btw... but good write up. will have to check this out
Dale Merrill said…
Ugh. Typos on my end. Yes, it was 2010. I really need a copy editor at times.
brad pounders said…
Thx for the kind words. It was a kick of a session.