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B-Side Band: Pilot Bay Blues

The Bay of Plenty 3-piece B-Side Band bring their Hawaiian shirts to the studio and succeed in capturing a sunny blues vibe. They may be lacking a bass player but they don't lack energy, largely due to Carl Winter's driving rockabilly drumkit and Paul Parkhouse's moaning harmonica lines. Some great originals hold their own next to more recognisable favourites. Wrack and Ruin has a wicked slapback guitar intro, anguished harmonica and gospel call-and-response outro. Too Much Fun is a Texas-meets-BoP guitar boogie. The witty lyrics had me likening the B-Side Band to Hot Club Sandwich, only with more of a down and out, back-alley swamp blues vibe. A live album, where they get rowdy and have a bit of an audience buzz, would have legs. Odd that the instrumental version of Canned Heat's On the Road Again has been credited as an original (titled Blind Owl Blues), when I suspect it should really be an arrangement credit. This is a great disc of good time rockabilly blues irrespective of that one quibble however.

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