Fricke’s Picks Radio: Blues & Speed With the Strypes, Zappa, Allmans
“We’re not playing blues or ska or punk – we’re playing it all together,” singer Ross Farrelly told me recently, describing the sound and moxy of supersonic Irish teens the Strypes for the band’s first feature story in Rolling Stone. “I’d call it ‘speed blues’ – all of our influences stuffed into one, in a big, loud mess.”
After catching the Strypes live three times inside a week at SXSW and in New York, then spending a rapid-fire day with them as they torpedoed the crew and audience at Late Show With David Letterman, I spent a lot of time on their roots and branches while spinning out with my own ideas on true grit, colored and weighted with echoes from my evening with the Allman Brothers Band during their recent Beacon residency. This year’s run ended early, with four shows postponed, and that group’s performing future is up in the air. But on my night, they blew the New York winter away for good.
It isn’t spring, I always say, until I’ve seen the Allmans peakin’ at the Beacon. It’s weird to think this might be the last year I get to say it.