The inspired guitar sound and playing of Rory Gallagher gets another important look on two releases from Eagle Rock Entertainment, the CD of The Beat Club Sessions and a double DVD of Ghost Blues.
The single CD is taken from the early 1970s German TV show, Beat Club and the press release tells us that the material is drawn from three different appearances on that show. The guitar is front and center and in sparkling form with its gritty nuances slipping through the speaker ahead of the bass and drums…it’s all a backdrop to Rory’s terrific skills which present a textbook of live performance that will probably be as geared towards aspiring guitarists as it is to the ever expanding fans of this genre. You hear Gallagher toying with Clapton licks in a way that isn’t copying as much as providing a counterpart, really lovely dangling of notes and a pure blues explosion that follows the tender fretwork.
The press release notes that the video footage is “captured on disc 2 of the DVD package and via select audio on the CD release The Beat Club Sessions.” It’s over 90 minutes of previously unreleased material for a guitarist who, like Nils Lofgren, Shane Fontayne, Mark Doyle (guitarist with Andy Pratt) and a mere handful of others, have licks and intuitiveness that rise above the usual sound forced upon us by commercial radio.
It’s a stellar set of releases and rather than gush about the guitar hero anymore, we’ll just alert you to more Gallagher available for connoisseurs of his music as noted in the press clipping:
Ghost Blues 2DVD and The Beat Club Sessions CD are important additions to Eagle Rock’s established Rory Gallagher library, which includes the Live in Cork DVD (released March 2009), The Definitive Montreux Collection 2DVD (May 2006), Live at Rockpalast 3DVD (August 2007) and The Best of Rory Gallagher: Crest of a Wave CD (August 2009).
Joe Viglione is the Chief Film Critic at TMRZoo.com. He was a film critic for Al Aronowitz’s The Blacklisted Journal, has written thousands of reviews and biographies for AllMovie.com, Allmusic.com and produces and hosts Visual Radio. Visual Radio is a fifteen year old variety show on cable TV which has interviewed John Lennon’s Uncle Charlie, Margaret Cho, Ray Manzarek, John Densmore, Felix Cavaliere, Marty Balin, Bill Press and hundreds of other personalities.
