HI FI Times 1.3
Album Review: RUMBLE! The Best of Link Wray
Careening at you like an out of control chopped and channeled ’32 rat rod with no floorboards is the raw, wild and wicked fuzz drenched twanging electric guitar of Link Wray
. This music is immediate and in your face and jumps out of even the tiniest of speakers with intent… serious intent. Like the outlaw daddy of the Beach Boys
and theCramps
, everything about this guy screams danger. I can’t imagine the horror that must have ensued when a cute and seemingly innocent 16 year old kid comes home from the corner drug store and plops one of these smoking 45’s on the platter in the living room. It must have been total '50s parental nervous breakdown. Ozzy
has nothing on Wray for scaring the bejeezus out of the unknowing parental units. Wray wouldn’t bother biting the heads off of bat’s or any other rodent, flying or otherwise because he wouldn’t want to spill blood on his leather… Now if it came down to spilling your blood on his jacket…? You’re on your own my friend.
With song titles like "Rumble," "Switchblade," "The Black Widow," "Jack the Ripper," and one of my favorite titles of all time, "Run Chicken Run," you know this man is bad medicine and you best not cross him. Listening to Wray reminds you why you watch your back in a dark alley. I was lucky enough to have seen one of his last shows at the Tractor Tavern in Ballard, WA. At 76 years old, he was still belting out the power chords that he is credited as inventing. Wray blazed a path, and in the process, laid the foundation for the fuzz and overdriven garage rock that began springing out from all parts of the USA. In fact, the entire punk movement would be nothing without power chords.
Wray was legendary for preparing his amps in order to develop as much distortion, fuzz and general mayhem as he could squeeze out. Keep in mind that his first recordings were hitting the jukes in 1958 along side Duane Eddy
, but while Eddy was doing relatively clean instrumentals, Wray was cutting his speakers for fuzz , loosening tubes for extra distortion and cranking the volume to the brink of equipment failure for that extra ounce of dangerous tone.
So crank it up and enjoy fuel injected supersonic tone from one of the most daring 50’s cats around… You can almost smell the smoking tires, avgas and scorching hot exhaust coming out of your stereo…
Catch you on the flip kids! -mke
. This music is immediate and in your face and jumps out of even the tiniest of speakers with intent… serious intent. Like the outlaw daddy of the Beach Boys and theCramps, everything about this guy screams danger. I can’t imagine the horror that must have ensued when a cute and seemingly innocent 16 year old kid comes home from the corner drug store and plops one of these smoking 45’s on the platter in the living room. It must have been total '50s parental nervous breakdown. Ozzy has nothing on Wray for scaring the bejeezus out of the unknowing parental units. Wray wouldn’t bother biting the heads off of bat’s or any other rodent, flying or otherwise because he wouldn’t want to spill blood on his leather… Now if it came down to spilling your blood on his jacket…? You’re on your own my friend.With song titles like "Rumble," "Switchblade," "The Black Widow," "Jack the Ripper," and one of my favorite titles of all time, "Run Chicken Run," you know this man is bad medicine and you best not cross him. Listening to Wray reminds you why you watch your back in a dark alley. I was lucky enough to have seen one of his last shows at the Tractor Tavern in Ballard, WA. At 76 years old, he was still belting out the power chords that he is credited as inventing. Wray blazed a path, and in the process, laid the foundation for the fuzz and overdriven garage rock that began springing out from all parts of the USA. In fact, the entire punk movement would be nothing without power chords.
Wray was legendary for preparing his amps in order to develop as much distortion, fuzz and general mayhem as he could squeeze out. Keep in mind that his first recordings were hitting the jukes in 1958 along side Duane Eddy
, but while Eddy was doing relatively clean instrumentals, Wray was cutting his speakers for fuzz , loosening tubes for extra distortion and cranking the volume to the brink of equipment failure for that extra ounce of dangerous tone.So crank it up and enjoy fuel injected supersonic tone from one of the most daring 50’s cats around… You can almost smell the smoking tires, avgas and scorching hot exhaust coming out of your stereo…
Catch you on the flip kids! -mke
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