Bob Log III: Trike

The blues as we know it has become a static thing, a collection of withered relics playing the same exhausted riffs to crowds of white people seeking cultural authenticity at fancy dinner clubs.

Of course, there's a whole ‘nother blues scene out there—a living, evolving form that's busting its creative seams at the moment. In this sense, Bob Log III is blues. But even as a one-man band (stomping foot for percussion, sampling assorted noises, playing mean-ass slide guitar), this stuff ain't all that unique—you've heard the incredibly twisted electric guitar work of “Bacon ” in any typical pre–Hole Truth–era Butthole Surfers track. The spastic yowlin', hootin', and gruntin' of “6 String Kicker” and “Log Dirty Down” might bring to mind good old Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper, especially given the washboard-primitive percussion. And Log sounds exactly like Eddie Cochran on the inbred stomper “Clap Your Tits.”

Trike is certainly no heavy departure from Log's last record, 1998's School Bus. Nor does it differ qualitatively from what he normally does in Doo Rag: it's all the same manic riffs, the same hyper-rhythmic vocal chatter. The only difference is that Log's foot, in the grand ol' tradition of bluesmen like Peg-Leg Sam, has replaced his drummer.

But who cares? What Log does is ingest, digest, and regurgitate familiar forms into curious new colors. Compare that to anything BB King has put out in 30 years and you've got something.

—John Pecorelli

Alternative Press magazine