please don't be dead

Well, I had a pretty great birthday last weekend. Had a great hang with great friends at a great beer spot that turns out has amazeballs catering. If you're anywhere near Crown Heights and you want to have a little get together I can't recommend them enough. Best part - when you're done drinking there, you can buy to go beers and the weekend is set!

Also some discovery news: so I usually do Google image searches for royalty free pictures for my Friday letters. I often start by just typing in the title of the letter and seeing what the search returns, and last week that search returned nothing but album art by the band Mastodon. How in the hell have I missed them for this long? This stuff belongs in my collection. You can even start with the album that my letter shares a name with, 2014's Once More 'Round The Sun.

But while those things are well and good, that's not why I'm writing today. I wish it were that simple. No, today's letter features an album from an artist that's metaphorically died and risen from the dead - twice.
 

I feel like there a lot of artists out there that have seen their careers fly up to the heights only to come crashing back down to be reborn into something new again. The most obvious one is the King himself, Mr. Elvis Presley. To know such fame only to fall off the popular music map must have been crushing, which is probably why his '68 Comeback Special crushed them all. But Elvis is far from the only one; a quick think brings me to Eric Clapton as another example of being at the height of your game (The Yardbirds, Cream, Derek & the Dominos) only to crash so far down from drugs and alcohol that you emerge on the other side with an Unplugged album for MTV that gives us a tune like "Tears In Heaven."

Fantastic Negrito has gone through both a career death/rebirth as well as a near death experience/rebirth. I'd love to write it all out for you here, but for the sake of both brevity and because I certainly can't do the story the same justice he can, you can read his bio here. The important takeaway is that he's a crazy blues guitarist from Oakland, CA who won the first NPR Tiny Desk Contest, has toured the world with Chris Cornell (RIP), and has a new album out called Please Don't Be Dead.

Plain and simple, this album cooks. It's got the best elements of contemporary blues combined with the grittiness of the old masters. If you're familiar with the work of guitarists such as Gary Clark, Jr. you know where you can take the blues if you use beats that would feel just as at home in hip hop as they do backing a hot guitar lick. On the flip side of that coin, if you've ever heard an old R.L. Burnside track from the 70's you know that kind of back hills lofi kind of blues. Fantastic Negrito takes heaping helpings of both of these, throws them on the plate together, pours a big ladle of California gravy on them, mixes it together, and out comes this kick ass amalgamation that is totally his own. It's interesting, and you'll want to listen a few times to really take it in, but I think that's exactly the point.

Recommended tracks: "Plastic Hamburgers," "Bullshit Anthem," "The Duffler," "Transgender Biscuits," "A Letter to Fear"