Canned Heat
Living The Blues

In 1968, Canned Heat wholeheartedly embraced young people from all over the world. A global awakening was on the horizon, youth had never been so vibrant, and it was time even for the old blues to rejuvenate to meet the youth and dance with them. After the stratospheric "Boogie With Canned Heat," the blues made another step toward the youth and their flowers, marrying contemporary sounds. "Living The Blues," right from the start with "Pony Blues," doesn't hide the occurrence: the old, eternal blues mixes with the groove of the flower power music, and among root arpeggios and phenomenal guitar spaces, it further accredits itself to the ears of the "movement."

There are still traditional pieces, like the rhythm and blues of "Sandy's Blues" or the very old boogie of "Walking By Myself," but the step toward Woodstock is decisive. The boogie rock of "One Kind Favor" openly testifies this. It is also evident in "My Mistake," once again with this impossible interpretation of "On The Road Again," and the legendary "Going Up The Country," showcasing the joy of country life among carefree flutes, psychedelic sounds and vocals, and lively boogie rhythms.

But even more emblematic is "Parthenogenesis," the progressive suite (progressive blues!), an absolutely timely choice in line with the tastes of the period. Nine chapters, seven enclosed between two delightful and evocative little tricks of a sort of echoing jaw harp. In between, a couple of boogie accelerations, strictly instrumental, including "Rollin' And Tumblin'," the opener of their debut album; there's room for a display of percussive skill, a vintage boogie on the piano, and a hard rock violence that disarticulates to become prog. When, in "Raga Kafi" the harmonica vibrates and stirs, it seems like Death Valley is in Tibet, that Buddhist monks find the ideal desert climate for their rituals, and the Californian sand is perfect for mandalas. It appears, in short, that the stuff Canned Heat was taking was quite a blast.

Yet it's not over, in fact, there's another album. The "Part II" of "Living The Blues" features Canned Heat in their natural habitat, the live show of course, nonetheless grappling with the showpiece "Refried Blues," which is nothing but the extended live version of the classic "Fried Hockey Blues." Over forty minutes of boogie-rock, divided twenty and twenty between side A and side B; the "physical" separation of the track is achieved thanks to the fading of the guitar solo. The instrument fades out at the end of the first side like the red LED of a power stabilizer. On side B, the guitar volume rises approximately where it had dropped, in "appearing" (the opposite of fading is appearing, right?).

Exhausting, relentless, these minutes flow, but the foot refuses to stop, at least not until the bass solo begins, which is very good and decidedly more imaginative than the endless electric guitar solo, which alone consumes almost half of the second side. A piece certainly at the service of the band and its solo musicians (there's also time for a great drum bash) as per the best live tradition, and as one would expect since the band is from those years. But unlike others, Canned Heat doesn't offer pieces that, when decontextualized, placed outside of '68 and its subsequent space-time bubbles, appear increasingly soporific and lacking in depth (any reference to stuff like "Blues For Allah" by the Grateful Dead and similar, with all due respect,  is purely intentional), but here you dance, indeed, you truly get into it, and when the track ends, the Bear shouts his legendary warning before bidding farewell to his delirious crowd, both, the vocalist and the audience, as if they still have plenty of desire and energy.

"Don't Forget To Boogie!"