Muddy Waters
The Ultimate Collection

THE REVIEW

I have never liked reviewing a compilation; it's not a complete work that reveals a small piece of the author's life, where you can breathe a certain mood of the artist. Usually, compilations have only commercial value... However, with Waters, it was different.

This album fully embodies the prototype of the blues genius, that spirit of casual nonchalance that separates a man as a man from the mask he is forced to wear every day at work, with family, in front of the system, allowing himself a beer or two, a cigarette, and a dance worthy of the name. Because, as in "Fight Club", we are ordinary people who treat each other with indifference and coldness on the outside but inside that venue, while that music plays, there are no more ranks, nor social classes, nor grudges, nor envies... Only men and women and life, so much life. These are the feelings you experience. This is what this album evokes, in our soul. Situations perhaps only lived through the frames of an old film, or in our imagination... Feelings strongly emphasized by the poor recording quality which, instead of being a flaw, as it would be for any other record, gives the work that certain something cool...

A bit like the voice of the old Muddy, a friendly and complicit voice at the same time, a deep and human voice, that warms whoever listens to it. No, it's not just comfort that derives from listening to the album... It seems strange, but it's an album that makes you want to do something. A bit like if, singing "Baby, please, don't go!", it actually wanted to say: "Hey, brother, why are you sitting there breaking your balls? Bust your ass while you have to, because to relieve the tension you can hop over to the venue tonight, have a beer or two, smoke a cigarette, and dance...". And isn't that the life for us, poor members of the lower-middle class? Isn't that our destiny, perhaps? To have an ordinary life, become so many invisible men living in the shadows of the high-ranked, making ends meet in some dingy provincial office, only thinking about our petty small-bourgeois interests, not caring about who dies in the third world, the exploited children, etc., "because these are things that will keep happening"?

Well, blues seems to scream at us loudly: you are the happiest people on earth, you who have to bust your ass, because without doing that, you don't know what satisfaction is... Even Johnny Cash said it, I think, maybe... Whatever, I'm leaving now, going out a little... maybe I'll go to the venue, have a beer or two, smoke a cigarette, and dance a little...