Peter Case
The Man With the Blue Postmodern Fragmented Neo-Traditionalist Guitar

Scorching sun, heat, blinding white light. The gray strip of asphalt winding ahead and beneath the car's tires. Open windows letting in furnace-like hot air that tousles your hair. To my right, the beautiful profile of a brunette smoking a cigarette. Dry stone walls of white stone section off the surrounding countryside as far as the eye can see, and for long stretches, they border the road.

These are the images that memory suggests to me every time I listen to The Man with the Blue Post Modern Fragmented Neo-Traditionalist Guitar.

The man with the Blue, postmodern, fragmented, neo-traditionalist guitar, is Peter Case, and this album, which could compete and win in a title endurance challenge with any of Wertmüller's film titles, is a forgotten treasure. A sack full of silver, as Thin White Rope would say.

The singer-songwriter from Buffalo, born in 1954, was one of the fundamental figures of the San Francisco New Wave scene, as the founder first of the Nerves and then especially of the Plimsouls, who in the early 80s released an EP and two high-level albums playing brilliant and nervous Pop-Rock and who, however, broke up in 1984 due to tensions among the members, frustrated by the lack of audience response (as often happens to valuable artists who, however, remain distant from the tastes of the masses).

Two years later, Peter releases his first self-titled solo album, produced by Mitchell Froom and T Bone Burnette, in which he fuses Folk, Rock, and Blues with hints (few) more typically New Wave, giving birth to what he himself defines as “Post-Atomic Folk” and achieving an encouraging success among critics and the public. However, it will take three years before, in 1989, The Man with the Blue… Guitar sees the light, the album of artistic maturity, where Peter receives support from a handful of musicians of the caliber of David Hidalgo (Los Lobos) on guitar, violin, accordion, and ukulele, Jim Keltner on drums, Mitchell Froom on organ and piano, Benmont Tench (Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers) on organ in “Two Angels” and Ry Cooder who appears in “Entella Hotel.”

The Man with the Blue… Guitar is a rock and electric album, but also Folk-Blues and acoustic, hovering with the inspiring presences of Bruce Springsteen, Townes Van Zandt, and naturally Bob Dylan, singers - like Peter Case - each in their own way, of the America of the underdogs, factory work, night drives on Thunder Road or Highway 61, fleeing from a past of poverty and suffering. The America witnessing the fading of the American dream. The huge America, just beyond the lights of the big cities.

The Man with the Blue… Guitar is a journey through that America and American music across ten songs. The incipit is entrusted to "Charlie James," a traditional to which Peter Case offers a chilling, sparse, and vibrantly emotional version, played at the crossroads of a dusty frontier road with acoustic guitar and a deep voice, slowly joined by an acoustic bass, Hidalgo's electric guitar, and the bluesy lament of the harmonica. “If you see Charlie James walkin' down the road, please don't tell him which way you see me go.” The following “Put Down the Gun” is another precious gem from this treasure chest, a robust Rock ballad that could be an outtake of Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town. "Entella Hotel" is a languid ballad made unforgettable by the delicate interplay of Ry Cooder and David Hidalgo's guitars. The Dylanian Rock of “Old Part of Town” picks up the pace of the journey along America's provincial roads, while we watch the scenery outside the window as in a black-and-white road movie. Accompanied by the delicate “Two Angels,” we take the Interstate towards the Mexican border as the horizon blazes at sunset. "This Town's a Riot," with its sharp guitars and sixties organ, is a homage that Peter pays to the old days of the Plimsouls and his Garage Rock/Pop roots. All the tracks would be worthy of mention, but now night has fallen. The journey is over, and the car idles, we open the door and step out, thanking Peter with a nod.

Scorching sun, heat, blinding white light. To me, this record remains indissolubly linked to a drive through the desolate summer countryside, with the boiling asphalt unrolling ahead of me and the beautiful profile of the brunette girl by my side. Because Rock 'n' Roll, besides the power to save lives - sometimes - also has the power to evoke memories with just a handful of notes and make them indelible.

Scorching sun, heat, blinding white light.