The Eagle is Back!

Summer of 1996.

On a summer afternoon, while strolling down St.Mark's Place, towards First Avenue,  I picked up a cassette tape from a street vendor.

What brought the cassette to my attention was the cover photo that reminded me of the darkly lit Spanish portraits that I was often encountering at the Met and the Frick etc.

Around this time, I was buying cheap cassettes and playing them on my new secondhand audio set(CoralSpeakers, RadioShackAmp etc.) while painting at this huge, well lit space that I was temporarily occupying.              (PS: My apologies to the gentle artists who allowed me the use of the space and then regretted for a good reason!  I hope to make it all up to you♡)

The cassette was priced at 4 dollars, which was way beyond the norm.

                  A recreation of the vendor's table.

But the vendor looked sincere,  so I didn't haggle.                                        Later, a thought came to my mind that he the vendor likely was a musician.

The front of the cassette showed the photo of Johnny Guitar Watson, who was then unknown to me, in white outfit flanked by two beauties in red.

The album, That's What Time It Is, begins and ends with that incomparable voice; which is rich, resonant, crystal, and cutting.   

The story that he tells is vivid and visual and merged with his instrumentation somehow raises the whole experience to a three dimentional movie like experience.                                                               

 Non to compare!     

      

THE TOPS:

BOW WOW                     an album from 1994.

THE EAGLE IS BACK     a song from 1961

 A Real Mother ForYa    a full album   1977

All Contents Copyright by Sungjoon Joh.  2022.