Welcome to MEGA RIFF FRIDAY
Oh children, let me explain this beauty. So let’s say you want to hear some good hard rock j-a-double-emms. Because the weather is awesome and your shirt is uncomfortable anyway. But you don’t really know where to go for some jams. Who can turn you on to some new stuff?
ETHAN F*CKING MILLER, man, that’s who. The man behind Howlin Rain and the Bay Area’s own god of the heavy riff. Turns out he’s got a blog called Silver Currant — it’s only occasionally updated, but each post has more salve for your rock-scarred soul than a year of Hello Vegetables.
For example: he’s posted two of his favorite compilations — custom mixes made for him that he loves and wants to share with the world. One is of some heavy-pscych “busted gnarly broke dick savage rock” and the other is a “killer riff” comp.
Today’s Vedge is a selection from Fitz’s Killer Riff compilation — a 1975 treat featuring a young Fred Cole (Dead Moon) on vocals.
Zipper – Bullets from Zipper
… and as if you needed more inspiration to read Silver Currant, here’s an example of the kind of writing you’ll find:
Sorry for the silence on here … I think my head has been a little out of it … I read on line that perhaps I should try putting twice as much gin in my G & T’s and then drink half as many G & T’s per day and I have been doing that but I have added a white wine chaser and it seems to be helping.
… I have got the new incarnation of Howlin Rain as a power rock 4 piece up and running and we’ve been rehearsing like madmen. In recent years I kept experimenting with mellower and mellower music with Howlin Rain and then when we hit the road last year forever I just kept wanting to work the songs into heavier and heavier jams on stage. It’s a blast to make mellow jams in a studio. Maybe even more fun than making heavy jams because there is so much room for nuance but then when you hit the stage it just feels so goddamn good to feel like you are stepping in to the gladiator’s arena to do battle to the death with heavy jams. I can feel these new 4 piece Rain jams like a hungry lion trying to eat me for lunch. You know, you feel like you’re under the shadow of something big and wild and you can’t outsmart it you just have to try and tear its eyes out while it takes you down to the dirt and blood.
And heahh’s Howlin Rain in its 2008 power-5-piece config doing “Dancers At The End Of Time” at Amoeba Hollywood:
