Deprator/Kearns
“Thriving Industrial Metropolis”
Deprator/Kearns
If you love guitar based blues by great guitar players (think Jeff Beck), you have to listen and buy Deprator/Kearns. This album seriously has some of the best licks I’ve heard since Beck or Clapton on smack or Page or Stevie Ray Vaughn. That combined with some great Lou Reedish type lyrics and vocals that sound like Tom Waits before he smoked too many cigarettes and you get one of the greatest albums I’ve heard for a while. According to Derek Deprator, the song, “Thriving Industrial Metropolis” is dedicated to:
Dave Taraszewski, his former Atomic Crash bandmate who died last summer. Taraszewski is best known locally for his work in The 8 Balls and Edge City. “It’s just about a working guy who likes rock ‘n’ roll that had to leave his band because he had too many responsibilities at his job and had no time left. It’s about Dave Taraszewski. Originally when he lived in Cleveland and was in my band in the mid ’00s, he wrote this song ‘Sweet Lou.’ It was basically about how artsy-fartsy Lou had become over the years, but paying tribute at the same time. I took the music that DT wrote, and some of the lyrics that I could remember. I turned the words around to sound like they were about DT.”
That album is just full of wonderful, guitar-based, blues that is so fun. Check out their cover of “Twentieth Century Schizoid Man”. Tremendous. I so love this duo. Oh, and for all you guitar freaks, the band also notes all the tunings they used for all the string instruments. Really one of the greatest albums I’ve heard for years. Thanks guys.