Label: Flying Fish Records
Category: Music
Average customer rating:
Media: Audio Cassette
UPC: 018964065744
EAN: 0018964065744
ASIN: B000000MW5
Release Date: 1996-10-15
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Artist:
Les Sampou
Label: Flying Fish Records Category: Music Average customer rating:
Media: Audio Cassette UPC: 018964065744 EAN: 0018964065744 ASIN: B000000MW5 Release Date: 1996-10-15 |
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Customer Reviews:
Les's New CD~Borrowed and Blue.......2001-08-22
"Borrowed and Blue" is exceptionally well crafted. Les's performances flow so naturally. She firmly yet softly captivates with the pure, simple elegance of her "plug and play" performances. When you listen to Les on this CD, you feel like you are sitting with her (where she made the CD) in a quiet living room. It is an intimate recording in which Les effortlessly delivers a seemingly private performance that you know comes straight from her heart.
This CD showcases Les's god-given talent for expressing deep and broad ranges of emotion in music and poetry, be it her own or of other great masters. It centers on the solo feel of just Les and her guitar and gives her performances an entirely noiseless backdrop. The result is a listening experience so personal that you may be prompted as I was to put on headphones. You can't help, but feel that you want an equally noiseless backdrop within which to hear Les's sublime gifts as a guitarist, vocalist and clever, rich, and profound lyricist.
You can almost feel and visualize her fingers picking and traveling effortlessly and seamlessly up and down the chords and chord changes. Her perfect guitar playing from picking to sliding to strumming, was splendid with its upright, melodic inflections and tones. Her accompanying vocals are of a sophisticated, albeit white palette, but she "must have paid her dues" `cause Les performs her own amazing slice of soulful blues here. On "Borrowed and Blue" Les Sampou delivers a "bassy", heart-felt, emotive, and often "tuneful", tapping collection of blues songs. This is a "must have" CD for anyone who has ever sung or even had the slightest inclination towards the blues. Once in a "blue" moon, music comes together so beautifully and feels so right that it makes me howl out loud. Les hit those same chords in me with B&B, but so soulfully, like a "howling moon" that moves you deep inside.
Check Out Les's latest CD, Borrowed and Blue; Also Great!!!!.......2001-08-21
This CD offered the perfect showcase for Les's god-given talent for expressing deep and broad ranges of emotion in music and poetry, be it her own or of other great masters. It centers on the solo feel of just Les and her guitar and gives her performances an entirely noiseless backdrop. The result is a listening experience so personal that you may be prompted as I was to put on headphones. You can't help, but feel that you want an equally noiseless backdrop within which to hear Les's sublime gifts as a guitarist, vocalist and clever, rich, and profound lyricist.
Les's transcendent vocals are perfectly blended with her syncopated guitar style. You can almost feel and visualize her fingers picking and travelling effortlessly and seamlessly up and down the chords and chord changes. Her perfect guitar playing from picking to sliding to strumming, was splendid with its upright, melodic inflections and tones. Her accompanying vocals are of a sophisticated, albeit white palette, but she "must have paid her dues" `cause Les performs her own amazing slice of soulful blues here. On "Borrowed and Blue" Les Sampou delivers a "bassy", heartfelt, emotive, and often "tuneful", tapping collection of blues songs. This is a "must have" CD for anyone who has ever sung or even had the slightest inclination towards the blues. Once in a "blue" moon, music comes together so beautifully and feels so right that it makes me howl out loud. Les hit those same chords in me with B&B, but so soulfully, like a "howling moon" that moves you deep inside.
She's awesome.......1999-03-30
This lady can play..........1998-10-03
A must-have even for NON-blues lovers!.......1998-09-07
The liner notes begin, "Les Sampou is tough. She's also tender, and smart. And she plays some very tasty guitar. And damn, can she write a song." Elijah Wald's essay suggests the same spare phrasing that hallmark the compositions on this album. From the opening Notes of "Holy Land," a lazy ballad of pretentious white trash, she hooks the listener and starts reeling. The broader strumming accompanying "Alibis" -- "My dad told me that you can't steal second with your foot on first / And I reckon he's right"-- opens out into full instrumentation as the passion builds. "Things I Should Have Said" takes the experience we've all had, of re-thinking a situation we could have handled better, and paints it in the context of a singer's angry musings on a cross-country drive. The soft yearning of a homebound traveller is delicately embellished in "Home Again." And again, you're right there with her, almost unconscious of the deft production so ably supporting the fine story-telling.
Sampou is adept at vivid imagery, despite a bare minimum of flowery phrases. Whether it's the childhood exhilaration of "Ride the Line," or the bitter discovery of her best friend's homosexuality and her own betrayal ("Flesh and Blood"), she makes the experiences our own. The aching exhaustion of "I Already Know" paints a woman persuading her heart to let go when her mind knows she should. "String of Pearls" uses the metaphor of an heirloom necklace for the values we don't always appreciate until we've proven their worth to ourselves. "Two Strong Arms" is a gritty anthem of a woman giving herself a stern talking-to-- this one's a personal favorite. (An excerpt doesn't do it justice, folks: you just have to hear it.)
I doubt we live in a world where a petite white woman will stand beside B.B. King as a blues icon-- and even Les herself might cringe at the pretension of that image. But for my money, this lady has the stuff of which legends are made. I challenge you to listen to the first cut. I doubt you'll be able to leave without wanting to take her home!
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