{"id":203,"date":"2010-04-06T06:52:25","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T11:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=203"},"modified":"2026-07-02T07:46:52","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T11:46:52","slug":"album-review-hot-tuna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2010\/04\/06\/album-review-hot-tuna\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Hot Tuna &#8211; Live at New Orleans House, Berkeley CA 09\/69"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.musoscribe.com\/images\/hot_tuna_new_orleans_house.jpg\" align=\"right\" height=\"249\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" width=\"280\" \/>Is &#8220;power blues&#8221; your thing? The answer to that question is a good  indicator as to how well you&#8217;ll enjoy the Collectors Choice Live  archival release from <strong>Hot Tuna<\/strong>, <em>Live at New Orleans House, Berkeley  CA 09\/69<\/em>. Titled like a bootlegger might name it, this set finds the  acoustic version of the <strong>Jorma Kaukonen<\/strong>\/<strong>Jack Casady<\/strong> duo playing a set  split nearly evenly between original compositions and blues classics.<\/p>\n<p>Though they&#8217;re playing in a country blues manner akin to <strong>Sony Terry and  Brownie McGhee<\/strong>, here Hot Tuna really does tear it up. Casady&#8217;s suitably  busy bass lines don&#8217;t intrude on the songs; they propel them forward.  The fretboard interplay between ace guitarist Kaukonen and bassist  Casady is fiery; at times they give listeners an idea of what <strong>Cream  <\/strong>might have sounded like on acoustic instruments (and without the  thunderous traps of <strong>Ginger Baker<\/strong>).<\/p>\n<p>The country blues of &#8220;Keep on Truckin'&#8221; uses a well-worn melody that  will be strikingly familiar to even the most casual <strong>Arlo Guthrie<\/strong> fan. The harmonica playing on the song is delightful, and may remind  some listeners of <strong>Canned Heat<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The pair of <strong>Jefferson Airplane<\/strong> veterans changes things up on each song;  while in lesser hands the blues can sometimes get tiresome and  repetitive, Hot Tuna never lets that happen. Fans of the acoustic blues  variants of rock (think of <em>Workingman&#8217;s Dead<\/em> and <em>American  Beauty<\/em> era <strong>Grateful Dead<\/strong>) will find much to enjoy in this hour-plus  set. The intimate setting and well-behaved crowd help make it a  beautifully-recorded document of this set from the final months of the  sixties.<\/p>\n<p>Hot Tuna fans who recognize both the venue and several of the songs may  well wonder if this disc is yet another repackaging of their first  album. It&#8217;s not; Hot Tuna played quite a few gigs at New Orleans House,  and many were recorded. As <strong>Richie Unterberger<\/strong> notes in his brief but  informative liner notes, this disc consists completely of previously  unreleased performances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is &#8220;power blues&#8221; your thing? The answer to that question is a good indicator as to how well you&#8217;ll enjoy the Collectors Choice Live archival release from Hot Tuna, Live [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31810,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/31810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}