Bman's Blues Report

Raw Earth is made up of a stellar line-up consisting of some of Singapore’s best blues and rock musicians including Danny Loong and Francis Chan (Ublues), Victor Chen (Malted Milk and winner of Strip Acoustic at Wala Wala), Surath Godfrey and Hanrong from rock outfit Reverie combining to lock in a strong groove with an old school favour and on stage improvisation and interaction which promises to keep things interesting. The band performs an wide array of Old School music styles from the 50s to 70s such as blues, rock and roll, funk, soul and even some classic blues rock and their repertoire includes songs by Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, CCR, Grand Funk Railroad, Albert Collins, T-Bone Walker, BB King, The Beatles, Otis Redding among others. While most current pop and rock music have gone more technical and predictable, Raw Earth attempts to retain the concept of soul and groove within their music through their performance. Sometimes you don’t know what you are going to get at a Raw ...

Original liner notes for "Scratch It" album by Ken Chang who has written for Allmusic.com and Blues Revue magazine. --- It was just another small footnote in blues history, but allow me a few lines here and I’ll give you the full story. The sky was overcast, the heat sweltering. Guitarist Harry Manx was halfway through his set at the 2004 Chicago Blues Festival when he decided to throw the audience a curveball. Enter stage right: Kelvin “Smokey” Ng. As Smokey took a seat by the microphone, there was some halfhearted applause, along with a couple of groans. Just a day earlier, a Japanese samisen troupe in full kimono garb had played on this same stage, resulting in a muddled attempt at an “East meets West” blues jam. And now here was Manx introducing a Chinese harp player whom he had met in Singapore. I could almost hear the crowd sigh, “Yes, globalization is nice and all, but we would like to hear some blues, please.” True, I could have pointed out to these folks that thanks ...