Music:
Member Since: 5/1/2006
Band Website: paulbibbins.com
Band Members: For now, only myself.
Influences: SONGS FROM THE INDEX OF FOOLS now available on Apple iTunes...CLICK HERE to buy downloads from iTunes
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Myspace Layouts - Myspace Backgrounds - Myspace Codes
Also buy from CDBaby.com
Guitarz-For-Ever.Com tone tips article for new & developing guitar players by Paul Bibbins__ CLICK HERE
My infuences are hot guitar players including, but not limited to, Jimi Hendrix , Stevie Ray Vaughn, Leo Nocentelli , Cream era Eric Clapton, Johnny Winter , Robert Cray, Robin Trower , Albert King, Ernie Isley.
Sounds Like:
Bittersweet Records
Proudly Presents!!! Paul Bibbins
Jimi's Ghost... When
Jimi Hendrix died, there was a huge hole left in the fabric of Rock. Noboby, but nobody, who has come along could even approach the summit that he single handedly built to climb.
Jimi Hendrix is deified because he
deserves it. And we still talk about him in the present tense because there isn't a lead guitar player worth their salt that doesn't presently, at least seriously look at the
Hendrix body of work. It's no different for Mozart or Beethoven either.
Electric guitar players are a lot like gun slingers of the old west. The question that looms on this point is: Who's gonna get their head chopped today? For the bystander what that question means is: Whose chops are going to outdo who?
For some time now, we'd say around 35 plus years, guitar players all began experimenting with and forging the path of playing lead fills with blinding speed, forgetting the expression of the fill to begin with. As if blinding speed, in and of itself was the thing most worthy to emanate. So, it became an exercise for the next guitar lesson. The same phenomena had occurred many years earlier during the Be Bop Jazz era.
Charlie Parker and Diz set the path and many followed. But then, along comes
Miles Davis. Which yet again, changed the direction of Jazz forever.
In order for someone to fill the hole that
Jimi left or someone to even try, one had to have a hell of a lot of "sand" to do that! Because no matter what that player did, they'd be standing next to the all time icon of the electric guitar. There is no one in music that will dispute that statement.
So one day a couple of months ago we were cruising through the "Space" and along comes this request for an add. We clicked on the profile. It was
Paul Bibbins.Now we weren't stoned at the time. Nor had we had anything to drink other than coffee...but by the time we were done listening to the four songs put up on the player, we were convinced that we were. Ummm...stoned, that is.
At the onset of all this, let's understand something. Electric Lead Guitar players have huge egos, though refreshingly, such is not the case with
Paul. They're all such experts on
who did what and
how they did it. Easily enough, this can also be because of their passion for playing the electric guitar, which basically is the modern day version of the classical violin and not just an expression of elephant heads. But we weren't listening to
Paul with an eye towards that end. We were just a few witnesses to our own experience of hearing what was coming over the speakers. Quite frankly, and there was a guitar player in the room at the time, we were transfixed on the screen and the speakers. For us it was like being hit with a brick on the side of the head without knowing the brick had been thrown.
And what a brick that was! Simply put, we were knocked out. Cold!
Are we an easy audience? Perhaps you should go take a look at the column written on the Brian MySpace profile. The direct answer is no, we don't think so.
So on several occasions after that we had talked with
Paul. We were going to sign him, on that there was no doubt...at least we wanted to, let's put it that way. The album Index Of Fools deserved to be looked at for another go around of treatment. Most often, time and money stop progress in the expression of recorded musical art (and notice how we phrased that, instead of the ubiquitous...recordings) especially for independent artists like
Paul Bibbins. We had felt the same about
Paul's Debut release.
Index Of Fools. 2 DEC 2006
Hey, wanna get someone you know something cool for Christmas? We know where you can get a great album...bet you do too...by now, right?
Ok, so like we've been groovin' on each new cut that's been comin' down the pipe at us until we finally got the last cut about a week or two ago.
Maaaaannnnn...this guy just kept on blowing us away. But then we're partial because he
is a
Bittersweet Artist. Then again, we knew what we were doin' when we latched onto
Paul, to begin with, like we say. However, another thing that maybe some of you folks out there may not know about
Paul is that he's a solid individual...and when he's got the time to play the perfectionist role he can really lay it out pretty heavy.
Something else that
Paul Bibbins' music proves is that people are still interested in hearing a great guitarist when they hear one.
Index Of Fools - REDUX is an amazing body of important work in it's final form. There's something ethereal about it. Also, there's something on it for just about anyones taste when it comes to
power trio work. There's the hard driving rhythms and guitar-grooves and then there's the more laid back styles. For instance when you listen to
Angel Blue and then
Thrill Walk which we have playing back to back in the album's song order...one can't help getting carried off onto some kind of other worldly, head lolling, stoned groove...and that's
without the aid of maryjane. It's almost like listening to
John Coltrane if he could play guitar.
Now there's something in the musicians world that maybe some who witness music, yet can't put what it is they're listening to into words, and that's called talking with the instrument. From one end of this present album's final structure to the other this guy,
Paul that is, just doesn't run out of things to say. We had just previously made a reference to
John Coltrane. And anybody that knows what the
"Trane" was all about, was this; if he had nothing to say with that horn of his...
he just kept quiet. On the other hand, on any particular night on 42nd Street, during the days of his meteoric rise in the "Age of Cool" as part of
Miles Davis' quintet, any jazz musician will tell you, that there were some nights when
Trane had a lot of talking to do and during those times, while taking his turn at a groove in a solo order, he just kept playing until he was all talked out for that particular chart.
Sometimes...that would last for five or ten minutes!
Well put a stopwatch on some of the tunes in this album. Do you have any idea as to the difficulty it really is, to be able to sustain a listeners interest for more than three minutes, when it comes to popular forms of music? It's not easy friends! So, when
Paul stretches you out into a seven minute groove, inter-sparsed with the lyrical content, which is also strong...well guys, that takes some doing. What's amazing is he pulls it off with
every song that takes you to those lengths. Every time!
So, here's what will happen to you if you put a pair of earphones on and listen to this incredible album. You'll go off into your own little personal space and spend time on another plane of existence. Your host to this cool experience is more than ready to take you there. And if you listen to him on this album from one end all the way to the other...you will have had your fill of music for the day because the grooves will stay with you. It's like, you'll be hanging out in the supermarket, and like looking for a pile of spinach or something, and bobbing your head to the echo's left in your brain. People will probably think you've lost it or just out there. You'll be an electric guitar, grooving vegetable and damn happy to be so.
Yes! Your brain will be salad!
Paul Bibbins...what can we say? We bow appreciably to the master of our reality in these grooves.
Can you dig it? We knew that you could!
L. Lewis & Brian Sidler - Bittersweet Records Co.
Record Label: Bittersweet Records
Type of Label: None
