The King Of Distortion Meets The Red Line Rebels

Link Wray didn't invent the notion of rock & roll guitar, but he sure changed it around when he scored his first hit in 1958. "Rumble" was a tune short on flash and long on menace, with the fierce growl of Wray's distorted guitar hovering over a slow, deliberate rhythm; the fuzzy report of Wray's axe was a far cry from the clean dexterity of the country-influenced pickers who dominated rock & roll's earliest days, and nearly every hard rock, punk, or metal guitarist owes a debt of influence to Wray's minimalistic thunder. Wray gets top billing, and rightly so, on the compilation The King of Distortion Meets the Red Line Rebels, but here Wray's presence serves as a jumping-off point for a brief history of guitarists who were willing to step up with something bolder and wilder than their peers. After eight classic tracks from Link Wray -- including "Rumble," "Raw-Hide," and "Jack the Ripper" -- The King of Distortion veers into an eclectic survey of jazz, blues, and rock guitarists who weren't afraid to push the stylistic envelope, from Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, and T-Bone Walker to Dick Dale, Paul Burlison (with Johnny Burnette & the Rock 'n' Roll Trio), and Willie Johnson (with Howlin' Wolf). The focus of this set is a bit foggy, given the way it jumps from being a Link Wray retrospective into an overview of a bunch of guitarists with divergent styles and approaches. But for pure listenability, this more than makes the grade; every track here is memorable, and plenty are stone classics that sound just as raw and satisfying as when they first hit jukeboxes back in the day. If you like your guitars to sound loud, proud, and dirty, The King of Distortion Meets the Red Line Rebels will introduce you to the key players in the noble heritage of fuzz, and it's a righteous, rootsy hoot throughout. ~ Mark Deming|