Live review: Bob Log III – Engine Room, 7th April 2009

At any other show, you’d be a bit perturbed by a small group of fans wearing a selection of crash helmets. But this is a Bob Log III show; the helmets are a homage, a gesture of camaraderie and respect. Or maybe just a bit of a giggle.

But more likely both, or so you’d assume if you’d already encountered the surreal and raucous one-man-blues-band Bob Log III before. If you’ve not, then the sight of gig-goers in helmets will be rapidly eclipsed by the arrival of the star of the show; the PA begins to broadcast some high-velocity blues fingerpicking, the crowd start whooping, and the man himself enters stage right through the audience, stepping up onto the stage and behind his little array of kit. A miniature kick-drum; a foot-operated crash-and-tambourine combo; a couple of old drum machines and little bucket with beer bottles in it. These things are not unusual. The fact that the man settling himself behind them is wearing a motorcycle helmet with smoked full-face visor, into which has been glued an old telephone handset? That’s unusual.

From behind the opaque plastic comes an understandably muffled voice packed full of truck-stop arguments and bar-room banter, on the lam from some hard-to-pinpoint part of the southern United States. Bob Log whoops; Bob Log monologues; Bob Log refers to himself in the third person quite a bit. Bob Log soon throws off the cheap black suit he’s wearing to reveal his trademark well-worn shiny silver jumpsuit. Bob Log sits down with a big old arch-top acoustic, and he starts to play.

Let’s get this straight: Bob Log III is largely a novelty act, but he transcends the hollow showmanship of the workaday one-man-band-with-gags by really having an incredible guitar style. It’s classic pluck’n'slide Delta blues, full of fast bends and sharp twangs, but it’s played at a velocity that almost defies belief. You just don’t know where to look: at his flailing right hand (the “monkey paw” of legend) or his thrashing fretboard fingers; at the reflective plastic surface hiding his face, or at his feet as they stamp and kick their way around his primitive (but surprisingly robust and loud) rhythm section on the floor before him; at the stage, or at the crowd – the laughing, grinning, yelling and dancing crowd. Don’t try and tell me Bob Log III is a bit silly; of course he is. That’s the whole point.

Silly don’t do it for everyone, of course. Nor does a little mild ironic sexism, for that matter; Bob Log has a well-known song called “Boob Scotch”, which is meant to culminate in a bit of audience participation that should be self-explanatory. No one here tonight is offended, but I think it worth noting that here in Brighton – legendary capital of British bohemia, known for its sexual and cultural permissiveness – there are no ladies in the audience willing to oblige. Late last year in Southampton, they were forming a queue. Go figure.

What excuses “Boob Scotch” – as well as “Put Your Shit On My Leg”, which features two ladies from the audience sitting (or rather bouncing) on Bob Log’s knees as he batters his way through the song – from being crass and exploitative is the ironic inversion of his stage persona; from the way he dresses to the way he speaks to the lyrics of his songs, Bob Log is a parody of the egotist rock star, a deflation of the bubble of mystique that taking to the stage can lend the most average of people. We’re not laughing at the girls on his knees, we’re laughing with them… and they’re laughing like drains.

Despite the sheer majesty of Bob Log’s guitar style, his songs are all somewhat of a type. This is understandable, given the limitations of his set-up; there’s only so much you can go with an amped-up acoustic, some foot-powered percussion and a beat-box, after all, and a standard template of [madly percussive blues riff] + [ragged stomping 4/4 kicks] + [extra 8-bit drums for emphasis] underpins the faux-narcissist ramblings and ugh!s transmitted through that telephone. But you’re not really here for the music. As with most solo acts, it’s more about the persona, the performance, the show; the music is just a vehicle for Bob Log III to ride on, enabling him to… well, to be Bob Log, basically.

As is probably obvious, I love it, and I’ll go out of my way to see him again any time he’s near enough for me to justify it. There are probably many people, however, who just can’t see the merit in some oddball blues nut dressing up like Eval Kneival and wailing like a redneck on a meth and Viagra binge.

Those people need to get Bob Log III a drink form the bar, and shut the hell up.