Words about music (319): Johnny Dowd

When I was growing up, Jimmy Reid had songs on popular radio. On normal radio, you would hear blues and pop stuff. Radio was a lot more varied than it is now, so the boundaries between, blues, rock'n'roll, pop were a lot 'blurry-er' when I was growing up. So, the jump between Jimmy Reid and Captain Beefheart, to me doesn't seem too big. If you listen to those Jimmy Reid recording as far as strange lyrics and strange production values, you couldn't get much stranger. People are spending millions of dollars trying to make their records sound weird, he was doing it with one mike, just him and his wife - and a fifth of whiskey, probably.

Johnny Dowd