Taylor wrote five tracks for the album herself (the other seven include two by her mentor Willie Dixon) and those originals are my favorites: every one’s a feminist manifesto, old-school style. You can’t get any more sexually confident and pissed-off than songs like "Piece of Man" or “You Ain’t Worth A Good Woman” and “Better Watch your Step,” where she reads the riot act to a no-account man who’s done her wrong. ("Lay around my house, baby, seven days a week / Soon as I turn my back there’s a woman out in the street…”) A classic blues complaint, but so what? It still applies.
It's enormously satisfying to hear this woman snap out lyrics like "I'm gonna buy me a mule / One can take the place of you / He won't have to look no further / I'll give him all that belongs to you." I'm telling you, guys, women really do think like this. So why do we put up with you? Because — as Koko tells us on that first track -- "A piece of man / Is better than no man at all." Amen, sister.
Los Straitjackets’ Rock En Español Vol. I
Koko Taylor’s roots are different from mine, I’ll admit. Los Straitjackets, though? Their roots are plenty familiar to me. I too grew up listening to the Ventures and Duane Eddy, and this instrumental combo – who hail from Tennessee and for some demented reason wear lucho libre face masks on stage – are masters of that surf-twang guitar sound, a sound that cries out for driving a convertible on a sunny California afternoon.
But for Rock En Español Vol 1, they’ve lined up guest vocalists to pay homage to a subgenre of music that was completely off my radar until now – Latino covers of 1960s rock ‘n’ roll hits. And the more I listen, the more I dig it. It’s a little disconcerting to hear these familiar tracks with Spanish vocals, but the way Los Straitjackets rips into them, I buy the concept.
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