Tuna Break

I’m a bit overworked, and I’m taking a Litkicks vacation day. But here’s a nice song for you to listen to: “Hesitation Blues” by Hot Tuna, recorded somewhere in 1970. Jorma Kaukonen is one of the best (and most underrated) guitarists of the rock era, and Jack Casady is not too shabby on the Guild hollow-body bass.

5 Responses

  1. This is a great blast from
    This is a great blast from the past … the rest of the first H.T. album is just as good, too, altho’ the CD has a hard time staying in print.

  2. Levi, I saw Jorma solo a few
    Levi, I saw Jorma solo a few years back at the Old Town School of Folk Music. He still has the chops- and a cult following. The man can finger-pick the blues without doubt.

  3. This little diversion was
    This little diversion was enjoyable and brought back some of those flashbacks… in particular when I had seen the Jefferson Airplane at an afternoon concert in San Jose. After playing awhile there was a short break wherein Jorma and Casady began what at first seemed to be a simple retuning but it continued into an otherwordly sort of sound that was intriguing. But this sound left the other members with a clueless look on there faces as if to say “what the fuck???” including Grace who took her mic and said to the audience: “I have no idea what they’re doin’…” leaving most of the crowd amused. This strange sound continued on for several minutes after her comment and the two of them, Jorma and Casady, seemed oblivious to both the band and the audience. Then on cue the both of them finished doing this little “piece” and looked at their band members as if to say “you guys ready yet?”

    It was a good day with Janis Joplin playing with Big Brother at that same gig.

  4. I couldn’t ever deal with
    I couldn’t ever deal with that guy’s hair in old pictures.

    I mean, agh. Hippy bands, yech.

    I used to see Casady in SVT back in the late 70’s early 80’s, a New Wave band.

    He had cut his hair, you can see

    http://eclypso.com/rock/sf%20punk/files/page8-1031-full.jpg

    They gigged around San Francisco and didn’t go anywhere. Their singer died (heroin).

    SVT stood for Sex, Violence and TV.

    I remember one song they did called “Heart of Stone”

    Yorma wasn’t in SVT

    Bob Steeler played with another SF band of that time that was a punk band (as opposed to New Wave) called the Offs.

    Hippies….augh

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Litkicks will turn 30 years old in the summer of 2024! We can’t believe it ourselves. We don’t run as many blog posts about books and writers as we used to, but founder Marc Eliot Stein aka Levi Asher is busy running two podcasts. Please check out our latest work!