Sturgis Nikides

LOW SOCIETY ONLINE http://www.screaminblues.com Unless you’re a big fan of John Cale’s solo work, you’re probably unfamiliar with Sturgis Nikides. Sturgis was Cale’s guitar player through the 1980s, and has a long, colorful history as a professional musician. Simply put, it’s easy to call him a time-honored vet and indisputable master of the steel guitar, but his first full length solo album stretches his talents to the limit, and allows him to reveal much more than knockout playing. Nikides’ Man of Steel goes beyond your average blues rock, evoking indigent American toughness on so many levels it recalls everything from to John Huston. This is blues on a transcendental level, and to be honest, I think it gives Ry Cooder a run for his money. Nikides plays that fucking thing, that hard steel slide guitar, in a way that doesn’t ask of the listener anything more than their ears and their time. It is not necessary to be an expert on the blues, nor to even be keen on blues music in general, to ap