Jip Golsteijn for De Telegraaf, Holland's biggest newspaper;
‘Coo-Coo’ 38 minutes and 9 seconds of adventure
The misleading simplicity of T-99
It has been commemorated with love many a time: The late Hound Dog Taylor wasn’t subtle. He only played two tempos, fast and very very fast (he only played ballads when the police threatened to raid, often not before the break of dawn), and everything was – almost, because there were only two guitars which had to be in tune - played in the key of E. It wouldn’t surprise me if T-99, the youngest leaf on the Cool Buzz-tree, which is gradually becoming a big oak, were Hound Dog Taylor-fans. But they’re also children of their time, with the knowledge of 2001, which Hound Dog didn’t have of course, if he would have been interested in it in the first place.
On ‘Coo-Coo’, produced by ‘Seatsniffer’ Walter Broes, almost every type of groove that was ever invented in the blues genre is being used. From the ‘Western Swing’ of Bob Willis (which became ‘rockabilly’ with The Stray Cats under the influence of producer Dave Edmunds) to “Let That Eagle Fly”, via the calypso of “Evil Eye” (straight from a Mike Hammer-episode), to plain vaudeville, complete with mandolin and Toby Rix-percussion in “Round & Round”.
But T-99 plays with the same misleading simplicity every time: drummer Henk Punter and bass player Thijs Gorter lay down a concrete fundament, on which singer-guitarist Mischa den Haring can set up his sometimes dangerously out of control forefronts. And then there is reverb… just like Mitch Miller's especially designed bathroom for Phil Spector, where none of the “Regulars” except T-99 may enter. For a long time ‘adventure' and 'Blues’ were far fetched in The Netherlands (before Cool Buzz that is), but ‘Coo-Coo’ is 38 minutes and 9 seconds of both.
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