Over Christmas, my daughter was given a goldfish as a housewarming present for her student flat. Given that there are 2 cats in the house, we think the future looks a little bleak for inter-pet relationships... and goldfish lifespan. I can just imagine the conversation between the 2 cats. One says, "Where d'you want this killing done?" I'm guessing the answer will be the kitchen floor - tho that won't rhyme so well as the original answer, but the cats wouldn't make it all the way to that particular highway. Longevity or otherwise, a fish needs a name and this one was quickly dubbed Frank. Neither my daughter nor I have any idea how to sex a fish but (as a name) Frank has a little bit of gender-bending quality so we hope he/she won't feel too misclassified. The Blues has a tendency to be regarded as a male-dominated genre, and perhaps that's a perception that's a little bent.
One of my new year resolutions this year is to dig a little deeper into the wealth of female talent playing Blues music. The excellent Blues website Down At The Crossroads has for quite a while been highlighting the contributions of women from the very start of blues right up to the present. I was aware of the contribution of quite a few of the old blues women but, apart from a few big names like Susan Tedeschi & Bonnie Raitt, I have been relatively ignorant of newer female artists, particularly young upstarts. I aim to fix that ignorance and, along the way, share a few tunes. Here's the first of those - courtesy of Samantha Fish, on an old Howlin' Wolf number. It's a song about an abusive relationship, so perhaps it's about time it got some airplay by a female artist. And she sure can bend strings. If only her parents were country music fans, and had given her a first name of Wanda, I might have had an awesome title for this post.... As it is, I present to you a fish called Samantha.
Oh, and the goldfish was a present from someone called Sam...
Wishing long lives and peaceful relationships to Frank and all of you out there in 2016.
Maybe we should do something to protect Frank...
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