Label: Tompkins Square

1968年の唯一音源を発掘〜復刻!!ロングアイランドの北部に位置するオイスター・ベイ出身、グリニチ・ビレッジでキャリアをスタートした孤高のギタリスト"ドン・ビコフ"。1968年、米Keyboard Recordsからリリースされた唯一の希少ソロ・アルバム[Celestial Explosion]がTompkins Squareより初復刻。LPのライナーノーツに記されたジョン・フェイヒー、ロビー・バショーとの比較のテキストが"当時の彼らを不快にさせた"と解説にありますが、間違いなく彼独自の異質アプローチに成功した凄い録音。









Don Bikoff released one lone, rare solo album, 'Celestial Explosion', on Keyboard Records in 1968, now reissued on LP/CD/DL by Tompkins Square. Watch the YouTube video of Bikoff playing on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, taped May 12, 1968. You'll see the sheepish, long-haired, mustachioed musician spinning gold in a style (still?) so foreign to the mainstream listener. The befuddled host concludes after Don's performance, "That's unusual to say the least." A kid from Oyster Bay, LI, Bikoff got his start in Greenwich Village, annoying Dave Van Ronk and playing the folk/blues circuit where he met Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Jesse Fuller and Mississippi John Hurt. The comparisons to John Fahey's and Robbie Basho's work stated in the LP liner notes touched a nerve with Fahey himself at the time. Today, those comparisons are still inevitable, however they are for lazy ears. Bikoff has his own approach.