He may never show his face, but Bob Log III is by no means shy. With his head concealed by a motorcycle helmet hooked to a telephone receiver and his gut squeezed into a low-cut, blue spandex jumpsuit, Log looks more like Evel Knievel in a Dadaist porn flick than a one-man band belting out the Delta Blues. His feet and fingers, however, paint a very different picture. Log's bottom half pounds out the rhythm on a bass drum, high-hat and jerry-rigged snare. All the while, his upper extremities shred the fret board with some of the fastest slide guitar blues this side of the Mississippi River, his frenzied licks flirting with both bluegrass and speed metal -- often simultaneously. Add some drum machine-driven disco and a few Latin rhythms and you've got yourself one hell of a party. (At last year's Fuji Rock Festival Log's scorching performance turned a bleak, rainy afternoon into a mud-stompin' hoedown.)
The '70s-era rotary telephone receiver sticking out of Bob's visor serves as a microphone, which he uses to squeal, holler and sing about his three favorite things: scotch, women and, um, women. Expect him to coerce (in passable Japanese) a few young females in the audience to sit on his knee while he plays. As the girls bounce and giggle to the beat, you can almost see a smile shine through Log's visor. Sometimes it pays to have the blues.
