Raw, Real and Raunchy. The Red Devils Part 01

The Red Devils live at Pinkpop Festival in The Netherlands

The Red Devils, a Hollywood based Chicago Blues band, took the blues scene by storm around 1992 with their raw, real and raunchy approach to the blues. I remember reading a review in a music magazine describing their album as the best blues record in about the last 40 years. After listening to the record at the local record-shop I couldn't agree more with the reviewer an bought the album. King King it's called and if you don't have it yet, go out and buy it, trust me it's worth your money.

I could go and talk about the tragic death of the lead-singer and harmonica player, Lester Butler, but if you google some you find enough info. I just stumbled on some VHS tapes I had lying around of the Pinkpop Festival in 1993, which I also attended, to see the Red Devils and The Black Crowes. And you guessed it it has footage of the Red Devils on it. That made me realize that this is one of those bands that I somehow forgot and have little story to tell about. I have seen them three times, could've seen them four times and why I didn't see them four times I will explain.

The first time I saw them was at Pinkpop. The second time I saw them was at De Lantaarn, a small venue in a town called Hellendoorn, on a saturday night. I remember that I and my good friend Henk booked a hotel to stay the night. Here we were, two 17 year olds at a fairly classy hotel, looking and smelling a bit to much like Rock & Roll. Henk tried to pay with his debit-card which the machine didn't accept. This to classy looking guy behind the counter didn't look surprised because this was the exact thing he was hoping for so he could kick us out.

Henk insisted that the man should check his machine, because he was sure he had the money on his bank-account. Henk tried to pay again, the machine still refused to do his job. Eventually the guy check the machine and the error code it was showing and noticed that the time on the pin-machine wasn't right and that was causing the problem. So we did get our room and we went to the gig.

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