Review: BlindBoy Gumbo @ The Yard Club

Written by Enniv Zarf
Second Life Indie Music Review
Blindboy Gumbo Myspace
The Yard Club

I am in a ton of those music groups in SL, way too many mostly so I can post group notices. But since I'm launching this magazine and such, I am now going to make use of those tons of IM's I get every hour and review different people. It's going to be crazy cause now I'm just going to random concerts and reviewing people from all over. And I can tell you already that it won't always be pretty. I hope I don't get too many people mad and upset. But I'm here to seriously review all the music as best as I could.

I got the IM for Blindboy Gumbo at Independent Musicians Group from fay Rehula who is the contact for Blindboy Gumbo to book him.

Blindboy is a singer and guitarist located in England and speaks with a British accent. I love a good British accent myself. But the singing itself wasn't all too British.

Blindboy performed at the Yard Club today around 1pm. I'm not sure what time did it start, but I got there at around 1:30ish. He performs both original songs as well as cover songs of popular RL artists.

I have to say I'm a little mixed with my reaction to Blindboy. I like his guitar playing and the feeling of his music, rather relaxing and very well played. It was fun and relaxing and definitely has a laid back feel to it.

But his voice definitely has some issues especially on cover songs. He does have a good voice quality but has intonation issues that was just bothering me throughout the whole time. And some times he does this sort of Elvis wannabe voice in some of what he's doing which I'm not sure works so well with his music.

I think he'd do himself some favor if he'd just make sure that his intonation is spot on for his music. It's not awful or unlistenable or anything. It's just that there are definitely moments throughout that are just a little off. But it's nothing that can't really be fixed if he really worked on it.

In general, I think Blindboy tries a little too hard to get a "sound" down when I think he doesn't quite need to over do it that much, but let his nice voice quality come through. But his guitar playing is definitely very wonderful to listen to and I almost just want him to stop singing and just play the guitar, which I actually thought was very good. His original tunes were definitely a lot better to listen to also, and the singing is definitely much more solid then the covers.

No matter he does create a fun environment and relaxing addition to any venue if you are ok with some minor intonation problems.