VA – Plug It In! Turn It Up! Part 1 to Part 4 [1939-2005] (12 x CDs)
A set like Plug It In! Turn It Up! Electric Blues The Definitive Collection
tends to reveal itself slowly, not through any single disc but through the
way it settles across all four volumes.
Twelve CDs in total, issued as a connected series, it gathers electric
blues recordings from the point where amplification
begins to reshape the music, and follows that current forward without
forcing it into a strict narrative.
It helps to dip in rather than start at the beginning.
A track built around a sharp, overdriven guitar line leads into something
looser, then into a groove that leans more on rhythm than melody.
Across the set, that balance keeps shifting. Early recordings still carry
the structure of acoustic blues, just pushed through an amplifier.
As the discs move forward, the sound thickens. Bands tighten, rhythms
become more insistent, and the guitar begins to take a more central role.
Names come and go, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James,
not as isolated highlights but as part of a wider field of players working
within the same language.
The sequencing keeps them grounded in that shared space, rather than
lifting any one performance above the rest.
What gives the series its shape is accumulation. Repeated patterns,
familiar chord movements, and variations in tone begin to connect across discs.
A riff heard early on reappears later in a different form, a rhythm returns
with more weight behind it.
The differences are there, but they sit within a consistent approach.
Heard across multiple sittings, the set feels less like a history lesson and more
like a long current of sound. The details shift, the energy rises and falls, but the
core remains steady, one amplified voice following another, carrying the
same idea forward without needing to resolve it.
(Butterboy)
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The tracklisting is a bit big to share here but clink on the link and check it out at Butterboy’s HQ
You won’t regret it, its an awesome collection and if there is but one number you don’t have you really need to check this out
