El Fish - Hooked (1999) [CD Rip]

Normally this kind of a cd makes us say : "this collection of alternative version, live-takes and rarities is typically aimed at the die-hard El Fish fan", if it wasn't for the constatation that the quality is so good, chances are real you could become a die-hard fan àfter listening to "Hooked". It's your choice.
What you get are eleven pieces of adventurous blues, in very different recording qualities (ranging from the muffled sounds on the big Pukkelpop stage, the near-studio quality of the Bassta-studio in the VRT, to small blues-venues and even a performance with óne microphone on a Dutch riding train) and very different atmospheres (from the rippling chill-out blues as a backing band for Willie Foster or Bob Pearce to the fucked-up bluesrock with Jean-Marie Aerts on the Pukkelpop-stage, from Canned Heat-ish roadblues to simple straightforward jumpboogie).
The tracks that worked best for me are the menacing atmosphere on "Look at the children run", the wildness of "Shake'm" the nervous shuffle of "People in Traffic", and certainly also the bonus-track "Mighty Long Time", in which harp-player Steven de Bruyn proves that he also can stand his ground as a singer, but most of all because he does that in a heck of a song of Sonny Boy Wiliamson.