His
face glistening with perspiration, Monster leaned
into the microphone and growled at the crowd, “All right now. We're gonna do
one more for you, now, it's a song Blind Lemon, old Blind Lemon
Jefferson, left behind.” Stepping back, he dropped his hands to the guitar and
spun off the first cracking, snarling line of “See That My Grave is Kept
Clean.” Recognizing Monster's opening riff, the audience, composed mainly of University of Washington
students and Seattle-based hippie-types, began to clap their
hands and stomp on the floor in time with the earthy blues. Rita stepped up to
the mike alongside Monster and together they started into Blind Lemon's anthem. Rita stepped back and swayed to the music, her
firm breasts swaying freely under the loose satin of her blouse, as Monster launched a burning, funky solo
that had made the tune one of the group's most popular numbers.
Like a single unit, the audience rose to its feet as the big guitarist's nasty,
insinuating runs made it impossible for even the most tone deaf to sit by
calmly. On stage, Monster was more than a musician. He was an experience, and
hearing him burn through the old favorite, the audience knew they were in the
presence of a certain kind of crude, music genius. Rita rejoined him for the last verse of the song
and together they sewed it up. Rita's hard and bitter alto mixing with
Monster's hoarse, atonal holler, gave the song the kind of down-home tone that
it was meant to have.
"Sexualized account of, well, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, really."
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