Steve Miller Calls the Bingo! Blues

Steve Miller is a great musician, but he hasn’t released a new album in 17 years.  Known for this “electric Blues” style, Steve has always had a freshly scrubbed and highly produced studio sound.  This week, Steve released — “Bingo!” — a new album that salutes the Blues masters who formed his young, musical, life.

You’ll get Steve’s take on Blues classics from Lowell Fulsom, Norton Buffalo, B.B. King, Otis Rush, Howlin’ Wolf, Jessie Hill, Jimmy Reed and Earl King along with new newer experimentation with Jimmy Vaughn.

If you buy from the iTunes store, you can get the plain Bingo! album for $9.99USD — or you can splurge an extra $3.00USD and get the “Bingo! (Special Edition)” with four additional tracks.

I don’t understand why Steve has two Bingos! for sale — he produces and releases his work under his own record company, so nobody is telling him what to do in the marketplace — because offering a plain version and a special version of the same album divides your interest and conquers any sort of hoped-for loyalty since the best songs are the four “Bonus Tracks” that Steve is purposefully withholding because he wants to squeeze an extra three dollars from your pocket; and so Bingo! instantly becomes a strange Hobson’s musical choice in a curious Straw Man argument marketing plan where the cheaper, less good, option is really no option at all.

My favorite tracks on the album are “Further on Up the Road” and “Look On Yonder Wall” — both songs scream and rattle and hum and wallow in a shredding Blues style and both are, of course, Bonus Tracks.

I have enjoyed Steve Miller’s tonal genius for most of my life, and Bingo! is a winner if you’re willing to pony up an extra three dollars.  Next time, let’s hope Steve just gives us everything he has, for a single price, so we can concentrate on the music and not be stumped by an unfathomable marketing plan.