Oh Wow!! What a damn good thing this one is!!

This is what you'll say the first time you'll listen to this album! And you'll repeat the same wows every time you'll listen this album for ever!! There's a Wow that's waiting for you for every second of music contained here and for every second you'll pass with this music! Listening to this album can be an experience that could change your thinkings about music forever!! An impressive collection of fantastic tunes this is what this album is all about!!! One of those album that undoubtedly will last forever. I'm not that astonished by Leo's technique which of course is great but I don't find it "incredible" at the point that can blow me away. There are nowadays a lot of players that could play extraordinary difficult things on the guitar even in the same or in different contexts. What blows me away is not Leo's technique (that I love anyway!!) but it's Leo's style and ability to communicate with me to emotion me with his playing and to expose different feelings with his hands, the most tender ones and the most hardcore ones in the same album and with only a simple acoustic guitar !!! This is what is terrific about Leo's playing and it is the same about every groundbreaking and universal artist in every musical style (classical, Jazz, acoustic etc).



You can hear everything american music has to offer in this album, and it's a lot. Bluegrass, country, folk easyness, blues roughness, Jazz sophistication, even the rock enthusiasm and energy. All played with only one single instrument: the acoustic guitar.



If you don't own this album I am envying you, for real. How lucky you are you never had the joy of listening this album for the first time?? You can't even imagine what you'll going through, the fantastic mix of emotions this album can produce in your soul !!



Go lucky dude, buy this album immediatly, you lucky guy!

One of the greatest guitar albums of the 20th Century

If Robert Johnson indeed sold his very soul to the devil, then the devil surely thrust part of his soul right back into the lap of young Leo Kottke in 1969. Vaseline Machine Gun amazed radio listeners when it first eminated from progressive, underground FM rock stations. I still vividly recall the first time I heard it on Detroit's legendary WABX in 1969. Yes, this album is naive and sloppy compared to Kottke's more technical offerings from the last 25 years. But, "6 and 12 String" will always remain as 37 minutes of some of the most shocking wildman fretwork, righthand thumbing and base slamming we will ever hear in our lives. It's one of the most exciting and importaint acoustic guitar albums of the 20th century.

Speed Does Many Things

The sizzling Kottke, the mellifluous Kottke, the impeccable Kottke, the humourous Kottke, the man with the butterfly touch, all characteristics that he was to pursue over many, generous albums, were eloquently set in place on this prodigal, remarkable initial outing. We had to wait until,'Greenhouse' for his 'geesefart voice' (which was as misleading as most of the other pseudo biography he wrote for 'Six & Twelve'.(And it was,'Louise' Paul Siebel's most popular song that he chose to confer with memorable tenderness). I came to Kottke, as did many of his early fans, through the esteemed John Fahey, whose unassuming,'Rivers & Religion' & 'Blind Joe Death' albums had staked out new territory for acoustic guitar in the 60s. Speed kills, of course. There were rumours that the famously dexterous digits were causing Kottke arthritic pain. But he wasn't flinching in Alice, during the mid 90s when in company with some Spanish flamenco maestros. It was a pleasurable relief that he'd lost none of his touch in the twenty years since I'd last heard him perform in Melbourne. Digging anywhere in his recordings is profitable. He is a brilliantly funny ranconteur as some concert recordings attest. But if you are just sampling, why not begin at this most auspicious of beginnings?