Rock violinist Bobby Yang

Another hat tip to litbrit, who posted a cool YouTube video of a young violinist named Bobby Yang, who plays hard rock tunes on his fiddle. The video of “Eruption” sent me to Yang’s web site, and the audio sample of “War Pigs” got me clicking the “buy the CD” button. I’ve now had a chance to listen to the whole CD three or four times, and I’m glad I bought it.

I like all ten tracks on the disk, called Yang It! Live at Eddie’s Attic. The standouts for me, though, are the Guns N’ Roses tune “Welcome to the Jungle”, Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times, Bad Times”, and Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”. The band’s rendition of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” is also fine, and in “Helter Skelter”, Yang reminds me somewhat of Jean-Luc Ponty.

Bobby Yang has a lot of promise, and this is a nice CD. The sound is decent, better than I’d expected from a self-produced disk.

I’ll also point out a post by Jonathan Rowe of Positive Liberty, which also sends us to Yang’s video, and which throws out some other recommendations for rock violin. I’ll add my own suggestions: Lili Haydn, Scarlet Rivera (here playing with Bob Dylan), and the early 1970s folk/rock group McKendree Spring (no video for this one, alas).