Biography
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Born
30 December 1957
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Died
2 April 2006 (aged 48)
Bernard "Buddy Blue" Seigal (December 30, 1957 - April 2, 2006) was a San Diego musician, music critic and writer who performed and often wrote under his stage name Buddy Blue. He was a founding member of The Beat Farmers, a Southern California rock band that blended country roots music and rock 'n' roll. As a music critic, he was known for his straight-forward style of critique that often used colorful language and original metaphors to either lambaste or praise musicians whom Seigal liked or disliked.
Born in Syracuse, New York, Seigal moved to San Diego in 1973 and played in several unknown bands while working as a clerk at a record store and attending community college. In 1979, he joined the Grossmont College student newspaper as a writer and was later promoted to editor. In 1981, Seigal, a singer and guitarist, formed the rockabilly band, the Rockin' Roulettes.
In 1983, he quit the Roulettes when he was invited to join the Beat Farmers with Jerry Raney and Country Dick Montana. He took musician Rolle Love with him. The Beat Farmers eventually signed with Rhino records and became know regionally and nationally with their performances of songs such as Happy Boy, Riverside and Gun Sale at the Church.
Seigal left the Beat Farmers in 1986 to start a new band, The Jacks. A year later, he was hired as a music critic for the San Diego Reader. He would later be fired from the paper when his editors suggested he write bad reviews on local San Diego musicians whom Seigal felt didn't deserve the negative press.
By 1990, Seigal's irreverent style of writing led him to writing assignments with a variety of Southern California newspapers, including The San Diego Union-Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Orange County Weekly, San Jose Mercury News and a full-time writing position with the weekly La Jolla Light At the time of Seigal's death, he had been writing for the OC Weekly alternative paper for several years.
Recording as Buddy Blue, Seigal began performing musically again in 1991. Releasing Guttersnipes and Zealots, which included vocals from Southern California rockers Dave Alvin and Mojo Nixon, it featured the songs, Duke of J Street, Someone You Knew, and a version of Gun Sale at the Church. The singles Dive Bar Casanovas, Greasy Jazz, Dipsomania, Pretend It's Okay (which included a guest spot from Chris Gaffney), and Sordid Lives followed. All were recorded by either Buddy Blue or the Buddy Blue Band.
Throughout his musical career, Seigal performed jump blues, a form of jazzy blues focused on uptempo rhythms and loud, boisterous vocals.
Seigal's impact on the San Diego music scene was diverse. As a critic, he promoted those whom he thought were worthy and viciously degraded musicians who he perceived as faking it or contrived. As a musician, he proliferated different styles of jazz and blues and periods in his bands often gave performers a crash course in tight songs and sets and exposed them to a myriad of musical styles and canvasses. He was very opinionated and could be abrasive to some but nobody could doubt his musical ability as a guitarist and song writer.
In his writing, he preferred originality over reverence and though his musical idols showed through in his playing, as a writer, he was more comparable to comic book writers such as Harvey Pekar or R. Crumb than other rock journalists.
In March 2002, The Union-Tribune issued a memo to its staff stating that one of Seigal's articles that had run in the paper used words – among them "old fart," "crapola," and "pooh-butts." – unsuitable for readers.
Shortly before his death, Seigal reunited with Jerry Raney and Rolle Love of the Beat Farmers (Country Dick Montana died onstage of a heart attack in 1995) playing shows as The Farmers. He has previously played in Raney-Blue (circa 1996) but left when the band became Powerthud.
Seigal died of a heart attack on April 2, 2006.[
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