Catching up on some threads-
>"The blues even todayg is a music which has become increasingly removed
>from its creative source, a music much loved by middle class white youth
>who are evidently more blue than black youth or who perhaps are merely
>nostalgic for a time when black people were a little less threatening and
>the white man was the unquestioned master of his and our fate. I cannot
>accept Fanon's definition of the blues asa 'type of jazz howl hiccupeed by
>a poor misfortunate Negro,' 'trapped hatred of the white man.' We know that
Nothing about this subject feels this cut and dried to me. I went through a very elitist blues period, mainly guided by middle and working class white guys, but none of the stereotype ideas fit, and believe me, I tried to make them fit during different periods of contemplation.
When I say elitist, I mean that blues, acoustic blues, was a singular obsession for a while. The people I was with would not have thought of bluesmen as "safe", had they thought in those terms at all. I knew a couple of guys who spent hundreds of hours interpreting piano rags on the guitar, following the path of players like Robert Johnson, Blind Willie McTell and the Rev. Gary Davis. They were considered genius players, to be revered and emulated. These guys were great, but they never gigged, or wanted to. They were simply in awe of what could be done with the riffs they were learning of these old records.I assume there were black guys doing the same thing. Like maybe, Ernie Isley. But if not, so what? What matters most? That these players genius is recognized, or what color the people doing the recognizing are? I have known a couple of young black players who were into these bluesmen, like the kid who turned me on to The Talking Heads. He was also upper-middle class. You gotta have some spare time, and/or spare cash to dig up anything out of the main stream.
Somehow, the cooptation of all "folk" trends by the capitalist machine, takes on a different tone when it comes to this subject, even in my own internal musings. I thought it was my discomfort with the fact that the contemporary blues players I admired were mostly white, but I now think it's more than that. Still thinking.
Whatever the context, I know there is nothing sinister in the fact that my absolutely favorite blues album to turn up real loud and sing along with, is the Paul Butterfield "Better Days" album, with Geof Muldar and the phenomenal Amos Garrett, (who I saw together in an almost empty yuppie bar in Buckhead, one of the best, and oddest
musical experiences I've ever had). The old bluesmen did not sound in any way submissive, no matter the exploitation and violent ends many suffered.
>Yeah - Ry Cooder was THE definitive white blues musician of this century,
>until a young man named Duane Allman came along and (temporarily) supplanted
>him. Scaggs in fact, was going to use Cooder on his "Loan Me A Dime"
album,
>but Jerry Wexler urged him to use Duane Allman. Muddy Waters (THE
definitve
>Chicago bluesman) said that Duane was one of the best bottleneck slide player
Ry Cooder was, is, and will forever more be, THE DEFINITIVE RY COODER OF THIS CENTURY, OR ANY OTHER. I love Cooder, but I don't think of him as a blues player, though I have not doubt he can play just about anything, and has. Off the top of my brain, I can't think of one blues number on his first three albums, or any later multi-ethnic extravaganzas. Haven't heard what he did in between. I inquired into Ry's politics because of the selections on those early albums. Like "One Meatball" ( as in "you gets no bread with one, meat, ball), and "I Got Mine" and Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene", and many other tunes having to do with economic exploitation, etc.
To whoever posted about Roy Buchanan's suicide, thanks for info. Quite a shock. I don't keep up with artists lives much, but I guess I got the impression Buchanan was a straight shooter ala T-Bone Burnet, maybe from that haunting thing called " The Messiah Will Come Again". That man could play the fucking blues, among other things.
Since culture does nto remain
>static, the only way that the blues can remain vital is for it be
>transformed by the present. Yet when [Jimmi] Hendrix played it the only way
>that a young man of the 1960s could, given his place in history, the
>majority of Black people rejected him and his music. So maybe the blues
>will have to disappear or live on in our literature. There is no choice
>really. To try to hold on to it or to any cultural material which is no
>longer organic is to try
>to stop time." p. 32
>
>
There's something wrong with thinking the blues has to disappear cause it's not popular black music anymore. I don't think it was all that popular for all that long, anyway. Sure, I've sold a lot of BB King, back in the 70's and early 80's, in predominately black stores, but so what. BB pretty much sucked anyway. Sort of like the Robert Goulet of the blues. The birth of the blues, along with the birth of mountain and country, started it all-American Music.
You can hear the blues in some contemporary black music, which in itself is not real popular. So what, if it sells, it probably sucks. I'm thinking of Chris Thomas, Rufus' son, I believe. Lenny Kravitz, The Neville Brothers, even back when they were the Meters. I don't keep up anymore, but I bet there are viable stains of music, not well known, that are heirs of the blues. "Dirty Mind", when Prince was Prince, and a black thong and leggings meant something, is a worthy contribution. And I hope nobody told Albert King the blues was dead. Ya know, if Duane woulda dumped the Macon boys and joined a real blues band, he might be alive today.
>was the big deal
>>about the Beach Boys, and the cult of Brian Wilson in particular?
When I tell people how much I hated living in South Florida, I tell them it's the cultural armpit of the world. Beach Boys and Big Daddy Lounges. I guess the BB's were big cause we so wanted to be California. The whole surfer thing. Our waves were so pathetic. I myself was a deeply bronzed ssurfer girl when I was about 13. First chills down the spine related to the beach. I came to really detest them in my later Dylan worship, 15-19.
But then at the very height of my musical snobbishness, ( like, you don't KNOW who Charlie Christian is?) I really got to love the Holland album. Always meant to check out Pet Sounds because of this, but don't think I ever did. So one night a friend really wanted to see the Beach Boys in Tampa. We went, and they played all the shit I had come to hate, and not one of the beautiful textured arangements. It felt like an insulting slap to the audience. A lot of folks were calling for the good stuff. I got the idea that they really couldn't play that stuff. Maybe that's where Brian came in.
I don't remember why we left the concert late, but we ran into Al Jardin and Dennis Wilson in the parking garage. Someone had sent us some of the most incredible pink Peruvian flake, it was really a dream, and not much of it, but our friend Barry liked them so much that we invited these guys to come and share it with us. They replied that drugs were anti-evolutionary. I would not realize this for many more years, but I still, still have that llama stamped envelope, 26 years later.
**************
>To lose one speaker, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks
>>>like carelessness.
Hey Chris, did you make this up? I'm adding it to my quotes and I don't want to site incorrectly.
koo,koo, ka-choo pms