From: Sjmwi~ol.com Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 17:32:30 EST Subject: Re: BLUES WARNING WHOOP-ASS (long now)
well, i think brian was ~much~ clearer in is second post. obviously he is a blues fan who wants to see the music continue and return to the vitiality it once possessed. i can actually agree with much of what he's written. the reponses to brian, though, have been just as enlightening.
one ironic twist here, has been that in the rush to defend blues music, so many have attacked top 40 and it's like ("top 40" music is defined here as music that is, or attempts to be, music that is heard by some mass audience.) again, the assumption is that one form of music better because...why? because someone decided that muddy meant and felt every note he ever sang and played, but someone like kid rock doesn't/can't mean anything he sings because he's loud, aggressive, and selling cds to a primarily young audience?
muddy's records were as crafted in their own way as lots of top 40 stuff. okay, no massive overdubs, drum machines, etc (but they did play with echo), but check out the muddy box set. there are a couple of tracks with false starts where muddy or a guitarist fails to capture the emotional intent of the song. ~conscious~ decisions were made to convey something or provide an instrumental hook. this wasn't some guy who just sat there and emoted. this was an articulate man, figuring out the best way to say what he needed to say. many (not to say all) artists today go through the same thing. maybe you can't relate to it because it's loud, or mechanized, or profane, or they dress funny, or the view point doesn't coincide with your own. the music is ~every~ bit as valid as any of the music we discuss so often. is some of it pretty bad? well, i think so, but i've heard plenty of bad blues music, too.
as for not wanting blues in the top 40...why not? i would love to turn on the radio and hear some shemekia copeland or paul delay song sandwiched between brittney spears and blink 82. it's one thing to accept that blues music is ghetto-ized, but i think it's perverse to celebrate it. muddy (i hate to keep using him, but he's usually the best example) made records to be heard and bought and played on the radio. do you think he wouldn't have been really happy to have been played on more stations with bigger audiences? don't you think that ~he~ would've liked to have gone on ed sullivan? wouldn't it be great to be able to say to random group of people that you're really into muddy, wolf, the walters, etc and have them at least know what you're talking about? most of the great blues we idolize today didn't isolate themselves from non-blues music. john lee hooker wrote "san francisco" because he liked "i left my heart in san francisco." little walter was inspired by jazz horn players. howlin' wolf was a big fan of jimmie rodgers. i saw a profile of susan tedeschi on tv. she was up for best new artist grammy, and they took her to a towers record store. she held up a copy of the others up for the award and admitted she probably couldn't name one song that these people sang... and she didn't see this as a bad thing! ridiculous!
this could go on and on, i guess. many points have been raised. i think the blues can grow and still be the blues...it started out as acoustic music and survived the transition to electric. i agree that the several structures and forms are pretty much set (I/IV/V, one chord boogies, etc), but even that is pretty flexible. all sorts of passing chords can make things much more sophisticated and interesting, without compromising the core of it. different instruments can be incorporated. blah, blah, blah... i guess i'm saying, it's a big world out there, and a different one than when the blues originated. it's time to allow those changes and that world in to blues and see where it goes (even if that means the big drum sound that i hate!)
