vic
Another perspective re blues played by "whites"
........." I will argue that for those interested in the support and study of African-American culture, blues as purveyed by whites appears unauthentic and deeply impoverished; further, it too often represents an appropriation of black culture of a type sadly familiar......"
http://www.bluesworld.com/WHITEBLUES.html
Hammeron
guidothepimmp wrote:
What about the deal with devil??
>☹
Mmmm...wrong genre ?.....but on a more serious note, could Ritchie Blackmore play the blues?
DonovanB
Warren touched on John Mayer and I'd like to elaborate a bit more on what he does. He plays a modern blues but in a lot of songs he gets real feeling across.
Take this;
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and this hits me right in my core;
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But then, with songs like Gravity, it starts to cross over to Rhythm and Blues, which we all love to despise.
Which blurs into this;
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Like Warren says, don't define, enjoy.
ezietsman
The two John Mayer tracks above is not blues, besides, he doesn't really market himself as a blues player, although on that one DVD of his he does do a blues set (and says so) which is pretty good.
My issue with the blues label being used in the local scene is that basically you pay money to see a number of 'blues bands' playing 'blues' and then you get rock bands with lots of weedly weedly guitar playing and whammybar squealing. Not all bands are like this, but this happens often. Maybe the scene is too small to carry 4 or 5 blues acts per show, that I can understand, but then marketing the thing as a blues show is not quite right I think.
deefstes
OK, I hear the point you're making about all the weedly bits and whammy bars not being true to original blues but...
We've seen all sorts of fusion genres and I generally enjoy when someone manages to pull off a good mix of two seemingly unrelated genres. How about Goatika (with Tony Levin laying down a flippin brilliant upright bass)?
So why should blues be so special that it cannot be fused with other genres to develop new forms of blues?
I almost get the sense that there is a certain "frame of mind" called blues but there is also a musical style called blues. The latter could be described in musical terms, just like other styles like Punk, Reggae or Baroque can be described in musical terms. And a musician is free to draw from any of these styles or use any of these styles as the basis for his music. You could incorporate Baroque into your Metal without having to be in Vivaldi's frame of mind, not true?
guidothepimmp
Tamla Kahn 'Hammeron' McMahon wrote:
guidothepimmp wrote:
What about the deal with devil??
>☹
Mmmm...wrong genre ?.....but on a more serious note, could Ritchie Blackmore play the blues?
Au contraire.. Crossroads tells a different story, bluesmen signing their life away and the only way out was to cut heads.. A guitar dual of such mammoth proportions that will result in the winner getting back his soul, the other being eternally damned..
Hehe
BobC
Vic wrote:
Another perspective re blues played by "whites"
........." I will argue that for those interested in the support and study of African-American culture, blues as purveyed by whites appears unauthentic and deeply impoverished; further, it too often represents an appropriation of black culture of a type sadly familiar......"
http://www.bluesworld.com/WHITEBLUES.html
Not shooting the messenger Vic, but rather the message in the linked article. I'll very much agree to disagree with the perspective posed in that article. The idea that certain races have ownership/domain over musical genres / musical forms is simply fallacious in a few ways - Genetic fallacy, Appeal to Tradition are two such fallacies.
Let me be clear, I am not dismissing nor disrespecting the obviously black origins of the blues, but the entire premise of the article is equally as fallacious as stating that anybody not of French or Italian origin simply is not prima ballerina material, and while they may half-heartedly emulate French and Italian Ballerinas, their lacklustre efforts will be notably inferior in comparison to French and Italian dancers because Italy and France are where Ballet was pioneered.
singemonkey
The colour problem with blues is not that it is too white. It's that it is too whitebread.
A handful of white people have been among the greatest blues musicians ever. But that was because they took it seriously.
Hammeron
singemonkey wrote:
The colour problem with blues is not that it is too white. It's that it is too whitebread.
A handful of white people have been among the greatest blues musicians ever. But that was because they took it seriously.
Would Gary Moore feature in that handfull?....and Ritchie maybe.....
majestikc
The Karate Kid versus Satan's Guitarist Steve Vai
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majestikc
I think the Blues is a state of mind rather than an exact specific musical style
singemonkey
Tamla Kahn 'Hammeron' McMahon wrote:
singemonkey wrote:
The colour problem with blues is not that it is too white. It's that it is too whitebread.
A handful of white people have been among the greatest blues musicians ever. But that was because they took it seriously.
Would Gary Moore feature in that handfull?....and Ritchie maybe.....
Gary Moore for certain. I don't like his voice. But his connection with the blues was real - he wasn't just parading guitar licks. Ritchie I have no idea.
AlanRatcliffe
Music is like language - if it doesn't change, it's dead.
If you don't like a particular direction a branch of the music has taken doesn't mean it's not a valid direction. It's all music, it all has meaning to someone.
Anyway, Townshend once said something like "We took the blues and turned it into something else. Then Jimi came over and took it back".
Bob-Dubery
singemonkey wrote:
The colour problem with blues is not that it is too white. It's that it is too whitebread.
A handful of white people have been among the greatest blues musicians ever. But that was because they took it seriously.
I'd say it was because they had a real connection to the form. Clapton, however boring you may or may not find him these days, certainly was a student of the blues, studied the great players (and paid tribute to some of them) and was genuinely inspired by the blues.
A large number of players who emerged from Britain in the 60s were inspired by the blues - even if they used that inspiration as a springboard into new musical territories. As one could in the 60s, and David Gilmour would be a prime example. So would Syd Barrett who named his band after two obscure blues men - Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.
I don't think it's game over for the blues, but it does seem to be a plant that lacks vigour once it's transplanted from the soil it originally grew in - irrespective of the background of whoever is
parodying playing it at any given moment.
Bob-Dubery
Tamla Kahn 'Hammeron' McMahon wrote:
singemonkey wrote:
The colour problem with blues is not that it is too white. It's that it is too whitebread.
A handful of white people have been among the greatest blues musicians ever. But that was because they took it seriously.
Would Gary Moore feature in that handfull?....and Ritchie maybe.....
Ritchie Blackmore certainly had distinct blues influences in his playing - but you can say that about a lot of players who emerged in the 60s. I don't regard him as a blues player, but he showed his roots on occasion.
vic
Here is an example of what was known in the '50's/60's as "Rhythm and Blues"....unlike the R&B that we hear today
The Stones were quite good at it
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Warren
ez wrote:
My issue with the blues label being used in the local scene is that basically you pay money to see a number of 'blues bands' playing 'blues' and then you get rock bands with lots of weedly weedly guitar playing and whammybar squealing. Not all bands are like this, but this happens often. Maybe the scene is too small to carry 4 or 5 blues acts per show, that I can understand, but then marketing the thing as a blues show is not quite right I think.
This I can actually fully agree with. Although it might be difficult to completely ring-fence the blues, it's not exactly cricket if bands advertise themselves as blues bands and then play something that doesn't resemble any kind of blues at all. And I don't quite get the advertising of such bands as "blues" bands, since I'm not sure there's exactly a raging market for people into blues music, as such. It's almost like they're trying to snag some kind of false street-cred by tacking "blues" onto the end of the show title. I could be completely wrong, of course.
And on Mayer again, although he really should speak less, here I really agree with him: ?
singemonkey
Now John Mayer really can play blues. But just the thought of hearing him ever speak again has totally put me off listening to him altogether. He may agree with me on every point, but it would take a lot to get me to watch that.
Not being a total A-hole is clearly not a requirement for playing blues.
Alan, I think the problem is that this side-branch has taken only the style and left the substance. To me this King of the Blues jamming, no good songs, lightweight vibe is like baseball compared to cricket. If no one gets that analogy the only thing left is to say, "If you have to ask, you'll never know." ?
Eh. Do not judge. I'd probably be outraged at my own attempts too, if it wasn't me ?
Jack-Flash-Jr
Here's an anecdote to illustrate the overreaching branching problem:
Anyone seen Oh Brother Where Art Thou? In it there's a character called Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas King). When asked why he was at a crossroad in the middle of nowhere, he reveals that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the ability to play the guitar. (obviously modelled on Robert Johnson).
Chris Thomas King is an actual guitarist and plays some great stuff in the movie (he also played Blind Willie Johnson in Soul of a Man (Wim Wenders)) I heard he was playing in a bar in the Village so my wife and I went down to see him. Cool guy, chatted a bit, didn't ask him about the DJ turntables set up next to his guitar rig.
His set started with an introduction to DJ somebody and a quasi rant about how blues needs to be kept alive... seque into 21st Century blues - electric techno blues or something. It was not... just not... just no. I'm not a purist and I've even been know to bop to techno of a certain type every now and then. This made the hip hop blues of the early 90s sound angelic. There was polite response for the entire set.. he turned off the whitebread just once, to do an unaccompanied Hard Time Killing Floor Blues. It was like the devil flipped the door open bought everyone a shot of tequila and commanded groove! Suddenly soul was in the air. Then back to nought.
I didn't buy his cd at the end.
singemonkey
The moment blues doesn't sound just a little bit dirty - a little bit antisocial, alcoholic, disaffected, nasty - it ceases to have it's core ingredient. When it feels entirely unthreatening, when a moral majority, "ban all pornography!" type is totally sitting there with his straight-jacketed family tapping his foot, it's no longer blues. Blues should always just be the slightest bit offensive to the very straight-laced. The sound of it. Not because it's loud, but because it's slightly skeezy. If you take the jungle out of the blues completely then it's a really bland type of music with little to recommend it.
The whole blues devil thing, that got taken up by metal (which also derived from blues through Sabbath and Purple before largely abandoning any trace of it in the '80s) was because of the lingering association between African religion, and things African, with players of the music. The blues is full of those sounds that the first generation of players associated with taboo "anti-christian" throwbacks to West African religion. Hence all the mojo stuff and spirits and cajun stuff. But even without that stuff in the lyrics, those scaley sounds kept a thread to the past which Christianised black Americans thought was evil.
The sound of a slide guitar man, draaaaaagging between two notes that are in key, but in between they're totally off. It's these feelings in your gut, the conflict between right and wrong, the fight between minor and major, that makes even sweet blues, or dance blues... wicked.
The stuff that makes me sigh has none of that.
P.s., the "woke up this morning thing," is actually part of the problem. There's this caricature of the blues out there - which is fine. Satire and all that. But I really believe that a lot of people think that the caricature actually is the music. Like, they literally start playing it, believing that it's just one tired cliché.
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