Our esteemed host Farquhar Throckmorton III once told me “I wish I could share your love for the blues, but I'm with Navin Johnson. Aren't they kind of - depressing?" Well, I’m with Navin too, but only on his theory of spectacle nose-brakes.
Blues was always about more than broken hearts and hard times. Blues can be jumping with energy, designed for celebration, loaded with passion and humour, laced with psychedelics, spaced right out. Freed from Navinite misconception, blues reveals itself as the true Mothership, and those who raise their eyes and minds beyond the slow blues moan will surely witness the full splendour of its coming. Amen!
There’s a stack of premium grade regular blues out there. And there’s a pile of low grade stuff too. I recommend using a filter on the low grade … Does the blues you are listening to last for more than three minutes? If guitar solos are present, do they last for more than 45 seconds? Is the singer a White European using an American or African-American accent to sing a slow blues about a failed relationship? “Yes” is the wrong answer to these questions. Filter your listening choices through them and a world of jumpin good regular blues will emerge.
Del's own swell blues CD [right - Ed.]
These time limits don’t apply when it comes to free blues. And what exactly the heck is free blues anyway? As England’s only imaginary comedy-psychedelic free blues guitarist, I often ask myself that question. And it’s complicated. Sometimes free blues can be regular blues. Othertimes free blues can appear to be blues free. Free blues is both a description and a demand. Free blues may be free from the classic 3-chord 12bar blues structures, but free blues can exist within these structures too. Free blues is blues that’s free from limits on what blues can and cannot be.
Further guidance is available from your neighbourhood Free Blues Advocate-Practitioner. A qualified Advocate-Practitioner can prescribe a course of listening guaranteed to permanently dispel misconceptions and expand blues horizons within 14 days or your money back. See comments for details. Becoming an Advocate-Practitioner requires several years of field work (fortunately not involving cotton), and a demanding final exam which includes essay questions such as “Coltrane’s Live at the Village Vanguard is a free blues album. Discuss” or the perennial favourite “Have you ever been to Electric Ladyland? Prove it in a minimum of 1000 words.” There may also be quiz-style posers such as “How did camels and the sun guide a one-time blues band to freedom?”
Free blues! Free your mind and your blues will follow. Your misconceptions are a prison, but many escape routes are available once the inner mind-wall has been breached. Realising belatedly that I was not born a poor Black child, this English blues guitarist found a way to blues freedom via the birth of an alter-ego. Me and alter-boy now live happily together in London in the late 1960’s, where the Bonzos are barking and Jimi is blowing minds and blowing the bloody doors off the blues.
And now I think I hear the 10.54 to Basingstoke a-comin’. If you’ll excuse me, I must be on my way.
Del has kindly donated a bunch of tracks to illustrate his theme. To qualify for this Blues Bounty, simply answer his camels/sun question!
ReplyDeleteThats too easy Farq, how about asking for some 1000 word essays instead? This aint just any old folderfull of blues, this is a prescribed treatment for Navin’s Syndrome.
DeleteThanks for adding that pic of my CD Farq.
DeleteIf anybody wants one it can be downloaded from my blog. For free! It’s free free blues.
This one's for Navin: https://workupload.com/file/SNz7vs6DLSW
ReplyDeleteBrilliant blues piece. Not sure about camels & sun but I do recall it was that stern but just rug merchant Alexis Korner's painful duty to expel Chicken Shack from Paradise.
ReplyDeleteIt was Shug Hanlan who dropped Robert Johnson off at the crossroads.
DeleteI thought it was Max Bialystock?
DeleteYou can load-down Del's album for free from his blog - click Del in the neighbors list in the sidebar.
ReplyDeleteThat's a cool blog! I agree with Del that in many cases British bands were better off doing psychedelic music with a blues base than they were trying to be "authentic". I do like sixties Fleetwood Mac, though, who managed to do both.
ReplyDeleteAll I can think of is Songhoy Blues a desert blues music group from Timbuktu, Mali, who were forced out of their own country. Soon they were playing festivals in The West - I've only seen them on tv, they're a very exciting blues based band.
ReplyDeleteNot acquainted with the gentlemen, but I have caught Del Boy and His Fools & Horses Band down at the pub a buncha times.
ReplyDeleteThanks Del, some interesting tracks on the blues comp (Junior Parker and Louis Jordan), a nice broad description of blues, and quite a bit I've not heard before.
ReplyDeletePlease don't think I'm being ungrateful, but I did end up with tracks split up all over my i-tunes, this may be my old computer and lack of technical knowledge about various artists compilations.
Hey Bambi I'd bet it mas my fault not taggin stuff, sorry about that. The music on my computer is like an old cardboard box of badly labelled cassettes. I made sure all those mp3s had correct artist and title but didnt think to tag them as part of a compilation. Glad you enjoyed the listen anyways.
DeleteBambi, your problem is that this comp was created outside of the Apple environment and Apple makes no provision to help you with anything they don't control or profit from directly.
ReplyDeleteThanks Psychfan. I generally get on ok with i-tunes, but Various Artists comps seems to be a bit of a problem with Apple. Nevermind have sorted it now.
DeleteI realized that I wasn't being specific enough to be helpful and came back to do so, but it sounds like you've got it.
DeleteQuite happy to see Sonny Boy Williamson II in the stack. I'm looking forward to him being 'just-one-of-gang'. Thank you!
ReplyDelete