An Argument Against the Blues

edited August 2012 in Fight Club
This comment, made a Mandolin Caf

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  • edited August 2012
    Not quite my area, but FWIW, I like a lot of non-blues-influenced music and also like blues more than I like its derivatives. I tend to either listen to full-on blues or music that has nothing to do with blues. (I suggest Frank Bretschneider or Alva Noto as an antidote :-)) I don't think much of my large collection of ambient, experimental, electronic, modern classical, etc. really has much if anything to do with blues influences. And a very small proportion of my music is vocal. And an awful lot of it is European. For the most part (with occasional exceptions) I just don't listen to the kind of pop/rock/R&B that transubstantiates blues influences. But my wife sings in a blues band and we do listen to straight blues - I can appreciate e.g. Joe Bonamassa, Otis Taylor, Ry Cooder, Ronnie Earl, Buddy Guy, Lightnin' Hopkins, Kelly Joe Phelps, etc. I can't really tell whether listening to all the pop music into which it has been absorbed spoils listening to the blues - I prefer listening to the blues itself or totally other stuff anyway.

    I do think there is something to be said for palate-cleansing contrasts. For instance I sometimes feel the need to lurch from too much ambient to a bracing dose of metal. Then I appreciate the ambient again.
  • But there is something refreshing, even bracing, like a cold shower, about music that is not blues influenced.
    This statement just kinda makes me shrug in befuddlement. In my experience (and, surely, nearly everyone here?), it's so, so easy to access music that's not particularly blues-influenced, it strikes me as peculiarly trivial, or just mundanely ignorant.
  • @Kargatron, should you read the original post, you'll see that it references not passive consumerism but active playing as part of communities of musicians. Of course, I've decided to take it elsewhere to focus on the notion of the idiomatic influence of Blues, not just actual Blues forms.
  • First, I had a whole missive written last night but the site timed out on me and I lost it when I tried to Add the comment. Oh, crap - iceberg. Couldn't even begin to rewrite it.
    Anyway, reviewing the article today I think it's an overstated reaction to an overstated problem. I don't find blues as pervasive as the author. If you're speaking about R&R, well, yeah, it grew out of blues and R&B, even some country. For that matter there are forms and progressions in Celtic music that were incorporated into old American country/Appalachian music which were partially incorporated later on into blues music. I posit that he is mistaken - there is a lot in bluegrass that is chronologically older than blues progressions - blues isn't that old, it's an amalgam itself of older traditions.
    Don't mistake the map for the territory, or blame the music for the intervals. It's in the way that you use it.
  • edited August 2012
    It's in the way that you use it.
    Isn't that the point (or at least my point): that there are differences between borrowing and using the Blues and the derivatives of the Blues? It becomes something like corn syrup, everywhere satisfying certain desires and instincts facily and temporarily. And you're correct that the problem is not the Blues itself, but more in the way that it is approached and employed. If a singer attacks notes in a particularly bluesy way, is the audience getting something of true emotional depth or is the Blues in general being advanced (perhaps even being detracted from)?

    (Does Clapton deserve a footnote?)
    I posit that he is mistaken - there is a lot in bluegrass that is chronologically older than blues progressions - blues isn't that old, it's an amalgam itself of older traditions.
    I would add that numerous Blues musicians felt that they played "Country music" and vice-versa.
  • edited August 2012
    I would add that numerous Blues musicians felt that they played "Country music" and vice-versa.

    Indubitably. Reminds me of a favorite album, Rhythm, Country & Blues - unfortunately the Amazon artist listings TOTALLY miss the point that these are duos - it's Gladys Knight & Vince Gill, Lyle Lovett and Al Green - these can be pretty fuzzy boundaries. Great album, with maybe one or two clunkers - I'll see if I can find a better listing - like this one from AMG that shows the duos.

    Does Clapton deserve a footnote? In what sense? Personally I have little use for most of his post-Derek & the Dominoes material - especially the albums featuring a certain person on drums....wait for it.....Oh, yeah, Phil Collins. Talk about mayonaisse rhythm sections. You'll have to forgive me but as a guitarist rhythm sections that can't swing and play a righteous shuffle just make me crazy, so there's a good application for the potentially pernicious influence of anemic blues influences.
  • Does Clapton deserve a footnote? In what sense? Personally I have little use for most of his post-Derek & the Dominoes material - especially the albums featuring a certain person on drums....wait for it.....Oh, yeah, Phil Collins. Talk about mayonaisse rhythm sections. You'll have to forgive me but as a guitarist rhythm sections that can't swing and play a righteous shuffle just make me crazy, so there's a good application for the potentially pernicious influence of anemic blues influences
    "It's in the way that you use it" wasn't a quote? Mayonaise rhythm section--LMAO
  • "It's in the way that you use it" wasn't a quote?
    Yes, it was, and I admit I was in stealth snark mode. The points prior to that were quite sincere however.
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