[Harp-L] Re: Totally bored with the blues genre



Hallelujah!!,....I SO Agree.  There are a couple of "Blues Festivals" in the  Ft. Myers, FL area every year.  Over the past ten years I think I've been to two.  REASON:  The musically challenged person/people organizing them have NO idea of what is "BLUES".  The festivals end up with five or six rockers and maybe a couple of solo acts doing their interpretation of Woody Guthrie and that other folk/rock artist who I'll remain anonymous
 
Cudos
 
Ron Burton..NOT a blues player but .......... 
]
 
 
 
 
 From: rhythmshark@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> To: mike@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; 3N037@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: [Harp-L] Re: Totally bored with the blues genre
> Date: Mon, 4 May 2015 21:25:52 -0400
> CC: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx; randy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
> Harp-L folks,
> 
> This is an interesting thread to me because as a lover of blues music  (player, director of the NYS Blues Festival for 8 years) I think  I know what makes for good blues music.  It's not blues-rock.  Unfortunately, the music I love seems to be going more and more in that direction and I don't like it a bit.  This move toward making all blues acts sound like Southern Rock is a mistake and I pray that some great artist will come along and save our genre from the dreadful homogenization that is going an.
> 
> For any big fans of the blues-rock stuff, sorry if I offend.  It's just my opinion, but you won't be getting me out to hear your group by playing it.
> 
> Peace
> 
> Bernie Clarke
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: harp-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:harp-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mike Wilbur
> Sent: Monday, May 04, 2015 2:25 PM
> To: Joseph Leone
> Cc: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx Harp L; Randy Singer
> Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Re: Totally bored with the blues genre
> 
> Ahhhhh Men Rev. Leone !
> 
> But that doesn't mean stop looking at Horn parts on a Diatonic.
>  
> " Do nothing tell you hear from me, " Lady Be Good",  Since I don't have you "
> 
>  
> 
>    
> 
> Mike Wilbur
> 
> 
> > On May 4, 2015, at 1:39 PM, Joseph Leone <3N037@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 
> > Hmmm, the way I see it, blues are generally a fairly simple music written by and for (at the time) fairly simple hard working people.  Not everyone can be a Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart, but they still need to express themselves. Blues fills the bill. When I think of genuine blues, I picture a beat up Montgomery Wards mail order guitar with missing pick guard and a hole in the birch face, probably mismatched strings, and a dented10 cent harmonica from a box at the general store (at $1.oo per dozen), held in a bent coat hanger rack. If there were any amp at all, it would probably be a beat up Silvertone that looked like it had been dropped off the truck a dozen or more times.
> > 
> > The mic is held together with twine and looks like it had been used as a hockey puck. The singer/artist has a voice that no one could exactly call pleasant and everything was out of tune. The drums were patched with pieces of canvas glues on and the bass was a wash tub with a stick and some wire. BUT Oooooh, what magic would come out of this junk.
> > 
> > Then, over the years, people started to try and improve blues. I have to give a lot of credit to some of these people for they really really studied the genre very hard and dissected it to the ength degree, but they also turned it into a mathematical thesis. I (personally) don't think that the early masters gave much thought to theory. Nor did they care. They just wanted to play in their own gut bucket style. Playing from the gut. Sitting on a bucket.  
> > 
> > Now, over the years there are some whom have used all sorts of musics as a means to their own ends. I consider that how, during the depression and the dust bowl eras, there were people who would sweep up a stable or do yard work for a few nickels so they could buy a can of beans .Then there were others who would sit and watch them work, write songs about it, perform them at hobo jungles, in the hopes that someone would 'share' their beans with them. Sometimes even becoming famous song writers. Like people who photographed the despair and later wound up as famous photographers, whose photos now go for thousands of dollars. I consider these people as users. 
> > 
> > No, I think blues are honest down to earth musics and if done in a caring manner and not 'phoned in' (as I hear so much of these days), it is a wonderful outlet for those who are willing to emote. To completely open their hearts and exude their innermost feelings. So I'm not so sure that blues have to evolve. I saw that with jazz. Hot music to swing to progressive to bee-bop to re-bop to hard-bop to fusion. Just my opinion but that killed jazz. 
> > 
> > In conclusion I have known Randolph for 20-25 years and never found 
> > him to be negative. Not at heart. He has always been a positive 
> > influence and ambassador of harmonica and while he rarely posts, the 
> > posts are usually links to wonderful things. He wants us all to start 
> > thinking. Because when you stop thinking, you're probably stinking. 
> > You're probably dead. There have been some seriously great posts on 
> > this subject. Well done 'W.C. Handy Randy'. lol
> > 
> > 
> > smokey joe
> > 
> > 
> >> On Apr 30, 2015, at 1:11 PM, Randy Singer wrote:
> >> 
> >> I'm going to come out of the closet and state emphatically that I cannot stand 80% of all the blues music that I hear. 
> >> 
> >> With the exception of Little Walter, Paul Butterfield, keb mo, derek 
> >> trucks, William Clark, mitch Kashmir, howard levy, Robert Cray, The 
> >> Allman Brothers, thiago, dennis gruenling, muddy Waters, rob 
> >> Paparozzi, sebastian charlier, eric Clapton and other progressives, I 
> >> find the state of the blues is a useless circle jerk of mind 
> >> numbingly repetitive musical clichés and nursery rhyme chord changes. 
> >> (please pardon the misspellings I'm doing this on my iPhone)
> >> 
> >> JOKE
> >> How many blues musicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb in? 
> >> 145145145145
> >> 
> >> In other words how many times can I keep hearing a I-4-5 or 
> >> progression with basically only diatonic notes? Imagine telling that 
> >> to a professional musician of any other instrument that they can only 
> >> play pentatonic and scales, they would look at you like you were 
> >> absolutely crazy out of your mind and they would be correct. Imagine 
> >> telling a piano player he could only use the white keys!!!! LOL. You 
> >> would be laughed out of the room. Yet seems like almost all the 
> >> harmonica players only use those scales with a couple colorful over 
> >> blows as if that would be sufficient
> >> 
> >> Most harmonica players have stopped growing and we deserve the gimp reputation that we have. 
> >> 
> >> Where is the Maceo Parker of our harmonica age? very few harmonica players could go head-to-head note to note with a player like him or Gerald Albright another great blues jazz player. Playing precise blues/chromatic lines is a extremely rare breed in our community yet in the horn community it's the easiest thing to do. 
> >> 
> >> If you keep recycling the same thing over and over again a copy of a 
> >> copy of a copy becomes faded and ludicrous
> >> 
> >> Also having performed and lived extensively in Brazil, Paris New York Nashville and now Miami I have come to revere the art of songwriting using predictable yet unpredictable changes and I see none of that in the harmonica community. 
> >> 
> >> The Beatles set the standard for creative and inventive songwriting and that seems to have TOTALLY escaped the blues and harmonica community.
> >> 
> >> The elephant in the room is the so-called blues Nazis and I am sure that when the blues musicians and songwriters attempt to create a song which sets the songwriting bar higher, they would be shut down by the blues natzis!! I believe when Robert Cray put out his strong persuader album which features some of the best blue songwriting I have ever heard, he was shut down as not being a blues artist any longer ---that's a bunch of BS!
> >> 
> 
> 

 		 	   		  


This archive was generated by a fusion of Pipermail 0.09 (Mailman edition) and MHonArc 2.6.8.