Re: [Harp-L] George Carlin on white blues man...

[David Fertig <drfertig@xxxxxxxxx>]

I think Carlin is hilarious!  And this schtick is great.  Carlin is a hero of mine!   And like most heroes he's fullashit and knows it.

By the way, I am white (Chicago-born German-Jewish/ Irish/ English/ French/ Polish/ Blackfoot/ Sephardic mutt.) 

Of course blues ain't about being black, it ain't really even about being oppressed, enslaved, broke-down or dogged, broken-hearted or cheated.   

Blues is whatever you feel it means to you, it's visceral and personal.  Jason Ricci said something like, "I've never picked cotton, I don't 'go down by da ribbah', I won't sing about it, I'll sing about stuff I know and feel."  And his voice is improving. (Hi Jason!)

If you've never been in jail, can you play or sing about it?  Sure.  Can you do it with the same feeling as one that has? Perhaps not, but maybe with better musicality.  But I don't play solely for musicality, I play because it makes me feel good, and sometimes others dig it, too.

I know a guy does a really great freight train thing on harp.  He's never been in a boxcar in his life.  I learned my "freight train" 35 years ago on box- and gondola-cars crossing America.  His sounds better, more entertaining.  Mine feels better to me because it evokes a true feeling in me from those experiences. I play for me, so it's fine, ain't got to be the best, just real for me. 

Blues is a musical style that I personally feel akin to and at home with, its "polyrhythmic microtonal" (or 'funky beat and bent notes') freedom permits textures of infinite and personal expression, it's a heartfelt form allowed by the loose traditional form of the blues, with the call-and-response, holler, bending notes, loose rhythms and improvisational noodles, etc., etc.  

Ron Perry (Susan Tedeschi's bassist, formerly the Hook's bassist for like 18 years) once said to me, "Oh Man, John Lee would play 8 bars, then 13, 11, 6, man, we were chasin' him all over the place and he just didn't care, we mostly kept up and it sounded fine."  Yeah, blues can be whatever's real, sounds good and feels right from the soul.

-Dave Fertig