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

[<bfrain@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

i'm with you, randy...plus there are a ton of players out there that really arent very good/interesting, etc..."that's it" by little walter sets the standard for me, followed by guys like butterfield, musselwhite, and a few others that really hit me right HERE! but they are few and far between...is it the alleged restriction of the 1-4-5 format? the nazi's? (who are jackazzes) 
all i know is that when i hear it, i know it's blues of some kind, and i listen with wonder and appreciation...
"run out of time"   butterfield

"one more heartache"  butterfield


---- Randy Singer <randy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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 clichÃs 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!
> 
> I believe that there is a absolute necessity to keep the tradition alive and I applaud and appreciate what the traditionalists are doing but as far as the general state of the blues and harmonica players it's a big ho hum. 
> 
> I fully expect to get a lot of hate mail so feel free to vent your anger or better yet do something about it and learn to play your next evolution of music while retaining your blues roots. Also if there are any other progressives that I have missed please list them. 
> 
> I will consider leaving the country or getting a bodyguard once I hit the send button on this. 
> 
> I love the harmonica more than anything else that's why I wrote this. 
> 
> If I have hurt anyone's feelings I apologize. 
> 
> With love, RANDY SINGER
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone