DAS44 Posted November 12, 2009 Author Share Posted November 12, 2009 Kinda off topic' date=' but can you imagine world where, what you think is green, may appear red to someone else or blue to another. If you think about it, its kinda......dunno how to describe it.[/quote']opinions. What may be crap to one person may be awesome to another. (I hate rap but some love it). One mans trash is another mans treasure. Right or wrong? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Basshole Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 .. .....Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Here is fruit for the crows to pluck' date=' For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop. . Abe Meirpol and is it Bessie Smith or Billy Holiday. I always get those confused Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeVeeWee Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 Defining#-o the blues = boxing in the 'blues Blues is just the opposite of a 'definition'...which is 'limitative' by definition... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adlankj Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 All this romanticizing you guys are doing is kinda funny... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silenced Fred Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 All this romanticizing you guys are doing is kinda funny... Are we romanticizing? or just speaking the truth? LOL the theoretical answers are endless, but so is the definition of the blues, or music in general, I mean, hitting two lids together is music, and so is an orchestral piece, it is all what sounds good to you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FirstMeasure Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 All this romanticizing you guys are doing is kinda funny... Funny? What the heck is so funny about acknowledging that music is romantic. You can't Romanticize Music, you can take the romance out of it, but Music and especially Blues is Borne of a Romantic Nature. Blues is, of course, a type of music where the back beat is emphasized more than the Down Beat, and of course theres the Pentatonic Scale with a Flatted Fifth Added. The Blues Culture, on the other hand, is far deeper. It has to do with Passing the torch and making it your own. You can't just whittle away at a scale over a I, IV, V progression and call yourself a Bluesman. You have to know what Sunhouse did, what Willie Dixon Wrote, What Johnny Winter Did with it. You have to know that Big Mamma Thortan fronted a Blues Band with an Electric Guitar before Muddy Waters did, and then understand the different ways they approach the same idea. Then there's the Improv. The tasty little pieces of lead lines that both define you as a player and show your awareness of the greats who's foundation you're building upon. It's a balance between the old and the new. Respecting the past without stagnating, and pushing the envelope without loosing the roots. Oh yeah, you better be able to nail a triplet beat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Natural Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 ...You have to know what Sunhouse did' date=' ... You have to know that Big Mamma Thortan fronted a Blues Band with an Electric Guitar.... [/quote'] You have to know what they did. You just don't have to know how to spell their names. Hey, speaking of Willie Dixon, I think Willie answered DAS44's question years ago when he said, "I AM the blues!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bonzoboy Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 The blues is expressing what's in your soul with your hands. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surfpup Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 The blues is expressing what's in your soul with your hands. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Isn't that all art? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FirstMeasure Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 You have to know what they did. You just don't have to know how to spell their names. Hey' date=' speaking of Willie Dixon, I think Willie answered DAS44's question years ago when he said, "I AM the blues!"[/quote'] Thanks Teach! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Izzy Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 "The blues aint nothin' but a good man feelin' bad" Ever feel disenfranchised? I get the blues sometimes, goddangit!!!! I couldn't define it but I know it when I hear it. I can't play it and won't try. When I'm blue, if I pick up my six string, I play depressing folk ^^V I do know one thing about blues though: You can't look happy, and when you hit a high note and bend it you gotta shut your eyes real tight and raise the neck a bit, maybe shake your head twice in discontent. I think that's part criteria, not sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Natural Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 Izz, you're on the right track.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FirstMeasure Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 Let's not confuse feeling blue with The Blues. Albert Collins isn't sad all the time. Stevie Ray has some of the most Up Beat Tunes out there. Muddy's "Got My Mojo Workin'" doesn't have a sad bone in it's rhythm. Lonnie Mack is smiling all the time. Robert Cray is very inspirational. Bluesmen do Sad better than anyone else, but it's no all about being sad. You have to "Learn How To Boogie", too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surfpup Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 I've never found blues music to make me feel sad - quite the opposite in fact. Maybe it's making joy out of sadness, but the lyrics can be depressing and it still makes me happy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guitargreg1993 Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 Why? You know it when you hear it. +1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djroge1 Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 I find it interesting that we use a color to describe a music and a feeling. We don't do that for any other style of music I can think of. In fact one can even use this color "blue" to describe other sub styles within a style - like "Blue Jazz." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 The reason I made the comment I did was exactly because I am familiar with the Handy quote. The chord progression is "Blues" in a sense, but so is 1/3/6/4/ etc., etc., yada, yada... The stuff the old black guys were doing in Handy's youth was not "blues," as far as I can tell, by nearly any criteria, any more than John Jacob Niles' transcriptions of Appalachian ballads are "country." "Gimme a pig's foot" is as far from a three-chord blues in ways as one might go, as is "Down and Out." Is "St. Louis Blues" a blues? I think yes and no. Again, one might come up with a dozen definitions. What of "Mood Indigo?" or... anything with a bridge, for example. "Basin Street Blues?" What of "Wandrin'?" Fred Neil's "Blues on my Ceiling?" Hank Williams' "Cold Cold Heart?" Ellington's "Mood Indigo?" If so, what arrangement is and what might not be? To me there's something about the term that simply is far too broad, even in a zen sense, and yet seems so often to be applied so much too narrowly. I even argue technically against the "You know it when you hear it" position because what you hear, and what I hear, may be entirely different thanks to our individual and musical backgrounds. Porgy and Bess as "blues?" No? What then of the once well known folkie thing "Dink's Song" Lomax made a thing about? Too much, too broad. Yeah, using the color "blue" for a musical concept is pretty unique and yet... How does Basin Street Blues with a "Dixieland band" arrangement coincide with "Smokestack Lightning?" Frankly I don't think of the younger fast-fingered guys - those who are or would be perhaps 40-50 today - who hit popularity as kids in the '70s as "bluesmen" at all. And that's not a racial or even technical distinction, but more a cultural one of the age both of player and listener. As a parallel, when I began some formal Japanese martial arts some half century ago, there was no secret made by the older Japanese that a big-nose could never truly understand Budo, the "way." Bu-jitsu, perhaps, the techniques themselves, and with a person of special talent, even great accomplishment. But not the "way." That "way" might be found when Hagakure needed no explanation, but only when read in the original by a native speaker-reader - and even the language itself was a decisive factor in not feeling, but being. To the Japanese of that era it was far beyond technique or style, even beyond zen into... something else some older guys wondered had ended with Meiji. Thus I wonder... Is not blues far more than one thing, one feeling, one gestalt, one concept? Is it even right in 2009 to talk about something we might hear and appreciate, but never truly "be," simply because after BB and a few other older guys, the era of bluesmen is gone, to be replaced by "blues musicians" who may be technically superior but... not bluesmen? What of Earl Monroe and "Muleskinner Blues?" I've heard it said that even his voice in regular conversation was "modal" and thus a take on a certain style - but I've never heard anyone else make that song "blues," "country," "folk" and hard-driving bluegrass at the same time. I dunno. I play a lotta stuff some folks call "blues." Gary Davis played a lotta stuff like "Stars and Stripes Forever," and is, I think, likely to be considered more of a bluesman forever than anything I might do or be or play. So... I think Roy Buchanan may be close as a relatively young guy, (although now deceased) so it's not entirely age dependent, race dependent, nor style dependent, it's not musical form dependent... Have we simply been guilty of overusing the word because it somehow suits us, but is not truly descriptive in the sense we expect the term "descriptive" to be? Frankly that's damned near my thought on it, and why I can't - or won't - even attempt a definition for 2009. Or - for all that, of 1890 or 1930. m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silenced Fred Posted November 13, 2009 Share Posted November 13, 2009 Milod- I'd quote you but it would take up too much room +1, you really summed everything up, and made it nice and easy to understand Thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluesburst Posted November 13, 2009 Share Posted November 13, 2009 Why? You know it when you hear it. Perfect answer!!! It's like a good joke, if you have to explain it, it's not funny... Blues is not there to be explained, it's felt. That's why the basic I - IV - V progression is timeless for those that feel it. Just my 2c Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FirstMeasure Posted November 13, 2009 Share Posted November 13, 2009 Frankly I don't think of the younger fast-fingered guys - those who are or would be perhaps 40-50 today - who hit popularity as kids in the '70s as "bluesmen" at all. And that's not a racial or even technical distinction' date=' but more a cultural one of the age both of player and listener. [/quote'] I have to disagree here. Those fast fingered guys are what kept Blues from becoming a memory of the pre-electric era. Just like Humble Pie and UFO were playing Rock and Roll that bore little resemblance to the Rock and Roll of Bill Haley and the Comets, the blues guys of the 70's just took it to a new place. It's part of passing it on and making it your own, building on the foundation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted November 13, 2009 Share Posted November 13, 2009 Firstmeasure... I didn't say they weren't accomplished musicians, nor even that they might not be excellent "blues" musicians. I said simply they aren't "bluesmen" in the sense of BB or Lightning... Frankly I feel the same way about a lot of "flamenco" of today's younger players (under 50) when compared to those who heard the music and developed the craft prior to and during the WWII era. In both cases there's no question of technical ability or familiarity with the idiom. It's just different stuff somehow. It's also why I don't really, in ways, figure that pre Edison phonograph black guys in the south are "bluesmen" in the sense of the guys who recorded from the early times through what BB and a few contemporaries play today. It's something exemplified in the music, but it's also that which makes a person and his/her "art" from something in the way of a common musical and cultural background. E.g., were we to yank the best of our 1950s and early 60s rock guitarists into the 21st century while they still were young, I think they might play whatever one might find in terms of current rock styles but - no, I don't think they could make the shift to be a true "death metal" or whateverthehell style because they weren't born to it nor raised with in the ethos that created it. I'm not knocking younger pickers, or older or middle aged pickers. What I am saying is that music and musical interpretation by even the greatest talents is tempered by what's in their heads from birth, and it's partly musical input and partly other cultural input. But it is "different" in different ages. Was Liszt the greatest pianist or piano composer ever? Well, I'd kinda doubt it, but was he absolutely incredible for what he did as pianist, composer and entertainer for his era? Yeah, I think so. It's also interesting that even playing a "old" piece, contemporary comments on this performance will have contrary sorts of outlooks on whether it's a performance of this or that level. I really wish I could hear Liszt's. <grin> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejXPcv9MS7s m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surfpup Posted November 13, 2009 Share Posted November 13, 2009 ...Those fast fingered guys are what kept Blues from becoming a memory of the pre-electric era....Humble Pie and UFO... took it to a new place. It's part of passing it on and making it your own' date=' building on the foundation.[/quote'] I feel this way as well. That is most certainly my favorite music and the music that has influenced my own playing the most. Those players also acted as a bridge, leading us younger folks back to Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, Son House, etc. (though maybe not back to WC Handy :- ). However, I don't really think of them as "blues" players. Semantics can be a pain in the a**, I know, but I usually refer to those guys (or my own playing even) as blues-rock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FirstMeasure Posted November 13, 2009 Share Posted November 13, 2009 Thanks Milod, I think I get it. The first recorded Bluesmen of the 30's, 40's, and into the 50's Lived the music they recorded. Having made it easier for the "Kids" to take up where they left off, like all the public officials that came after our Founding Fathers can't be a Founding Father, just another President. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FirstMeasure Posted November 13, 2009 Share Posted November 13, 2009 I feel this way as well. That is most certainly my favorite music and the music that has influenced my own playing the most. Those players also acted as a bridge' date=' leading us younger folks back to Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, Son House, etc. (though maybe not back to WC Handy [smile'] ). However, I don't really think of them as "blues" players. Semantics can be a pain in the a**, I know, but I usually refer to those guys (or my own playing even) as blues-rock. Me too, they were what made me want to play Blues First, but there's no way around the Rock part. I guess I really wouldn't want to get away from the rock part either. Being "Pure Bluesman" wouldn't suit players like us. :- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted November 13, 2009 Share Posted November 13, 2009 FirstMeasure... You gottit... Honestly, I think it does "show" in the music. Hell, why do we listen to BB King when there are dozens of guys who can play similarly, and perhaps with more speed and more something-or-other? It's because BB is BB... an original that helped to give rise to others' development of the art along certain branches. How did he get to be BB? He grew up at a time and a place and with certain musical and cultural input into his own individual unique personality. Can I be like BB musically? Nope. I may be able to copy his stuff, I may be able to play it note for note and nanosecond by nanosecond but... somehow it just won't work. Honestly I don't even try. I have enough problems making my hands do what my head wants to hear them do from my time and place and musical and cultural input and... Also... I think we're definitely reinforcing my belief that "defining" blues is really impossible because the word "blues" has probably been stretched far more than it should have been in terms of defining a style or type of music. Another point - I think that the music we hear around us makes a huge impression, and that it's gonna affect whatever it is that we end up playing without us even thinking about it. m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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