Why? In God’s great name, why? Why did a bunch of white boys from the Home Counties feel qualified to express the miseries of poor black sharecroppers? What mystical allure did the twelve bar, three chord structure hold over a generation of slouching, greasy-haired, skinny blerks in loon pants?
To find the answer to this, we must go back, back … to the blood-soaked levées of Berks & Bucks in the mid ‘fifties, to portly, prematurely balding Cyril Davies, who met the only-very-slightly more charismatic Alexis Korner while they played for the rambunctious Chris Barber’s Jazz Band. This was jazz as in trad, dad; the music of choice for speccy young men in duffel coats and no girlfriends. To be fair, Korner did book the Genuine Article for his club, giving black blues artists a bit of the spotlight. But also in the interests of fairness, he did “sing the blues” himself. A mistake. The number of white Brits who have the necessary throat and lung equipment to sing the blues is … well, probably two. Or three. Alexis and Cyril shared a set of schoolboy adenoids for vocal chords (cf John Mayall), but that didn’t, unfortunately, stop them from forming the seminal Blues Incorporated in the early sixties. This is where the true horror of British Blues was born, nurturing the embryonic talents of Charlie Watts, Jack Bruce, Ginger “Ginger” Baker, Long John “Long John” Baldry, Danny Thompson, and Dick “Call Me Dick” Heckstall-Smith amongst others I can’t be bothered to look up on Wiki. Some of these people – the smart ones – moved into R n’ B, or jazz, or folk, or anything else but de blooze. Around this time, John Mayall, the other Godfather of British Blues, joined the Blues Syndicate (see how a pattern is forming here?) up in Manchestershire. It wasn’t long before Korner lured him to London, and in ’63 his band The Bluesbreakers (hmmm … I wonder what they played?) were ripping it up at the Marquee, around the time that loveable scally moptops “The Beatles” were cleaning up their act for the grannies and recording their first album. This needs thinking about. Not much, but enough. The Beatles gave not a backstage Reeperbahn toss for authenticity. They were a bunch of capering music-hall tarts for whom the suffering of the Afro-American meant O. They’d plunder black music where it suited them, but they were never going to change their name to The Beatles Blues Band. They had more chords, for one. And could sing. Both demerits as far as the blues enthusiast was concerned.
Although there were earlier British blues albums (including one by Mayall), it was Mayall’s imaginatively-titled Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton album that established the form as a going commercial concern. All over the country young men woke dozily to the realisation that they too, could be authentic musicians playing real music. Okay, they’d never heard any Blind Son Leadbelly records, but they’d heard the Beano album and seen the writing on the wall – Clapton Is God. All it took was three chords – two of which they probably knew already. What could possibly go wrong? A probable lack of commercial success could be flaunted as a Mark Of Authenticity. They would spurn the crass commercialism of pop n’ roll and the cheap glitter of fame. That is, unless someone gave them a good pop hit, in which case, all bets were off. These were the heady days of the UK blues boom, when ents committees throughout the length and breadth of our fair land competed to book the latest blues sensations into their polytechnic dances, and it was impossible to take a stroll in the park without tripping over some lanky wastrel whining “woke up this morning” to an out-of-tune guitar. Dumb-da-dumb-da-dumb-da-dumb. Girls, of course, secretly hated the whole thing, but tagged along because, hey, that’s how it was, okay?
No doubt Cyril and Alexis and John were sincere, believing in the blues as a cause, a kick in the pants to Tin Pan Alley and the UK music hall tradition. But why did they have to try to play it – worse, sing it – themselves? Mayall and Clapton became huge stars on the back of the tradition they’d appropriated. Which is kind of ironic, given the poverty of the source. And yes, they gave a little back, in their own way. But what they can’t do is the ultimate act of atonement; unring the bell of British Blues.
Oh well (Parts I&II), it didn’t last long, and they’re mostly forgotten now, the bands that sprang from that fertile Home Counties soil. The good that came of it, the R n’ B, the jazz and the folk and the whatever, is still good. In the end, we can only nod our heads in sage agreement with Steve Martin in The Jerk, who although brought up a poor black kid had the honesty to own up to his whitebread roots: “The blues – isn’t it kind of depressing?”
Well, hi there.
As ever, interesting and thought provoking. As ever some bollocks in there too but, you know what, basically you are right!
Not trying to be right or wrong, and hope I’m succeeding.
No Korner, no Mayall = no rock music.
The Beatles would never had made it past yeah, yeah, yeah
Actually, I think yeah yeah yeah was where they moved on to once they’d largely left covers of black music behind. I’ve never heard any evidence that they paid Messrs Korner and Mayall any attention at all.
Yer Blues I suppose but that’s also a satire at the same time. The there was a little Fleetwood Mac inspiration on some of Abbey Road, though that was from a development of the form by the originators that was kind of new territory. Some would say The Beatles didn’t have the guitarist able to play that way. Maybe so but probably a good thing. I guess, as was said elsewhere, they had so many other musical interests to draw from they didn’t really need to go there. They were doing fine as they were, mostly.
I’ve said this before elsewhere on the blog. Great album though it may be, Abbey Road shows the Beatles using influences lifted from the biggest band of 1969, Fleetwood Mac. In 1969 Peter Green’s outfit had displaced The Beatles as biggest UK chart band, a position they had held since 1963.
And Yer Blues from the White Album was also a direct nod to the burgeoning British Blues Boom
Yer Blues, though terrific in its own right, is definitely a piss-take.
I have it on good authority that Rongo once approached Clapton with a cheery ‘hope you’re giving us any more of that ‘lawdy Mama’ shit, Eric’.
Ringo, obvs!
Cream cut “Lawdy Mama” for a BBC session. It’s on the Crossroads box set – very good it is too.
Praps the Scouse The Mouse Hitmaker was thinking of that.
In latest MOJO a piece on Long John Baldry highlights that he was a mucker of the Fabs back in the Hamburg days and was instrumental in steering them towards many an R&B gem to cover live.
This is what you meant to write, surely?
Donovan invented all music, that is taken as given
You’re absolutely right, you naughty old thing you. None of the buggers could really sing, could they? Which is not to say it wasn’t roaring good fun being in some sweaty back room in a pub listening to Clapton or Green or Gallagher letting rip.
But you know what? An awful lot of the original source material wasn’t very good either. A friend of mine doggedly collected that blues part work that came out about 20 years ago, upwards of 100 CDs. (And then he was burgled and they were all nicked, so he started all over again.)
There’s a reason that there are only a handful of bluesmen that everybody’s heard of: they were the good ones. A quick listen of vol.87, Howlin’ Mudbelly, was proof enough of that.
Just as with Merseybeat, once the Man discovered there was money to be made, the market was flooded with pale imitations. Black? Tick? Battered old guitar? Tick. Been in jail? No? Never mind, we’ll say you were.
And now that everything ever recorded is available, they’re being ‘rediscovered’.
Don’t get me wrong (I have to say that around now, it’s the law) I love the blues. But I’m quite happy with that handful.
I’m happy that you’re happy with your handful, Mike. You know what they say – more than a mouthful’s wasted.
So true, thep, as someone who is happy to admit a perverse love of whiteboy blues, thin vocals and all ,and have a fair few Savoy Brown, Blodwyn Pig, Chicken Shacks to prove it. Chasing back to source proved ultimately disappointing, with my ears unable to accommodate the raw gravel and groan, rudimentary guitars of even the so called masters. John Le Hooker? No thanks. But I did find the revived electric Kings, Albert, Freddie and so on, finding the right up my street, and the yankee white boys, from Bloomfield to Vaughan. So if that makes me a failed authenticist, fine. I also prefer folk with drums and country without western.
Once we knock on the head the 30 or so titles recorded after c. 1970, that Orbis ‘Blues Collection’ of the early 1990s is great. I’ve got about 58 of the 60 I need.
Personally, it’s the second and third string guys I like the best – like Otis Rush, Jimmy Reed and Magic Sam – and the five or so compilations (Hillbilly Blues, Blues Women, 30s Blues, East Coast Blues) in the series are terrific.
The heavyweights – like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters – were served by lesser later work.
Mayall’s one was a concert from about 1987…..hmm….useful!
That series hit a couple of rights issues during its run, one due to a label being taken over, the other due to Charly records licensing out the Chess catalogue which they didn’t actually own. Consequentially the series put out a lot of rubbish which they hadn’t intended to issue when the series launched around, particularly as they stayed away from the major labels.
Was the Mayall one actually live? At least one other in the set was a fake concert – remade greatest hits smothered in overdubbed applause. Some of the sets compiled from 78s were dodgy sounding too, with far too much digital reverb than was absolutely necessary.
I believe that Jimmy Reed provided the blue(s)print for the 60’s British wannabees by showing that you didn’t have to have a great voice or be a great musician. The enjoyment to be had from being able to create music from a fairly simple format had already had an effect on budding strummers during the skiffle era. Maybe we should have a thread condemning American kids copying the Beatles et al after the 60’s British Invasion.
You’re saying that kids played the blues because it was easy, and you didn’t have to be able to play or sing particularly well? Oh, okay.
…. and while I’m at it; it’s not to difficult to understand why thousands of young white American boys adopted the Beatles (young white boys) as role models. I’m not “condemning” anybody (go and stand over there with Twang).
I think I may have answered my own question, and it’s something along the lines started in Owlsley’s thread. The “Godfathers” of British Blues took it up because they were influenced by the originals. The later generation took up the blues because they were influenced by the Godfathers, in particular Mayall and Clapton.
Spot on…(bottom 2 strings) achunkachunkachunkachunka x 4, (5th and 4th strings) achunkachunkachunkachunka x 2…etc etc, plus random sucks on the gob-iron if you can do two things at once. Jimmy Reed probably sold as many harmonica harnesses as Dylan did.
A lot of blues artists never made the long voyage up the neck to grab that difficult B chord.
ooh I do love a good old contentious post. I agree there was a whole heap of bloated widdly guitar crap (in retrospect as I loved a lot of it at the time). I would like to put up a defence for Peter Green and the early Fleetwood Mac – to my mind the only British white guitarist and band who really cut it at the time. I guess there will be others who might want to make a case for the early Stones or Rory Gallagher (wake up @twang you might be needed here). But yeah I cant get too excited about the likes of Savoy Brown and have never thought of Clapton as God or even as a minor deity.
Yes I think Peter Green was the best of the lot by a country mile, beautiful singer. Songwriter. Guitarist.
I don’t think comparisons work. PG played lovely lyrical blues, but didn’t have the fire Eric had. And vice versa.
Can I just add my voice (tuneful, unlike Mayall’s) to the deserved praise for Peter Green. Magnificent player and possessor of a beautiful voice. He was one of the major artists of the late ’60s and his work still holds up brilliantly.
So, hello then, Peter Green
Man Of The World was a great single
So was Oh Well and Green Manalishi
End Of The Game was actually a good album.
Because Not Twelve Bar
And you played some great solos
Even if they all sounded a bit the same
That’s about it, really
Completely agree on End Of The Game. Also features Alex Demechowsky on bass, AKA Erroneous off Zappa’s excellent bigband suite, Grand Wazoo.
We’ve been here before, but I simply can’t listen to End Of The Game. Recorded immediately after Green’s departure from Fleetwood Mac and right at the onset of his mental heath issues, it goes nowhere as far as I can see.
More interesting is the mention of Erroneous. Around 1979 I had blagged my way backstage at a Zappa Hammersmith Odeon show to deliver some rented amplification gear. I didn’t get to meet Frank, but saw a little of the soundcheck.
As I was leaving via the stage door in the alleyway at the side of the building I heard raised voices. At the door stood the imposing figure of Mr. Smothers, Frank’s long-time bodyguard.
“But I’m Erroneous, I tell you. I played on The Grand Wazoo” a whining voice said.
“Look buddy, I’ve told you three times. You ain’t getting in here without a pass” Mr. Smothers said calmly but firmly, in a voice that clearly hinted that no further nonsense from this interloper would be tolerated.
Yes, it was some bloke claiming to be Alex Dmochowski, aka Erroneous, the mysterious name credited on the sleeve of The Grand Wazoo, Waka/Jawaka and Apostrophe .
Now, I’d seen The Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation some years previously and while I couldn’t absolutely swear to it, this character didn’t look much like their bass player Alex Dmochowski as I remembered him.
As I apologetically pushed past Mr. Smothers and walked out into the street, the conversation had reached the shouting stage. Then there was the sound of a scuffle as the erroneous Erroneous was manhandled out of the doorway and into the alleyway. Then the stage door slammed shut behind him.
How curious, I thought. If you’re going to claim to be someone you’re not, why pick a guy who guested on three Zappa LPs under a pseudonym? Then I figured it was all an elaborate double bluff. Hardly anyone would know what the real Alex looked like, so this imposter had a better than average chance of pulling it off.
He clearly hadn’t reckoned with Mr. John Smothers
‘That’s about it, really’. Really!? One can take iconoclasm a bit too far. Too reductive, my good man. Beautiful player – restrained, elegant, classy, yet still wonderful at conveying emotion.
In the early days Clapton was stratospherically brilliant and was indeed Godlike next to the other lameo players. PG came somewhat later and was equally brilliant but different. By comparison Jimmy Oage was a stumbly also ran. It all got a whole lot more interesting with blues rock rather than trying to play pure blues, and Rory kinda bridged the gap, able to do both with ease.
But ultimately it’s another boring hate thread. Rather blues or blues rock any day than some twat with a stupid haircut poking at a synthesiser with one outstretched finger. I hate hate threads.
Oh tsk. I don’t hate blues rock, Twang. Leaves me unmoved, really. But what ever did some twat with a stupid haircut poking at a synthesiser with one outstretched finger ever do to you? LEAVE HIM ALONE.
I hate people who hate hate threads.
NO!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can’t let that pass – I hate people who, er, hate people hating hate threads! It’s hateful!
I hate everyone and I am leaving this thread forever!
I’m off to start a white reggae thread.
Didn’t Joss Stone win some award for best reggae album this year – Grammys?
Billboard’s Best Reggae Artist of 2015
That’s the one. Beyond parody.
Who won best rap artist – SuBo?
That was best crap artist.
The Day Today wins!
Presume then the invite to the MOBO’s is in the post along with Mick n Keef’s?
Great fun, but essentially unfair! Have you never heard Duffy Power sing? You didn’t have to leave your natural talent behind to stroll along Tin Pan Alley with an assumed name, and you didn’t have to be hairy and festooned with CND badges to marvel at and wish to recreate the geetar blues. The B of R’n’B is Blues, after all, and Jazz is also essentially kind of blue.
Slavish (unfortunate choice of word) copying of the blues by white UK acts I find unappealing. Such ersatz music seems kind of pointless and frankly a bit embarrassing to listen to with these chaps pretending to be black. Fleetwood Mac did move into other styles though. Man Of The World is brilliant and I suppose they had to go there first to get somewhere else after. Most of these musicians developed and did something more imaginative and adventurous at least part of the time. And Little Red Rooster is a fairly ‘authentic’ blues cover but as a record it still sounds fantastic to me and not at all fake or ersatz. Just because you come from a nice home counties, middle class background doesn’t mean you can’t reinvent yourself into something rather more exotic and strange.
Good to see you back in harness mate (hey, whatever turns you on).
Hard to fault most of what you say, especially regarding the early British Blues Scene, which was much too earnest for its own good. Korner and Mayall couldn’t sing for toffee it’s true, but theirs were the voices that launched a thousand ships, most of which sailed under a flag of blues convenience until rock, with its attendant fame and fortune, beckoned their disciples.
We’ve already discussed the Beano Album until we’re blue in the face, so let’s take that as a solid gold blues given and move on. It was the second wave of British blues which stretched the friendship to breaking point. With Clapton gone to rock superstardom in Cream, Peter Green in Fleetwood Mac and Mick Taylor about to join the Stones, it was left to the likes of Chicken Shack, Savoy Brown, Free and Keef Hartley Band to pick up the slack.
Paul Rodgers of course was (and is) the match of any white soul/blues singer who ever drew breath and while Free were hamstrung by Kossoff’s drug problems, their early work remains some of the best blues/rock of the period. So let’s leave them out of this.
Chicken Shack and Savoy Brown were shameless Fleetwood Mac wannabes and although Shack guitarist Stan Webb was a great showman, venturing out into the audience on a 100 foot guitar lead as early as 1968, the songs just didn’t match Peter Green’s and pretty soon the two bands (Shack and Savoy) merged into a sub-Quo boogie outfit.
I often think that the likes of Rory Gallagher, Gary Moore and others wouldn’t (indeed, shouldn’t) have got up in front of an audience and opened their mouths if they weren’t such tremendous guitarists. But it’s the guitar that’s all important here. Distorted blues guitar had been around in black music since the early 50s, but white audiences didn’t discover this wondrous new sound until 1966 when The Beano Album (natch) turned it up to eleven and brought it into white living rooms.
But the important point here is where the Blues Boom lead. As I said in the Beano thread, it took us all the way from Chris Barber, Lonnie Donegan, Alexis Korner and Cyril Davis via the Stones, Pretty Things and Manfred Mann, to Cream, Hendrix, Jethro Tull and beyond.
Along the way they ripped off a lot of the old bluesmen, but they also made a lot of money for some of them too. So I reckon it’s about even.
Re Clapton: I may be going out on a limb here but he is soooo boring as a guitarist. Speaking as a mere listener here of course rather than an amateur guitar bore.
….as is 99% of the Blues.
Clapton clearly crossed over in rock mediocrity fairly early on, but he could still produce the goods when required.
Check this out from his 1994 blues “comeback” album From The Cradle.
The man is on fire here on Five Long Years
Time to post one of my favourite YouTube clips of Jeff Beck skewering a coasting Clapton at The Secret Policeman’s Ball. To give Eric his due he knows he’s been outrageously upstaged.
http://youtu.be/k38RXWa_Ezo
True, I guess I meant post-Dominoes really.
I really like FTC. It’s his attempt to do Hard Again and at the same time sell Da Blooze to the big-shoulderpadded punters who bought August.
And he sings like Fozzy Bear on almost the whole album, which can never be a bad thing.
There’s a really weird album in the 90s where he sings like Cliff Richard. I remember being invited onto Radio Ulster to talk about it. that in itself only added to the weirdness.
It wasn’t Pilgrim, was it?
I think Clapton mellowed out and became quite dull but if you listen to Derek and the Dominoes live recordings his soloing is particularly raw and powerful. Anything but boring. Take Why’s Love Got To Be So Sad off Live At The Filmore from 1970 for example. Also his version of Badge on the Old Grey Whistle Test concert from 1977 is fantastic.
My version of Layla is a single album, shorn of all the dumb-da-dumb stuff that sounds so hopelessly dated. It leads nicely into 461, when he’d very nearly freed himself from the blues. Nothing he’s done since is quite as good, but he’s a fine guitarist and songwriter.
Mayall was astonishingly good as a talent spotter and talent-nurturer, but his voice remains an obstacle. I can’t think of any other vocalist who has to strain to reach every single note.
If you were 17 in 1968 and heard EC’s playing on this track (I was and I did) the last thing you thought was this is “soooo boring”. It was thrilling. It was enlightening. And for me it changed everything.
A big “up” for the Beano Album there.
Tends to solidify my argument that it was Mayall/Clapton – already interpreters of the form – responsible for the horrors of the British Blues Boom and not the original artists. But did anyone really think “gosh! that sounds easy!” listening to Clapton? Mayall, maybe.
Duffy Power told me in an interview (quoted in my John McLaughlin book) that he extolled Blues Inc to the Beatles at a TV show canteen in 1963 and was shocked when they said they weren’t interested ‘cos there were too many bald blokes’.
Duffy had great taste, though: he covered several Beatles songs, probably his best being a 1969 recording of ‘Fixing A Hole’, turning it into a mesmerising, unlikely kind of English blues.
He was a R&B man at heart, rather than a ‘blues rocker’. He was never convinced by the long sustained note BB King-esque sound ushered in by Clapton et al.
I agree, the three pioneers of British blues (Davies, Korner, Mayall) were poor singers. Duffy had an incredible voice, and the demons to tap into the soul of the blues form.
Here he is (backed by Danny Thompson on string bass, Alexis Korner and others) on a BBC Radio 3 blues series from 1968, with ‘Gin House’. Immense.
Oh lordy. This clip says it all, really. Yes, he’s a good blues belter, even if the band is a total shambles (by 1968 they should have been able to get it together better than this). But the twelve bar structure is claustrophobic (unending – I couldn’t get through this), and the sense of a bunch of musos playing to a formula is overwhelming, almost to the point of parody. Did Huddie Ledbetter think he was playing within a genre? He was just being himself, singing who he was. These guys are stylists.
I rather enjoyed the shambling looseness of the band!
“These guys are stylists.”
That’s a bit harsh. I didn’t particularly enjoy that clip but they’re doing what they’re inspired to do. You’re a writer, a good writer (I bought Baddha and enjoyed it immensely) but do you think you are free from precedent, influence and inspiration, all of which are likely to inform your own work? I liked the chaps in the 60’s who turned me on to the real thing (without Eric playing Hideaway I wouldn’t have heard Freddie King play Hideaway) and some of them came pretty close themselves to the real thing:
“These guys are stylists” – hairdresser blues, that’s the worst.
Something for “I woke up this morning”, sir?
The 1966 sleeve notes to Fresh Cream claim that Eric Clapton was “originally a rustic”.
50 years later, I still have no idea what that means
I only know that word in the context of bread.
Tewdally the wrong band.
@peanuts
I think that the gist of my post is in that first word – why? (to save you scrolling up). Why did the blues – practically an alien culture, and hardly expressing the lives of young white relatively well-off males – become so popular? Why did Cyril n’ Alex take it up as a cause? Were they struggling with the complexities of trad jazz and looking for an easy way out? Did they think playing the blues would get them more pussy? (This is not a facetious question – virtually every group that sprang up in the wake of the Beatles/etc. had seen the effect the music had on girls, and wanted a piece of that action).
Another question – were they the first white UK blues fans? Were there others in the forties, the thirties, maybe the twenties? White blerks playing scratchy 78s and inspired to pick up a gee-tar?
Why them, then, and why then, then?
Later, the influence/attraction of Mayall/Clapton is easier to understand. Sort of.
More @peanuts: nothing wrong in being influenced (“open your eyes and your ears, you’re influenced”) but quite a lot wrong with shameless apeing (is that a word?) of a form. Bert Jansch, right here in this thread, shows his influences but comes up with a fresh deal from an old deck of cards. Like Dylan, if you like. But the whole “authentic” thing – singing and playing a twelve-bar as closely as possible in style to the real thing – just leads to fakery. What irony!
“Why did Cyril n’ Alex take it up as a cause?” – because they heard it and they loved it? Possibly? “The Restless Generation” by Pete Frame gives some insight to this.
Did they think playing the blues would get them more pussy? – did they not have mirrors?
“Were they the first white UK blues fans?” – No. Now we come to the definition of blues – see a different thread. Then ask Philip Larkin, Chris Barber, Humph, & George Melly. And read Colin Harper’s “Dazzling Stranger”. Much went on with old folkies and traddies that lead to young white blokes finding “the blues”.
But my question – and I’m a bit tired and pissed now – is about precedent and the positive impact of what inspires you. Eric Clapton, young lad in southern England, hears something that shapes his life forever. What branch of artistic endeavour is not affected by what’s gone before, even if it’s foreign, tangential or ultimately diluted?
The young white blues “copyists” were a welcome stepping stone from what went before to where we are now.
Philip Larkin, Chris Barber, Humph, & George Melly. They didn’t play the guitar, right?
With blues/rock arguably now the most popular music in the world, it’s hard to recall a time when this wasn’t the case.
What we must remember is that back in the early 50s when Chris Barber, Alexis, Mayall and other pioneers were championing turning on to the blues, it wasn’t sexy or rock and roll in any way. It was true world music and a neglected art form. It might as well have been African, Balinese or Chinese music for all the crossover appeal it had.
The clincher was when a bunch of skinny white kids with good haircuts and Carnaby Street clothes latched onto the blues, turned it up loud and presented it to “the kids” in the mid 60s. That was the launch point for the modern form of blues (and later rock).
Before that blues was a scholarly pursuit, in much the same way that traditional folk music was before Fairport, Steeleye etc plugged in.
Don’t know for sure but will ask them if we meet and let you know. Clearly, if I bump into a couple of them I will be in god’s heaven but I will do my best to get a message through. cf Houdini.
Of course my reference to them was not regarding their strumming ability but to their early blues fandom (as you well know).
However, we seem to be on the verge of an argument and I don’t argue with strangers on the internet so I now concede that you are right.
Cheers.
What world are you living in, Johnny? Haven’t you noticed that Rap has taken over, followed by scantily clad young women singing over EDM? Blues/Rock has had its day. Decades ago.
By the way, Alexis and I shared a field in Wales once. The burger van ran out of grits.
I was about to ask if Roger Bunn and Enjin were a ventriloquist act, but then I discovered that he was Roxy Music’s first guitarist! Nothing to do with this thread, but his bio is interesting: http://www.billboard.com/artist/1532652/roger-bunn/biography
Is that Move as in *The* Move?
“With blues/rock arguably now the most popular music in the world, it’s hard to recall a time when this wasn’t the case.”
With polka and Tuvan throat-singing tying for second place.
@peanuts.
What a strange place this has become. On the verge of an argument? Why? I’ve thoroughly enjoyed your comments and responded to them.
James Litherland’s Brotherhood.
He was the original guitarist in Colosseum, before Clem Clemson.
And Killing Floor – they were the pick-up band Freddie King used for his 1969 UK tour. I saw him backed by them at Sheffield University
@h-p-saucecraft
I got confused and now realise you’re my best pal. Sorry pal.
@mikethep
Yes, it was The “Move”. They came on fashionably late making it difficult for us weekend hippies who had work the next morning.
There were loads of people on the bill who went on to greater success . . . Jim Mullen, Alan Gorrie and more.
Killing Floor was one of those bands you couldn’t get away from on the weekend. Like Stray.
Great to have you back H P. As uncontroversial as ever.
How about a YouTube thread on The Blues, K? That’d be depressing.
Check this out. Fleetwood Mac’s Then Play On album was supposed to feature a bonus EP featuring Jeremy Spencer’s comedy rock & roll spoofs. It never happened and the EP remains unreleased. However, parts of it turned up in 1998 on a semi authorised Mac double CD The Vaudeville Years 1968-1970.
On this track Spencer does some great impersonations of Alexis Korner and John Mayall, plus some American blues guys too.
It gets interesting at 3:44 and the uncanny “John Mayall” comes in at 14:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrZHH-kqxLE
I can’t fault the early Stones, Yardbirds, Them etc., so I won’t, but then that’s really blues-pop rather than blues-rock and by 1965 they’d all, apart from Eric Clapton, moved on to better things.
By sheer coincidence I find myself listening to ‘Crusade’ by John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers, and for a record from 1967 it breaks the cardinal sin…..it sounds like a record from 197 – f***** – 8!
And this at the height of Syd/Pepper’s/Jimi pyschedelia.
So I find myself in broad agreement, avoid blues-rock, and indeed rock, like the plague.
Always been a bit wary of Mayall and last night’s spin of Bert Jansch’s ‘Birthday Blues’ from 1969 sounded far more like genuine blues to me.
Good call, Deram. Here’s a real ‘English blues’ (with Duffy Power on harmonica) – not in any way in hock to any US formula – ‘Poison’, from ‘Birthday Blues’:
Thanks Colin. Never knew Duffy was on the Birthday Blues LP. I really must read the sleeve notes more carefully.
This is extraordinarily good. Has the voodoo running right through it.
That’s fantastic stuff, Conch. The Alexis and Mayall impressions are incredible (and very funny) 🙂
Here’s Duffy’s ‘Fixing A Hole’:
While searching for a germaine clip in the hope of blowing your thesis out of the water (BritBluesPron: “woadah”), I happened to come across this. It may just explain everything. And I mean everything. The driving force that has blighted so much music of the last fifty years – the tedious, misguided, pretentious and presumptuous quest for “authenticity” – can be traced back to at least 1959.
Take it away, George (BritBluesPron: “Joajah”). As far away as possible, please.
“Germaine”? No, that’s the no-platformed transphobic. I meant germane. Er, germain? Look, relevant and pertinent, ‘kay?
Dear, dear Georgieboy! I love the plummy tones contrasted with his black beat generation sweater and artfully de-kempt hair. I also love the chair the interviewer sits on. So much for this being a hate thread, eh readers?
As regards ‘authenticity’, there must have been something in the UK water in the late ’50s, early ’60s as the ‘trad folk’ movement was also plagued with this.
I couldn’t hear that, I had my finger in my ear.
Hynyarrrr…..
If it wasn’t ‘authentic’, then it was mere copying, not to say ripping off, wasn’t it? So it had to be ‘authentic’ to assuage the white-boy guilt. A very early example of political correctness.
Your comment, Mike, is either irony turned up to 11, or transparent truth. Either way, awesomeness.
I recall reading that it was the unreconstructed Commie, Ewan McColl, who was the main interpreter and enforcer of ‘authenticity’ in the folk field, imposing his illiberal, authoritarian mindset on the Aran-jumpered scene and helping, therefore, to consign it to oblivion.
Wanted to post the video for this but it’s not available. Instead here’s the lyrics
I’VE GOT THESE FLEETWOOD MAC CHICKEN SHACK JOHN MAYALL CAN’T FAIL BLUES
As performed by The Liverpool Scene
Woke up this mornin’ and my agent was standin’ in my room.
Oh yeah, I woke up this mornin’ and my agent and a man from Blue Horizon Records, and Mike and Richard Vernon was standin’ in my room, yes they were.
Oh, they said, “You better learn some blues, son, ’cause there’s gonna be a boom, a great big boom, daddy!”
I got the Fleetwood-Mac, chicken-shack, John-Mayall, can’t-fail blues.
I got the Fleetwood-Mac, chicken-shack, John-Mayall, can’t-fail blues, yeah.
I got the Fleetwood-Mac, chicken-shack, John-Mayall, can’t-fail blues.
From the deep, deep south of the river Thames,
Bottleneck guitar is the latest trend.
I’m gonna earn more money than I can spend.
I got the blues.
I got the blues, the Fleetwood-Mac, chicken-shack blues.
I got the Fleetwood-Mac, chicken-shack, John-Mayall, can’t-fail blues.
I got the Jethro-Tull, bellyful, Savoy-Brown, reach-me-down blues.
I got the Jethro-Tull, bellyful, Savoy-Brown, reach-me-down blues.
I got the Jethro-Tull, bellyful, Savoy-Brown, reach-me-down blues, yeah.
I’m gonna pick that cotton an’ do my thing.
Don’t know the chords and I just can’t sing,
But there’s lots of noise and the drums don’t swing.
I got the blues.
I got the blues, the Jethro-Tull, bellyful blues.
I got the Fleetwood-Mac, chicken-shack, John-Mayall, can’t-fail blues, yeah.
Got money by the spoonful.
Got money by the handful.
Got money by the roomful.
Got money by the bank – full.
I’m with Blue Horizon Records. Ev’rything is gonna be all right.
SOUND of sparse applause.
SOUND EFFECT of something like wooden folding chairs being folded and stacked, continues throughout the following speech:
SPOKEN: I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to hurry out of the hall now, sir, please. I’m afraid— Hurry up, sir, because it’s eleven o’clock, and this hall is supposed to be closed at ten-thirty. I’m afraid— I mean, there’s no need to take that attitude, sir, and I’m only doing my job. I’ve been here since eight o’clock this morning, and I shall miss my last bus home if you don’t hurry up. I’m afraid— You’re being offensive, sir, and I shall have to report this to the manager. [Another voice says something unintelligible, ending with “git.”] I fought in the War for the likes of you, and I’m not gonna have….
This is excellent. What about Can Blue Men Sing The Whites?
Oh wait – here it is:
Well, that’s just nit-picking, isn’t it?
As a denizen of the Surrey Delta, how dare you cast aspersions on my truly authentic po’ boy roots.
Four out of the six bedrooms in our house were not even en-suite. And once my father’s sit-on lawnmower ran out of petrol. He had to walk back a full half-acre of garden back to the shed. I say shed, more a set of converted outbuildings to be accurate, but that’s beside the point. I hope you’re thoroughly ashamed of yourself HP.
I hang my head in shame. I had no idea, Fin, really no idea. How horrible for you. It’s always a humbling surprise to find out how poor the poor really are, what they put up with day after day, making the best of their meagre lot.
Perhaps you might pen us a suitable “blues” number?
View From A Mansion On St. George’s Hill Blues (first verse)
Woke up this morning, saw my Coutts account was showing red
What will the neighbours think, may as well be socially dead
Then the phone rang, bank saying it was all a big mistake
I was liquid once more, just a slow transfer from my friend the Sheikh
Got so excited, took another Sloane Square babe straight to bed
What’s a poor little sharecropper, sorry shareholder, like me to do?
Looks like I’ve got those mean old view from a mansion on St. George’s Hill blues
(working on the rest but you’ll appreciate, after much more than 5 minutes writing, one must repair to The Reform Club for a glass of something convivial and a chat with one’s broker. Any assistance appreciated)
My blazer needs a button, boater’s seen better days
My blazer needs a button, boater’s seen better days
Been hittin’ the Pimms so hard, gotta change my Henley ways
My woman she done left me, pushed me outta my punt
My woman she done left me, pushed me outta my punt
That gir- (that’s enough authenticity – Ed.)
I often find myself pondering when the 60s ended, indeed it’s pretty much the only thing I do ponder on, and, 31st December 1969 aside, I have a few choice contenders (death of Hendrix, Stones tongue logo, last Beatles 45 and/or L.P. etc.).
If anyone can post a picture of Clapton’s debut L.P. (from August 1970, I believe), there is man who looks really bored, in an awful suit, with an awful beard and a dire haircut…..in other words, virtually the blueprint for the 1970s.
Please, if anyone can definitively date that photograph, that’s the date I’m working to from now on.
http://i917.photobucket.com/albums/ad15/camplimp/clapton_zpsgvvl7hcq.jpg
The Clapton debut solo LP was released in August 1970, so we can assume the picture dates from 2 or 3 months before that.
That Fender Strat on the cover is “Brownie”, a 1956 model which Clapton picked up in 1967 at Sound City on Shaftesbury Avenue in London and used extensively in the 70s. It’s also the guitar on the back cover of Laya. “Brownie” was auctioned for charity in 1999, selling for just under half a million dollars.
The Fender Telecaster Clapton used at the Blind Faith Hyde Park Concert in 1969 is a curious Strat/Tele hybrid, with the neck coming from “Brownie”.
Here’s a recent clip of Eric receiving a Fender Custom Shop reproduction of “Brownie” and talking about it. Some nice noodling, too.
I must say Eric was never very imaginative with the nicknames for his guitars was he? Brownie, Blackie…
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to hear that he also had guitars called Sunbursty and Reddie.
Unlike Joe Bonamassa, who has a range of interesting nicknames for his guitars.
This from the Joe Bonamassa forum with annotations by Joe himself:
9-0829 – 1959 Les Paul standard. “Magellan ” ( name because it’s circled the globe on tour)
9-1951 – 1959 Les Paul standard. ” Principal Skinner” ( originally The Skinner burst, but renamed, I am a huge Simpsons fan)
9-1688 – 1959 Les Paul standard. “Spot” ( named because of the unfaded spot on the top, that is now starting to fade a bit)
0-0137 – 1960 Les Paul standard ” Batman” ( named for the factory Bigsby tailpiece under the ABR-1 shaped like wings of a bat)
7-3941 – 1957 Les Paul standard “Major Tom” ( named after good friend and burst buddy Tom Witrock who sold it to me)
1964 Gibson Firebird 1 “Treasure” ( named for my good friend Dan and his generosity, trust and for loaning it to me. And fellow forum member both on the LP Forum and here.. )
That album is great. It’s the hidden gem in EC’s catalogue.
I remember disliking the first solo LP on release, probably because it didn’t have any of the guitar pyrotechnics we had come to know and love from Cream. But it’s aged remarkably well and sounds great today
A few of the songs from that album cropped up in his live set for a long time after its release too – Blues Power, Bottle Of Red Wine, Let It Rain, After Midnight…
It’s okay, it’s listenable. I think I remember having the “original mix” by Delaney Bramlett. But I do take issue with the “awful suit” slur. Mr Clapton has always been a bit of a clothes horse and I think he looks fantastic here. He always looks great. He took a lot of stick for going cargo-pants and slouchy tees (long before the rest of us eventually caved), and for his great Armani suits. In fact, he regularly comes in for an unfair kicking for his threads. I for one am heartily sick of it. Especially as those who sneer at the man’s style are generally dressed like Post Office counter staff. So I say – LEAVE CLAPPO ALONE. The man has more style and talent in his … in his … help me here … some small part of his body … need an analogy …
He probably needs the nice bit of clobber, because it must be just me, but EC has the most anonymous fizzog in rock – in old group pics (even solo photos), I’ve never been able to pick out which one is him. There’s not a single outstanding feature that I’d be able to describe if I had to assist the police do an identikit picture of him.
Good point, Sniffity. In pictures of Cream you can tell who he is, though, by weeding out Ginger and Jack. Eric’s the one who’s left.
Weak chin.
End of the 60s? Already over in 69? With Woodstock the hippy thing becomes a cliche. The clothes and hair are not so good any more. Altamont exposes the naivety and limitations of the summer of love dream. The Stooges begin making records reflecting the true nihilism in the outlook of much of the youth. Heroin is becoming the cool drug to take. And so on. The rot was already setting in in 68. I believe Jagger thought the 60s was still going on when the Stones made Exile On Main St. Tge whole jet set rock star thing was already happening. He was a bit slow on the uptake there. Maybe decades of pop music always end a year or two before the actual decade ends after peaking over a summer? Maybe I’ve had a few glasses of wine…
For my money, the 60s ended when Quintessence did – or, rather, when the six-piece Quintessence split in June 1972. (The 4-piece fizzled on, made one more LP released in early 1973 and, incredibly, called it a day around 1980 – but no knew, because everyone had forgotten.)
Just as Lonnie Donegan’s last hit was in the same month as the Beatles’ first, (the end of “the 50s” in 1962) there seems to be something symbolic about a total London counterculture band-of-the-people (who lived more or less next door to Marc Bolan in Ladroke Grove) fracturing and, almost instantly, falling off the public radar at a time when glitter suits and glam rock ushered in “the 70s” as we now know them.
One can quantify this shift in public taste/popular culture remarkably clearly. Between 1970 and mid-72 Quintessence appeared on BBC2’s Disco 2 twice as well a BBC2 counterculture documentary New Horizons, two ITV music programmes, a full BBC2 concert broadcast from Norwich Cathedral (alas, wiped) and were featured in three theatrical-release concert/festival films. In the same period they received an onslaught of national music press coverage: in the mainstream British weekly journals Melody Maker, NME, Disc, Record Mirror and Sounds alone, album reviews and news coverage aside, Quintessence would receive a remarkable 17 concert reviews and 19 interviews, with further interviews in the monthly magazines Zigzag and Beat Instrumental. Beyond the summer of 1972 there is almost nothing – the fall off the cliff is virtually total.
That wqas when, in Britain, “the 60s” was over.
The sixties, and this is a fact, lasted from ’65 (everything previous was the fifties) to ’75. The decade can be split into sub-divisions (’65 – ’67 being obvious) but that’s essentially the ten years when everything that could be great was great.
So Bohemian Rhapsody is, and A Hard Day’s Night isn’t?
Errr…..OK.
Got a lot of time for the ’68 theory, but with nuggets in the shite (pretty much anything on Island, various psych LPs, the fag end of The Beatles) all the way up to, though getting increasingly more sparse, June 1972 (Pink Moon, Swaddling Songs, La Vallee soundtrack).
It’s one of the reasons I’ve always thought of Ziggy Stardust as an end, not a beginning.
But then I saw the first series of Budgie from 1971 a few years ago and the feeling was decidedly down and the clothes awful.
London wasn’t swinging, I’d have spotted it.
AHDN is right on the cusp – signalling the dawn of a new era. BH is its death knell.
How about Terry Reid?
Rather aptly, Rich Kid Blues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrgjEUfRcdU
The (for want of a better word) Fillmore circuit in the USA gave a lot of these second and third tier bands a much longer shelf life than they probably deserved. The GLW grew up in SF at that time (arse-end of the sixties, early seventies) and she remembers bands like Chicken Shack, Ten Years After, Savoy Brown etc were always on the bill somewhere…
Ah, but TYA were only ever on the bill once in the early 60s. It’s just that Alvin Lee’s soloing in ‘I’m Going Home’ went on for roughly three years, during which he never managed to go home. Periodically, audience members would wander in and think it was another tour, another show…
Well played!
If there’s one thing which epitomises the general ghastliness of Woodstock for me, it’s the gurning face of Alvin Lee as he solos on and on, like a boot stamping on your face – forever…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW5M5xljdCI
The second Ten Years After LP Undead from August 1968 is a lost gem however.
Recorded at Klooks Kleek blues club (essentially a room above a pub in West Hampstead) in front of just a few hundred people, it shows what a great band TYA was. Sure Alvin Lee was flash, but it was all low volume stuff here and the band is as tight as a gnat’s chuff.
I’d run into a burning building to rescue this LP
Colin is right about Alvin’s (ALVIN??) solo – it’s probably still going on somewhere. Like the ninth circle of hell. What an unattractive proposition the man was, and how pleasant to bask in the relative certainty that I’ll never hear his awful, mind-bogglingly dull, schoolboy-pleasing music again.
You seem a little, how shall I put this, techy since coming back to the fold HP.
TYA were great when they were playing the blues. It was when they started writing their own songs that things started to go wrong.
cf. Rory Gallagher
Tetchy? Not at all. Conversely, it seems the blog has become a bit of a glum old place, with few able or willing to have some factetious fun for the sake of it. Tell me, Johnny, when you’re down at the Woolalongaburra Arms, are you all deadly serious and careful to express objective truth with offence to no-one? Do you not engage in badinage, drollery, a little piss-taking? Anyone thinking that a thread called The Filthy Slobbering Horror Of UK Blues Rock is intended as an academic exercise in musicology is labouring under a misapprehension. Can we not have a birravalarf at white boys playing the blues? Is it not a fit subject for a bit of light satire?
No.
Or yes.
I’m a bit confused.
But, I definitely think, well, maybe.
Anyway, that Australian bloke said you’re a bit techy . . . can you fix my internet? It’s full of swearing.
I’m not Australian.
And by techy I mean you never concede even the most eloquent and well-argued point. There must be SOMETHING good about white boy blues?
As for the blog becoming a glum old place, it’s only because we’ve been missing you old bean.
@peanuts – you are my best mate. Bring your Scalextric round to my place!
@johnny – I do concede, I do. And, perhaps surprisingly, I do listen to UK white boy blues, or at least Mayall, whose Mick Taylor years I am in the process of re-appreciating. Bare Wires and Laurel Canyon both have enough strangeness to lift them out of the 12-bar rut, and Turning Point is one of my bestest Top 100 albums. Sometimes. But gawd, there was a lot of hilariously hopeless rubbish being played under the guise of authenticity, and Alvin Lee is without peer in this.
And by “techy” I clearly mean tetchy,
Harumph!
@johnny-concheroo
Sorry. Anyone who lives in Australia is Australian to me. Otherwise, why would they?
@h-p-saucecraft
Darn, I don’t have any Scalextric. I do however have an impressive Brio layout.
Interested?
Brio? That’s like wooden Meccano, right? The stuff your parents bought you if they ate muesli. I really don’t see how it’s going to fit with my Scalextric … could you build an overpass with it?
Phooey…Brio is brilliant, made my offspring the fine upstanding successful citizens they are today. Actually, it’s more like wooden Hornby Dublo.
Actually, it’s my son’s Brio but he left home 12 years ago with no inclination to take it with him. So it’s now mine as it’s too brilliant-in-every-way to get rid of. It lives in the attic, obviously.
Your theory holds up though – my wife eats muesli for breakfast. I admire her for her endurance.
Brio = muesli
Hot Wheels = CoCo Pops
Scalextric = Frosties
Subbuteo = Bran Flakes
(actually this belongs on the other thread, I think)
“the blood-soaked levées of Berks & Bucks”. So, who were the berks and who were the bucks?
Berks: glum, plodding noodlers who never quite woke up this mornin’ in spite of their repeated claims to the contrary.
Bucks: The Rolling Stones, who were born out of this scene and became the Greatest Rock n’ Roll Band In The World.
Extra points for that e acute by the way, HP, although where would we have been if Don M had driven his Chevée to the levée?
Up the créek?
In the days when going to a concert (and it was a concert back then) was still a teenage earth-moving thrill I sat watching Alvin Lee solo for at least ten minutes during every song with a growing horror. All around me long-haired afghan-coated boys were shaking their heads in ecstasy. These were the same boys who had just booed The Incredible String Band off the stage. To be honest, the String Band were particularly shambolic that night but trying to play with cries of “Alvin, Alvin” ringing round the hall must have been a tad daunting.
Put me off Yer Blues for life..
Schoolboy music it may have been ,but being one of that demographic at the time of seeing Woodstock that performance by Alvin Lee it etched in my memory along with ver Who Jimi and of course Sly. The solo could have gone on for another minutes and I’d have lapped it up.
Having said that I preferred Slade’s Hear Me Calling
White boy blues is still very much alive and well in the hands of Joe Bonamassa. He was born in 1977 and grew up in up state New York listening to the Beano Album, Paul Kossoff and the other blues boom bands.
Here’s Joe doing Blues Deluxe a track from the first Jeff Beck album Truth, released nine years before he was born.
He’s the real deal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbUCUjsZm9E
The Adele of the guitar.
Adele is a very good singer so HP is saying JB is great, JC.
regards
JW
Thanks JW, I thought as much.
Oh yes, absolutely. And they’ve both nailed that “authenticity” thing.
I knew it HP – you are a man of wealth and taste. Well taste.
I may be derailing this thread here but I am very interested to hear about your Brio railway, Peanuts. Seriously! What a wonderful toy. It gave our kids hours of fun. A wooden answer to Lego.
I mite hav known. You are a wet and a weed and i diskard you uterly.
A wet and a weed, earlier today.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g401/mikethep/brio_zpsvol1a477.jpg
Kaisfatdad, yesterday, photoshopped into a picture of Swedenway.
Blues rock is still alive and well, Tigger. I saw the very exciting Songhoy Blues live this summer in a crowded, steamy tent and the atmosphere reminded me of the heyday of the Marquee Club or of seeing Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac live.
Was the tent your own, K? Did it have a trampoline? Were you naked and beating each other with twigs?
Damn right! My own private show. I bounced and the lads from Mali rocked. And as the last chord rung out I performed a spectacular leap into a frozen lake. Magic!
Those Africans are great, bringing their own vibe to it, not to mention authentic suffering. Joyful Blues anyone? But, they are hardly dominating the world as Johnny suggests.
Black people playing the blues? Shurely shome mishtake.
You have to admire their impudence!
Ha! They’ll be listening to dub music next.
Back to the original theme of these white boys from Britain and blues rock; as Hendrix said, blues is easy to play and harder to feel. I think that applies even more to blues singing.
Okay, Junie – those three or four white Brits who can sing the blues? We’ve already had a vote for Duffy Power (although not from me). I’d say Joe Cocker, but he never actually sang a twelve-bar, I think, so he’s disqualified. Peter Green, I think. He’s not by any means a trad. arr. blues singer, but he has a great voice and sang the blues, so he’s in. So that’s … one. Hmm. This is harder than I thought.
I’d nominate Paul Rogers, Van Morrison does he qualify, our old friend Rod Stewart (try Love In Vain), let me think some more….
He’s got to have sung de blooz, though. Twelve-bar, the Kind Men Like.
Well Paul Rogers did a whole tribute album to Muddy Water, Rodney- see above, and as for George Ivan Morrison ,did you know that after Gloria and Moondance , Sonny Boy Williamson’s Help Me is the song Van has most played live – 843 times. I do coz I read it in an interview in Blues magazine where he talk about his love of the blues and his influences.
OK, Paul and Van are in. I think we can stop now?
Yep I’m going back to watching the tennis.
The Beano Album. So good they did a Mojo tribute CD
http://i.imgur.com/yw3Rj11.jpg
Have you considered a blog piece on this album, Johnny? I for one can’t get enough of this seminal classic iconic rock classic!
Hmm, sounds like a good idea.
Do you think there would be enough interest for such a thing among the Afterword cognoscente?
Don’t push your luck, mate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBm8wYvZ0Gc
Ok, so Nimmo may have heard the odd Free LP, but these guys are to the slobbering underbelly of whiteboys blooz that Dawes are to 70s Laurel Canyon AOR.
On the subject of ‘white boy blues: is anyone any good at it?’ I’d like to propose SHANE PACEY. His new Trio album arrived yesterday and I’ve heard it through about 5 times already, and it’s intoxicating. On the one hand, I’m reading this thread thinking, ‘yes, white boy blues is pretty rubbishy and hard to justify – a moment in time that perhaps doesn’t stand up to too much scrutiny in the cold light of day…’. On the other, I’m listening to ‘Watch Out!’ by the Shane Pacey Trio thinking, ‘This is fantastic!’
I’m sorry, lads. I really like this album, despite the finest minds of the AW telling me I shouldn’t.
Here’s a (unfortunately, rather boring) man introducing several sound clips from it. Get past the man and enjoy The Man!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkNy7vBXICI
I’m up for this, because your man Shane knows how to force a blues grunt – look at him – that’s a whopper – Alvin would have been proud!
Ah, but the difference is that Shane is a ‘bluesman’, not a blues-rocker – at least not when he plays in the SP Trio. The Bondi Cigars may have lurched more blues-rock-wards, I don’t know…
“the finest minds of the AW”
And @h-p-saucecraft
He shoots! He scores!
Mr Radar’s introduction here is hilarious. Worth watching the clip for alone. Note the action figures on top of his CD collection – I’m guessing that’s as much action as he gets.
I
Is that a Gene Simmons figure on the left?
Bondi Cigars are playing down here (Melbourne) in March – Way Out West for those of you in the errr West/ North or for East/South inhabitants he is playing Caravan Club as well as a Festival in Geelong.
Last time I saw them BC were pretty solid blues.
Guaranteed to get you toe tapping.
There’s a lot of weedy, entirely unnecessary guitar-widdling White Boy Blues still being performed in the back rooms of many a UK pub. I’ll have no truck with any of it, thank you very much.
This here auditory artifact, however, is a whole different kettle of bananas.
(The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – Down in the Beast)
Ian Siegal is getting a lot of recognition these days. Here he is in 2011 in his best Beefheart voice.
The Onion’s take on white boy blues:
http://www.theonion.com/article/affluent-white-man-enjoys-causes-the-blues-1511
Chris Wilson is a big bear of a man but a very gentle man. Plays phenomenal Chicago blues harmonica and has a booming voice that can also sing lovely ballads like Face inThe Mirror and You Will surely Love Again.
this is audio only of his version of the Sky is Crying.
It’s a bit quiet, Junes.
ahem
Is it time for Blues Hammer? (after 2:30 in the clip)
Some of the posters on this thread might be interested in this. I was watching a documentary on Ewan MacColl on the Youtube. There was an advert for a gig in London featuring Big Bill Broonzy, Humphrey Littleton and Ewan MacColl. Maybe have been just Pre Elvis in the UK but that’s a guess.
I know there was a lot of cross over with the jazzers and the early US blues players. This is pretty much the same time as skiffle and MacColl was a big enthusiast of skiffle – and even had a skiffle band with Alan Lomax.
Massive up arrow. Love that movie.
The first rule of Blues is never, never, never listen to 2 blues LPs in a row. You just lose the will to live. Blues has the ability to introduce absolute unwillingness to suspend disbelief. The cliches of Blues are so deeply entrenched that if you are not in the right frame of ears then any Blues will sound deeply inauthentic.
That said, I do think the UK has produced some fine guitarists: Peter Green, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Rory Gallagher, Mick Ronson and even Eric Clapton (pre 1977) have had their moments, but it’s variety that is the spice of life and a diet of only blues songs is just stultifying. I saw Clapton at Coventry Theatre circa 1981 when he just played 26 blues pieces one after another and it was very grim indeed.
Best blues album for me is Hard Again by Muddy Waters and Johnnie Winter. I did see Honeyboy Edwards a few years ago and he did convince me of his authenticity.