h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*Waits for Ed to refute the claim that there is anything right about Cream.*

There some intelligent people here. I hardly need explain.

Just listened in for a while..

Clapton's lead break hardly stands up to my mind. After a semi-quote from "Blue Moon" it is just fiddling around- compared to the clean lines that one has come to expect from mature Clapton. Of course it was a great age of live music, and, to my mind lots of live music like folk and jazz is meant to be consumed fresh and on the spot not "taken away" and stored.

I was interested to see that Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood still "warm up" before concerts by sitting on a carpet (the same one they always take with them) and jamming acoustic blues to "touch base" with the roots of their sound.. "All power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely", as I find when I find myself getting into my electric guitar for any length of time. Loudness that blocks out the world, common sense and normal thought processes can be another dead end or ghetto.

One of the great themes of the Sixties was whether "whities" could actually play the blues rather than go through the motions. The real blues scene always seemed to me to be materially prosperous Southern English lads who hated the thought of becoming part of the establishment which their parents were either in, or hoped that they would gain access to, and (following what I wrote before) we did feel that we were carrying the world upon our shoulders with collective guilt for the mess our forebears had produced nb. during "The Age of Catastrophe 1914-1945".

So we embraced the American Civil Rights cause as just one strand in our desire for a better world, and found that American Blues really touched something deep and driving within.. And of course many Black American Blues Men had their careers made for them by the way that British audiences welcomed them and revered their music and their message. My own introduction was Sonny Terry and Brownee McGee starting off a concert in a full concert hall and getting the place rocking with one accoustic guitar, harmonica, two voices, and stamping feet.

But surely nothing was more obviously experimental and prototype than some of those "progressive music" LP's when musicians could really feel unleashed- often with the aid of drugs that had been an important part of music from at least the jazz age. For me nothing that Hendrix did was better than what we managed to achieve with Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower".. like so much great music written for Eighteenth Century patrons it is when the artist has to work within narrow confines that he/she is really pushed to their most pure and refined self-expression.

Cass

Perhaps I identify better with 'just fiddling around' because it's what I do. I have no interest in becoming a brilliant player... just fiddling around is enough for me; a couple of scales, a few valves and a fuzzbox and I'm good.

My current project is pretty much just a rhythm section with me on bass and a friend on drums. Will prove interesting to some, but just 'loudness' to others.

Mr. Dreadful

Well I must confess that my own electric bursts are often when I find myself listening to some electric blues or Santana, and I just can not resist switching on an amp and a distortion with Santana type sustain and "fiddle around" to my hearts content. Pure escapism.

I started mentioning (before and deleted) Yehudi Menuhin writing in his autobiography that he thought he had led a privileged life in being able to take people via music with him to a real utopia. There are times when I feel that being alive to listen to certain passages of music is really the true "In Between the Heartaches" moments that makes up for all 'the heartache, and the sadness and the tears'.

There is a marvellous part where he decided to go to Belsen just after the camp had been liberated. Benjamin Britten volunteered to accompany him on a concert tour. For the concert at Belsen all the Jewish(?) tailors had been busy making suits for everyone out of army issue blankets so that it would be a true concert- and island of civilization and hopefulness in the midst of the unspeakable horror that Richard Dimbleby had described so graphically.

Live music can do such things.

Good luck and to quote the old adage "Keep music live"-

Cass

>>.. nothing that Hendrix did was better than what he managed
to achieve with Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower". <<

I can remember exactly where I was and exactly how I felt
the first time I heard that. It was a religious experience.

Dylan's poetic vision set to Hendrix's soulful psychedelia!
It never got better than that. It still moves and inspires me.

Although the Blind Faith album had its moments as well.

"I have finally found a way to live
in the presence of the Lord."



~jwf~

jwf

I perhaps should add that "All Along the Watchtower" is one of my favourite "sings" my style.. I suppose I started to run it after "One of These Nights" (Eagles) when I was messing around with harmonica plus guitar and "meddlyising".

Many of Dylan's lyrics are so "pregnant".. An early personal favourite was/is "It Ain't Me Babe".. so "right on" for those of us who felt with were "all alone, no direction home, just like a rolling stone".

But then there is Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" "Half a million strong..We dreamt we saw the bomber jet planes riding shotgun in the sky, turning into butterflies above our garden."

Cass

"when I find myself listening to some electric blues or Santana"

My thoughts had passed from Cream & Ginger Baker, to the 20-year-old Peter Shrieve at Woodstock... with Santana.... and this is what I was listening to when I read your post, Cass:

Santana - Soul Sacrifice (Woodstock 1969)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLDalZ4-53g

Before that, Alvin Lee enjoying himself, also at Woodstock:

I'm Going HOme - Ten Years After live at Woodstock 1969
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFpfureaCVs

Woodstock is one of the most tragic ironies of the 60s, viewed as a great beacon of counter-culture whereas it was really a commercial venture gone wrong with all kinds of lying and back stabbing and bands refusing to play unless they got paid up front.

See...what I don't like about Clapton is...yer blues isn't meant to be about getting things note perfect. It's about playing *unexpected* notes - but within the strict confines of the blues form. Clapton never surprises me.

And Cream...it was a case of getting all these guys together who were meant to be The Best. Give him his due, Clapton remained Clapton but the others...they thought they were so good the they could Deviate. It was w*nk rock at it's worst. And Baker's stupid gurning was unforgiveable.

Hendrix...well he was the exception that proved the rule. The important thing to remember is that you can leave aside the psychedelia and he was still playing brilliant blues. He showed off...well...because he could. He had a natural facility that couldn't be tamed. But there's a school of thought (which I share) that says he was at his best when he was reigning it in. 'Hey, Joe' is my favourite.



For an alternate take on psychedelia, minus virtuosity, here's The Jesus and Mary Chain:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2bzrCCKDwc

Completely, utterly brilliant! My wife was at school with them, not three miles from where I type.



Yer blues should have...boundaries. It should sound like this sort of thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jN5vqEyV7g

Or in a modern incarnation, this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t1_ETuWIbE

Compare and contrast Ginger Baker's 'This Must Be Difficult Because I Have To Pull A Ridiculous Face' antics to the coolest drummer in the world. Certainly the drummer with the biggest .

"He had a natural facility that couldn't be tamed."

Actually drink and drugs tamed it quite a lot... all that famous footage of Hendrix is when he was sober, or at best nicely steaming. When actually high he was a mess and could barely play a note.

Meg White is certainly worthy but I don't rate her that much as a drummer, there's minimalism that comes from a strict 'less is more' ethic and minimalism that comes from not having apparently learned more than the most basic stuff.

Aaaanyway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1TEZ6sDeeE

Mr. Dreadful

People say much the same kind of thing these revisionist days about "The Finest Hours" "mythology" of the Second World War..

There is always going to be a dark side to life that can be depended upon. The art of living is in bringing people enlightenment and hope that "darkness must flee before the Light".

Anything the size of Woodstock would not bear the close scrutiny of "muck rakers".. But this goes back to the problems that any other generation is going to have understanding ours because we were compelled to see the global picture- and not just an aggregate of minutiae and detail.

There has never been another day in history like the one at the height of the Cuba Missile Crisis when I was a teenager doing my paper round and looking at the headlines, and looking up at the sky. Those trips to the Farnborough Airshow to see the wonder of our Delta and V Bombers. Anyone of our generation anywhere on Earth with any savvy knew that this was Red Alert and this could be the last day of life on Earth!!!

If you want to get Woodstock in perspective read what Naomi Klein (probably a Woodstock baby) wrote of the special 25th anniversary one to see the triumph of darkness in the early part of "No Logo".

Daddy there's a big ship out on the water
The biggest ship that I've ever seen.
Yes my boy. It's really big, the biggest ship there's ever been.

Daddy there's a plane coming off it
A lovely thing just like a dart.
Yes my boy. It's beautiful it really is a work of art.

Daddy I want to ride on a boat like that
And wear a sailor's hat
And go sailing the whole world round.
And I want to drive that plane
Or any plane might be the same
As long as it can go faster than sound.

Daddy there's is a great big mushroom
I could swear it wasn't there before.
Yes My Boy. It wasn't there.
That's what the boat and the plane are for.

Cass

I'm not really sure what your point is...

Edward the Bonobo

As I suggested earlier so many "White" blues people got/get it wrong and play the blues in a European tragic/pathetic tradition feeling sorry for themselves- and their lot in life.

I think it is Gill Scott Heron who insists that the Blues is a celebration of Life, a kind of defiant statement that life has thrown all this at me, but "I am still standing" and ready to fight the next round with Life tomorrow.

I was thinking this vaguely when reading the BBC sport piece on Viv Richards who, it was observed, many people thought must be arrogant because of his demeanour at the crease when playing cricket. Cricket for West Indians was part of that same kind of affirmation of the indomitable spirit that came through the work of so many African-American bluesmen. And the power does not come from the electric power but from the sheer physical presence of the bluesman. Howling Wolf was something to see.

By the way I think it was last year that I saw a classical singing competition on TV France. The eventual winner was an African-American soprano, who definitely had physical presence. She said she also sang other styles, and had music in her blood since her grandfather was Muddy Waters.

Cass

"tragic/pathetic tradition feeling sorry for themselves- and their lot in life."

Which is silly, because that's what country is for...

No other "white" blues people got it more right than Black Sabbath, when they combined the blues they'd been playing at the band's formation (as The Polka Tulk Blues Band) with the grim reality that was life in a British industrial town in the 1960s, and then added some Hammer Horror schtick for good measure.

Mr Dreadful

My point is that those who did not experience that global feeling of "being in touch" with "brothers and sisters"- faced with imminent Death and yet in Life for now- are really in the same situation as those who missed the party and then persuade themselves that it was no great loss.

It often happens that when you really touch life at its deepest current the vitality will break out of the confines of your planning and expectation. I once got more than I bargained for, trying to make friends with a young tree!

The miracle of Woodstock- and it has left a strong legacy- was that there was so much "self-government" and "autonomy", so much goodwill when quite the reverse could have happened -and did 25 years later.

Those of us who only got to smaller "gigs" like Hyde Park found that spirit, and of course in many ways the path had been trodden by the earlier student demonstrations NB those in France and elsewhere in 1968. Those set out to challenge the establishment at the heart of national and regional government. Woodstock and other such festivals were modern versions of Abraham or Moses taking their tribe out of Ur or Egypt to a place where they could just "do their own thing" and ignore the establishment for a while.

Our son was helping to man the Cowshed Recording Studio in the Greenpeace Field at Glastonbury this year and found much of that spirit still enduring. But now it is all part of a "counter-culture establishment" that has lost the drive that came from the energy of fusion in the Sixties.

As Santana has come up, though I have come to love much of Santana, my first opportunity to listen to Santana LP's came at the same time as the chance to hear the first two Ossibisa LP's all owned by the same guest (a black Rhodesian)..For me the dynamic tension of those first Ossibisa LP's was better. In that line-up there were three West Indians- electric guitar, bass guitar, and keyboards- and four West Africans- flute, trumpet, saxophone and jazz drumkit. I still love those first three albums with the dialogue between the two elements. Thesis, antithesis and synthesis. It was very sad- for me that, like so many dynamic relationships it could not be sustained.

And to my mind (as I have said before) this happened to the whole dawn revelation of the Sixties music. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. But to be young was very heaven."

Cass

@Mr D:

Yes, unlike say, Coltrane or Davis, Hendrix needed to be sober to do his shit. It may look like he's playing around, but it's as disciplined as feck.

It's said that he learned his attitude to his guitar from his time in the United States Marine Corps. 'Your M16 rifle is your wife.' When he was seen without his guitar his time was up.

On a similar theme - Jazz is not as free as people think. One of Monk's golden rules was 'Hum the melody in your head.'

Actually my Hendrix story is that in the summer of 1967 I went with some friends to a park in Cardiff with a lake and rowing boats.. Out on the water we saw the unmistakable spectacle of JH sitting statuesquely in the back of another rowboat- and realised that he was performing at a Cardiff venue that evening.

On our way out we passed the kiosk (perhaps to hand in something to prove we had brought our boat back)and we asked the middle-aged lady if she realised who JH was. She was not a pop fan, but commented JH on his impeccable politeness and good manners. He had taken a fancy to the necklace that she was wearing, and offered to buy it from her. But accepted with good grace when she said that it had come down through her family and that she really would not wish to part with it.

I always think of this really normal and mundane side when I contemplate the "off stage" persona. I think that I heard on a radio documentary that shortly before his death he was exploring the work of Miles Davis- another part of the "fusion" movement.. I got our daughter to get me the CD of "Sketches From Spain"- an LP that many friends possessed at uni in the mid-Sixties.

As an aside has anyone managed to find modern recordings of the Modern Jazz Quartet?

Cass

"the grim reality that was life in a British industrial town in the 1960s"

Sounds rather like the roots of ghettoisation..

But what does seem very strong in many industrial and more consciously "working class" parts of British music in the Sixties was the important admixture of "Celtic traditions" of music making and other performances going right back it seems to the "Wakes Weeks" that were certainly still observed in the early Nineteenth Century.

It is pretty obvious that the Macartney's (a la Paul) had a very strong family tradition of music making ("Your Mother Should Know") and Ireland seems to have had a strong tradition of people supplementing their income by street and public house performing, which was more successfully "commercial" if it was funny and good humoured. Dublin has apparently produced more number one hit songs than any other place on Earth.

The Davies household (Ray and Dave) similarly according to them was a large family household with lots of uplifting moral boosting singing and larking about.

So the Blues was less attractive in Britain's "depressed areas" where it was a case of "life on the Dole". It seems to have been the places of the New Industrial revolution, the assembly line and endless "clocking on and of" that persuaded some people to try to earn a living entertaining the Workers who would provide a market.

From the depressed North the Beatles like many other bands went to entertain the workers in West Germany and nearby parts of economically resurgent Europe.

Cass