Last night, I enjoyed an evening of great, and honest, live music, at a jam night, managed by guitar wizard Gwyn Ashton. The venue was Ye Olde Foundry in Dudley, here in the West Midlands.
I had a chance to play plenty of blues harp with great musicians, and enjoy the playing of several great guitarists, who blew everyone away without showing off - or breaking sweat. Here is a shot I took of Gwyn playing bass with Daniel Seth, who is a great all - round singer and guitarist. However, he really can sing and play blues. Sometimes with a twist. Last night he segued B.B.'s "The Thrill is Gone" with " Another Brick in the Wall".
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The blues structure allows people to play music together without team building courses. Or even speaking to each other sometimes! The opening guitar riff/chord and a nod of the head for a solo works every time. When jamming, the endings are usually the rough end of the pineapple. The icing on the blues cake however, is that familiarity with the songs or the structure, enables soloists to fly. In my case, sometimes too near to the sun, but travel broadens the mind and is good for the soul.
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Of course, not all good open mic. or jam night music has to be blues, but it sure as hell is a great way to enable people to gel. I urge everyone to abandon the processed shite that we are being spoon-fed, and go out to see live music. Appearing now at a pub near you......
Blues jam. Try it as one of your five a day.
'twas in another lifetime - as Dylan said, that my friend Steve and I, hitched several lifts from the West Midlands to Bath, for the one day 1969 Blues Festival,which was held in the showground.
We were in our last year at school, and this was to be an adventure. No tent. No intent, other than youthful what-the-hell. We slept in a field, under a shared overcoat on the ground en-route, and again on the return journey.
I made eye contact with a local girl, on the bus to the showground, and later met up with her at the festival. I remember that we gave her £1 to get sandwiches and cider from the town, as there was no beer for sale at the festival. I can't remember what was on sale there. Not much compared to today's events I'm sure. Letters were exchnged after the festival, but of course we never met again. I still have the letters!
It is extraordinary to think of the bands who were on the two small stages that day. Suck on this ~ Colosseum,Ten Years After,Taste,Chicken Shack, Blodwyn Pig, John Mayall, Led Zeppelin,Fleetwood Mac and The Nice. And more.
Zeppelin were on stage mid-afternoon as they were a new act, with Fleetwood Mac closing. I remember Shake Your Moneymaker as the defining moment of the day. John Peel was the compere by-the-way.
The origins of a lot of things I am still driven and excited by, can be traced to that one day (June 28th 1969). I doubt if anyone who was there that day, thought that this would have lasting resonance. However, that day and the much bigger festival at nearby Shepton Mallet the following year, which we also hitched to, germinated the Glastonbury Festivals. A lot of people have posted comments online about the two Bath festivals. Clearly, I am not alone in marking them as important events in the popular cultural history of the U.K. or in the popular personal history of growing into who we are now.
Of course what is missing (other than my girlfriend for a day's letters - which I have exclusive worldwide access too, when I climb into my rock and roll loft) is documentation. In 2011, any event - electrifying or deadly dull, is on facebook and youtube within minutes, but in 1969 and 1970 we did not consider posterity,or the possibility that these events would mark a boundary and a new hope for young people and music.
There are not many images circulating fom the 1969 festival, but what is available to us, shows that we did not look like the guys grooving in San Francisco. First attempts at looking cool. A similar event now would show teenagers looking currently cool, alongside middle-aged blokes wearing larger sized versions of the clothes they wore at the 1969 Bath Blues Festival.
Oh ~ and everyone sat down on the ground to listen to the bands. No flags blocking yer view of the stage. Let alone blogging yer view.
At the time of writing, there is a lot of attention being paid online and in the printed media, to the ebb and flow in status of celebrities (who are accredited with few meaningful achievements themselves) regarding their skill at judging amateur musical acts and dancing dogs. Here are a few thoughts about talented musicians and longevity.
A few weeks ago, a friend told me that he was re-reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac. We both read it in 1970 while hitch-hiking in Europe, and earnestly training to be hippies. He mentioned the reference to Slim Gaillard in the book.
My old man was a fan of Slim Gaillard (and the equally entertaining wordsmith and rock and roll routemaster, Louis Jordan) and would often burst into a refrain from "Cement Mixer,Putti Putti" or "Flat Foot Floogie With a Floy-Floy". Gaillard invented a cool language called Vout, or Voutie. I discovered last year, that Sarah (my eldest daughter) remembers her Grandad singing these songs, but assumed that he made up the crazy lyrics himself. So she has clearly not heard the songs elsewhere.
As a pianist, singer and guitarist, Gaillard had several hits in the 1930's, and a big hit in the USA in 1946, with a song called Dunkin' Bagel. In some ways his songs were a precursor to rap, and he utilised gimmicks to entertain his audience. He could play piano with the back of his hands or - with fruit, Yes -fruit. Fruit.
His daughter married Marvin Gaye, and he can apparently be heard on hand claps, on a track on the album Sexual Healing. Slim migrated to England, and continued to play music until his death in 1991. You can see some wonderful online footage of him,including a number with Jools holland, and the awesome Omar Hakim (ex-Weather Report) on drums.
My point? Slim Gaillard enjoyed a career spanning almost sixty years. Will it be possible for musicians to have such longevity in future? I doubt it. Living in the here and now is fine and dandy, but looking in the rear view mirror can often pay a rewarding bonus. The musicians with something new to say who are popular now, all show signs of having listened well.
May 2011 was the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Robert Johnson, who died in 1938. He died aged 27, leaving only material from two recording sessions, but bequething a great slab of the bedrock of blues and rock music. Longevity.
Bob Dylan clocked up seventy years on our planet in May this year. It is incredible to think that he turned the popular music world upside-down in 1965 at Newport. Recently, I watched a concert from 1985, and it is as powerful and urgent as the stuff from the sixties - and this was not considered to be his hot period. I imagine that he still writes and plays music as part of his five a day. Even now, he nods to Blind Lemon, Blind Willie, Leadbelly and Mr. Guthrie. Longevity for them all.
I recently watched two TV programmes - which I rate as promotional films, about the actor Hugh Laurie, making a blues album. He is now an international TV star, and gauged by the programmes I watched, he has a genuine love of the blues. My gripe, is that the programmes did not introduce newcomers to the music of Dr. John or Professor Longhair, or the generic music of New Orleans. Nor did it satisfy confirmed blues lovers, by showing classic footage or recent performances by New Orleans musicians. In sixty years time Hugh Laurie will not be seen as an innovator. He could have done something more enlightening with his time, other than to satisfy his blues lust. Jools Holland acknowledges the past masters of his chosen idiom, as does the excellent Ben Waters. Then they take it forward.....
During the 1960's blues boom in England, we heard John Mayall, Fleetwood Mac, Cream, Savoy Brown, Chicken Shack and others, playing their versions of American blues. I for one, sought out the source of their material, and still do. One of my favourite clips on youtube - Son House playing his song Death Letter, has one million less hits than the version by The White Stripes. It is amazing that we can watch Son House on our computers, when I never saw him on TV when he was alive. I know that Jack White is a fan of Son House (see the film It Might Get Loud) but will he have a sixty year career? I hope sob if that is what he wants, because I like his music. Will he ever invent a cool language, and play guitar / drums with fruit? Fruit.
I have gone on for too long. Don't Look Back. I did, and look where it got me to: A state of fruity voutie longevity. Who wants that? Maybe, my generation?
