This morning I was watching/listening to Crossroads 2007.
This dvd features THE guitar festival that Eric Clapton has staged three times
(2004, 2007, and 2010) to present some of the finest guitar players alive. All
proceeds for these events go to Crossroads Center, a drug treatment center
founded by Clapton. To paraphrase Sir Clapton, “cause is a simple one....people
who use to drink like me....alot of my heroes didn’t have that option….maybe
they wouldn’t have….” Watch the YouTube video and hear his statement in its entirety
(along with his take on Robert Johnson’s If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day).
This got me thinking about The List, the Greatest Guitarist
List put out by Rolling Stone Magazine, or I should say compiled by some pretty
impressive musicians gathered for this task by Rolling Stone Magazine. And I
thought, why does this society feel the need to rate everything under the sun?
You cannot say one guitarist is “better” than the next--can’t be done. I look at
the list as just that; a list. Just because one is rated number 12; well, that
doesn’t mean he is any better or any worse than number 13 or number 11. When I
make out my grocery list just because I may have listed apples first and
bananas second; okay let me do that over—I may list Milky Ways first and
Doritoes fifth but that doesn’t mean Milky Ways are better. It’s just a list
and next week Milky Ways may be replaced by Snickers, depending on my mood.
Maybe that’s just what it is, a list. But being the
competitive race we are we automatically assume those listed towards one end
are better or worse than those in between. Well, I say bullcrap. They are
all awesome and have interjected pieces of their souls through their
instrument. And god only knows, there may be some unknown guitar genius
somewhere in rural China right now as I write who could outplay them all and we
will never know about it; and therefore never make the list. “If a tree falls
in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
My introduction to the pop music scene of the early 60’s was thru my older sister, Dawn. The Beatles, Petula Clark, Dave Clarke Five, Roy Orbinson, Simon and Garfunkle and even that rockin’ mama, The Singing Nun, are just a few of the flood of artists, talented and not so talented, that serenaded me thru childhood. My cousin and next door neighbor Ann Marie and I dug up Jerry Lee Lewis’ Great Balls of Fire out of an attic trunk (remnant of my dad’s youngest brother, Roger) which we played over and over again on my sister’s little blue record player. Man, we rocked.
As I matured so did my tastes; Jim Morrison, Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Steppenwolf, Cream, Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, ZZ Top, Bob Dylan (electric), et cetera. , I consider The Stones, Exile on Main Street, my favorite album, especially the double CD put out a few years ago. Within each track you can feel, even smell the wasted decadent strung out condition of the band and their entourage. If you have ever seen the dvd Exile on Main Street you will not only hear but see what I mean. Yet they record a magnificent LP; the instrumentals alone can blow your mind--the horns are amazing! Musicians who are willing and able to bare their souls to their listeners reveal pure genius in my book. Enough of this intro; I will attempt to convey what the blues mean to me.
In eighth grade I received for Christmas the greatest gift ever, a Magnavox hi fi stereo furnished with an AM/FM radio. At this time FM stations were beginning to generate a following for they could play the long versions of songs and entire albums without commercial interruption. While playing with the dial one night I hit upon KUNI out of Cedar Falls, IA. The most haunting, gut wrenching sounds flooded my room, raw guitar licks and harmonica solos that stroked my even then old soul, vocals that reverberated with a pain centuries old. I did not know that I was listening to authentic blues at the time--not the white boy British version, but the real deal. Through Bob Door I was initiated into the Blues Only Program and introduced to such raw genius as Lightnin Hopkins, Muddy Waters, Willy Dixon, Big Mama Thorton, T-Bone Walker, Robert Johnson, Buddy Guy, Koko Taylor, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf, Albert King, BB King, Freddie King, and on and on and praise gawd on and on. Every week night at 9pm Bob would further my education for a half hour and on Saturday nights for a whole magnificent hour and a half. Nothing, not even god almighty and his chorus of angels, ever touched me like this “race” music born of spirituals sung by slaves down in the cotton fields of Dixie. Even to this day I get goosebumps listening to the haunting primitive sounds of Robert Johnson. Koko Taylor can rev me up like no other and Muddy Waters will titillate my soul till the day I die.
I have lived thru my share of shitty times; the last two weeks have been a rough go. But when I feel overwhelmed I put in my earphones and sail away to a state of mind that no drug can imitate. There is a power, to me as powerful as another’s “holy spirit” that can lift me out of the ruts of this life and imbue in me the strength to go on. And if there is anything I am able to understand regarding the plight of the black man and woman in this country, well I know it was their ability to express their pain along with their pleasure thru the music that they were compelled to create to ease their troubled minds, bodies and souls. Long live Blues Power.
