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Posted: February 25 2015 at 13:29
^Nice overview, Todd. But it seems to me that the British folks were well versed in Chicago Blues, and except for Robert Johnson, stayed clear of Delta or Piedmont Blues.
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Posted: February 25 2015 at 13:39
"I'm a Man" takes on a completely different meaning when it is played by a group of adolescent middle-class English white boys than when sung by Bo Diddley
^Nice overview, Todd. But it seems to me that the British folks were well versed in Chicago Blues, and except for Robert Johnson, stayed clear of Delta or Piedmont Blues.
Peter Haycock explored acoustic delta style on the Climax Blues Band album "A Lot Of Bottle", sometimes Jeremy Spencer played acoustic slide work n the vain of Gospel and John Baldry recorded "Black Girl". Alvin Lee played an old fingerpicking acoustic style on the song "Don't Want You Woman" off the Ten Years After debut. Ron Wood played a beautiful Mississippi style slide on "Around The Plynth" from the Faces album "First Step". Rory Gallagher , hailing from Cork, Ireland played the style more frequently and he was thought to be part of the British Blues movement by most bands, yet differed with his unique approach such as playing sax on the "On The Boards" album by Taste and performing more on acoustic instruments than many others would during a live performance. It seemed that way, but not sure. There were times when you could find that style ON a British Blues album, but...yes..it did seem that most British musicians focused more on the Chicago Blues.
I have no problem with Steve Wilson sort-of capturing the 70's symphonic prog essence on "Raven" - the CD is excellent from start to finish. There is a helluva lot of elitism on this site, I would have to admit to TOTAL ignorance of American Blues , but so what? I do listen to main-stream classical music now and again - but I would welcome all prog act's getting in on the 70's retro gig if more music like "Raven" was produced!
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Posted: February 25 2015 at 16:15
dr wu23 wrote:
cstack3 wrote:
Can the early 70s prog sound be cloned nowadays?
Probably....wheel up a Mellotron, a Rickenbacker bass, some warbling lads singing harmony in counter-tenor, and let fly!
The same could be asked of "Can the original blues sound be cloned nowadays?"
Living in Chicago, I am forced to tolerate any number of all-white, "cool blues" musicians who attempt to portray themselves as offering the "real deal."
F 'em. I saw Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers in the early 1970s, when he played to a 100% white college age audience. At one point, he shouted "Have you ever had the blues??" All the white kids started to cheer and clap, and he snarled "You ain't NEVER had the blues!!"
I understood what he meant - the original blues musicians had to deal with alcoholism, drug addiction, VD, violence, robbery.....it was not an easy life. To try to rip that off by strapping on a Stratocaster and playing "Sweet Home Chicago" is a bit repellant to me.
Same for early 70's prog. We musicians can play something that sounds like it, but we aren't the British/German/Dutch children who were born right after WWII in ruined nations....nor do we have the same societal pressures such as revulsion over the Viet Nam war, potential nuclear annihilation etc.
I've written music and played it for people who said "You sound like Yes!" or "You sound like early Genesis," to which I might reply "You ain't NEVER had the prog!!" I haven't, I've just been an outside observer.
Hmm......then I guess all the great blues that Clapton, Beck, Page, Duane Allman, Vaughan, and the rest played over the years is just so much bullsh*te.....back to the drawing board.
Sorry, I don't consider that stuff "blues." Blues was an art-form that was uniquely American, rooted in the post-slavery culture of the South and migration of blacks to the North in order to find economic and social freedom.
The Brits copied the blues, morphed them, even ripped them off wholesale, but it ain't the blues according to my playbook. Blues-rock is more like it.
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Posted: February 25 2015 at 16:23
M27Barney wrote:
I have no problem with Steve Wilson sort-of capturing the 70's symphonic prog essence on "Raven" - the CD is excellent from start to finish. There is a helluva lot of elitism on this site, I would have to admit to TOTAL ignorance of American Blues , but so what? I do listen to main-stream classical music now and again - but I would welcome all prog act's getting in on the 70's retro gig if more music like "Raven" was produced!
One does nothing yet nothing is left undone. Haquin
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Posted: February 25 2015 at 16:24
cstack3 wrote:
dr wu23 wrote:
cstack3 wrote:
Can the early 70s prog sound be cloned nowadays?
Probably....wheel up a Mellotron, a Rickenbacker bass, some warbling lads singing harmony in counter-tenor, and let fly!
The same could be asked of "Can the original blues sound be cloned nowadays?"
Living in Chicago, I am forced to tolerate any number of all-white, "cool blues" musicians who attempt to portray themselves as offering the "real deal."
F 'em. I saw Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers in the early 1970s, when he played to a 100% white college age audience. At one point, he shouted "Have you ever had the blues??" All the white kids started to cheer and clap, and he snarled "You ain't NEVER had the blues!!"
I understood what he meant - the original blues musicians had to deal with alcoholism, drug addiction, VD, violence, robbery.....it was not an easy life. To try to rip that off by strapping on a Stratocaster and playing "Sweet Home Chicago" is a bit repellant to me.
Same for early 70's prog. We musicians can play something that sounds like it, but we aren't the British/German/Dutch children who were born right after WWII in ruined nations....nor do we have the same societal pressures such as revulsion over the Viet Nam war, potential nuclear annihilation etc.
I've written music and played it for people who said "You sound like Yes!" or "You sound like early Genesis," to which I might reply "You ain't NEVER had the prog!!" I haven't, I've just been an outside observer.
Hmm......then I guess all the great blues that Clapton, Beck, Page, Duane Allman, Vaughan, and the rest played over the years is just so much bullsh*te.....back to the drawing board.
Sorry, I don't consider that stuff "blues." Blues was an art-form that was uniquely American, rooted in the post-slavery culture of the South and migration of blacks to the North in order to find economic and social freedom.
The Brits copied the blues, morphed them, even ripped them off wholesale, but it ain't the blues according to my playbook. Blues-rock is more like it.
Hmm....I must have left the word 'rock' out of that sentence.....shame on me.
One does nothing yet nothing is left undone. Haquin
Joined: July 20 2009
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Posted: February 25 2015 at 19:24
dr wu23 wrote:
cstack3 wrote:
dr wu23 wrote:
cstack3 wrote:
Can the early 70s prog sound be cloned nowadays?
Probably....wheel up a Mellotron, a Rickenbacker bass, some warbling lads singing harmony in counter-tenor, and let fly!
The same could be asked of "Can the original blues sound be cloned nowadays?"
Living in Chicago, I am forced to tolerate any number of all-white, "cool blues" musicians who attempt to portray themselves as offering the "real deal."
F 'em. I saw Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers in the early 1970s, when he played to a 100% white college age audience. At one point, he shouted "Have you ever had the blues??" All the white kids started to cheer and clap, and he snarled "You ain't NEVER had the blues!!"
I understood what he meant - the original blues musicians had to deal with alcoholism, drug addiction, VD, violence, robbery.....it was not an easy life. To try to rip that off by strapping on a Stratocaster and playing "Sweet Home Chicago" is a bit repellant to me.
Same for early 70's prog. We musicians can play something that sounds like it, but we aren't the British/German/Dutch children who were born right after WWII in ruined nations....nor do we have the same societal pressures such as revulsion over the Viet Nam war, potential nuclear annihilation etc.
I've written music and played it for people who said "You sound like Yes!" or "You sound like early Genesis," to which I might reply "You ain't NEVER had the prog!!" I haven't, I've just been an outside observer.
Hmm......then I guess all the great blues that Clapton, Beck, Page, Duane Allman, Vaughan, and the rest played over the years is just so much bullsh*te.....back to the drawing board.
Sorry, I don't consider that stuff "blues." Blues was an art-form that was uniquely American, rooted in the post-slavery culture of the South and migration of blacks to the North in order to find economic and social freedom.
The Brits copied the blues, morphed them, even ripped them off wholesale, but it ain't the blues according to my playbook. Blues-rock is more like it.
Hmm....I must have left the word 'rock' out of that sentence.....shame on me.
Apology accepted. Rory Gallagher came the closest to the American black blues sound, and he died in a very traditional manner. Everyone else was a poser.
Fripp made a point that ITCOCK broke away from the "American blues" sound by being perhaps the first band rooted in European musical tradition.
Greg Lake admits prog-rock became overblown, but his pioneering work in King Crimson and Emerson Lake & Palmer nonetheless remains a deep source of pride. “It was a very strange thing to hear a rock band taking their influences from European music, as King Crimson did,” Lake tells Rolling Stone, in a new interview. “I mean, I didn't sing with a mid-Atlantic accent. I sang with a British accent. The music of King Crimson was almost exclusively based on more European structures. It wasn't the three-minute single. It wasn't basic blues-riff music.”
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Posted: February 25 2015 at 20:42
cstack3 wrote:
dr wu23 wrote:
cstack3 wrote:
Can the early 70s prog sound be cloned nowadays?
Probably....wheel up a Mellotron, a Rickenbacker bass, some warbling lads singing harmony in counter-tenor, and let fly!
The same could be asked of "Can the original blues sound be cloned nowadays?"
Living in Chicago, I am forced to tolerate any number of all-white, "cool blues" musicians who attempt to portray themselves as offering the "real deal."
F 'em. I saw Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers in the early 1970s, when he played to a 100% white college age audience. At one point, he shouted "Have you ever had the blues??" All the white kids started to cheer and clap, and he snarled "You ain't NEVER had the blues!!"
I understood what he meant - the original blues musicians had to deal with alcoholism, drug addiction, VD, violence, robbery.....it was not an easy life. To try to rip that off by strapping on a Stratocaster and playing "Sweet Home Chicago" is a bit repellant to me.
Same for early 70's prog. We musicians can play something that sounds like it, but we aren't the British/German/Dutch children who were born right after WWII in ruined nations....nor do we have the same societal pressures such as revulsion over the Viet Nam war, potential nuclear annihilation etc.
I've written music and played it for people who said "You sound like Yes!" or "You sound like early Genesis," to which I might reply "You ain't NEVER had the prog!!" I haven't, I've just been an outside observer.
Hmm......then I guess all the great blues that Clapton, Beck, Page, Duane Allman, Vaughan, and the rest played over the years is just so much bullsh*te.....back to the drawing board.
Sorry, I don't consider that stuff "blues." Blues was an art-form that was uniquely American, rooted in the post-slavery culture of the South and migration of blacks to the North in order to find economic and social freedom.
The Brits copied the blues, morphed them, even ripped them off wholesale, but it ain't the blues according to my playbook. Blues-rock is more like it.
Sorry C., I'm going to have to say nonsense to your line of reasoning. By your logic, blues is a dead language, like Latin. It went on life-support by the mid-50s when R&B supplanted blues as the favorite genre among black listeners and died altogether by the 70s with the advent of funk.
But blues didn't die, and the master bluesmen who fell into obscurity before 1960 were saved by white American and Brit guitarists who worshipped the greats and revived their careers. Hundreds of careers. And to say that great and consummate white musicians like Paul Butterfield, Eric Clapton, Johnny Winter, Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Ray Vaughan (all members of the Blues Hall of Fame, by the way) didn't play the blues is absolute bullsh*t. Johnny Winter and Muddy Waters, Stevie Ray and Albert King, Bonnie Raitt and Sippie Wallace -- these were familial relationships. You missed the boat on this one.
It was a new generation of bluesmen who revived the musical form and brought it to the pinnacle of popularity, and in the process saved a lot of musicians who might have died poor and forgotten. The new generation just didn't happen to be black, and actually blacks have nearly abandoned the genre, sadly, as they have jazz. Or did jazz end with John Coltrane?
...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology...
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Posted: February 25 2015 at 21:12
The Dark Elf wrote:
cstack3 wrote:
dr wu23 wrote:
cstack3 wrote:
Can the early 70s prog sound be cloned nowadays?
Probably....wheel up a Mellotron, a Rickenbacker bass, some warbling lads singing harmony in counter-tenor, and let fly!
The same could be asked of "Can the original blues sound be cloned nowadays?"
Living in Chicago, I am forced to tolerate any number of all-white, "cool blues" musicians who attempt to portray themselves as offering the "real deal."
F 'em. I saw Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers in the early 1970s, when he played to a 100% white college age audience. At one point, he shouted "Have you ever had the blues??" All the white kids started to cheer and clap, and he snarled "You ain't NEVER had the blues!!"
I understood what he meant - the original blues musicians had to deal with alcoholism, drug addiction, VD, violence, robbery.....it was not an easy life. To try to rip that off by strapping on a Stratocaster and playing "Sweet Home Chicago" is a bit repellant to me.
Same for early 70's prog. We musicians can play something that sounds like it, but we aren't the British/German/Dutch children who were born right after WWII in ruined nations....nor do we have the same societal pressures such as revulsion over the Viet Nam war, potential nuclear annihilation etc.
I've written music and played it for people who said "You sound like Yes!" or "You sound like early Genesis," to which I might reply "You ain't NEVER had the prog!!" I haven't, I've just been an outside observer.
Hmm......then I guess all the great blues that Clapton, Beck, Page, Duane Allman, Vaughan, and the rest played over the years is just so much bullsh*te.....back to the drawing board.
Sorry, I don't consider that stuff "blues." Blues was an art-form that was uniquely American, rooted in the post-slavery culture of the South and migration of blacks to the North in order to find economic and social freedom.
The Brits copied the blues, morphed them, even ripped them off wholesale, but it ain't the blues according to my playbook. Blues-rock is more like it.
Sorry C., I'm going to have to say nonsense to your line of reasoning. By your logic, blues is a dead language, like Latin. It went on life-support by the mid-50s when R&B supplanted blues as the favorite genre among black listeners and died altogether by the 70s with the advent of funk.
But blues didn't die, and the master bluesmen who fell into obscurity before 1960 were saved by white American and Brit guitarists who worshipped the greats and revived their careers. Hundreds of careers. And to say that great and consummate white musicians like Paul Butterfield, Eric Clapton, Johnny Winter, Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Ray Vaughan (all members of the Blues Hall of Fame, by the way) didn't play the blues is absolute bullsh*t. Johnny Winter and Muddy Waters, Stevie Ray and Albert King, Bonnie Raitt and Sippie Wallace -- these were familial relationships. You missed the boat on this one.
It was a new generation of bluesmen who revived the musical form and brought it to the pinnacle of popularity, and in the process saved a lot of musicians who might have died poor and forgotten. The new generation just didn't happen to be black, and actually blacks have nearly abandoned the genre, sadly, as they have jazz. Or did jazz end with John Coltrane?
Dressing up in colorful robes and waving spears doth not a Zulu warrior maketh.
That "stuff" ain't the blues. Music influenced by the blues, using the blues scale for the guitar, and other idioms unique to blues music, but not blues. I've seen real bluesmen, Clapton etc. ain't it. Good music, yes, but not blues.
The musical genre that blacks dominate is gospel. In Chicago, I avoid the Blues Fest like a plague, but always seek out Gospel Fest. It is the better by far in terms of talent, musical message, energy etc.
I think that Jazz still lives, although in a reduced form. It is still hugely popular in Chicago. Most of the best musicians I've seen are black, and it is a truly integrated art form. The "blues" bands we have in these parts are all white guys, trying to act like they know what they are singing about. I find it repellant.
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Posted: February 25 2015 at 21:51
cstack3 wrote:
The Dark Elf wrote:
cstack3 wrote:
dr wu23 wrote:
cstack3 wrote:
Can the early 70s prog sound be cloned nowadays?
Probably....wheel up a Mellotron, a Rickenbacker bass, some warbling lads singing harmony in counter-tenor, and let fly!
The same could be asked of "Can the original blues sound be cloned nowadays?"
Living in Chicago, I am forced to tolerate any number of all-white, "cool blues" musicians who attempt to portray themselves as offering the "real deal."
F 'em. I saw Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers in the early 1970s, when he played to a 100% white college age audience. At one point, he shouted "Have you ever had the blues??" All the white kids started to cheer and clap, and he snarled "You ain't NEVER had the blues!!"
I understood what he meant - the original blues musicians had to deal with alcoholism, drug addiction, VD, violence, robbery.....it was not an easy life. To try to rip that off by strapping on a Stratocaster and playing "Sweet Home Chicago" is a bit repellant to me.
Same for early 70's prog. We musicians can play something that sounds like it, but we aren't the British/German/Dutch children who were born right after WWII in ruined nations....nor do we have the same societal pressures such as revulsion over the Viet Nam war, potential nuclear annihilation etc.
I've written music and played it for people who said "You sound like Yes!" or "You sound like early Genesis," to which I might reply "You ain't NEVER had the prog!!" I haven't, I've just been an outside observer.
Hmm......then I guess all the great blues that Clapton, Beck, Page, Duane Allman, Vaughan, and the rest played over the years is just so much bullsh*te.....back to the drawing board.
Sorry, I don't consider that stuff "blues." Blues was an art-form that was uniquely American, rooted in the post-slavery culture of the South and migration of blacks to the North in order to find economic and social freedom.
The Brits copied the blues, morphed them, even ripped them off wholesale, but it ain't the blues according to my playbook. Blues-rock is more like it.
Sorry C., I'm going to have to say nonsense to your line of reasoning. By your logic, blues is a dead language, like Latin. It went on life-support by the mid-50s when R&B supplanted blues as the favorite genre among black listeners and died altogether by the 70s with the advent of funk.
But blues didn't die, and the master bluesmen who fell into obscurity before 1960 were saved by white American and Brit guitarists who worshipped the greats and revived their careers. Hundreds of careers. And to say that great and consummate white musicians like Paul Butterfield, Eric Clapton, Johnny Winter, Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Ray Vaughan (all members of the Blues Hall of Fame, by the way) didn't play the blues is absolute bullsh*t. Johnny Winter and Muddy Waters, Stevie Ray and Albert King, Bonnie Raitt and Sippie Wallace -- these were familial relationships. You missed the boat on this one.
It was a new generation of bluesmen who revived the musical form and brought it to the pinnacle of popularity, and in the process saved a lot of musicians who might have died poor and forgotten. The new generation just didn't happen to be black, and actually blacks have nearly abandoned the genre, sadly, as they have jazz. Or did jazz end with John Coltrane?
Dressing up in colorful robes and waving spears doth not a Zulu warrior maketh.
That "stuff" ain't the blues. Music influenced by the blues, using the blues scale for the guitar, and other idioms unique to blues music, but not blues. I've seen real bluesmen, Clapton etc. ain't it. Good music, yes, but not blues.
The musical genre that blacks dominate is gospel. In Chicago, I avoid the Blues Fest like a plague, but always seek out Gospel Fest. It is the better by far in terms of talent, musical message, energy etc.
I think that Jazz still lives, although in a reduced form. It is still hugely popular in Chicago. Most of the best musicians I've seen are black, and it is a truly integrated art form. The "blues" bands we have in these parts are all white guys, trying to act like they know what they are singing about. I find it repellant.
I think if you asked Muddy Waters if Johnny Winter was a bluesman, or Albert King if Stevie Ray was a bluesman, they would unequivocally say yes. I think the same goes for Eric Clapton, Paul Butterfield, Jeremy Spencer or Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac, or Canned Heat (with their incendiary release Hooker 'n Heat).
By your clouded thinking, no one can play blues who is not black and wasn't born before 1940. That is silly, and sort of reverse racism, muddle-headed as that may be. As far as Clapton, he's in the Blues Hall of Fame, and jammed with every great bluesman on the planet. Look at the list that's been elected to the Hall. Ain't no one there who don't play the blues:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blues_Hall_of_Fame (again, the only white musicians currently are Paul Butterfield, Eric Clapton, Johnny Winter, Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Ray Vaughan -- a very select group - so it's not like they are an asinine outfit like the Rock and Roll Hall that pulls performers from every known genre, claims they are rock and plops them in to sell tickets)
Oh, and by the way, one of the greatest blues albums of all time was Albert King's Born Under A Bad Sign. Who was backing Albert on that album? The Stax Records house band, which included Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, Wayne Jackson and Joe Arnold -- all white guys, and white guys who played on every Stax blues and R&B classic. As I said, bullsh*t.
P.S. By the same pretzel logic, the genre "progressive rock" occurred between 1969-1979 exclusively by musicians from London and Canterbury (and perhaps Luton) because they and only they had direct access to the European classical/folk motifs and middle/upper class British snobbery with the intent to strip rock of its blues background and graft this European classicism onto it. Americans need not apply and anyone starting their performing careers past 1980 ain't prog. Sorry, find another name.
Edited by The Dark Elf - February 25 2015 at 22:16
...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology...
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Posted: February 25 2015 at 23:34
The Dark Elf wrote:
P.S. By the same pretzel logic, the genre "progressive rock" occurred between 1969-1979 exclusively by musicians from London and Canterbury (and perhaps Luton) because they and only they had direct access to the European classical/folk motifs and middle/upper class British snobbery with the intent to strip rock of its blues background and graft this European classicism onto it. Americans need not apply and anyone starting their performing careers past 1980 ain't prog. Sorry, find another name.
Exactly.
Why is it called "neo-prog" on PA? I don't like the term "prog," neither did originators like Peter Banks and others.
John Wetton said it best:
Everyone who wants to be progressive, in inverted comas, want to use mellotrons, Marshall amps and Rickenbacker basses, you know, it's all back to 1973, which is hardly progressive. So it's very much regressive. But it seems that progressive has become a generic term for a style of music which involves time changes, classical moods...
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Posted: February 25 2015 at 13:29
Can the early 70s prog sound be cloned nowadays?
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SteveG wrote: