WTF HAPPENED TO ALL THE GOOD BANDS!? IX

By J. MINOR

My opinion on blues music and feeling blue may differ from others that listen to the genre. Some say there are sad blues and happy blues. I call bullshit. In fact, I’m going to create a new pigeon hole in the music industry and rename Happy Blues, Yellow Music, because that is the color of sunshine. Yellow Music is pop or light rock music with a few blues style riffs and licks, maybe some sax tossed in. It represents good times, celebration and love.

The Blues is about pain, suffering and tortured souls. It is about loneliness and despair. True Blues music will make you drink liquor alone, straight from the bottle, not pass around the wine like Yellow Music.

Causes of feeling blue are many.

The blues, is getting twelve miles per gallon when you drive across the country to visit a sick relative.

The blues, is realizing that your best of times were actually the worst.

The blues ,is sitting alone, in a crappy motel room in Flagstaff, Arizona, writing an article.

The blues, is not losing the girl you love, but never having her in the first place, and wondering if you ever will.

Getting the blues is easy, especially if you don’t pay attention to life’s details, and neglect to do and say the things needed to make you happy. Ridding yourself of the blues is a tough mother.

Listening to real blues music doesn’t help alleviate the suffering, you’re just heaping someone else’s pain on top of your own, but playing the blues can help a little.

Grab a 1957 Stratocaster, plug it into a Twin Reverb, treble set at three o’clock, bass at one, scoop the mids and add  little bit of reverb. Bend a double stop on the G and B strings up a full step, and right when you get to the top of the bend add some vibrato. Let the notes slowly decay as they return to pitch. Repeat as necessary. If it doesn’t make you feel better, it will, at the very least, piss off your neighbors.

Instead of touching on the pioneers of the blues, Robert Johnson, Albert, BB and Freddie King, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, the list goes on and on, I’m going to give some examples of artists inspired by these and other old timers, who took the blues to the next level.

Johnny Winter and Rick Derringer getting extra greasy on  It’s My Own Fault, recorded live in 1970, and released on the album Johnny Winter And Live, in 1971. Johnny was hands down my favorite blues and rock player. Johnny died on July 16, 2014. RIP Johnny.

Humble Pie’s take on the blues is represented on the song I Wonder. Steve Marriott’s vocals and guitar bring on the pain in mass quantities. Good stuff from the Humble Pie Smokin’ album.

If anybody ever sold their soul or used magic to get ahead on guitar, it was Jimmy Page. Check out Jimmy tearing it up on Prison Blues, released on his solo album Outrider. Chris Farlowe  supplies the vocals while Jimmy gets soulful and a little bit sloppy on his Les Paul.

No matter what your take on blues music, if you are a purist, you will think I’m full of shit, there is no denying that modern guitar players can take the music up a few notches while still being faithful to the roots of the blues.

With music like this to listen to, I can enjoy feeling bad.