People, listen to the blues.
I know that's just the the type of thing your average grey dad in a grey wool sweater would mutter when hearing dubstep blast out from the room of his teenage son.
I'm not saying you should disavow your past preferences, deny your musical past. Stick to your cd's, folks, because you found something in them in the first place.
But like I've said in the past, it's always worth the effort to go beneath the aural surface created by the mainstream media.
Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel. I think Marx said that. But listening to the early 20th century blues legends, you can hear they felt it. Poor, old black guys, with a lifetime of problems oozing out of every note they sung. Problems with alcohol, money, women and the law. Six string exorcism. Just one guy with a guitar. Here, use this microphone.
Take Blind Willie Johnson for example. Guy becomes blind at the age of seven, when his stepmother throws acid on his face. He grows up poor, lives his life poor. He dies poor, after months of sleeping on wet newspapers in the ruins of his burnt home. Before his demise, he manages to record some songs between 1927 and 1930.
One of them is currently echoing in outer space.
So why not tip your toe in the stuff?
Take a listen, be it Blind Wille Johnson, Charley Patton, Bukka White, Sonny Boy Williamson, Mississippi John Hurt.
I can pinpoint a certain moment, a second in a song, one note that is, in my humble opinion, a summary of all things blues. It's in the following clip, I think everyone can hear it. I'd like to think there's not a person in this world that wouldn't hear it.
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