November 11th – I’m a pretty simple individual
over most things, only really get worked up over stupidity and am content to be
a back-stager over things that a lot of folk think I should be more forward
about…sorry to all those who have to cater for my insouciance; it’s not
deliberate and you know I love you all… However…
Music has been a constant thread in the tapestry of my life.
It’s what forms some of my opinions, fires my imagination and is a prime mover
in my weeping or soaring emotionally in equal measure. I class some modern
lyrics as modern poetry and they give me plenty of scope for research in order
to understand the meaning carefully folded between the lines. Not that I’m an
anorak or anything like that, I just enjoy the process of finding out how a
certain song came about or how the lyrics link in with the time and space they
were written. I suppose I ought to say at this juncture that if you want to
stop reading now and bugger of to put some lard on the cat’s boil then please,
feel free. I don’t expect anyone else to find these sorts of things even
remotely interesting, it was just that I noticed today was the birthday of Mose
Allison (1927) and that got me thinking…
When I was in bands full time we (the band members) were fully
focussed on what other bands were doing, all the time trying to keep one step
ahead. One of the staples of every band, from those at the very top of the heap
(Cream, Hendrix, The Who) to those face down in the gutter (us for one) was to
do a selection of cover songs in one’s repertoire and to re-jig at least one
blues standard so as to stamp the band’s roots credentials on an audience that
in the main just wanted to dance…you know;
Never mind this blues-authenticity
shit, play summat I can bop to
kinda thing. Not that anyone could deny the blues credentials
of either Tendency Jones or The Image; we all took ourselves VERY seriously… well,
most of the time. I have to say that the gig we did at Wooten Wawen Social Club
wasn’t exactly a high point
We’d been booked in, I now think by mistake as the audience’s
combined age would have taken us back to the dinosaur age. Thing is we were
full of ourselves then and figured the fact that 80% of the audience wore
hearing aids would mean that the louder we played the better they could hear
us…y’know? I think the stage was the size of a table-tennis top, certainly well
filled by my drum kit which consisted at that time of nine shells and seven
cymbals…oh, and a hi-hat…to the point where other band members had to stand on
the dance floor level, but then, they were only three guitarists an organist
and a vocalist so, what do they matter? By the time we were a third the way
through the first number (a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Stone Free, I believe) there was an undignified scrabble to gather
up various sets of ejected dentures and felled octogenarians with as much
dignity as they could muster. Not surprising then that the management strode
over to the stage at the striking of the last, blasting chord in order to
inform us, in no uncertain terms, that we really would have to turn the volume
down unless we wanted to face manslaughter charges.
We duly did so (we were nothing but compliant, especially
where the possibility of losing a fee was concerned) only to see that little
had changed down front. At the culmination of song two we’d managed to
rearrange the chairs and tables by sheer brute force of our lessened volume and
several small children (oh, yes, it was THAT sort of Club) had tried to take
shelter under the kitchen counter; and they would’ve succeeded were not for the
gang of cowering pensioners already filling the space to bursting point. This
time the management came across with the cavalry and laid the law down; we either
turned down to a volume acceptable to their clientele or they (the management)
would pull the plug (literally) on the gig and, worse still, we wouldn’t get
paid.
I think there was some discussion surrounding the fact they
(the management) had booked a rock band so what th’ fuck did they expect to
turn up; Englebert Humperdink’? It was to no avail. So, in order not to antagonise
the management any further (and cut off my fag/beer supply for the forthcoming
week) we suggested that we begin to play the next song (one of our own
manufacture) with one of their number by the stage and another in the audience
and then, as per their direction, we could gradually turn down the volume to an
acceptable level… Suffice to say I ended up uncoupling my two kik-drum peddles
and playing the rest of the kit with two pencils, vox was all acoustic and all
guitars were at level 0.5 on the amps…the Hammond organ we turned off
completely. No such worries for Mr. Allison.
This is a guy who wrote, toured and performed for 65 years.
His influence has spread the length and breadth of 60’s/80’s rock music
(Hendrix, Stones, Waits, Mayall, Cale, Yardbirds, Fame, Blue Cheer, Cactus) and
his name is mentioned alongside performers of real stature in the blues and
jazz world (Getz, Mulligan, Cohn, Sims) and had his songs covered by The Clash,
Van Morrison, Elvis Costello and Leon Russell to name a very few. He was made a
Jazz Master in 2013 and has a Blues Marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail; in a
nutshell, this was a guy who could hack it. His original 1959 composition of Young Man Blues was played on acoustic
piano with acoustic bass and jazz drums with brushes. They would’ve loved him
at Wooton Wawen Social Club…loved him.
Not so had The Who done their cover of that same song. One of
my all-time top-twenty numbers, their rendition of it on the Live at Leeds album gives a real insight
into a song’s development from the original blues artist to when it’s let out
into the field of rock. Cream did it to great effect with Spoonful and Crossroads
but, IMHO, The Who’s version of Young Man
Blues takes the blue ribbon; it would also be fair to say that Mr. Townshend’s
performance removes the mask of we’re
serious bluesmen on stage here…listen to these roots and shows just what
rock music should do to you when played with conviction, no matter what its
pedigree and authenticity…and it should also be played VERY LOUD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeXJKlogiM4
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