*BANG*

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

I will keep on researching and learning and playing and listening. I'm in tears practically reading your post;what does all that guff have to do with my definition of the blues?

Zilch absolutely nothing.

You allude to the fact that you know more about blues than me because you've played some gigs with some people i've never met or heard of What does that have to do with the debate? Again nothing.

You can't even define blues because you don't know what it is. It's not 12 bars or 8 bars or 16 bars because it could be all those things and mix that up with a lot more stuff.

I'm not impressed that you played some gigs with people who had a drug habit, that again doesn't mean anything millions of non blues musicians have drug habits. So why even mention that. You seem to have an inferiority complex and seem in need of recognition and ego support from other people, even virtual people over the net

So you may know something i don't? that may very well be so but there again you've caught yourself in your own trap by putting down someone from another country and telling them that they can't know what you know because they're not from the US!

_________________
Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

Obviously read through the filter of a person who refuses to get the point whatsoever and whose mind is closed.

I've expended more than enough energy on this.

Good day, sir. We'll have to agree to disagree.

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

One time, I was illegally downloading music. I downloaded Blackened by Metallica, an absolute classic. Upon reading the info on the song, it said the genre was blues, forever shaping what I perceive blues to be. Metallica, I feel you.

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1984 Squier Contemporary Stratocaster
1986 Peavey Envoy 110
1967 Kingston Acoustic

Gorgon, I'd like to hear a clip of you playing, anywhere I can hear that? You Tube perhaps?

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I had my own YT channel for about a year and then i got fed up with it and ditched it.

Anyway on there i had a lot of clips of me playing a lot of the old country blues tunes solo, no backup as a crutch, just me and the guitar.

I had a lot of Rev Gary Davis tunes up; Twelve Sticks, Candyman, She's Funny That Way, Cincinatti Flow Rag. Plus some Mance Lipscomb tunes like Spoonful, Sugababe. Stuff like that.

Can i hear a clip of you playing?

However what does that have to do with the discussion?

_________________
Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

If you click the link in my signature line below, you can. Enjoy the 'blues' clips.


Absolutely nothing, except to give an idea of where you're coming from musically.

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After thinking about it a bit, I don't think the blues can be defined. It's like trying to define love, or that feeling when you witness your first child being born. It's an emotion, a place of mind that's different for everyone, but in some ways, the same for everyone. We can relate to each other, but those feeling are never identical from one human to another.

I will say that musicians understand music better than the casual listeners, and the same goes for blues musicians. If a musician defines one self as this, or that, they are limiting they're creativity. When you do that, your not a musician, your a guitar player.

I taught a friend of mine to play the basics a few years and today he can SHRED! He knows all the scales and is fast! But he plays the guitar, not music. I haven't learned all the scales yet and am no where near as fast as him, but I can a play cheap $250 box guitar with simple a simple G-C-D and smoke him!

Attitude, emotion and feeling it in your bones defines good music whether it be blues, country or rock. With that being said, there is no beginning, no end, and no true definition of any genre.

It was mentioned by our friend from Glascow that I might think that EC and SRV might be all that I know about the blues. And I'm not gonna run off a bunch of names that I read from book and act like I know it all. I don't!

But Ill take EC and SRV anyday!

I play music, not just the guitar from a book.

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Gary

+ 1 billion on that.

Once you start defining yourself as one thing you begin to limit yourself, and that's no good for you or the progression of music. There is something to learn in everything.

Personally I'm not a big fan of the blues, however I'd be stupid to decide that I don't play it and cut it out my life, as there are certainly parts of it that I can learn from and include in my playing, and who knows one day you do that you might stumble on the best thing you write.

But you already did. You put me down labelled me as ignorant and said i couldn't know anything about music because i'm from Glasgow! Well i do know some things about blues music. I started listening to Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck and Clapton and then i learnt through that about BB King and all those guys. I took that all the way back to Charlie Patton Blind Blake Rev Gary Davis and all those guys. I didn't just read about them in a book, i have Rev Davis's cd's, same with Lightnin' Hopkins, Charlie Patton and Big Bill Broonzy. Even Pink Anderson as well.


Yeah well they're good players, but not blues players, more blues rock.


I don't even know what this is supposed to mean, explain this to me. "The guitar from a book" as in what learning to play guitar from a book or what is this referring to?

I have learnt from books, just like i've learnt from listening to records and trying to learn stuff from them and transcribing them. Watched DVD's that kind of stuff.

_________________
Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

The blues is reading all this squabbling...

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the blues is like basketball, boring to watch but fun to play.

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I think by now we all understand that Gorgon is a "purist".

But I, for one, am exceedingly grateful that blues has expanded from this narrow definition, and influenced musicians in all walks of life. The British "invasion" is a direct result of blues influences, and from there we have gained a glorious palette of expression of the human condition - in all its glory.

The "original bluesmen" carried on a tradition of musicians playing for their families, or just for the pure joy of it - before radios and phonographs were common. The bluesmen represent the infancy of blues, not the birth. It is powerful music indeed. But while it can be appreciated, there is no way to revisit the conditions and times that spawned the unique expression found there. We have moved on, and that is really a good thing.

To place such confines on definitions leads to all sorts of troubles, especially when the greater population of the world have much broader terms. Blues are expressed in a huge variety of ways today - and they have been for many years.

Perhaps, Gorgon, it would be better to claim yourself as a "Blues purist", and state that your opinion of what defines blues is narrow. I (and many others it seems) don't seem to appreciate your dogmatic view, and the way you are trying to enforce that view on others. I lived for a few years with a gent who held similar, if not the same views as yourself. He was a nice guy, and it was great to hear (constantly) the "original bluesmen". But we were able to agree to disagree, and move on to appreciating artists for what they offered - not for what we percieved they lacked.

I'll end this with a quote I found by B.B. King about Jimi Hendrix:
"To me, he was one of the great explorers of the so-called Delta blues. I don't think it has anything to do with where a person is born. A lot of people play blues who have never been to the South or even have been to the United States. He was Jimi Hendrix, he didn't sound like anybody else but himself."

Yea... PURE *#@!**$@

cheers!

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Eh! thanks! No need for the expletives. See this is what i alluded to earlier when i said to someone about Toppscore and him being banned; i don't remember him ever swearing at anyone or downing them in this way above. No call for that really. I'm expressing my opinion as per the title of this thread "what's your definition of the blues?" ie. mine.
I don't want to be verbally abused for stating it. Maybe the people that have been abusive need to examine why they're being like that?

As far as being a purist; maybe, but then again i can listen to and appreciate modern blues "music" because that's all it is now a form of music. The lifestyle and the traditions of the old original bluesmen are no longer around.

I've stated my definition of the blues or what it means to me but i've not read one reply that describes what modern blues music is! It can't be because it's 12 bars long because songs vary. It can't be because it's emotional music, because music is emotional by it's very nature. So what distinguished blues music from any other kind of music? It's not because of the blue note in the scale because that interval has been around since the start of time. So how do you define modern blues music? I haven't heard one explanation that could distinguish blues from most other forms of music.

That's why i define it as i do. The traditions and the backgrounds related to the south the delta and the old time bluesman are what define it to where it is today.

I mean lets have a serious discussion about this. The explanations and definitions given so far do not, in any way, define blues as they also apply to most other forms of music. All this rubbish about the blues is nothing but a good man feeling bad are stupid! that applies to tons of musical types. Tango music from Argentina, particularly the music of Astor Piazzolla is loaded with those feelings but you can't call that blues.

Maybe basically what you'd be better saying is; you don't have a definition for what it is.

_________________
Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.