Being from the same time frame (and lucky enough to see and meet many of the great ones) I have to say that I am not quite so discouraged in terms of gear. The 80's did suck but the quality of gear is much better than it ever was. You'll pay for it but the gear is better. That said, all my 25 amps are pre-CBS. The contemporary problem I have is with live music paying anybody. Youtube and HD are serious quality and hard to compete with to get people out of the house. I'm actually optimistic for a resurgence though. Nothing can compete with the pure energy of live music.
Last Edited by on Nov 14, 2012 12:02 PM
My thoughts are similar to Littoral's in that I have hard time accepting the decline of live music, especially blues music.
It is weird how people cringe at the thought of seeing a "blues" band, but then some artists talk about their blues influence when they have nothing to do with blues.
I am 31. When my peers hear "blues" they think of middle aged white guys playing boring music. That is the feedback I get anyways. The word "blues" is a kiss of death. That being said, when they happen upon the music, they generally love what people are actually playing (and not what is being assumed).
I also have a hard time accepting stuff like Gungmanan style or whatever it is called and how the masses flock to that stuff. It is worse than reality TV, lol. Music is so contrived and watered down now...not just blues, but everything.
My neck of the woods supported a really solid to great scene through the 80's. It declined a bit in the 90's, evidently, but was still workable. In the early part of this century, the clubs were still around, but the money wasn't.
In the last five or so years, it has really really dropped off. There is just no sustainable club work. A large part of that, although not exclusive, was the bands themselves. It was the same guys jobbing in different bands all the time. You pretty much heard the same thing everywhere...in small clubs that hold 50-100 people (that's not to say that many were there) and pay $300 a night.
Other factors that are at least relational include increased DWI enforcement and a smoking band.
I am an hour south of the metro, but used to be able to hear great blues bands within 5 minutes of my house at least monthly. Actually, there was a place .8mi from my front door that had the large acts from the city at least once a month. Now, the only place at all supporting blues, has some low key duo and trio type stuff frequently.
I looked at the local lineup for bands in town and knew next to none of them. I used to play 2-3 times a month in town and now can't even find a duo partner.
I always wonder how far you can take blues forward to be modern to the point it's not blues anymore. Majic Dick got less and less of a role in J. Geils as that band evolved it's sound.
I think blues is a niche market. It's never going to be as popular as pop(duh). Perhaps blues is like classical music. Stravinsky is considered a modern composer,even though "Rite of Spring" was written 100 years ago.Most of the 20th century composers( with a few notable exceptions) are not embraced as well as their earlier counterparts. Present day blues fares a lot better than present day new classical. Not a lot of new compositions in that genre.
Veteran musicians tell me how they got at least $300 a gig in 1980's dollars.They could do 5-6 gigs a week. I'm a boomer(63). In the 80's,I went to see bands all the time. And the house was packed. We were young,we liked to party. We had no Internet,i-pods,smart phones,HD big screen TV and I only got about 4 channels on my 19" CRT.What else was there to do? Nowadays,we've got all these other entertainment devices. There's nothing like live music,but it's tough to hook people on it.
JD, music, not gear. Ok. I don't listen to much of what occurs on radio but the processed noise isn't interesting to me. I play 78's on my Victrola. Walking By Myself on the big wind up brings out the ghosts, nothing like it. Effects? I bust on Ricci for his pedal board because it's mostly noise to me. I played 30 years plugging straight in -anything else is just in the way. I did recently start using a delay pedal, sometimes.
Just the same here in Australia. Best money we were paid in the 90's was $600.00, no way we can get that now. I occasionally hear what is called 'R and B' and don't even recognise it. Yes I've heard the same sentiments regarding blues in general 'Oh, that boring old fart stuff'. When questioned, these people clearly have no idea how energising good blues can be. Even jazz, which was pretty popular in my area some years back has taken a tumble. As stated, the advent of iPods and the like have pretty much killed off the chance of a large audience. We have a standing joke about how much the 'audient' enjoyed our performance.
I think that there's been some great blues/ blues-based music made in the last 40 or so years - to my ears comparable to the best of the 60s and 70s, excepting of course for the real legends like Muddy or the Wolf. Are you sure that you're still looking for it?
I'd agree that a lot of mainstream over-produced blues is quite dull, but there's some deep stuff more around the margins. Would you like some suggestions?
Last Edited by on Nov 14, 2012 1:04 PM
I started singing r&b doo-wop etc. when i was 14,1964.than i got hip to blues and gospel.i started harp in 1968 and guitar 1970.i think there`s too much of different blues to put a [cage] around it by saying "new directions"there`s already many, many directions.i see to much SOS boring playing by people trying to recreate stuff thats just like it was ,instead of looking to new avenues...also i see Jimi Hendrix as a blues man who put it in another space and 42 years later there still are few players expounding on that blues...thats a new direction now !!!
Well, how far from Blues is no longer influenced or Blues based? I've seen some posts in this discussion about artists claiming Blues influence that the poster doesn't perceive in their music. So, have you listened to The Black Keys? They move around a bit stylistically from a fuzzed out simple, stomping two piece {drums and single guitar} neo-blues to more complex arrangements. I don't know if they fit what you are looking for {JD} since there seems to be a line between "non traditional stuff" and what a lot of people of a certain mind set will want to listen to. I like them, their music {most of it} moves me and to my mind has depending on the song a blues vibe about it. They started with quite a few good blues covers on their records, and now write more original stuff. anyway, that is one band {besides the White Stripes {that I wasn't always so thrilled about} that might fit the question of this thread. Tracks all over youtube if you want to check them out. Oh yeah, how about the Dead Weather? That might be WAY to far off the beam for ya {pretty heavy stylistically}, but I feel a blues vibe there. If music has a certain kind of heavy hooks, a certain vibe, then I personally feel a blues influence, but once again, so subjective. Of course then one can get into whether stuff IS Blues music or Blues INFLUENCED music....
Last Edited by on Nov 14, 2012 3:18 PM
@JD Hoskins - sorry that my post was worded a little bluntly. I have a number of friends who often say that the best music was 20/30/40 take your pick years ago - I also try and convince them that there's some worthwhile music from the past 10 or so years as well
I think that there's a lot of blues-based music nowadays that looks beyond the interminable-guitar-solos-plus-plodding-rhythm-section formula that a lot of people associate with blues. I hear more RL Burnside than Eric Clapton, always a good thing in my opinion!
Anyway, you might not have heard some of these - not all strictly blues perhaps
Hopefully why I like them is self-explanatory!
John Mooney (ok he started in the 70s, but still making great albums if now too rarely)
Nathan James / Ben Hernandez - My Backyard
Alvin Youngblood Hart "How Long 'fo I Can Change My Clothes"
Olu Dara - Rain Shower
Johnny Sansone - The Lord is Waiting (and the Devil is Too)
Ian Siegal - Oh Mary Don't You Weep
Kilborn Alley Blues Band - Hangin' On
C.W. Stoneking - Ragged And Dirty (with handy subtitles)
Cash Box Kings - Tryin So Hard
Darren Watson - My Love Will Never Die
William Elliot Whitmore - Old Devils
Paul Reddick - I Will Vanish
Harrison Kennedy (ex- Chairman of the Board) - Noonday Train
Otis Taylor - 10 Million Slaves
Chris Cotton - What Would You Do?
Chris Cotton - Blues & Sadness
...I do get carried away sometimes
on second thoughts maybe these weren't what you meant by the changes in the blues in the last 20 years? Anyway maybe you or someone else will like some of them
Last Edited by on Nov 14, 2012 3:15 PM
"I was looking for discussion of music that is now catogorized as blues music, not blues influenced, blues related, blues rock, but music that folks today define as blues."
I'd have to say that this is sorta like the 10 million dollar PORN question - What is blues today - "you'll know it when you hear it"
On the bright side, it's much easier to record your own music and sell it now. It's much easier for a smaller act to do their own merchandising. If you do well enough at the show so you get a line of people lining up to buy your CD afterward you can still make out pretty well. You can also monetize YouTube more easily than you could get a record deal, and get a much better cut of online sales. You may make less at the door, but I bet online pirates probably steal less of your money than record companies did.
It's easy to look at it and say an act was getting X back in the 70's, but is the act packing the audience in like it was? Is it all the distractions? I know club music can draw pretty well. It's not my taste in music, but neither was disco. The guys who were getting that money back then, where they big names? The market, from what I hear, is pretty fragmented, but, and I'm asking this as a no-name player asking an honest question, were there acts out there back then that couldn't get top dollar too? It's possible that it's just easier for the people who aren't making the money in the community (like myself!) to stay connected with the community with our stories of woe. What are the people in the more popular genres getting for a performance?
What I can say is a lot of music in general today is way bass/drum heavy with the vocals/lead/fill instruments more down in the middle of the mix. The snare tends to crunch vs. a natural sounding snare. I prefer my music to be more of the old school way where the vocals and lead instruments were way on top and drums and bass more in the back. Also most modern blues push the beat way too much. It is stiff and brittle to me. Here is a great example of todays mix style for the blues- heavy on bass and drums in your face and a stiff beat. I got this track from the pete anderson guitar center tracks and did a 1 take harp overdub. I thinned the backing track bass way back but it still is dominating in my opinion. If I left it as it was it would be booming your speakers out. Walter
PS: I was raised with cheap record players that didn't detail the bass and drums well and then spent most of life in clubs where the drums and bass were more in the backround than front ground. SRV recordings are great examples of modern blues mixes IMO.
---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year in the Tunnel of Dreams Studio. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
aside from a delay pedal i've never been much for gadgets in my gear. a digital camera is nice if i can remember to hit the record button before hitting a stage but that's not really the topic here.
i get lucky sometimes and get to play a nice and decent paying gig. a bigger or mid size band has not been good for me since the pay is so low, even an equal cut is seldom enough to even cover expense esp if it's any distance away. still, i have had some memorable weekend "vacations" which involved motels, fast food, local greasy spoons, and dives in other towns, notable in the delta. we had to justify those trips as vacation/promo/investments. sadly they did not pay off in the long haul.
these days i am content as a member of a couple of duos and one of which becomes a 4 piece when the pay is ok. it's a really good time and we do rock the house and the crowd sometimes. meaning we always rock the house but it depends on who walks in the door. my primary duo is with my wife Jolene as guitarist and vocals. myself as harp and vocals. the exciting development lately is that we're beginning to move forward into arranging material for our next cd, which is planned to be much more than a duo recording. drums, bass, keys, guest guitars, maybe some brass, possibly a guest harpman- big project on a very small budget. but the time has come. you follow your muse.
i've been in on recording everything from micro cassette recorders to full studio, 2" 6 track tape, complete digital virtual to tube pre amp etc etc etc. it's all an exciting trip.
i am pretty much traditional because it's just my life's calling. ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
