Same song but not played the same way. This is the mark of a great musician. Note that he's NOT playing notes, he's playing sounds, that's the only way a person can play that way.
More evidence of how he thinks and plays sounds and scenes rather than note. Like spirit who are acting.
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"Musicians are the architects of heaven"
Last Edited by on May 28, 2010 9:58 PM
Chris this is really cool - thanks for posting it. 12 string with a slide is SUCH a great sound. What I notice about this guy's performance is that his rhythm is SO TIGHT. I think this is what holds everything else together. Easy to understand. We're all saying - "oh yeah, I know good rhythm is important." Man, it is NOT easy. I don't just mean good rhythm. I have good rhythm. I mean IMPECCABLE rhythm. It is hard to come by! ---------- /Greg
Great stuff! I have also lately been exploring slide guitar. I have some problems (cubital tunnel syndrome) with my left hand that forced me to quit guitar playing few years ago, but now my goal is to learn to play it with just the slide which should be ok.
He is from Norway and if I don't remember wrong he has won the blues-category in our national music awards. And "Give it away" is a cool cover of the Red Hot Chili Peppers song:)
Bjorn is undoubtedly an excellent musician but I don't really hear anything that progressive or modern in his playing myself.
Wizz Jones, Isacc Guillory and John Rebourn have been playing in a similar vein for nearly four decades. Bjorn just seems to be playing it on a 12 string and faster to my ear. Maybe you're hearing something I don't?
Last Edited by on May 29, 2010 5:24 AM
I've probably listened to more Bjorn Berge than you. For me it's in the power, energy and choice of chords. He also employs a modern musical sensibility to his playing. The breakdowns often move through rock, folk with some jazz and classical elements.
whatever turns you on is the truth. All the chords, notes, phrasings, tones, beats, have all been done. People that focus on such angles are chasing the end of the rainbow- a wasted journey because you are chasing something that can't be found. You will just end up a conglomorate of others stuff. Kind of like a robot with no soul that spews endless stuff that has no root of it own. It is what touches your heart that makes music timeless. that is what I consider modern music. Let your music touch your soul and it will always be modern and timeless. What more can you ask for? Walter ---------- 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. " No one can control anyone, but anyone can let someone control them"
yeah seasick steve is way cool, I haven't listened to him in a couple of years, thanks for bringing him up. I thinks he's a flame holder for the old school and isn't necessary modern in the way that bjorn is.
btw- bjorn isn't playing 12 string, its a 12 string guitar strug with seven strings. He doubles the bottom ----------
Re: Bjorn Berge--Absolutely blues. The spontaneous improvisational expression is great. IMHO, this is the way to approach blues improv. But it's his incredible sense of groove that holds it all together and makes it work. The sounds may change, he may not play the same notes the same way twice BUT THE GROOVE IS CONSTANT--impeccable rhythmic feel.
Buddah ....Def. the blues...Not Delta or Chicago.....more like Piedmont or Hill Country.......Mississippi Fred was my first "Blues Album".
---------- Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art. - Charlie Parker
I wondered if any of you knew of Seasick Steve. My son plays slide and is really into SS. He even took 3 strings off one of his old guitars, put on the boots, and started stompin!
I'd never heard Berge, and after looking at the first two videos, I was definitely afraid that Berge's sex partner(s) might often be yelling, "Slow down! Slow down!", impeccable rhythm or not. Then he did slow it down in the third one. But compare it to the dynamics of the Bukka White clip, where the fast section is used for contrast instead of being the baseline. There's urgency and urgency.
I remember being at that 1996 Snooky Pryor/Lazy Lester/Antones show mentioned in a recent thread and having my guitarist brother nudge me when Lester swung a Jimmy Reed tune at the authentic original (slower) tempo: "Did you see that!? He kicked off that tune and every woman in the room started moving her hips!" Which of course speaks to one's goal as an artist and all that.
Don't get me wrong, I think Berge is genuine contemporary blues, but though the fast tempos may shout "Modern blues!", using too much of them would be constricting the emotional range of an evening, despite the impeccable swing that Greg notes. Check the urgency in all those vintage clips Buddha posted. Spaces like that can still exist in the modern world and I think we should try to evoke them sometimes. Not in the excruciatingly correct/polite broomstick-up-the-behind way that is a trap retro bands can fall into, but in the sense of evoking those emotions rather than reproducing those records. I think that's related to what Buddha means by finding sounds, not playing notes.
For me, the steamrolling fast tempo stuff too easily devolves into mundane blues-rock if the beat gets pushed a little too hard. I think Berge speeds the tempo without unduly pushing the beat, and as Greg remarks, not many people can do something like that. I have to opine that maybe artists like Jason and Sugar Blue tend to steamroll the audience too often. That may be good blues-rock in their hands, but it's still blues-rock to me, short on the restraint and space and dynamics that have always been cardinal blues virtues (you need restraint to properly set up glorious excess).
I concede that seated-audience concerts are a different matter, and you probably want to do something overtly urgent if you're on TV, but grassroots blues is about packing a dance floor and selling booze and encouraging sexual congress. You wanna show me modern blues, I'm gonna ask how well it does that. What's posted here may very well be a skewed sample of Berge, but I'm always curious about how a blues artist would handle an entire 9:30-1:30 pm gig.
Last Edited by on May 29, 2010 3:08 PM
I've been listening to Bjorn for a couple of years now--he is great--I don't really care what you call it--but I always thought it was progressive blues.
I've been working on slide for a while now--it ain't as easy as it looks! Keeping the intonation in is always a struggle--kind of like harp in that way. Son House and Fred McDowell are my big favorites right now. . .
Htownfess - Stephen very eloquently put and as always you hit the nail right on the head. I agree completely with everything you said in that last post.
it's not fair to judge Bjon just from the vids I posted. I'm naturally attracted to heavy grooves, intensity and uptempo music. There is plenty of stuff of his that is much slower. I have all of his albums and they are pretty good with only a few flashy tunes.
@htown: What you're saying about Jason and Sugar is, in my experience, somewhat more true of Sugar than Jason, and it's NOT true of Sugar's acoustic playing.
Last time Jason passed through Oxford, back in the fall, my wife and I sat through his entire first set. It was a model of knowing how to leave space. He had lots to say and he took his time saying it. The clips that people post of his playing on YouTube--some of them with Walter Trout, for example--quite naturally excerpt the hard-driving stuff. But that's not the set that he so skillfully staged, last time I saw him live. He used restraint to set up glorious excess. Those words are a precise description of what he did. And that's exactly what he does on his recent remake of "Down at the Juke," which remains one of my favorite of his recordings.
I think the faster temo stuff showcases technical talent and can be appreciated for that but the groove I'm lookin' for is the slower one that oozes and slides and then sometimes drops something in for tension. Yall' know that blues comes in all sizes from Bjorn Berge to Robert Johnson.
Walterharp: This is perhaps not relevant as it is not "blues" per se but there is a song from that "Jeff Beck and special guests" show that you posted that Imogen sings entitled "Blanket" that is perhaps the most mellifluous song I have ever heard. So much was I impressed that my band has been practicing it (It's a burden to sing for our singer though) and played it out once or twice. In fact what I enjoy most about "Blanket" is it's hypnotic ambiguity regarding classification and Holy Shit was it impossible not to play along with when I heard it. Sublime!!!! ---------- Myspace: dennis moriarty
I like that "Rollin' and Tumblin'" fine, Walter--things like how vocally the basic riff is voiced for most of the song, the slidelike tones too, the stops are like what a great Chicago band would work into the song over time, plenty of interplay between the musicians. The singer didn't seem too engaged with the lyrics, which is why I don't object to someone like Bob Dylan writing themself some new lyrics if it means more conviction in singing.
Joch's video is fine too: Beck is such a vocal guitar player. It's kinda hard not to watch the techniques he uses to get those sounds, but he seems determined to evoke moods by whatever occurs to him and IMO it all coheres. Again, plenty of interplay with the other musicians, he's holding a conversation up there.
@Adam: I recall you saying Jason mentioned getting his head more into blues lately--sounds like it was reflected in his show. We got his general-audience-headliner single set a year ago and it seemed overwhelmingly high energy to me. I don't think blues vs. blues-rock has to be an either/or proposition, but those shorter headliner sets don't necessarily let an artist range at leisure over their whole territory--some pressure to put the pedal down if that is something you are known for. Like to see someone stretch out for an evening if I get the chance, want to see Sugar Blue at home sometime if I can.
That version of Rollin' and Tumblin' is great but how is it considered modern, since Beck, Clapton and Hendrix were doing things just like that 45 years ago?
"Voodoo Chile" anyone?
I guess it begs the question of what someone mean when they hold a video up like that and say "modern blues".
Is it rocked up effects laden, whammy-bar tricked, electric guitar? Been done before many times?
Or is it that it's being sung by a Bjork-esque white gal? Is that what it means to be modern?
Anyway, whatever. Good to see Sydney-gal Tal Wilkenfeld kicking ass on bass with Beck. She's a phenom.
Now this... THIS... is... or should I say WAS modern blues 40+ years ago.
Amazing how you can apply wahhed-up guitar, a droning descending pattern, pentatonic wanking and incongruous lyrics about Homer's Illiad (likely studied by Jack Bruce) in high school to create a magnificent hypnotic piece of musical bliss that one Youtube poster accurately describes as "an ear orgasm".
Nope, Ev630, I can't equate "Ulysses" and that Beck "Rollin' & Tumblin." I fear you missed many of the subtleties in the latter. In particular, since I wasn't familiar with that recording, I had to go confirm the date, because I what I thought I heard there was musicians who had listened to Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside and the rest of the North Mississippi artists. Yep, 2008, I was right. That's what underlies the rhythm and stops and dynamics of that recent Beck version. That Fat Possum stuff went through the old-timers like a wave: Bob Dylan's one--compare the albums Highway 61 Revisited and Time Out of Mind to pick up that influence; Tom Petty's "Your Saving Grace" had to be influenced by it; Beck here. Not just Jack White and the Black Keys coming out of that. Along with that, a much more nuanced guitar sound & note choice in the Beck cover.
I fear "Ulysses" has got a very good version of the Dreaded Blues-Rock Plod. Baker/Bruce play it very well but there's no way you can compare it to what's happening in the Beck vid. The better 1960s blues-rock drummers were often coming from Elvin Jones, not S.P. Leary, a different swing and rhythmic complexity. Canned Heat is the only blues-rock band back then that immediately comes to mind as achieving the complex blues feel in the Beck vid: something like "Peavine" with John Lee Hooker, for example. Even Johnny Winter doing "Roll & Tumble" back then, think they just kinda steamrolled it. So did the Cream reunion, just one continuous gallop.
Hendrix, can't say given all the hours of stuff I haven't heard yet, but not a lot of that Hill Country thang on stuff released forty years ago.
Still, you may have made the point that the blues-rock can be as dated and yet timeless as what Paul Oscher does. But the first Beck video does *not* sound like 1968 to me. There's a rediscovery of blues lurking in there, IMO.
Last Edited by on Jun 04, 2010 4:06 AM
The thing that makes Beck so different than other blues players is that he rarely uses anything that resembles a standard, BB King, Stevie Ray Vaughn or anybody kind of lick. His vocabulary, with the whammy bar phrasing, finger picking, odd slide mixed in with jazz, and rockabilly licks is very unique. Even though he is now older, I still consider him modern in this regards.
Fess, the point I was wanting to make was not that the other people named had played the same riff, but that the idea of taking a long-established blues groove and playing it with late 60s guitar rock distortion, effects, whammy and straight-ahead blues rock attitude is not new.
Hence: Voodoo Chile (Slight Return).
What is (or was) innovative (45 years ago) was to change up a blues pattern with all of the elements mentioned above but to do it with incongruous subject matter, (The Iliad). Whether you think it plods or not is immaterial. In fact it does plod in contrast to blues I enjoy listening to. But when I want a slice of 60s pretentious power rock, it hits the spot.
I would note, while the Fat Possum artist stable could be listed as a source for the groove Beck uses - so could Johnson and Waters, who preceded them.
Indeed, if you buy Clapton's CD from 2004, he plays pretty much the identical groove that Beck plays here when he plays "If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day" - a groove he got from Johnson.
Joch - Beck is great, but he is not a bluesman. He defined fusion with the album "Blow By Blow". The video you posted is a tune from that LP and Beck has been doing it since the early seventies, pretty much the same way.
Beck is a prog-rock/fusion guitarist. He's not a bluesman even if he occasionally dabbles with a blues groove. Just as Miles was never a blues player even though he played jazz over a blues progression.
Are you sure it's not Tal Wilkenfield? I can't see vids(at work), but Tal toured with Jeff Beck, and it was a common misconception that it was his daughter on bass. Tal looks much younger than her actual age, which is 21, I think. ---------- Todd L Greene, Co-Founder
Last Edited by on Jun 04, 2010 7:18 AM
