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Why the Blues Really Hit The Spot


After a tough week at the office, I found myself headed to New Orleans for a short business trip.

As any of you who have visited Bourbon street know, there are plenty of live bands to choose from: Dixieland jazz, R&B, pop/rock cover bands and simple, down home, guitar driven blues.

I had a great time listening to every single band I could find, enjoying a wide variety of music last week.

But whenever I really settle in with a good, live blues band, I wonder what it is that makes the blues so timeless and appealing -- especially late at night with a good local beer!

So for fans of the blues, can anyone explain?

Do the blues more perceptively touch some aspect of human nature? During times of stress or loss, do the blues give you a sense of empathy and understanding? Or is there some counterintuitive explanation that the blues can somehow cheer you up in a mysterious way like Ritalin somehow calms hyperactive kids?

I guess I am asking the musically equivalent question of when and why people seek out movies like Love Story, Platoon or Terms of Endearment?

What are your thoughts and experiences and when do you most enjoy listening to the blues?
cwlondon

Showing 5 responses by grimace

grimace
624 posts
 
Well, I don't know about "touching some aspect of human nature" or about those special moments, but if you like it, play it! BTW - Blues are particularly good with Bourbon.
grimace
624 posts
 
I don't see any reason not to combine beethoven and beer.
grimace
624 posts
 
Chasmal makes a good point. Robert Cray, Keb Mo and other contemporaries are just rehashing stuff the originals did forty, fifty, sixty plus years ago. Jazz has the same problem. After you've listened to Miles Davis, Bird and Trane everyone else is just copying in some way or another until you wind up with a largly nostalgia music form.

This isn't to say there aren't people playing good music today - there are, but its true creative spirit is long gone. Fortunately there are lots of great old recordings.
grimace
624 posts
 
We're re-colonizing ourselves with a watered down version of our own cultural history.
grimace
624 posts
 
I love the blues, but by its very nature its a pretty limited art form. There's only so much you can do with a couple of verses and choruses. The folks playing today just don't have anything new to add to the conversation. Its not to suggest they aren't good musicians, its just that they're playing someone elses breaks from forty-five years ago. Plus those old recordings have a certain essense of their time and place that you're never going to recapture with newer recordings.
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