Sometimes I feel like I want to dismiss blues as a genre I like, or even the Black Keys as a band I like, but then they put something out that is accessible to me and I dig it.
Definitely not a fan of the long-ass solos, or Stevie Ray Vaughn in general. But there’s always some blues around that I can really dig my teeth in to.
And definitely without blues there’d be no Beatles, Stones or Zepplin. It’s be Herman’s Hermits all day every day!
Woulda got up this mornin’ except he was dead. Oh, Yeah!
His woman done lef’ him because he was dead. Oh, no!
Woulda jumped in the ribba; was already dead. Oh, my!
It’s a variation on the African ‘call and response’ way of singing. If you listen to traditional music from west Africa (Mali, etc.), it’s very prominent, and as you said, is very very old.
I’m a big fan of live music, blues being one of my preferred genres. There are genres that I like more than others of course but I have a fairly wide range of tastes.
When I ask someone what kind of music they like and they say, “everything except for rap and country” I know that they are, almost without exception, fucking idiots.
Tell me this: have you tried listening to blues music when you’re blind drunk on rye in a smoke-filled juke joint, shortly after your no-good woman took all your money and ran off with your best friend? If not, you’re not really getting the full experience.
I agree with what others have said. I don’t like “pure” blues, or at least, it has a very limited appeal, because of the "all-sounds-the-same"ness of it. But blues is an essential ingredient in a lot of the music that I do like very much.
I often go blues dancing, and I’m also kind of sick of blues music. The problem with blues is that half the songs use the same goddamned chord progression or slight variations thereof. It’s like a stupid Word template that uncreative musicians can fall back on: I I I I IV IV I I V IV I I
Don’t get me wrong, rock musicians do the same stuff with their love affair with a select few 4-chord progressions, like: vi IV I V (e.g. Am F C G). It’s nice the first hundred times you hear it, but afterwards, you kinda wanna shoot up a recording studio.
That said, some artists can do really cool things with the blues framework, esp. when they thankfully decide to stray from the most familiar of the patterns.
I don’t despise blues music, but it’s not my favourite genre. I just get really tired of hearing a bunch of songs with the same exact chord progression. (Though I am aware that not all blues songs have those chords, but a lot do.)
