Night Music for Drinking
As Kurt Vonnegut puts it in "A Man Without A Country":
"That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today - jazz, jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stone, rock-and roll, and on and on - is derived from the blues.
A gift to the world? One of the best rythm and blues combos I ever heard was three guys and a girl from Finland playing in a club in Krakow, Poland.
The wonderful writer Albert Murray, who is a jazz historian and a friend of mine among other things, told me that during the era of slavery in this country - an atrocity from which we can never fully recover - the suicide rate per capita among slave owners was much higher than the suicide rate among the slaves.
Murray think this was because slaves had a way of dealing with depression, which their white owners did not: They could shoo away Old Man Depression by playing and singing the Blues. He says something else which also sounds right to me. He says blues can't drive depression clear out of a house, but can drive it into the corners of any room where it is played. So please remember that."
So here is some great blues:
John Lee Hooker playin'
- I am Leavin'
- Hobo Blues
- The Healer with Santana
- It Ain't Gonna Change with Santana
- Baby Please Don't Go with Van Morrison
- Gloria with Van Morrison
Hound Dog is 7) killing the slide guitar
T-Bone Walker plays the guitar and sings 8) Blues Ain't Nothing But a Woman 9) Don't Throw Your Love On Me So Strong
Howlin Wolf howls in 10) Love Me Darlin'
Music Posts
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Sharpener's Blues
The knife sharpener in the plaza
With his abrasive discs of fire
Grinds the steel you offer
Down to its sinews.
The sparks are the spectacle You pay for, along with edged Knives that cleave clean through Anything that you want slice
Potatoes, chicken bones, bread Of wheat, of time, of memory. Outside the window, sun glares At these unchanging blues.
My Poems
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