Wednesday, September 27, 2006

 

I Know it's the MBW
Hold Your Horse, I'll Get to It

I've spent the morning watching my new Sue Foley Live in Europe DVD. It's every bit as good as I hoped it would be, shot tastefully (though I have some issues with the lighting) in front of a small audience. That's the best way to see Sue, of course, any blues musician for that matter. It has to be intimate.

I got to thinking while watching the DVD. When I was in college I knew (not very well, mind you) a theater major and his wife. This guy was a good actor but I always thought his strength was fight choreography. He did a sword fight in a production of MacBeth that was not only compelling but humorous. This was years before Jackie Chan and John Woo hit the consciousness of the american public, so it was fresh and new to us.

As a sideline, he and his wife did mime. That's right, mime. They were a performing mime troupe. You read that right, mime. They were trying to make some money on the side by performing mime. As you can probably tell, I thought the idea was ridiculous.

I respect mime. I always saw it as a tool. Every actor has to be able to emote without using words. Mime, of course, takes all vocalization out of the equation and forces the practitioner to get a message across in other ways. So I saw it as useful, a step along the way to becoming an actor.

But to get caught in one exercise, it just seemed laughable to me. I've since seen some pretty good mime, Billy the Mime's (aka Steven Banks) performance in the documentary The Aristocrats had me rolling on the floor (well, not literally, but you know what I mean) because it was good mime taken in a completely odd and perverted direction. Banks did some interesting mime things on his show The Steven Banks Show which nobody but me seems to remember. OK, so maybe I only like one mime, but at least I got passed looking at it as just a step on the way to becoming a good actor or actress.

So I'm watching Sue Foley Live in Europe today and she plays a cut from her Love Comin' Down album. Mediterranean Breakfast is a wonderful instrumental, but I never found it all that bluesy. The whole album actually takes a decided turn away from the blues as did her next album Where the Action Is. Now I like both of these efforts, but I was a little saddened that one of my favorite blues guitarists seemed to be, if not turning her back on the blues, at least distancing herself from it. Never fear, Change and New Used Car are both solid blue efforts.

I had a drummer friend when I lived in Vermillion. He was in a couple of bands, one a straight up (and excellent) blues band, the other with a friend of his from high school that was a punk sort of thing. I was completely into the blues at the time and asked once why that didn't do more of that. The friend pointed out that he didn't really like blues. He'd read Robert Palmer's Deep Blues while in high school, really got into the blues for a while, learned a lot about song structure from the form but became bored with it and moved on to other musical styles.

I couldn't believe it. How could someone get bored with such a fine form as the blues? It's beautiful in its simplicity, limited chords, a very structured format with rules that need to be followed most of the time to make a good song, but that forces a songwriter to be witty, it allows for solos easily because its structure means that allows someone to sit in and improvise to a song he's never heard before.

Today I thought about mime and the blues. Both can be seen a merely learning exercises for an actor or musician. But both are fine, stand alone form on their own merits. No, I don't really care for mime in general, but when it's done well, just like most any style of music, I can enjoy it.

Then I think about myself. I'm a harmonica player who first picked up the harp because he had $13 dollars in his pocket and wanted to play the blues. The first songs I wrote were pretty much straight up blues songs. I used the blues as a learning tool in my songwriting education, learning song structure, what will work and what won't. When I started performing I sort of turned my back on the blues. I still do a blues song or two, but I haven't written a blues song in over ten years. The lessons I learned while trying to sound like Willie Dixon, Little Walter and Muddy Waters stuck with me, but nobody would mistake what I do for the deep blues of the Mississippi delta.

I've thought less of a person because he was stuck at a point in the educational process of their craft. I thought less of a person because he zoomed past a point in the educational process of his craft, one I happened to really enjoy. I zoomed past a point in the educational process of my hobby but didn't even really notice it until today.

So today's MBW is about me an what a friggin' idiot I can be. How I get judgmental about other people and then find myself doing the same damn thing myself. Every day I try to open my eyes a little wider and see, actually see the world around me. I try to see my actions through the eyes of others. More often than not I don't measure up to my own standards, I don't do myself what I expect of other people.

All I can do is try, I tell myself, to be a better person. Even then I find myself failing to give other people a break for stuff I know I've pulled myself and expect people to forgive me for. Jeez, I can be such an asshole sometimes.

I like to think that everyday I'm a little bit better at being a human than I was the day before. I know that isn't always the case in actuality. And I know that I'll never achieve my goal, I'll never be the person I really want to be. I'll continue to piss people off along the way for stuff I do and for stuff I don't do.

I'll try to do better tomorrow. Not just on this blog.

BOJ

Comments:
I wrote a little blues song a couple of years ago. It's called Polish Sausage Blues. It can be taken in one sense as a woman who wakes up hungry and can't find what she wishes to eat for breakfast. There is this other interpretation of the song wherein she is missing her boyfriend, who happens to be Polish. Normally I find double entendre to be a bit tedious, but in this case I find it clever.
 
To quote the D (see last Tuesday's post):

I love you baby
But all I can think about is
Kielbasa sausage
Your butt cheeks is warm

I check the dispstick
You need lubrication, honey
My Kielbasa sausage
Has just got to perform
Now get it on.....


I know it doesn't really have anything to do with, well, anything, but doesn't that song just kick ass?
 
I feel as though I ought to be offended but somehow I'm amused instead. The D rocks.
 
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