60s Blues Rock

[steveeeeeeeee]

I've been listening to The Doors a lot over the past couple of weeks and am really enjoying their first 2 albums. It might be cheesy, but I really like Ray Manzarek's organ playing and as a band, they really had a knack at putting together some fantastic musical hooks that stomp very much in a Northern Soul fashion, but there's also pop and psychedelia there.

But when I listen to their more critically acclaimed, heavy blues albums; Morrison Hotel and LA Woman, I feel nothing. Manzarek's organ playing is buried beneath the drawn out, predictable blues rock.

I have a similar thing with Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, which I've been listening to repeatedly of late. But the first 2 bluesy tracks; Rainy Day Women and Pledging My Time are just boring predictable and sterile. From Visions of Johanna onwards, we enter another stratosphere, every song is faultless, bar the bluesy Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat. Whenever I play the album, I skip the opening 2 tracks.

There are whole swathes of late 60s music that I just can't get into, no matter how much I try. Big Brother and the Holding Company and most of Beggar's Banquet by the Stones are examples that stick out. I have tried the Grateful Dead a couple of times, but it lasts no longer than a minute or two. Same goes for anything involving Jeff Beck or John Mayall, but I like Faces, but unsure they belong in the Blues Rock genre.

Saying a certain type of music all sounds the same is the ultimate form of ignorance, I remember thinking this about dub reggae when I was a teenager and how wrong I was. But 60s Blues Rock really does sound pretty samey to me, what rewards are there for the listener that can't be given in far greater quantity by actually listening to Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters?

[Satchmo Distel]

Your last sentence is the clincher: those great artists were falsely portrayed as belonging to the distant past despite playing loud urban electric guitar blues, whereas the Blues Rockers were supposed to be contemporary despite being less talented and not having been raised in that culture. I may, however, make an exception for Janis Joplin, whose voice was just extraordinary and IMHO had a lot of gospel in it (like Etta James). Jimi Hendrix eventually too was an original artist (but perhaps not on the first album).

[San Bernardhinault]

....what rewards are there for the listener that can't be given in far greater quantity by actually listening to Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters?

I think this is the nub of it. Basically, the answer is not much. To an extent maybe shinier production values - although you can find that in other parts of actual blues.

The funny thing is I have a soft spot for a whole lot of white-blues. That's because at some point in my teens as I got into listening to guitar rock stuff I got sucked in by UK media to the Rock Family Tree nonsense that said that if you liked Led Zep go back to the Yardbirds and then across to Mayall and Clapton and Beck and Page and all their various offshoots. And because I listened to it when young it still has a nostalgia thing for me. I used to listen to the Blues show on Radio 2 presented by Paul Jones (out of Manfred Mann) and there was always hagiography of the Alexis Korner, Blues Incorporated era, so I felt that mid-60s British blues rock stodge was somehow essential.

Objectively, though, it's all pretty rubbish and worse than authentic stuff. As it goes, I think the Janis Joplin stuff is at a different level, is actually a progression on the music. You could argue the same for some of the less tiresomely dragged out Cream stuff (thanks to Baker and Bruce, mostly). But the blues end of the Stones, or the John Mayall, or Alexis Korner, or all the stuff that came later, just isn't worth revisiting unless you want to know what the later, better British rock originated from.

It was valuable at the time because it helped give a new audience to the actual blues, of course. So it wasn't a worthless exercise. I just don't think there's much value in listening to it now.

You'd be better off listening to the Howlin' Wolf Rocking Chair LP again. Not that I even listen to that much anymore. I should this afternoon.

And yes, I also often skip the first two tracks of Blonde on Blonde, and never got my head around the Grateful Dead (although I'm not 100% sure they fit the category).

[Amor de Cosmos]

Speaking as a 60s kid I'd agree with most of that. Except maybe this bit:

But when I listen to their more critically acclaimed, heavy blues albums; Morrison Hotel and LA Woman, I feel nothing.

I'd question whether they were more acclaimed than The Doors's first two albums. It was more the relief of a return to, something approaching, form after the stuff in-between.

Big Brother were never a great band, if it hadn't been for Janis they'd have been no more than a Haight Asbury footnote. And after she left they pretty much dropped out of sight. The Dead were... The Dead. You loved them, or were bored shitless. Sometimes both, depending on what you'd ingested that day.

For me the archetypal band of 65-68 San Francisco were Country Joe and the Fish. They best embodied the sound, the look, and the feel of that time and place, though others may disagree. Moby Grape were close runners up (though widely disliked at the time for "Selling out to the "Man'... man!" ) Their first two albums, though uneven, are more varied and interesting than anything most bands from that time and place produced.

[Amor de Cosmos]

And yes. White boy blues was almost always a waste of time — though I do have a soft spot for Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. And no, The Faces aren't in that category.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Janis Joplin is the one I want to get, god knows I've tried. Her voice is amazing, I just don't like any of the songs she sings.

[danielmak]

The sub-genre boundaries for these things can be fuzzy. Blue Cheer is a band I like a lot. I don't know if they fit the blues rock bill. MC5 is often discussed as a proto punk band but they also seem to fit a little bit. And Cream works for me as well, although I never bought any of their records.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Yes, MC5 is a good one. I'm turned on by the power, the spectacle, the urgency, the danger and intensity of their music, which is only captured in their live recordings. As a studio band, I don't listen to them that much and they stray into Blues Rock. But I imagine anyone with the slightest interest in music has watched this repeatedly in awe:

[danielmak]

[Amor de Cosmos]

Janis Joplin is the one I want to get, god knows I've tried. Her voice is amazing, I just don't like any of the songs she sings.

Here repertoire post-BB&THC is much more varied. Though, sadly, her health was noticeably in decline by that time.