Substance Abuse.

Not strictly Blues but please bear with me. I have just recently watched the full length documentary about Amy Winehouse ‘Amy’ AND an equally long documentary about Kurt Cobain ‘Montage of Heck’, both stunningly put together and equally heart-breaking. Not a joyous experience for me. But, glutton for punishment that I am, this also coincided with me finishing the autobiography of Art Pepper ‘Straight Life’ (mentioned in previous post.).

Conclusion (straight from a graduate of the University of the Bloody Obvious) doing drugs screws you up!

But really; Winehouse, Cobain, Pepper all terrific talents – the first two snuffed out prematurely at the magic age of 27 (I know, you can add to the list, Johnson, Joplin and Hendrix) and Pepper who arguably lost his best years doing time for drug offences; so, so sad.

I really don’t believe that indulging in mind-altering substances is a prerequisite for the nurturing of talent. In my mind there are a lot of ‘what-ifs’.

I’ll expand this to the world of Art –
My first visit to the Van Gogh Museum lead me to the conclusion that if dear old Vincent hadn’t fallen prey to his largely untreated malaise I’m sure he would have gone abstract! Someone says that Cobain would have probably veered heavily towards the Blues – who knows? Maybe Amy Winehouse would have escaped the grip of Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone etc. and branched out into work that was truly groundbreaking?

Alcohol and weed were part of the Blues culture as well, look at Otis Spann and Jimmy Reed; watch on Youtube as Wolf berates Son House for his squandered talent through love of the bottle! But also think of those true great artists who had no need of substances.

Larry Garner.

I was talked into listening to Larry Garner as a contemporary example of where Blues is going. Dutifully I felt obliged to get a copy of his album ‘You Need to Live a Little’ 1996.

Initially I was impressed by the musical content, but after a while I found myself rapidly skipping tracks. The magic wore off very quickly.

But what was it that prompted me to eventually delete it from I-Tunes? I guess I was looking for a modern interpretation of Blues themes; I expected a rawness; something with grit – I just didn’t find it.

I fully accept that I would never get a sharecropper’s deep mournful lament, of the kind you can feel in the vocal style of Muddy Waters, even when Muddy was quaffing Dom Perignon and driving fine new Cadillacs. But, as an example, it was Garner’s track, ‘Four Cars Running’ that really puzzled me. The theme was bizarre; he was lamenting what I would consider a First World problem. Personally I run two cars and I think myself very fortunate, but to complain about four cars in your driveway seems a bit….spoilt! 

Maybe I’m being far too much of a purist but I was left scratching my head wondering if there is any deep Blues left in the world. There were other tracks whose narrative left me feeling a little queasy.  ‘Don’t Run Talking’ conjured up an image of John Travolta in ‘Urban Cowboy’. Maybe it’s wrong to make assumptions about cultures that are many thousands of miles away from my own, but surely music should be able to cross borders and cultural boundaries easily?

Somebody said I should check out the late Luther Allison.

Reading.

A quick posting on what I would recommend on reading at the moment.

Being a fan of biographies and autobiographies I enjoyed reading the Muddy Waters biography ‘Can’t be Satisfied’ by Robert Gordon. An exceedingly well written and researched book. I feel I understand much more now about what made Muddy tick. How he held on to some level of integrity after leaving the delta and how he was able to inject such feeling into his performance and composition despite changing times and circumstances. Muddy comes over as a good man but certainly no angel.

The other book I want to recommend is not Blues but Jazz related. Even if you don’t dig Jazz, even if you’ve never heard of one of the greatest saxophonists of the mid 20^th century American Jazz scene Art Pepper read this book! It’s called ‘Straight Life’ by Art and Laurie Pepper. I have trouble with autobiographies as you know there’s a good chance they’ll be a gloss job; this is the reverse. I found myself wondering why Art Pepper would confess so readily to so many weak and despicable acts. Brutally honest, a shocking account of extreme substance abuse and how this great talent was almost destroyed by his own demons.

Not for the faint hearted.