Did Y'all Hear That?: Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, Steve Stills

"Yeah, well Eric (Clapton) plays almost exclusively perfect...Me, I'm playing guitar really well. I play sweet blues!"

Can you believe that this incredible album came out of a single nine hour jam between these three guitarists and costed just $13000 to make? (Well, now that I think of it, Nirvana's debut costed just $1000). Of course, Kooper and Stills have collaborated in Dylan's classic "Highway 61 Revisited" but this here is the real deal! Bloomfield (who was already known from Paul Butterfield Blues Band) had just quit Electric Flag while Kooper exited Blood, Sweat & Tears. Stills was late of Buffallo Springfield and still a few weeks away from a more or less full-time commitment to David Crosby and Graham Nash. So technically this was a "super-group" just like Cream even though the trio never actually performed together. Half of the tracks feature Bloomfield/Kooper and the other half Kooper/Stills. Of course this happened because Bloomfield was a heroin addict at the time and was constantly unable to perform. So, Kooper called in Stills to complete the project. Despite those problems, the rhythm section of Harvey Brooks (bass), Eddie Hoh (drums) and Barry Goldberg worked like a charm. Another great example of Mike Bloomfield's fluid and clean guitar style that made him famous worldwide.
Of course, shooting heroin for more than 15 years isn't exactly the best thing a musician can do...Bloomfield's inevitable death came in 1981, in San Francisco, when he OD'ed inside his parked car.
Still, this album remains a statement of his great talent and unique playing. A super session indeed!

Let's Go Get It!

Thesis

To me, music is the most enjoyable aspect of art and I believe that although everyone perceives it differently, it cannot be evaluated with subjective criteria.

There are albums that I consider masterpieces yet in the hands of someone who hasn’t yet acquired the requisite understanding to appreciate them, its intolerable noises. Plus, the music industry seems to endorse a mass culture that transformed music from a way of entertainment (for lack of a better term) to sterilized amusement, making the number of inexperienced ears grow bigger day by day.

Nevertheless, music albums act as objective aesthetic standards whose purpose is to express the emotions and/or thoughts of the artist, to embody beauty and to induce a catharsis in the listener. By doing so, their music enters our lives, our souls; We dance, drive, argue, laugh, cry and make love to albums; On first listening they unfold as books and movies do, each track carrying us further into unknown territory, past terrifying peaks and pools of calm. As times passes by, we hear them hundreds of times and we absorb their licks and chords by osmosis until we find ourselves singing and air-guitaring along with the music, even when we are only hearing it in our heads.

Personally, It's no exaggeration to say that music has a huge impact on every aspect of my life. As a child, anything I liked was mine and I could appreciate the world through it. Music taught me a lot about every other art form, not as a surrogate, but just as a pathway. I studied the work of Dylan Thomas after listening to Bob Dylan, I became familiar with Henry David Thoreau via Pink Floyd, I came to admire Mati Klarwein's visionary paintings from Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, I began reading Huxley's stuff after listening to The Doors and I became accustomed to many African American Community issues from Public Enemy. It seemed to me that there was always something new to learn, some reference hidden behind album covers, lyrics or song titles. Something helped create those sounds that intrigued me and I happily looked that up. To make a long story short, I discovered a profound love into digging up the stories, the trivia, the cultural references, the recording techniques and the resemblances between music trends and other arts such as literature, poetry, cinema and anything else that catches my fancy.

DJ Shadow once said that “When I sample something, it's because there's something ingenious about it And if it isn't the group as a whole, it's that song. Or, even if it isn't the song as a whole, it's a genius moment, or an accident or something that makes it just utterly unique to the other trillions of hours of records that I've plowed through”. Similarly, whenever I come across something I perceive as ingenious- regardless of genre, I post it here: Classic Rock, Hard Rock, Psychedelic, Trip-Hop, Jazz, Drum & Bass, Hip-Hop, Punk, Reggae, Dub, selected Videos, Documentaries and many more. After all, all music genres connect with one another.

Countless Blues and R&B tracks are sampled at a regural basis from Hip-Hop artists to achieve higher levels of expression, the source of which comes from Dub music and Jamaican toasters who were chanting using improvised lyrics over a rhythm or beat. Pioneers like DJ Kool Herc carried that sound into the streets of Bronx creating Hip-Hop while Jamaican rudeboys inspired the lower-class youth in Britain to create the Punk movement. The Clash wrote music whose initial aggression masked a sophistication that that would soon make the term "Punk" seem laughably misplaced as they assimilated Hip-Hop and were grappling with Dub and Reggae, making their sound incredibly fresh. Furthermore, Dub features like sub-bass, skittering and jittery drums (which would later be termed "2-step"), distortive echo and reverberation effects, along with other soundsystem techniques went on to form Electronica, Jungle, Garage, and eventually Dubstep.

And of course Rock has its roots on the Blues. The Blues were born in the North Mississippi Delta following the Civil War. Influenced by African Roots, field hollers, ballads, church music and rhythmic dance tunes called jump-ups evolved into a music for a singer who would engage in call-and-response with his guitar. Artists such as Robert Johnson - whose sound is critically recognized as the culmination of the Delta Blues tradition, have strongly influenced almost all popular music including Jazz, Country, and Rock and Roll and continue to help shape music worldwide. When the Blues migrated to Chicago and Detroit- during the later forties and early fifties, it became electrified. Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, and Elmore James among others, played what was basically Mississippi Delta Blues, backed by bass, drums, piano and occasionally harmonica, and began scoring national hits with Blues songs. Many of Johnson's compositions by now had become electric Blues standards.

In the UK artists such as Eric Clapton were intrigued by the Chicago style Blues and by copying its intensity created a whole new way of playing that dominated the 60's and 70's. Acts like Cream, Free, Black Sabbath, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and countless more basically played an updated, energized version of the Blues. The "British ambassadors" Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were major Delta Blues fans, so does Angus Young who sees himself as "a Blues guitarist playing Rock & Roll". Gang Starr's Guru has collaborated with numerous Jazz artists whereas Miles Davis experimented with Hip-Hop oriented sounds before his death at age 65. John Densmore loves Jazz, so does Charlie Watts. The Housemartins were an english pop band yet FatBoy Slim evolved to a Big Beat DJ. In 2003, DJ Muggs recorded an Electronica record, proving that he is not limited to his usual Cypress Hill sounds. Ritchie Blackmore currently plays Folk music - whose trademark representative, Bob Dylan admires Rap artists such Kurtis Blow and Run-DMC.

Now, although it is obvious that music classification is wrong, there are obviously separate categories of genres tagged appropriately in this site. However, you should try to broaden your search to find more stuff you like. All in all, links found here are provided solely for cultural purposes. In order to have an ultimate musical experience you need excellent music quality that mp3s can't deliver, and quality artwork as well. So please buy the original record and support true artists that deserve to be heard! If you are an artist that wants to be indexed in this site, contact me. Also, bookmark this site or follow via Google and try to comment back, it would be nice for this site to evolve into a quality music community! Enjoy and let the music play!

2 σχόλια:

T-Bird said...: glad to see this up here. a few comments about the writeup: 1. al kooper is an organist, not a guitarist. 2. while i'm not recommending it *at all,* the fact of the matter about heroin is that unless you o.d. (which you could do on any number of drugs) the drug itself isn't what kills most addicts--it's that they forget to do basic things like eat and take care of themselves because they are so focused on getting high.
...also, a lot of people might recognize "season of the witch" because it was sampled for a big hiphop hit. the break is in the first 30 seconds...; November 22, 2011 2:51 PM
G said...: True, Kooper has played many instruments on many records perhaps I should credit him as a multi-instrumentalist..As for the heroin facts you mentioned,since it has such a powerful impact on people that you either o.d or neglect basic needs, it's what deteriorates you to the level of a sick animal waiting to die. It kills you either way...; November 23, 2011 1:40 AM

Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, Steve Stills - Super Session (Blues, 1968)

2 σχόλια:

Recent Comments

Twitter Updates

Search This Blog

Thesis

Your Favourite Music Is:

Comment, Chat & upload board

Support Real Artists

Won't you follow me

Visitors Counter

Labels

Last Month's Most Popular

Last Week's Most Popular

Archive