The Blues has destroyed my life,... making it wonderful !!
- 01/08/2013
To say that Blues is not just a music genre, could sound as a trite and hackneyed phrase, but , believe me, in my case is quite the Simple Truth.
The Blues has coloured and shaped my entire life... ever since I first listened to it , at the age of 14...In that heartbreaking visceral sound, I had finally found something that could understand me, something that could touch you by reaching the deepest part of your soul.
Since that moment, I’ve just kept following my instinct: to express myself by playing the Blues, as well as I could... I simply had to stick to the sound that would excite me into life, the one Sound that , till today, has been the key to access life and understand this encoded surrounding reality.
Many people share the belief that The Blues is a simple music to perform or understand...Well, they’re dead wrong...I believe “Blues is the simpliest music ...you could perform wrongly!!!”
Of course, to believe that today, in so technological a society, where everyone is rushing so fast, were everything is connected to the web, there still can be someone who willfully pulls up his guitar to play Blues, must sound a little bit out of time and fashion ... but it is not so instead, because the blues will never die, as “people will always be in need of a bit of Blues”.
Everytime I listen to people as B.B. King, Skip James, Robert Johnson,Stevie Ray Vaughan, Albert Collins, Johnny Winter, Albert King, Eric Clapton,Frank Frost, Muddy Waters, Bukka White, Jimi Hendrix, Son House, Robben Ford,Jimmy Reed and Their blues mates, I just don’t feel anachronistic : I’m in Heaven instead... (or should I rather say Hell?)
All music genres owe something to The Blues... Music in general, may it be Rock or Jazz , Hard Rock or Progressive, wouldn’t have been the same without the Blues... every musician should be so humble as to admit it.
In 1971, while the four baronets were climbing on top of the European music charts, J. Lennon stated “ Well, I wish I could just do like B.B. King “ ; their cousins The Rolling Stones had always shown deep interest in The R&B, in the music by Chuck Berry, in the hypnotic riff of Muddy Waters: this band was so called after a song by Muddy Waters!!
Blues Quotes
The blues is a chair, not a design for a chair or a better chair... it is the first chair. It is a chair for sitting on, not for looking at. You sit on that music. (John Lennon)
The blues is the music of the devil and we are his children. (Walter Mosley)
Lay down at night you don't know where you're goin' to sleep, where on earth your next meal to meet, that make you a Bluesman. (Juke Boy Bonner)
Blues is Easy to play, but hard to feel. (Jimi Hendrix)
A guy will promise you the world and give you nothin', and that's the blues. (Otis Rush)
Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable. (Janis Joplin)
Like you and your woman ain't gettin' along and you're in love. You can't sleep at nights. Your mind is on her - on whatever. You know, that's the blues. You can't hug that money at night. You can't kiss it. (John Lee Hooker).
I been in the blues all my life. I'm still delivering 'cause I got a long memory. (Muddy Waters)
My idea of heaven is a place where the Tyne meets the Delta, where folk music meets the Blues. (Mark Knopfler)
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