Blues For Life Your place for blues reviews and news.

Now I've really never liked John Mayer even when he would hang out with Eric Clapton, and Buddy Guy. To me he's always been this arrogant ass selling himself out. While I admit he has fantastic taste in cars, I still find him unacceptable.  However, I have never been able to eloquently manifest my thoughts in my head on paper but luckily now I don't have to as some hobbit has done it for me. (Did you know that in New Zealand there are the three Orcs for every one person.)

Thing is, John Mayer, the reason you bugged me (and still bug me) is because you have created a cult where a bunch of people see you as a serious musician who just happened to take a shot at being a pop star because it was handed to you and then decided you would make a bid for seriousness on the side.

In fact, the way I put it last time was:

Mayer does not deserve the chance to redeem himself with his white-boy blues and folky guitar antics. He made his choice. He allowed the music industry to package him up. And he needs to stay in that box. And be that guy. He can try his best to be Michael Hedges or Pat Metheny. But he'll still be plying two-hand acoustic tapping on a custom harp-guitar to the sound of Your Body Is a Wonderland.

And I stand by that. But this is where I kick myself, John Mayer, I really do. I threw out a wee taunt to you, a slightly barbed challenge. I suggested that you made your sappy-pop bed when you signed your life away on the line. And I told you to quit pretending to put your alleged pedigree to use and go back to making music so lame I won't even be sent copies of it and won't have to try to form an opinion of it.

I concluded with the cheap shot (or Cold Shot perhaps, since you're a fan of Stevie Ray Vaughan) that your body of work is no wonderland.

Hit the link for more.

Otis Rush is easily my favourite Blues singer. Hell- my favourite singer period. The tonal range, emotion and power of his voice never fails to inspire awe in me. No performance demonstrates better(in my humble opinion) how completely great a singer Otis Rush is then “My Love Will Never Die”. Absolutely perfect!



Oh yes- He's been known to bend a string or two also. A true blues giant!

Otis suffered a stroke in 2004 which put and end to performing for Otis. He has since been honoured with a marker on The Mississippi Blues Trail. It's located at the train station in his home town of Philadelphia, Mississippi. This is the spot where Otis caught the train headed North to Chicago. The rest is Blues history.

Our prayers are with you Otis. Get well!

Another not to secret side to me is that I've been a fan of Jazz longer than I've been of blues. (Nothing preference wise but I had heard Jazz first.) I love jazz and a early figure for me in Jazz is Wynton Marsalis. In elementary school music class I remember watching  his videos and I completed in a Jazz competition in High School to play with him at Lincoln Center (turns out our band was ineligible). While I had always had a great respect for the man I didn't think it could get any higher, till now. I present to you an interview he did last month with CNN about his music and blues music as a whole.

CNN: What led to the compartmentalization of these kinds of music, that came from the same roots?

MARSALIS: Money and racism. I don't know which one came first.

CNN: Why was blues not regarded as something of value in this country?

MARSALIS: It came from who we didn't like. That's what it was -- it wasn't that we couldn't see it. Who it came from, we did not like them.

CNN: So do you include African-Americans in that? So black people didn't appreciate it?

MARSALIS: They didn't appreciate it. They don't now. That's part of the whole kind of self-hatred that comes from that type of slavery that the black American still labors under. That racism was heavy.

The legacy of it -- it wasn't just 50 years. It was seven generations, and if a generation is 33 years, ... seven or eight [generations]. That's a long time. And to recover from it has proven to be very difficult......

Marsalis in unapologetically blunt, as he should be. Looking at my school campus lately I have been thinking about racism . You see while my school, George Mason University touts diversity as a drawing factor I've been amazed at how self segregated the school population is. Nearly every group you see is racially homogeneous, next to no one hangs out with people of other races. While I may hang out with a diverse crowd I've been shocked lately by everyone else. What I needed is a little reminded from Marsalis about how racism effects American life and more specifically something I love, the blues. The article interview is incredibly insightful and a great read that I heartily recommend.

Freddie King was a monster performer.

Today one of my earliest harmonica influences passed away, Norton Buffalo of the Steve Miller Band. He was 58 and the cause was lung cancer. I first saw Norton in 2006 at a show the Steve Miller Band was doing at Wolftrap. The band was great but the audience was full of women in their 40s drinking margaritas and pretending they were back in the 1970s and still sexually attractive. They talked the entire fucking show, I wanted to kill them. Norton however was great and this was at a time where I was really beginning to work on my harp chops so I took his performance to heart. He will be missed. [source]