Serenity Now
I love slide guitar. I’m not a devoted student, but I do play slide on occasion, and I always wish I were better at it. I saw Duane Allman twice with The Allman Brothers Band, and he represents some kind of slide guitar ground zero for me. I know it’s a relatively simple part, but check out “Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’”. Love that “wi WOW” figure in the song’s “A” section.
And, of course, Derek Trucks took the baton from Duane and just kills! I’ve written before about his and my mutual love for Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Maki Madni – Derek’s application of American blues-based slide guitar to Qawwali seems perfectly natural.
Bonnie Raitt’s recording of John Hiatt’s “Thing Called Love” isn’t a deep track or anything, but it’s a great example of Bonnie’s distinctive slide playing. And to complete the circle, slide player Sonny Landreth figures prominently in John Hiatt’s catalog – check out his playing on his own “Congo Square”.
I also recently saw Jason Isbell in concert and was impressed by Sadler Vaden’s slide work. So check him out.
Delta Blues musicians, I guess, pioneered this whole thing. Listen to Charley Patton’s “A Spoonful Blues”, recorded in 1929. And of course there’s the great and mysterious and legendary Robert Johnson; witness “Come On in My Kitchen”.
Johnny Winter’s eponymous album is a long time favorite of mine, and his playing on “Dallas” Is the real deal.
One of the zillion things to admire about George Harrison’s guitar work was that he developed a distinctive and expressive style of slide guitar that was mostly separate and apart from the Southern, blues style that I’ver been talking about. The obvious example is on his hit “My Sweet Lord”. I’ve thought that the beautiful slide guitar on Weyes Blood’s “Andromeda” is a kind of homage to George’s slide style. (I think this part is played by Blake Mills, fwiw. If any of you know him, please ask him if I’m right ;-).)
BUT I DIGRESS. Cue the slide guitars! (And click the image to listen.):
This new song was inspired by my feeling that we’re all awash in the experience of things’ not working the way they should – chronic disfunction everywhere – and that we’re getting just a little frustrated that we can’t figure out how to fix it. Maybe it’s just me, so if you don’t relate, apologies for dwelling on this idea.
I wonder why there’s so much anger out there. (Do I really wonder, do I?) The rage expressed by the January 6 rioters. The tone of political “debate”. I would blame it on the pandemic and its aftermath, but it’s been building for a while. (In her very excellent book, “Doppelganger”, Naomi Klein nicely identifies the pandemic as a “threat multiplier”. So things have certainly gotten worse.)
Speaking in my role as armchair psychologist, I note that the real experts say that the frustration you experience by continually trying but failing to accomplish something can lead to a number of unpleasant “feelings”: stress, anger, aggressive behavior, irritability, depression. “Frustration, if left unaddressed, can evolve to helplessness, annoyance, anger, or rage.” So it matters. It hurts.
Are we all trying to accomplish a thing, over and over again, and yet failing? It does seem like it. So what is that thing, then, that we’re all trying to accomplish? Certainly it doesn’t feel like we’re in agreement about what that is. And maybe that’s the issue.
You say stop, I say go
I say Beatles and you say no
How can we achieve some common ground
You say states, I say fed
I say blue and you say red
Time for us to turn this thing around
As usual, I have absolutely no special insight into all this, much less any useful ideas for what to do. So … feeling frustrated now? How about NOW?
OK, one idea, a coping mechanism pioneered in an episode of Seinfeld : SERENITY NOW!
Ha ha ha. Ha. In the meantime, all y’all please hang in there, okay, and let’s get’er done. If we can do it, it all might get better. And, as always, thanks for listening.
