Dear John, I'm a firm believer if there had been no Willie Dixon, there would never have been a Led Zepplin. Zep covered Mr. Dixon's tunes to where they were unrecognizable. Loved and loathed by many. I liked them personally. Incredible arena rock. What I didn't like was their failure to pay just due for the rights to the songs, but that's a whole 'nother story. Saw them 5 times and was ready to fight the lines for tickets in 1980 when Bonham died. End of an era. Last week I prattled on about John Primer and never once mentioned his cohort, Bob Corritore. Bob's resume reads like a Blues Who's Who. He's been nominated for all kinds of awards and is rated in the top tier of Blues harp players working today. He's been doing his radio show for more than 30 years offering an entertaining and historical oversight of our music. It hit me that I'm taking Bob for granted which was not my intention. PBS has such a close relationship with Bob and the RR I just think he's always gonna be there. My apologies Mr. C. Chandler is Friday for the Blues and Saturday night for jazz. This is a free show and is always a lot of fun. Make your plans. Guys must be taking the week off because the Out & About section is a tad skimpy this week. You never know. Awesome days and nights are here to get out and enjoy live music all over the Valley. Pick a genre and show your support. Have a week! Sincerely, Jim Crawford - PBS |
Hippie Blues: Zep by John Covach, It used to be said that somewhere in the world, at any given moment, "Stairway to Heaven" is playing on the radio. This 1971 track from the fourth Led Zeppelin album, with its mellow guitar intro (perhaps borrowed from Spirit's "Taurus"), became so ubiquitous in rock culture that it formed the basis for a well-known music-store gag in Wayne's World (a sign in the store reading "No Stairway to Heaven"). Like "Bohemian Rhapsody" for Queen, "Money" for Pink Floyd or "Hotel California" for the Eagles, "Stairway" played an important role in making Led Zep one of the highest-profile bands of the 1970s. Some would even argue that Page, Plant and company are to the 70s what the Beatles are to the 1960s, Elvis to the 1950s or Michael Jackson to the 1980s.Despite Led Zeppelin's status as icons of 70s rock, the band's music is steeped in the British electric blues and psychedelia of the 1960s. The first two albums, of course, were released in 1969; Led Zeppelin II competed in the album charts in the autumn of 1969 with the Beatles' Abbey Road - placing the 1960s and the 70s in immediate musical juxtaposition. Is there any other way to hear the center section of "Whole Lotta Love" as something other than late-60s psychedelic head music (though more sexually driven than most hippie soundscapes to be sure) or the slow sections of "Dazed and Confused" as opiate-induced languor? It was trippy blues, or better yet, "hippie blues."The blues roots in Led Zeppelin's music have been much discussed; the story is often told of how the band developed out of the ashes of the Yardbirds, a band that in many ways carried the torch for electric blues on the London scene in the mid 1960s after the Rolling Stones became an international sensation. The Yardbirds soon had hits of their own, though the recording of "For Your Love" became famous for Eric Clapton's refusal to sell out to pop sensibilities, leaving the band to play a more authentic style of electric blues with John Mayall. The Stones, Clapton and even Mayall owed much of their blues scene in London during the 1962-64 period to Alexis Korner, Cyril Davies and the band that started it all: Blues Incorporated. Led Zep guitarist and mastermind Jimmy Page also moved in these circles, as did bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones. In fact, the circle around Korner and his band touched many other important British musicians, including Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and even jazz guitarist John McLaughlin. Page and Jones also spent most of the mid 1960s in the recording studio, playing sessions and developing the skills (as well as a certain pop sensibility) that would soon come in handy when Zeppelin began recording, especially into the 1970s as the band's music became increasingly ambitious. This is the path to "Stairway to Heaven."In his article "Does The Song Remain the Same?" music theorist Dave Headlam identifies the sources that Page and the band used for a large number of tracks on the first four albums. Of course, covering the music of other musicians was very much a part of the London blues scene - indeed, it played a central role in British pop in general during the early 1960s, as American records were quickly copied in British versions before the originals could find distribution in the UK. But most often the sources of the music were acknowledged, and even trumpeted with a certain pride among the British bluesmen (Muddy Waters was a favorite among these groups). The Beatles (like other Liverpool bands) played dozens of covers, and several of the early Stones singles were cover versions (the early albums are packed with them). So it would seem that while Led Zep's later adaptation of already-released music was in keeping with a well established and widespread practice, they were the exception in that they did not often acknowledge the original sources. But even that characterization is not quite right, since early Rolling Stones b-sides, for instance, were revamped versions of other records, credited to Nanker Phelge: "Stoned" was a reworking of "Green Onions" by Booker T and the MGs, and "Little By Little" recast Jimmy Reed's "Shame, Shame, Shame." Of course, this reworking of material without attribution was motivated by a desire to collect publishing royalties for the newly "created" song. Still, in this context it is clear that even the infamous Led Zeppelin song "thievery" (Robert Plant's word for it) was rooted in 1960s practice and was nothing new in 1969.We tend to remember Led Zeppelin in terms of the studio albums, produced with increasing skill by Page, who is certainly one of the masters of layering guitars and who captured the big sound of John Bonham's drums to perfection. But Led Zep was first and foremost a live band; once that band took the stage, it might be three or more hours before they stepped down. Live Zeppelin was often drenched in improvisation: songs might go in any number of directions once they got going. And the live sound was much sparer than the studio sound, with no layers of guitars to thicken the texture. From a musical point of view, a live show was a very different undertaking from recording an album: in performance it was about owning the stage, creating dynamic contrasts and taking the music wherever it seemed to want to go that night. In London during the mid 1960s, fans would have called such interpretive freedom a rave up; in the late 1960s it was a jam, but by the 1970s it was hardly an innovation. Like San Francisco bands such as the Grateful Dead, or southern rock bands like the Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin in concert were a jam band: how many more ways can you play "How Many More Times?"The sixties roots of Led Zeppelin provide further evidence for an argument I have been making for many years now: there is a clear line of historical and music-stylistic development that can be followed from the early 1960s through the late 1970s. While some rock historians have seen a distinct break between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, perhaps marked symbolically by the tragic events at Altamont in late 1969, I have argued that the lines of continuity are far stronger than the moments of discontinuity. In the case of Led Zeppelin, we can locate their roots in the London pop and blues scene of the 1960s, and trace the band's emergence out of the blues-inspired music of the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, and Cream into a style that continued to blend blues with folk (Joan Baez, Bert Jansch), pop and even prog-rock to create a distinctive style that seems to stand as the sound - or at least one very important sound - of the 70s. The influence of Led Zep continued to be felt long after the band's demise in the wake of drummer John Bonham's death in 1980. Many would cite the band as an important source for the "heavy" rock of the 70s, 80s and 90s including heavy metal (though Page is quick to remind us that the group did plenty of lighter, acoustic-based music). When the first album was recorded during the fall of 1968 and released in early 1969, it was indeed fresh. But it was not a break with the past. Looking back after forty-five years, it seems clear that, in spite of all of the other styles figuring into the story, at its core the music of Led Zeppelin is hippie blues. Zep covering a WD/ Muddy tune |
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| OUT & ABOUT Tuesday, April 2 Wednesday, April 3 Hans Olson, 7 p.m., Time Out Lounge, Tempe Chuck Hall, 6 p.m., Corrado's, Carefree Thursday, April 4 Sugar Thieves, 6 p.m., Goodyear Festival, Goodyear Eric Ramsey Hosts OPEN MIC, 6 p.m., Fatso's Pizza, Phoenix Hans Olson (EVERY THURSDAY), 6 p.m., Handlebar, Apache Junction Arizona Blues Project, 8 p.m., Harold's, Cave Creek Friday, April 5 Innocent Joe and the Hostile Witnesses; The Blues Review Band; Rhythm & Bluesmen w/ Geo Bowman; Bob Fahey, 5 p.m., Chandler Jazz & Blues Festival, Chandler Blues Review Band, 8 p.m., All American, Fountain Hills Cold Shott & The Hurricane Horns, 7 p.m., Wigwam Resort, Litchfield Park Common Ground Blues Band, 8 p.m., El Dorado, Scottsdale BluZone, 8:30 p.m., The Bench, Tempe Brown Dog Blues Band, 7:30 p.m., Twisted Lizard, Scottsdale Paris James, 6:30 p.m., Scratch Pub, Mesa Saturday, April 6 Hans Olson w/Chuck Hall, 5:30 p.m., Bryan's BBQ, Cave Creek Cadillac Assembly Line, 8 p.m., Mountain View Pub, Cave Creek Outback Blues Band, 7 p.m., Stanford Inn, Salome Mother Road Trio, 5 p.m., PJ's Pub, Sedona Sunday, April 7 Mike Eldred, 3 p.m., The Vig, Scottsdale True Flavor Blues, NOON , Copper Star, Phoenix Monday, April 8
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Weekly Jams Sunday Rocket 88s JAM, 4 p.m., Chopper John's, Phoenix Bourbon Jack's JAM w/Kody Herring, 6 p.m., Chandler Sir Harrison, JAM every other Sunday, The Windsock, Prescott MONDAY Bam Bam & Badness Open JAM, 9 p.m., Char's, Phoenix Weatherford Hotel JAM, 6:30 p.m., Flagstaff TUESDAY OPEN JAM Hosted by Jilly Bean & The Flipside Blues Band, 7 p.m., Steel Horse Saloon, Phoenix JAM Sir Harrison, 9 p.m., Char's, Phoenix Rocket 88s, JAM, 6 p.m., The Last Stop (Old Hideaway West), Phoenix Gypsy's Bluesday Night JAM, 7 p.m. Pho Cao, Tempe Tailgaters JAM, 7 p.m., Glendale WEDNESDAY Tool Shed NEW JAM Party, 6 p.m. Gabby's, Mesa THURSDAY Tool Shed JAM Party, 7 p.m., Steel Horse Saloon, Phoenix Jolie's Place JAM w/Adrenaline, 9 p.m., Chandler JAM Hosted by The Scott O'Neal Band. Every other Thursday, Windsock, Prescott Friday Saturday Bumpin' Bud's JAM 2nd & 4th Saturdays JAM, 6 p.m., Marc's Sports Grill |
Moved? Changed email addresses? Please let us know of any changes in your address, email, or phone number so we can keep you informed about the Blues community in Arizona. Email us at: info@phoenixblues.org or write to: Phoenix Blues Society P.O. Box 36874 Phoenix, Arizona 85067 |
GOT BLUES? If you are a Blues musician, a group, or a club that features Blues music, and would like to be listed, please send your info to info@phoenixblues.org and we'll be happy to list your event in our weekly Out & About section of the newsletter |
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