After Considerable Thought …

Here’s all I can say about Rolling Stone’s 14 Classic Albums That Flopped When They Were Released.

Yeah, well.

Different Shades of Blue

One of the things I really dig about Joe Bonamassa is he’s an all-in-one deal.  

Play one of his CD’s and by the time you’re done you’ve had your Cream fix, your Zeppelin fix, your Allman fix …  Buddy Guy, B.B., Gary Moore, Rory Gallagher, Mark Knopfler, Taj Mahal … Humble Pie, Savoy Brown – the list goes on and on.

With Joe, you get all the major food groups in one very tasty blues-rock stew.

Like all great musicians, Joe Bonamassa has his own voice.  But like all great musicians, he’s a superb student of what’s come before.

So Many Roads

With apologies to the purists, here are the songs that helped me figure out that  The Blues was the thing:

·      Jimi Hendrix - Voodoo Child (Slight Return)

·      Led Zeppelin – When The Levee Breaks

·      The Doors – Riders On The Storm

·      Canned Heat – On The Road Again

·      Cream – Crossroads

·      Led Zeppelin – Since I’ve Been Loving You

·      Elvis Presley – Heartbreak Hotel

·      Johnny Winter – Highway 61 Revisited

·      The Beatles – Come Together

·      Creedence Clearwater Revival – Suzie-Q

Yeah, I know – but we all get there by different roads.  For me, Main Street was called Beatles Avenue.  Take a right at Rock & Roll Drive, left on Psychedelic Boulevard, left again at Hard Rock Road, slip down a back alley and you find this cool juke joint where they’re all playing:  B.B., Muddy, Sonny Boy, Howlin’’ Wolf, Hooker …  all of ‘em.

Does the road matter if we reach the destination?

Relax and Float Downstream

Here’s some Socratic reasoning:  Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles is an R&B tune because it has a hypnotic, driving beat.  It is also a folk song because it’s carried by simple strumming on an acoustic guitar.  But it’s pretty heavy, so you could argue it’s a rock song.  Or compromise and call it folk rock. 

Then again it’s very trippy, so really it’s psychedelic rock – or maybe even early prog rock, since it lifts from other genres and quotes strange modalities.

Or you could say it’s all of those things, which happens to nicely sum up The Beatles.  Now, if you can say a single song can represent the diverse canon of the best group of all time, then obviously that song is the best song of all time.