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"I hate the blues."
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Hunter T Wolfe
Hunter T Wolfe
1701 posts

Re:
Nov 06, 2009, 19:10
"I hate the blues" - I take it to mean that he, personally, doesn't enjoy listening to blues music, and so he was therefore surprised to find himself enjoying Blue Cheer, who he acknowledges are blues-derived.

I think it's a personal taste thing. He's not trying to knock The Blues off their historical perch. He didn't make a statement 'blues music is rubbish,' he just admitted that he personally didn't enjoy listening to it. And there's no law that says everyone has to like, or even pretend to like, listening to any particular genre of music just because it is undeniably important and furthermore to those who do like it full of variation and depth and subtlety and so on?

Lots of people on this forum say they hate jazz, which is just as much of a blanket dismissal of a vast range of very varied music that is also historically hugely important to the whole field of popular music. But they are within their rights to say they don't like it, if that's how they feel. So chill out somewhat.

By inference and by his previous statements on the subject though, I think if Julian does have any case against the blues it's that it's a bit old hat these days, that the genre has to an extent become defined by its cliches, and that in rock music 12-bar blues is often a default setting that can become a limitation stopping more interesting experimentation? Like Eno's statement about putting any three rock musicians in a room and telling them to improvise, and they'll immediately just start jamming on the blues rather than do anything more original, which is why he likes to work with non-musicians or throw a spanner in the works with his oblique strategies.

Me, I like blues (and jazz) but I think it's a fair point.
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