The "Blues-Free Environment"

We're gettin' down today
We'll pick you up and take you away
Get down tonight, well alright!

british punk liked blues and its derivatives better

The first time I heard that song, it struck me as a James Gang rip/homage, straight from "Rides Again."

Last Boston album, "Corporate America," had a decent amount of thud to it. Again I heard Scholz' fondness for heavily compressed arena rock just pre-Boston.

Boston, over the long run, was far and away heavier than Blue Cheer, who were recorded shrill and noisy, about the opposite of Boston. They didn't have anywhere near the recording savvy or equipment to comment their live sound to vinyl and by the time that rolled around, they weren't heavy, the big guitar sound was long gone.

The Scholz sound, which he patented and patented and patented again in guitar hardware, was many flavors of heavy and it surely lent itself to the blues because ZZ Top used it relentlessly, among others.
I used it to record albums and it had a lot of growl to it when you wanted it to sound rock and roll tough.

Funny enough, I no longer particularly like the first two Boston records but do listen to the last one occasionally.

wow i have never heard this but it seems true!!

I guess I've always associated 'Disco Sucks' with rock fans more than punks, though. Those people at that Chicago White Sox game, for example.

I know what they are, but they're not "blue chords", they're "blues chords."

Anyway, it's interesting and of course Chuck is always so entertaining. Boston is pretty good, it's real straight music. And to me part of the whole blues thing is not playing straight--apart from the songform aspect of it. Punk musicians also played real straight and of course there's no harmonic thing happening in most of it either. I don't get the opposition between "blues" and disco--I mean at that point in pop music what was really "blues" to begin with? Southern rock I guess, and down here all the Allman Brothers fans hated disco. And as Peter Shapiro points out, the single biggest musical influence on disco is that Gamble and Huff music with Earl Young on drums, and that had very little do with blues, even less than most soul music has to do with blues. I guess what I'm saying is, it's weird to me to even think in those terms by 1976 or whatever, it seems that anyone who really had a big animus against disco because it wasn't "bluesy" were people who were, you know, moldy old bluesniks or southern rock fans. It always seemed funny and just so counter-productive to me, even then, and now even more. Why sweat any of it? If the disco beat bothers you more than the tasty and "complex" twin drumming of those guys in the Allman Brothers, then that just strikes me as a peculiar personal problem. And the big thing that seems weird to me, too, is that disco drumming in part derives from tightened-up funk drumming which derives from parade-beat/New Orleans drumming, which is just as essential to rock and roll as is "blues." In the end (I'll quit rambling on now) it all strikes me as historical amnesia.

they might not exactly be equiv, but all the heaviest stuff i can think of is generally all the growliest stuff, and vice versa.

I would be really interested to hear an explanation as to what possible way Marquee Moon is bebop.

-- petesmith (plsmit...), August 22nd, 2005.

My point, though, was that most of Scholz's tones are not growly and he probably had the heaviest sound of them all.

Walter, yeah, I'm not saying all disco was blues-free. Off the top of my head, though, it seems to me that there was probably less use of the minor pentatonic notes in a major key, less use of the blues chords, etc. I'm not sure about all of your examples. "I Will Survive," for example, is very diatonic, I think. (It's in a minor key, but obviously minor in general =/ blues.)

well i haven't listned to it in a couple of years and i don't have it handy, but i guess i was referring less to the style of music and more to a philosophy: a sort of systematic deliberateness, confident professionalism (where even if it's being played fast it feels slow), respect for the different parts/players (not stepping on their toes), a veneer of refinement amidst the willfulness.

I hear you. And I think Gloria Gaynor's vocal on "I Will Survive" is awesome. But I still think the melodic structure of the thing maybe had something to do with people thinking it was crass pop music rather than blues.

I think for that line of reasoning to work you would need to point to some black female singers who were more bluesy and more widely accepted by the disco-sucks crowd. It also implies that the disco-sucksers would have liked some of the more blues-oriented club songs if they had heard anything outside of the big chart hits.

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I am so glad that I'm too old to be bothered going to clubs like that anymore.

Yeah, prob'ly true, but I always think we were kidding ourselves as immaculately denimed, coiffured teenage metallers when we thought we weren't into "fashion".

doesn't everyone have at least one outfit that they wear out on dates and stuff?

Were they? I don't know the era well enough but in that case who did pioneer the sound (and it is a very distinct sound)? Argent's "Hold You Head High" was 1972 I guess. I suppose Styx had some stuff out before Boston too, which has less boogie to it. But I did see Boston as unique in the heavily Americanized synthesis of pop-Yes and pop-Zeppelin (with maybe some Eagles in there too).

xpost (Hmm, maybe even "Layla" and "Badge" for that matter are forerunners of this sound?)

not before Booker T & the MGs?

i'm your captain.

but the blues is a feeling

I'm shocked no one jumped in and said "the blues is More Than a Feeling"

To introduce a new element, since this has ranged far and wide: what about the falsetto? I was relatively musically sheltered and had the good fortune of coming out of it just when punk/new wave broke, so I hated both Disco and longhair 70s rock and in both cases something I remember (and call this homophobic if you will) that started with The Bee Gees but applied equally to Rush, Boston, etc. in my mind was men singing like girls. Just bugged me then and though I've gotten over it I think it still is something I have to get through to enjoy certain music.

Bear in mind I was a teenager then, so this was a very knee jerk think. My exposure to 'heavy' rock was minimal (I grew up the eldest in a very religious family) and limited to what I heard on the radio ... but even say the end of 'Stairway to Heaven' ... I could hear that the band rocked out, but the guy singing in that falsetto just seemed "gay" (using the word in a very Junior High sense and well aware that it's far from it.)

I liked punk because the people sounded like they were singing in their actual voices (the yelps of Devo and David Byrne straining the top of his range notwithstanding.)

Of all the theories presented, I really think the reaction to Disco had as much to do with it's ubiquitousness (-osity?) as anything. It doesn't matter whether other rock was played on the radio at the time. Top 40 radio has always repeated 'hits' more than I care to hear them, and I don't think the 'disco sucks' of then is much different than the 'britney sucks' of today.

There certainly was a 'rock sucks' movement, and it was called punk.

Naw, Styx rocked more early on in their catalog. Lots of people hear "Lady" and go full stop but, by and large, the first four records on Wooden Nickel have a very fair measure of American hard rock and boogie mixed up with grander plans. And they were all prior to Boston.

er... not that I am aware of.

I think it's cool that you were there to see it, and I like hearing your perspective - feel free to correct me 'cause you're the older guy, but goddam, I don't even know you - what's with the name calling ("maroon") and sniping ("this is so full of shit it squeaks," or whatever the hell you said) in your post? Shouldn't you be at some ribfest in the 'burbs checking out the Savoy Brown reunion tour?

So I dunno, I'm suspicious about Allmans fans being "pro-black." Pro OLD black, good old southern-liberal crap, blues fans who dig Albert Collins or whoever but find modern black music all threatening and "not real." What's interesting about Shapiro's book is the early use of records by unlikely bands like Chicago or Cat Mother (described as a "hippie jam" in the book) by proto-disco DJs. Or, listen to stuff from the early '70s like Cymande, that's certainly got affinities with the Allman Brothers to my ears. I tend to be a syncretist in a big way when we're talking about music, and disco always seemed to me to be such a perfect example of this...Shapiro's book convinces me of it even more.

I get what Don says about blues as soundscape on something like Layla, don't get the bit about Clapton on those London Howlin' Wolf sessions, or why playing like that is blues/not blues because it's "geometrical." You could say the same thing about the guitar playing on Howard Tate's records from 1967; that Greil Marcus quote just strikes me as kinda Greil Marcus's bullshit. Actually, I never much liked Eric Clapton's guitar playing, but I think what he plays on "Rockin' Daddy" on those London Wolf sessions is just about the best thing he ever did. But maybe I'm missing something here, Don, so feel free to set me straight.

Green Onions / Behave Yourself
(Volt V-102, October 1962)
Reissued as Stax S-127
Billboard Hot 100 Chart Peak: #3
Entered Chart: 08/11/62
Weeks on Chart: 16
Billboard R&B Chart Peak: #1

Booker T's crew were quietly travelling across the mid-60s South, probably in cars, or maybe a van, way before ever getting a bus, much less a plane

http://img.epinions.com/images/opti/5b/bd/137119-music-resized200.JPG

because remixing as we know it now didn't exist (yet) during The Gallery's mid-70s heyday. Right around this Tom Moulton was inventing the process with his party tapes and studio work with Gloria Gaynor and her producers Tony Bongiovi and Meco Menardo.

while it's interesting, and insightful, to discern a similarity here it's also important to remember that in the early 70s these bands played to discrete audiences w/very little crossover. North of the Mason-Dixon line, anyway...

And, gotcha Don, on Clapton. My preference is for rhythm guitarists over guys like Clapton, always. Bobby Womack.

Shoot, I was in high school when that whole southern-rock thing exploded; I was one of those people nodding over 22 mins of "Whipping Post" and "Elizabeth Reed." The other thing that's interesting about the Allmans is their roots in West Coast jazz--I mean that's what "Elizabeth Reed" and "Hot Lanta" are all about, in my opinion. And I do remember folks in my high school (just north o' Nashville) remarking about the Negro fellas in the Allmans, too--or, for that matter, in Little Feat. Even at the time, tho, I was always interested in commercial soul music like the Spinners, and I remember getting some funny looks when I'd be grooving to "Pick of the Litter" back then. So yeah it's complicated--and I think Skynyrd were probably just as enlightened and "liberal" as the Allmans, back then.

naw, it struck me when i lived there that many of both chicago's black and white residents were more "southern" than me even if they've never left town. great migration and all.

Never had a mullet, a satin jacket or 8-track tape of Head East. Only vinyl, my brother was the 8-track guy.

I don't even know you - what's with the name calling ("maroon") and sniping ("this is so full of shit it squeaks," or whatever the hell you said) in your post?

Because it was. But regrettably also known to be tasteless and tactless.

Shouldn't you be at some ribfest in the 'burbs checking out the Savoy Brown reunion tour?

Savoy Brown never broke up! Haven't seem them in decades but the last time I did my girlfriend fell asleep at the table while they were playing. It ruined the evening. Consumer tip: Don't get the last two Savoy Brown CDs, a studio and a live one, they're not any good!

Re Don, Tommy Shaw didn't show up for Styx until after the Wooden Nickel days. His joining the band was pretty much when I checked out. Never cared for his voice although I saw him later in Damn Yankees, who for that show, did rock hard although probably more by virtue of Ted Nugent doing a couple of his trademark songs and Blades having the band do Nightranger's "You Can Still Rock in America" or something.

"But [I'm]" ... was -supposed- to be in there.