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Train Music!

Iving

By Iving
in Music in General

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christopher3393

christopher3393

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8 hours ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

Blues is limited in its expressive means to two or three themes (as trains, for example), manic-depressive transitions between irrepressible longing and suspicious overexcitement, and a scarce musical arsenal. 

😊

Some people called it devil music. Of course they called jazz devil music for some of the same and some different reasons. As to its limits?

Blues is capacious. Lots of room inside. Topically it covers travel by multiple means, painful aspects of relationships (unfaithfulness, unrequited love, loss, loneliness), sexual longings , prowess, and flirtation, natural disasters (flooding), meager rewards for work, poverty, social dislocation, hypocrisy (including preachers), escape into euphoria with drugs and drink and the resultant troubles that follow, social inequity, racial prejudice, defeating or even killing adversaries, reversals of fortune and frustrated expectations, the inescapable immanence of violence and death, ignominy, on and on and on...

 

7 hours ago, AnotherSpin said:

Some old healthy rock:

 

https://youtu.be/rNJ8MOAj4rY

 

 OK, so what is this? A jazz-rock showpiece with room to stretch out and show your chops, with a kind of white guy blues flavor, performed at a ski resort in Idaho for rich white folk. 😊

 

It starts off sounding like 2:19 Blues (Mamie's Blues), which goes like this:

 

Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton :: Mamie's Blues (Two Nineteen)

 

 

 

or like this (Louis Armstrong et. al.)

 

 

...or even like this:

 

Leon Redbone LIVE- 2:19 Blues (Mamie's Blues)

 

 

 

Even folkie Dave Von Ronk has a nice version. None of them sound like BS&T's cover to me.

 

Then David Clayton-Thomas seems to be quoting the blues standard "Trouble in MInd", which goes like this:

 

Trouble in Mind · Bertha "Chippie" Hill w/ songwriter Richard Johnson on piano and Louis Armstrong on trumpet.

 

 

Trouble in Mind - Dinah Washington

 

 

Trouble In Mind (Live In New York/1965) · Nina Simone 

 

 

and my personal favorite:

 

Lightnin Hopkins ~ Trouble in mind  

 

 

 

 

 

or even like this:

 

Trouble In Mind · Johnny Cash

 

 

or this!

 

 Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band cover of Richard M. Jones' "Trouble In Mind."

 

 

 

What they all have in common is that they respect the feel of the song, unlike BS&T.

 

Now the key lyric that makes this a train song is this and only this:

 

I'm gonna lay my head on some lonesome railroad line

and let that 2:19 special ease my troubled mind.

 

but Clayton Thomas doesn't include that. And then he goes on to throw some other random blues lyrics together, ending with a crude paraphrase of Mercy Dee Walton's "One Room Country Shack", a solid country blues song covered well by the likes of Buddy Guy ( a tradmark song for him), John Lee Hooker, and Paul Butterfield (a white guy from Chicago who understood the blues). They all kept it slow and mournful. They respected the song.

 

So in my opinion, BS&T's number is a showy, frivolous co-opting of blues, so that the players can strut their stuff. And it's not a train song except in a token way.

 

Sorry, Another Spin. I think we're a world apart on this. But, let the train song play on!

 

Everybody Loves a Train · Los Lobos  

 

 

 

 

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AnotherSpin

AnotherSpin

Posted
Posted
48 minutes ago, christopher3393 said:

😊

Some people called it devil music. Of course they called jazz devil music for some of the same and some different reasons. As to its limits?

Blues is capacious. Lots of room inside. Topically it covers travel by multiple means, painful aspects of relationships (unfaithfulness, unrequited love, loss, loneliness), sexual longings , prowess, and flirtation, natural disasters (flooding), meager rewards for work, poverty, social dislocation, hypocrisy (including preachers), escape into euphoria with drugs and drink and the resultant troubles that follow, social inequity, racial prejudice, defeating or even killing adversaries, reversals of fortune and frustrated expectations, the inescapable immanence of violence and death, ignominy, on and on and on...

 

 

 OK, so what is this? A jazz-rock showpiece with room to stretch out and show your chops, with a kind of white guy blues flavor, performed at a ski resort in Idaho for rich white folk. 😊

 

It starts off sounding like 2:19 Blues (Mamie's Blues), which goes like this:

 

Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton :: Mamie's Blues (Two Nineteen)

 

 

 

or like this (Louis Armstrong et. al.)

 

 

...or even like this:

 

Leon Redbone LIVE- 2:19 Blues (Mamie's Blues)

 

 

 

Even folkie Dave Von Ronk has a nice version. None of them sound like BS&T's cover to me.

 

Then David Clayton-Thomas seems to be quoting the blues standard "Trouble in MInd", which goes like this:

 

Trouble in Mind · Bertha "Chippie" Hill w/ songwriter Richard Johnson on piano and Louis Armstrong on trumpet.

 

 

Trouble in Mind - Dinah Washington

 

 

Trouble In Mind (Live In New York/1965) · Nina Simone 

 

 

and my personal favorite:

 

Lightnin Hopkins ~ Trouble in mind  

 

 

 

 

 

or even like this:

 

Trouble In Mind · Johnny Cash

 

 

or this!

 

 Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band cover of Richard M. Jones' "Trouble In Mind."

 

 

 

What they all have in common is that they respect the feel of the song, unlike BS&T.

 

Now the key lyric that makes this a train song is this and only this:

 

I'm gonna lay my head on some lonesome railroad line

and let that 2:19 special ease my troubled mind.

 

but Clayton Thomas doesn't include that. And then he goes on to throw some other random blues lyrics together, ending with a crude paraphrase of Mercy Dee Walton's "One Room Country Shack", a solid country blues song covered well by the likes of Buddy Guy ( a tradmark song for him), John Lee Hooker, and Paul Butterfield (a white guy from Chicago who understood the blues). They all kept it slow and mournful. They respected the song.

 

So in my opinion, BS&T's number is a showy, frivolous co-opting of blues, so that the players can strut their stuff. And it's not a train song except in a token way.

 

Sorry, Another Spin. I think we're a world apart on this. But, let the train song play on!

 

Everybody Loves a Train · Los Lobos  

 

 

 

 

 

Even more, blues has a huge advantage over other music styles that have been mentioned in your long message, such as jazz. The advantage is that after you have heard two or three blues songs, you don't have to try to hear any more, there will be the same repetitive thing - both in terms of music and lyrics 🙂 

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christopher3393

christopher3393

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

Even more, blues has a huge advantage over other music styles that have been mentioned in your long message, such as jazz. The advantage is that after you have heard two or three blues songs, you don't have to try to hear any more, there will be the same repetitive thing - both in terms of music and lyrics 🙂 

 

🙄

 

 

 

 

...and my favorite:

 

 

I'm out.

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