I Am a Big Eric Clapton Fan. Cultural Appropriation is BS

[NOMBEDES]

Here is my rant of the day:

 

I love the fact that a bunch of kids got together in England (ca. 1960) and started playing blues music.  Now many folks rightfully think that the only true blues music is the authentic American blues music from black artists starting way back in the 20th c. and developing until today.   

 

But I have to say that no one in Santa Maria California was going to play any blues music authentic or otherwise until the British Invasion got going.  Because of the Blues Breakers, the Stones and other UK groups a lot of us white boys became life long blues fans and developed a strong interests in the "real stuff" .   So cultural appropriation is a force for good IMO.

 

As far as E. Clapton goes, I just put him in the title to piss people off.

[Allan F]

50 minutes ago, NOMBEDES said:

As far as E. Clapton goes, I just put him in the title to piss people off.

And I'm sure you didn't have any particular person or persons in mind.

 

[sphinxsix]

In my most humble opinion (as usual ) cultural appropriation is what it is.

Sometimes good. Sometimes not so good. Sometimes not so bad. Sometimes really bad.

In case of EC it was in general bad (except from his early period which I mentioned on the 'other' thread).

I wrote the above sentence taking an example from the OP, just to piss some people off 

I just love to check out post factum what happened on closed threads. Is this only my perversion.? 

The Stones are IMMHO an example of not so bad CA, heh.. After they had stolen a thousand of songs from the original blues and rhythm'n'blues artists and after their manager had locked them in a room saying they won't go out till they write themselves something decent, they managed to write some pretty cool songs during the next decades, to which I also happened to tap my feet.

IM(again)MHO the most brilliant and amazing but also perverse in a way example of CA took place in case of ..Bob Marley. I guess some are surprised so I'm explaining this weird at first glance statement. Most reggae fans agree that in reggae music Marley was the absolute no One, I subscribe to it with my both hands, both feet and with a pencil hold in my mouth.. The only problem is BM gained worldwide popularity while ..not performing reggae. 

This is what real reggae sounded like (Jamaican early BM recordings):

 

 

 

When Chris Blackwell from Island Records (some eg Lee Scratch Perry who BTW sold early BM's recordings produced by him in his Black Arc studio and now millions can buy them everywhere for real cheap used to call Blackwell - Whitewell but that isn't important right now), so when CB heard some early BM recordings came to the conclusion that they were pretty good (with the emphasis on pretty) but wouldn't sell so he proposed changing the tempos, the sound etc and thus came into being something which Marley himself named 'roots rock reggae' (with the emphasis on 'rock reggae). And it sounded like that:

 

 

One would have to be deaf not to hear the difference, right.?  

The bottom line is - the best reggae performer of all time didn't perform reggae. What he did was simply a cultural appropriation of the Jamaican music form called reggae and turning with a little help from Chris Black/White-well.. well into the masses friendly product which BTW due to Marley's creative genius and Black/White-well's clever production was simply great.

BTW few know that Bob Marley, the great 'Black' prophet of Black Rasta (and not only Black and also not only Rasta) people around the world died of cancer which only the White people happen to have because he simply wasn't Black. His father was as White as me or Chris Black/Whitewell or (also Chris) Connaker..

We could potentially ask if his disease was to at least some degree an example of cultural, racial or simply medical appropriation but I'm not sure that's important right now.

 

Chris, it's never too late to close this thread but maybe it's better to do it now, that is at least MMHO.

If not, I guess I will check out later what happened here..

 

[Ralf Hutter]

IMHO, "cultural appropriation" is Politically Correct BS. Why TF do we feel that we have to parse every freaking thing these days?

[garrardguy60]

To culturally appropriate something, you have to be able to do it/pull it off capably (i.e., if you can't pull it off, it's not successful appropriation). EC is a shitty bluesman. His blues albums (e.g., In With The Blues) are to actual blues what Linda Ronstadt's Nelson Riddle albums are to the American Songbook; namely, poor imitations which are painfully amateurish.

 

As you can tell, I am not an EC fan. I will give him credit as a pop/rock artist, though even here I think he is best classified as a sideman whose luck allowed him to rise to star status. He can't sing. His guitar playing, while competent, is so wildly overrated it's not even funny. Jimmy Page is such a superior guitarist, but Page doesn't get credit cause he was stuck with that wailing banshee singer and all their songs were about fu.... well, you know what Zep's songs were about. (I say that not as criticism; they are my second favorite band after the Beatles and before the Stones.)

 

EC's best work was with Cream, because he was paired with two musicians who were superior to him, allowing him to do what he does decently, and not having to stretch beyond his level of competence. (Oh and btw, George Harrison cowrote one of their best songs, Badge, so again this shows how EC has consistently benefited from a little help from his friends.)

 

[beetlemania]

49 minutes ago, garrardguy60 said:

stuck with that wailing banshee singer 

 

How dare you, sir! 
😂

Houses of the Holy shows Plant’s full range, their best album, IMO. Is it his fault the wailing songs proved most popular?

 

I do agree with much of your opinion regarding EC. I definitely rank late ‘60s Peter Green above EC, as well as Duane Allman. Jimi, of course, is King. I think EC’s best work was The Concert for George. 
 

Also, speaking of overrated, did you seriously list the Stones with The Beatles?

😬 

[jabbr]

English Blues evolved into its own forms and remains distinct from American Blues. The best thing Eric Clapton did was give highlight to Buddy Guy whom I have seen live many times in many years. The artists notably Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and the other English kids might have sounded like American Blues in their demo tapes and earliest work but quickly incorporated English folk and went off in their own direction.

[NOMBEDES]

I and I people cannot agree with @sphinxsix.   There are many styles of reggae.  Old school, main stream, dub, what have you.   Bob M. is just one more branch on the tree.  

[AnotherSpin]

27 minutes ago, NOMBEDES said:

I and I people cannot agree with @sphinxsix.   There are many styles of reggae.  Old school, main stream, dub, what have you.   Bob M. is just one more branch on the tree.  

 

It's silly to argue that Bob Marley's music isn't reggae. It is largely thanks to Marley that reggae has evolved from a local phenomenon to a global one. As far as cultural borrowings are concerned, one can point out that Marley used the Western electric rock band format. Of course, purists would argue that authentic reggae can only be performed with drums and only during Nyabinghi ceremonies - something similar can be heard in the recordings of Wingless Angels, Keith Richards project in Jamaica. 

[NOMBEDES]

4 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

It's silly to argue that Bob Marley's music isn't reggae. It is largely thanks to Marley that reggae has evolved from a local phenomenon to a global one. As far as cultural borrowings are concerned, one can point out that Marley used the Western electric rock band format. Of course, purists would argue that authentic reggae can only be performed with drums and only during Nyabinghi ceremonies - something similar can be heard in the recordings of Wingless Angels, Keith Richards project in Jamaica. 

 

 

Yes.  This is the point.  UK Blues, Bob Marley style Reggae (and more examples than we can count) all of this great music migrates across the world and then comes back to influence new artists and expose/educate the music lovers to the original.   

 

 

[sphinxsix]

5 hours ago, garrardguy60 said:

EC is a shitty bluesman. His blues albums (e.g., In With The Blues) are to actual blues what Linda Ronstadt's Nelson Riddle albums are to the American Songbook; namely, poor imitations which are painfully amateurish.

I wouldn't use the word amateurish, IMO he's quite a pro but an oversmooth and utterly non inventive (after Cream years) and boring one. Same for most of his lyrics.

What is eg this song (about).? About the fact that he was to some party and the woman looked good and helped him to get to(!) bed.?  Well, Eric, she probably loved you, yeah, yeah, yeah.. (but the 60's are long gone, don't misunderstand me - I respect The Beatles a lot!)

 

 

2 hours ago, NOMBEDES said:

I and I people cannot agree with @sphinxsix.   There are many styles of reggae.  Old school, main stream, dub, what have you.   Bob M. is just one more branch on the tree.  

 

1 hour ago, AnotherSpin said:

It's silly to argue that Bob Marley's music isn't reggae. It is largely thanks to Marley that reggae has evolved from a local phenomenon to a global one.

 

The part about Marley and CA was more or less serious in as many %s as BM was Black. Or White for that matter. What I seriously wanted to show was that reggae that Island/CB and BM sold to the world was very different from reggae they performed and knew in Jamaica. Let me quote one of the late American presidents - it's true, it's non fake news 

 

1 hour ago, AnotherSpin said:

Of course, purists would argue that authentic reggae can only be performed with drums and only during Nyabinghi ceremonies

No, Nyabinghi is something very different from reggae, my friend who has clearly unignored me, although both are music of Rasta.

 

1 hour ago, NOMBEDES said:

Yes.  This is the point.  UK Blues, Bob Marley style Reggae (and more examples than we can count) all of this great music migrates across the world and then comes back to influence new artists and expose/educate the music lovers to the original.  

Could not disagree with that!

Beside that for me Marley was a great artist - musician.

 

[sphinxsix]

As for Nyabinghi vs reggae. reggae derives in a straight line from ska and rocksteady. Some say that the extremely hot Jamaican summer was the factor - people simply didn't feel like faster, more intense dancing, the rhythm slowed down, the bass line got heavier and thus reggae was born.

Nyabinghi OTOH is strongly connected with religious Rastafarian gatherings, so called 'groundations' and heavily based on drumming and gospels influenced vocals. Sometimes, especially on commercial recordings an offbeat eg guitar accent that we also find in reggae is added.

Few Nyabibghi albums gained wider popularity, although I used to be interested in Jamaican music in my later teens/early 20s I probably have 4 or 5 such recordings.

 

But let's not forget about the topic..

Fluid guitar playing, beside that IMO as convincing in reggae as in blues, sorry.. 

 

 

 

 

[mevdinc]

19 hours ago, NOMBEDES said:

I and I people cannot agree with @sphinxsix.   There are many styles of reggae.  Old school, main stream, dub, what have you.   Bob M. is just one more branch on the tree.  

I agree that there are many styles, but I'd say that Bob Marley is the tree.

[AnotherSpin]

By the way, those who like to calculate who owes what to whom can safely take note of the fact that Bob Marley was black on his mum, white on his dad, and his grandmother, his father's mother, was a Syrian Jew. Many Caribbean musicians, including those in the reggae genre, have very diverse backgrounds, including Chinese or Indian roots. 

[sphinxsix]

4 hours ago, mevdinc said:

23 hours ago, NOMBEDES said:

I and I people cannot agree with @sphinxsix.   There are many styles of reggae.  Old school, main stream, dub, what have you.   Bob M. is just one more branch on the tree.  

I agree that there are many styles, but I'd say that Bob Marley is the tree.

I tend to agree with most reggae fans, as for roots (traditional) reggae, Marley was the absolute number one artist. 

Contemporary reggae is very diverse, nowadays AFAIK Jamaica is a place where actually practically every year appears and gains great local popularity new so called riddim (rhythm)..

 

[Bill Brown]

7 hours ago, AnotherSpin said:

By the way, those who like to calculate who owes what to whom can safely take note of the fact that Bob Marley was black on his mum, white on his dad, and his grandmother, his father's mother, was a Syrian Jew. Many Caribbean musicians, including those in the reggae genre, have very diverse backgrounds, including Chinese or Indian roots. 

 

Thank you for this, have been meaning to make the comment for a couple of days.  His mother was very black.

 

I also meant to correct @sphinxsix re. his melanoma being a "white person's" disease.  He had melanoma of the nail-bed of a toe, this different epidemiologically from the melanoma lesions most think about.  He refused (an attempt, it is a bad disease) a chance for surgical cure with amputation.  The seizures he suffered in NY were from brain metastases:

 

Subungual melanoma: a deceptive disorder

 

Abstract

 

Subungual melanoma is an uncommon form of acral melanoma that arises within the nail bed. The incidence for acral melanomas is similar worldwide, but the proportion is higher in dark-skinned individuals. The subungual form represents about 2% of cutaneous non-sun induced melanomas in the western world, and up to 75% in Africans, 10% in Japanese, and 25% in the Chinese of Hong Kong. Up to 33% of subungual melanomas are amelanotic. Black pigmentation of the adjacent nail fold, termed Hutchinson's sign, may be a diagnostic clue. Non-specific features and symptoms along with a high incidence of amelanosis often lead to delayed diagnosis, disease progression, and a poor prognosis with challenging treatment options.

 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19111151/

 

Bill

 

P.S. my Caribbean friends who like Damian Marley were intrigued when I explained that 3 out of his 4 grandparents were white...

 

 

[AudioDoctor]

On 10/1/2021 at 3:59 PM, NOMBEDES said:

Here is my rant of the day:

 

I love the fact that a bunch of kids got together in England (ca. 1960) and started playing blues music.  Now many folks rightfully think that the only true blues music is the authentic American blues music from black artists starting way back in the 20th c. and developing until today.   

 

But I have to say that no one in Santa Maria California was going to play any blues music authentic or otherwise until the British Invasion got going.  Because of the Blues Breakers, the Stones and other UK groups a lot of us white boys became life long blues fans and developed a strong interests in the "real stuff" .   So cultural appropriation is a force for good IMO.

 

As far as E. Clapton goes, I just put him in the title to piss people off.

 

Where do you think the Blues those British bands heard, came from?

 

Also, this entire thread is off the topic of the entire forum, purposely meant to "piss people off" and needs to be over on rightwingernutballconspiracies . com or some such cesspool of bullshit.

[AnotherSpin]

6 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

Where do you think the Blues those British bands heard, came from?

 

Also, this entire thread is off the topic of the entire forum, purposely meant to "piss people off" and needs to be over on rightwingernutballconspiracies . com or some such cesspool of bullshit.

 

It feels like all British rock is deliberately reduced to the early Stones or Led Zeppelin. Was the influence of the black blues central and fundamental to the mature Yes, King Crimson, The Moody Blues, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, The Alan Parsons Project, Roxy Music, Gentle Giant, Supertramp, Manfred Mann's Earth Band and so on?

[christopher3393]

10 hours ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

It feels like all British rock is deliberately reduced to the early Stones or Led Zeppelin. Was the influence of the black blues central and fundamental to the mature Yes, King Crimson, The Moody Blues, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, The Alan Parsons Project, Roxy Music, Gentle Giant, Supertramp, Manfred Mann's Earth Band and so on?

 

Well, if we're talking about the sixties, some of those bands didn't get started until very late sixties and early seventies. Other well known British blues rock bands  besides Stones and Led Zep (two behemoths) are Cream, the Yardbirds (very important!), the Animals, John Mayall, early Fleetwood Mac, Savoy Brown, Ten Years After, and more, some not so well known outside of G.B. but very influential like Alexis Korner's band, Long John Baldry, and others some of our Brit members are much more familiar with.

 

Like Nombedes, I was one of those kids who came up on this British blues rock, loved it, and played a lot of it in a band. Even though I lived only a few miles from Chicago, I was a kid, so I didn't hear a lot of Chicago Blues until 1970 and beyond. I've also re-listened to a lot of Eric Clapton's blues covers recently, and I really respect the contribution to blues he has made, both musically and through the Crossroads shows. I don't share his politics.

 

p.s. I am a big Bob Wills fan.  🤠

[Samuel T Cogley]

The theft of black blues started way before the '60s.

 

Exhibit A:

 

 

 

Now Benny Goodman and Peggy Lee just two years later:

 

 

Funny thing is, this tune started as " The Weed Smoker's Dream" in 1936:

 

Quote

 

In 1936, the Harlem Hamfats recorded "The Weed Smoker's Dream". Band member McCoy later rewrote the song, refining the composition and lyrics. The new tune, titled "Why Don't You Do Right?", was recorded by Lil Green in 1941,^[2] with guitar by William "Big Bill" Broonzy. The recording was an early jazz and blues hit.^[3]

The song has its roots in blues music and originally dealt with a marijuana smoker reminiscing about lost financial opportunities. As it was rewritten, it takes on the perspective of the female partner, who chastises her man for his irresponsible ways: "Why don't you do right, like some other men do? Get out of here and get me some money too."

 

 

[Samuel T Cogley]

And something a little more recent, from this Wikipedia page:

 

Quote

Without songwriter Willie Dixon's knowledge, Arc Music, the music publishing arm of Chess Records, brought a claim against Led Zeppelin for using "Bring It On Home" without its permission.^[1] The group maintained that they copied parts of the song as an intentional tribute to Williamson, but resolved the matter with an undisclosed cash settlement.^[1] For the 2003 live album How the West Was Won, the song was credited to Dixon alone, with the note "Medley contains 'Bring It On Back' (Jimmy Page/Robert Plant/John Paul Jones/John Bonham)".^[8] On the 2014 Led Zeppelin II reissue, Dixon is listed as the sole songwriter.^[9]

 

[lucretius]

I'm all for copyright protection but I believe, with respect to music, the time takes for the copyright to expire and the music to enter the public domain is far too long.  Something like 20 years after a work is released/published should be enough.

[PeterG]

3 minutes ago, lucretius said:

I'm all for copyright protection but I believe, with respect to music, the time takes for the copyright to expire and the music to enter the public domain is far too long.  Something like 20 years after a work is released/published should be enough.

I think this means that you are not all for copyright protection.  Isn't it already tough enough for an artist to make a living?  Believe or not, there are now people who believe they should have millions of songs at their fingertips for only 10 or 12 bucks a month...

[lucretius]

1 minute ago, PeterG said:

I think this means that you are not all for copyright protection.  Isn't it already tough enough for an artist to make a living?  Believe or not, there are now people who believe they should have millions of songs at their fingertips for only 10 or 12 bucks a month...

I just don't think that copyright protection should last far longer than patent protection.  (How much 50 year old stuff are you streaming anyway?)

[AnotherSpin]

3 hours ago, christopher3393 said:

 

Well, if we're talking about the sixties, some of those bands didn't get started until very late sixties and early seventies. Other well known British blues rock bands  besides Stones and Led Zep (two behemoths) are Cream, the Yardbirds (very important!), the Animals, John Mayall, early Fleetwood Mac, Savoy Brown, Ten Years After, and more, some not so well known outside of G.B. but very influential like Alexis Korner's band, Long John Baldry, and others some of our Brit members are much more familiar with.

 

Like Nombedes, I was one of those kids who came up on this British blues rock, loved it, and played a lot of it in a band. Even though I lived only a few miles from Chicago, I was a kid, so I didn't hear a lot of Chicago Blues until 1970 and beyond. I've also re-listened to a lot of Eric Clapton's blues covers recently, and I really respect the contribution to blues he has made, both musically and through the Crossroads shows. I don't share his politics.

 

p.s. I am a big Bob Wills fan.  🤠

 

Of course, I listened intensively to those bands a few decades ago, and some of the unmentioned ones as well. All I was trying to say was that I don't see the desire to present rock as just an extension of the blues tradition as justifiable enough. Rock has absorbed that and a lot more.