November 20, 2025 • 37 mins
Why don’t people care about the blues anymore?
We applaud guitarist Joe Bonamassa’s heroic tribute B.B. King Blues Summit 100, celebrating what would be the King of the Blues’ 100th birthday, but have to ask, ‘Why?’
We parse through our conflicted feeling about the state of the blues; is the blues a dead genre and did white people kill it?
Tell us about your first listen @AtFirstListenPodcast on Instagram!
Subscribe so you don’t miss an episode
We applaud guitarist Joe Bonamassa’s heroic tribute B.B. King Blues Summit 100, celebrating what would be the King of the Blues’ 100th birthday, but have to ask, ‘Why?’
We parse through our conflicted feeling about the state of the blues; is the blues a dead genre and did white people kill it?
Tell us about your first listen @AtFirstListenPodcast on Instagram!
Subscribe so you don’t miss an episode
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Welcome to at First Listen, the music podcast for people
who don't always get the hype but want to.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Sometimes we're talking about old people's stuff.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
I'm Andrew, I'm no Mani, and today's one of those days.
It might be our messiest episode coming up. Is this
a mini is this a regular episode?
Speaker 4 (00:29):
Might add we a.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Middle We don't know.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
We're going to talk about the blues, a subject that
neither of us has any business discussing as an expert. Anyway,
bb King, the King of the Blues, would have turned
one hundred years old this past September, So really, in
no sense is this episode timely because he also died
(00:55):
over ten years ago.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yes, and he was born one hundred years ago, and
I believe that that is not when he started being
the King of blues. He may have started young playing blues,
but he didn't get king status until much long.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
He was probably the King of the Blues for a
good forty five years, maybe longer, I.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Would say so. One of the reasons we're bringing this
up is because people were not talking about it.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Right, Yeah, people were not talking about it, which is
why we're talking about it. Because a man named a
famous blues guitarist and rock guitarist named Joe Bonamassa.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
So famous that everyone in.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
The worlst people do know about it. I think anybody.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
He's one of those people where anyone who plays guitar
knows the name.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
That makes sense.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
If you don't play guitar, you probably don't know the name.
If you're a woman, you probably don't.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Know any Yeah, I feel like I have actually seen
the name on credit tide.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I mean he plays big venues. Yeah, he'll play like
the Beacon Theater. He'll play like Red Rock.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
He's like the type of guy that my dad would
be stoked about some tickets and he would go with
his buddy.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Okay, I'm text your dad right now and see if
he knows who Joe Bonamasa is.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah, I should just a quick day. I probably don't.
I can say I don't even need to check. I
would bet a lot of money. Yeah, I don't need
to check.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
I can.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
I can already guarantee my dad knows this. This is
right up his alley sole.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Let me play a clip from this interview here. Joe
Bonamasa was recently at my workplace, q Ando four point
three doing an interview with Out of the Box with
Jonathan Clark talking about why he took it upon himself
to make a tribute album BB King Blues Summit one
hundred tribute album to the late BB King.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
It was on my radar last year that he was
turning ninety nine. I go, wow, you know, eventually, I'm
probably gonna get a phone call from somebody who's producing
a record or some sort of tribute right thing for
his one hundredth Come January of this year, nobody called,
and Okay, maybe they don't want to be on the record.
But then I did some slew thing on the internet
(03:13):
and asked around and contacted his family and all that,
and we're like, is anybody doing anything? They're like no.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I'm like, which is surprising.
Speaker 5 (03:23):
It's surprising. Yeah, it's beyond surprising. Yeah, And I said, well,
do you mind if I do something?
Speaker 4 (03:30):
So you had a particular question.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
I don't know if I can actually articulate the question
because it's wrapped up in many other questions. But I
think it's interesting that Joe Bonamasa, who is one of
this phenomena of white team blues guitar players. He's much
older now, but he knew BB King for twenty five years.
(03:59):
He opened for bb at twelve years old and has
made a career as a world famous guitar player.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
And it is.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
In Joe's own words, basically he took up this mantle
of keeping BB King's music live with this tribute album.
And the guests on the tribute album include people who
a lot of people who personally knew BB King, like
Buddy Guy, George Benson, one of the Neville Brothers. I
(04:32):
forget which one Sha Ka Khan is on it. And
then there's people he mentioned like Kenny, Wayne Shephard and
Derek Trucks and Susan Tadeshi. Everyone turned out for this record.
Everyone was happy to do it, but it took Joe
as opposed to Bebe's family or somebody who was like
in Bbe's band to organize it, or some.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Blues musician in New Orleans or some you know, because
there's there's plenty of people still playing the blues, like gigging,
like on a local scale, so I feel like I.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Have so many. Basically, what you said was why why
is it?
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Uh?
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Why is that the came?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
What is this sort of what is the state of
the blues.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Uh, it's such a it's such a vital genre, where
of course rock and roll came from the blues, heavy
metal came to the blues, but I mean just modern
pop music came from the blues.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
It's American music history.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
It's it's essential American music, essential Black music history. And
I I'm a little, I don't know, disappointed. I get
sort of protective of the blues music as music that
is important for me personally, and I wonder why it's
(05:58):
not important to other people, and wonder why it seems
like it's more important to white people than it is
too black people.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Uh So, Okay, so I have I have lots of
thoughts on that par I.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Think I adequately expressed my confusion on this suspect subject.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
I think you have, yes.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
So on one hand, I think that is the case
for a lot of like black music genres that basically
white people got to them and black people were already
onto something else. So it was blues, jazz, I think
R and B as well, and soul like and rap.
(06:40):
Now honestly like versions of like even when you look
back of like the version of rap, the way the
style of rap that like some white rappers might be
doing is like corny to like the new the new kids. Right,
so there's like the old black guys and the new
white guys. They get together and they're like this is
(07:01):
we're both sill, we're still into this and so on
one hand, I think that there's this and yeah, me
as an expert, but you know, I know media studies.
Basically there's this thing that I think white people they
will look back on things and be like things were
(07:22):
better in the good old days. And famously black people
don't think about it that way.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
The good old days. We don't look back. We look forward.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
As black people, things were not better back then, and
we don't necessarily think it's that fun to remember them.
Like though we know it's important, it's always so tied
up in pain that and like our parents. My grandma
would never talk about you know, not like I mean,
my grandma was a sharecropper, you know, goes with the blues.
(07:55):
She would never ever talk about any of that stuff.
You couldn't you couldn't get it out of her. You
couldn't get you can't get these stories out of like
that generation because it's so painful and like they're just
like praise God that I'm still alive, you know, or not.
And I think that there is a big way that
(08:17):
like white music fans, white art fans will be like, oh,
you'll even hear like, oh, this new rap music is bad,
but Tupac was great. Like it's like you're they're able
to like see the older stuff as quality and then
the newer stuff as like lowbrow. I think it's a
(08:38):
very common way to think about really pop popular music
in general, pop popular things in general. I think it's
always like, oh, the old stuff is cool and the
new stuff is lent. And then on the other side
of that, I think that it's very hard to find
people doing things that aren't explicitly for profit. There is
(09:00):
no money for the arts or for history or for
anything that's not gonna make the biggest buck possible, you know,
why make Why why like talk about history when you
can just like make a thousand AI like copies of
it and like people stream it either way.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
So I think this is convoluted, but I actually I
think that it all comes together to make for these
like for the like slow erasure of history. And then lastly,
I think that people don't realize including this guy Joe, uh,
(09:43):
don't realize that it is on them, not you know,
he he took it upon himself, but other people in
that world don't realize that it is upon them to
teach and to bring this back.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Because because nobody else will.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Like I can't tell you how many of my teachers
these days are always they reference this old stuff and
like you know, famous old actors or comedians or artists
or whatever, and they're like, yeah, you should really learn
your history.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
It's important to know this stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
I'm like, suggest me, one book, suggests me, one movie.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
I don't know how am I supposed to find out
about it?
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Like I feel like there's so much information to be had,
and it's like, oh, I'm supposed to watch Severance, I'm
supposed to watch the new whatever.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
I'm supposed to see the.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
New this and listen to the new that and stay
on top of everything and learn about this history that
is infinite and you don't know where to find it
and it doesn't even necessarily like exist in the places
you look in a way that you can like absorb.
So and like, yeah, as you said, blues clubs are
closing closed down right.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
I mean that's the other aspect of when it comes
to bb King specifically, like his sort of lasting imprint
on American music was the blues clubs. He had this chain,
BB King's Blues Club. They would do all kinds of shows,
and I believe maybe there's still one open in Memphis,
(11:22):
but I believe around the country they're all closed. So really,
this is an artist whose impact on music was very significant,
and now as they've been gone for a little while,
it's their legacy is sort of fading. Their mark on
(11:43):
the industry is fading, and you know, their music is
not really top of mind anymore. I even think about
like hip hop in the nineties, they were sampling records
from the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
But they were usually rock records. They were usually by
like white artists or disco. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
I mean, the only like blues record that I can
think of, and I'm far from a expert in hip hop,
only blues record that was sampled in a big hip
hop song is that the Ray Charles song and that
gold Digger by Kanye West. Other than that, like, these
black artists were not pulling necessarily from black music. They
(12:33):
were pulling from a lot of rock and other styles.
Of music that maybe black people didn't really participate in.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Well well, and there's also the element of blues being
so I feel like it's a live music type of genre.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, that's probably true.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
It's so much about, yeah, being in that space, like
your connection with the artist, because it's not original music typically,
and even when it is original music, it's very similar
like that. You know, you learn the blues. You know,
you first they have jazz band, you learn blues.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
It's sort of you know, musicians of all stripes are
somewhat familiar with the blues because it's taught as like
lesson one, where like these are the sounds you're capable
of making.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
It's very simple, and then you move on from that.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Like one of the things that is interesting about Joe
Bonamasa and players like him is that they stay in that,
you know, level one genre, but they learn other things
and then they become so good at interpreting these blue
songs and making them their own that it really, you know,
(13:54):
to see that kind of playing live is very exciting,
But it doesn't it doesn't always I'm across on a recording.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Right and I think, like again, I think it does
come across on this on this EP?
Speaker 4 (14:10):
Is that what it is? This record? Whatever?
Speaker 3 (14:13):
So the record is being released as EPs each month
because there are so many tracks match. I don't know
if I cut that out of what of the Joe
Bonamassa quote, But there's like thirty two songs and he's
releasing it in volumes like the first of the month
or the first week of each month until February of
(14:34):
next year.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
And like the the it's very good. I'll say so far,
it's very good. And I listen to this and I
am reminded of what I'm off and reminded of when
I listen to stuff like this, is that, like why
do I listen to anything new? It all sucks compared
to this kind of like because it all this is
(14:56):
like it's all a copy of a copy of a
copy of this, Like it's it's an interpretation of this.
And the amount of years of expertise in artistry and
respect for your history and your respect for your craft
and all is in it. But you don't need that
to make music. You don't need all of that you
(15:18):
and you shouldn't.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
You. You gotta make all of the stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
In between before you get there, right, And I.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
Think that like when you are.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
A young artist. Yeah, you're like, oh, it kind of
sounds like that when I do this, and that's cool
for a second, but then you you know, you move.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
On, like now, time to thrash.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Time to find something that anyone that I am in
the age group of also wants to be a part of,
because I mean that was for me. I played saxophone
all through like school age, and I am thinking of
picking it a back up again, but I kind of
abandoned it because it wasn't a part of any music
(16:05):
that I listened to. I love jazz and blues and ska.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Even Scott's mostly brass band.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
That's the thing, you know, My my folk punk band with.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Me saxophone, saxophone.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Saxophone, acoustic guitar and harmonica, m Missus Doubtfire, my band
from high SCHOOLSD thank you to.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Thank You, And it was great.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
But like no, you know, it was always like, well,
this is what I play, so this is what I'm
gonna play in the band.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
There be a reason there are no other bands like this.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
It's exactly exactly no, And it was about us having fun.
It wasn't shocking, Ley, I know, it was.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Not about not enough for the money.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
We weren't.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
We weren't and that was a good thing because there
was no money, but no rip to that friend anyway.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Hey, you were smiling when you said that, So I
assume they are still with them.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
No, they are, but just not personally.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
No, they are passed away. But I'm laughing because what
else are you gonna do?
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Cry? Oh okay, Yeah, it's okay.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
I was like laughing because I'm like, I have to
say it because I do miss him.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Anyway, I was thinking about them this like.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Not it sounds like you have a touch of the blues.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
I do, though, That's why I mentioned it, because it's
like it's there.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
There is this. I think Roland Bart talked about aura
in some of.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
His essays and there was this and aura is like
a word that people use a lot now. But the
idea is that real art when you it has aura.
The Mona Lisa, for example, has aura. The picture of
(18:07):
the Mona Lisa on your laptop does not have aura.
And it's basically the idea that the copy of the copy,
the more you copy it, the less aura it has.
And I think that that is something we're hugely missing
out on in mass.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
Media today that we have.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Like almost erased the we've erased the concept of that
being important. Yeah, and it's like, don't notice it. It's like,
don't pay attention to the fact that this has no aura,
because it's entertaining and that's enough.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
And you should be ready to move on to the
next thing.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Exactly, just exactly, so don't get too interesting.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
If you think about, like, anytime you like the song
that you were hearing in your headphones and then you
instead of listening on headphones, you heard it on speakers,
and how much more you liked it? And then if
you then go from speakers to seeing it performed live, like,
how much more you then like it?
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Exactly except for if the live version sucks, if the
versions isn't a real musician, all they have is marketing
and one idea and whatever.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
And so, and that person is much easier to sell
than an artist who is a.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Complicated person, like we recently discussed with our di'angelo episode.
He would not be controlled by anyone. He was a
true artist. He did what was right for him as
an artist, and he had aura all over the world,
all over the place.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
It was.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
It was big, and that is something that is difficult
to sell, or maybe they won't let you sell them,
but somebody who really doesn't have a ton to offer,
or maybe is just easy, like easy to manipulate, easy
to squeeze. I think you know a lot of these,
like young kids who get record deals young. They probably
(20:24):
could be very prolific artists, but they get squeezed dry
so early that they don't have.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
To they don't get a challenged exactly.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
It's funny what you're saying about copy of a copy
of a copy. Before we started recording, you asked me about, like,
what is the material on this Blue Summit record? Is baby,
it's all bb King material, But he wasn't really a songwriter.
And you know the scene from which BB King emerged,
(20:57):
which I believe was the Chicago and I'm gonna say
the nineteen fifties, maybe I'm off by a few years.
That was like the electric blues. The like Muddy Waters
came even before BB King and he came out of
that scene. And of course Muddy Waters was critical to
(21:19):
the development of the rock and roll. The Rolling Stones
are named after a Muddy Waters song that was like
the third generation of the Blues. There's like a proto
blues genre, which is like was never recorded, never written down,
there's no photographs of the people who played it because
(21:40):
they were like literal sharecroppers and slaves. And then there's
another generation where it's like Robert Johnson's Sonhouse sister Rosetta Tharp,
where like we have some recordings of them, but they
sound horrible. It's like like these people were just like
never got those opportunities, and then they started getting a
(22:04):
little bit of you know, shine after like decades after
they were you know, passed away. So like bb King,
the music that he got famous playing was not music
that he wrote, but he was so good at interpreting it,
so good at communicating it live, and like he played
(22:24):
live forever, like almost until right up until he passed away,
and he was old for my whole life. He was
performing in a chair my entire life, and he was
still moving the air in a room and packing theaters
and getting people to come out and see him. Like
(22:48):
that's exactly the aura that you're talking about, like to
stand while he was playing live.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Now, it occurred to me, just as you said that
that I think of the blues as being played sat down.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
By an ancient man.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
With like some young guys behind him maybe, but like
an ancient man sitting down with the yes, yes, no
I and what you just talked about. Another part of
it occurred to me, and this is something it's a again.
It's it's like the the lost media. The stories that
(23:27):
weren't written and the things that weren't recorded are unknown,
like they're unknown, and they're they're more and more unknown
as time passes, and then as we fill up the
all the data in the world is like a larger
and larger percentage of it is since the creation of
(23:51):
digital media.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
And something that I.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Really it's really sad to say, but I think the
people people who were supposed to be doing it are
dead from HIV and AIDS.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Like I think that.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
All of the coolest people from that generation.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Died.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Friend Leebowitz was talking about this recently. Did you see
this basically, Friend Leebowitz was basically like, think about it.
The coolest people are the ones who are getting laid
the most, doing drugs, partying. It's the people who weren't
getting laid who survived. And then with all many other
(24:40):
epidemics COVID as well, like I feel it in my
own neighborhood of Harlem. The older generation of black people
who populated my neighborhood disappeared through COVID. And I don't know,
(25:03):
I don't know all of them.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
You don't think they moved upstate?
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Well I know for a fact the black lady veterinarian
in my neighborhood died of COVID. I know, I either
they moved upstate or they passed away. Either way, they
were raised from their community and alienated.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Because of a lack of resources.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
I started after the rent freeze, it was eviction notices
all over the walls, and slowly my apartment building has
now looks completely different, and everybody is like under forty
and it looks like crap. Nobody takes care of it,
and nobody is looking after their stuff anymore, which includes
(25:54):
your history. And I really think that, like, like I said,
you don't know what you don't know, so it's very
easy to erase history that's barely even written down in
the first place.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Yeah, I mean the Blues has the Blue survived like
into BB King's era just through like oral tradition, like
I think it was from Mississippi, So I mean he
began playing music as a child, probably learning music where
that nobody knows who wrote the song, and you know,
this music was just these songs were kind of just
(26:27):
passed down through generation through people going to see live
music and remembering songs from those gigs. This might be
a hard left turn, But have you heard of the
movie Sinners?
Speaker 4 (26:44):
Have I heard of it?
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Did you see it?
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Of course I saw it, and I recently watched a
video essay about it that was.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
Longer than the movie shout out.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
FD signific Ice.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
I saw someone next to me on a plane watching it,
and I thought it looked very bad, but apparently people
really liked it.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
It's great anyway.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
It's a contemporary film that revolves around the blues, and
I think it's set in the thirties or the twenties
or something.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
Something like that. I think it's the twenties.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
And or the thirties.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
I had the thought while I was watching it that
while you were watching it, I was watching it.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
She also had subtitles on, so I was I was
getting a lot you.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
I just have to stop you, right, I basically watched it.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
You did not watch it that was shot on large
format film.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Okay, you don't think me peeking at somebody's iPad on
a flight, just watching it.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
That was shot on large format film. It is meant
to be watched in a theater at the And it
is a music.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
It is a bass. It is about music.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
So this is the one thing that audio is important.
Did you like the songs in it?
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Yeah? I did.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Do you anticipate or have you seen it all a
blues revival from this movie?
Speaker 4 (28:07):
No? Okay, more of the vibes, Yeah, the vibes. I think.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
I think it's a lot more about I think it's
more people being happy to see a fun version of
black historical fiction rather than like people being enslaved. It's
(28:33):
like black people having fun and then it's fantasy stuff
and it's like fun. So I think that is more
the thing. But actually, on that note, another reason that
I think, and I touched on this earlier, but another
reason that I think all this is happening is because
everything is about making your own stuff now rather than
(28:56):
making like covers and stuff like I think for a
very very long time, even you know, just an art
in general, and you still have to do this when
you go to art school and music school, you have
to learn the classics. You have to copy the masters, right,
and then once you do that, you you move on
(29:21):
and make your own stuff.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
That was like that's just what was done.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Like nobody wanted to hear your music because before I
think part of it is learning expertise, but it was
also before recorded media. Like if I wanted to hear
a song, I needed someone to play it, and that's
my favorite song, and so play that. Like I don't
need to hear your crappy original music because I can
(29:58):
listen to the old version of it or somebody doing
some good old version of it already. Why would I
listen to your version of it? Or why would I
make a version of it when I could just make
my own Because I'm I don't need to compete with
BB King.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
I'd rather compete with myself.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
So I think, like I think that's also a big
part of this is like I just think everybody, at
least in this country, the great us of a we
are we're all media makers.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
Now, like shout out podcasts.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
You know, we're all media and we're all making our
own stuff. It's all a copy of a copy. We're
talking about music on our own podcast. We're listening to
podcasts about music. We're we're contributing stuff, and sometimes that
might be celebrating something from our past. But there's also
(30:57):
this element of like, well, I don't know, I'm not
a historian, you know, and that's not going to get
any clicks anyway, so like why bring it up?
Speaker 2 (31:08):
It is.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
You do have to cut the youth a little bit
of slack, because.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
You know, when.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Baby boomers grew up, the history of recorded music was
pretty light, and you know, since that era, all music
has been recorded, even if it poorly so, and it
is harder to find the things you're supposed to know about.
(31:43):
It may be that more people know about the blues
and more people love the blues today than ever before.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
It maybe they're huge and like Taiwan, like I feel
like that's also something that happens, is like it moves
across the globe, and.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Like it moved to the UK in the sixties.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yes, yeah, no, like in like South Sudan they're playing
the blues, you know, and we don't know about it.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
But also like this was never a top forty genre, right,
That was because they didn't want black people on the
top forty. But then when they allowed black people on
the top forty. They'd kind of moved on to other
styles of black music as being the popular one. So
(32:35):
maybe I shouldn't Maybe I shouldn't worry, but I still
have more questions and I still want to work this
out with people. We did a bb King episode with
Diamond last year because I had referenced the blues on
a number of episodes of like when we're talking about
like rock or R and b artists, and I was like,
we should actually do a blues record. So we did
one of BB King's live albums and the other challenge
(33:00):
with that music, and I had this just even selecting
a recording for us to focus on was a lot
of it doesn't sound a lot of it sounds old.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
In addition to being like an antiquated style.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Of music, a lot of those recordings did not have
like the full studio treatment. It's just kind of a
bunch of guys in a room with a microphone, and.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
It's very likely that they weren't getting the best quality
at the time either of what existed at the time.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Yeah, So anyone who is interested in Blue Summit one hundred,
we thank Joe Bonamasa for tackling this project. Sounds like
a huge pain in the ass to do fun but
also a huge pain. So good on him for doing that.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
I really want to say, I think, like on that note,
I think that is so important.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
I think.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
I don't want, as you said, cut the kids some slack.
I mean, I'm I'm very much of that mind that.
I really think that I hear people of boomer and
Gen X generation older Gen X. It's always and this
I feel like I've been hearing this my whole life.
It's like you kids don't know anything. You kids don't
(34:17):
know anything, Tell me, tell us it. It's always like
you were supposed to just figure it out. You were
supposed to just know it. And it's always like scolding
us for not knowing it.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
And and if.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
You meet someone who's like our version, like the version
of us but older, then they'll like name thirty artists exactly,
and it's like, well, so I'm going to listen to
zero of.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
That exactly exactly, exactly, exactly so true.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
You know what, Okay, I I'd rather have that.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
Give me a long stupid list and I'll listen to
one thing.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
I was feeling a little bit bad about doing two
bb King episodes, but maybe that's worthwhile, and that we
just need to to turn people onto one guy and
if they like it, they'll figure out the RESTAURANM Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
And I really think it's not even about liking it.
Like we don't read Crime and Punishment because we like it.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
It's like about more than that.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
It's about history, you know, Like I mean, yeah, you
read Crown Punishment and then you go through your emo
phase and you're like, I'm a literature god and you know,
and like maybe one person who has to you know,
one person in a class gets into it and like
starts to learn to read, and maybe one person gets
into Blues because we talk about it and like that
(35:38):
is enough. But I think it's also important to just
know about it and talk about it and keep the
conversation alive. I think that's kind of what this was about,
cause it's like it is history and we are It's
like we talk about it all the time, but it
(35:58):
becomes a thing you talk about, not engage with.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, well, I can't wait to hear later. In this
interview he did with Jonathan, he talked about how he
has Shaka Khan on this record singing the Thrill is Gone.
I said that it's not out yet. I cannot wait
to hear it. So that's that's on the way this
year and next Dominate. Do you have anything to plug?
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Yeah, come check me out on December sixth come to
UC Black. It is going to be at eight thirty
and then right after that is outlaugh episode seven.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
I think you're going to be on the show.
Speaker 4 (36:41):
I'm going to be there.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
I'm now locked in to be on the jury, so
I have to be there every show.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
But otherwise, Yeah, this's Comedy Survivor.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Comedy Survivor Live comedy at a Bred Citizens Brigade Theater.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
It is so much fun.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
We have Phoebe Robinson hosting use and we have guests
from the Survivor universe on the comedy Survivor called out Bath.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
Check it out up well.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Thank you so much for listening. Tell us about your
first Listen on Instagram at at First Listen podcast, and
we'll be back next week with another episode. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
Bye,
Welcome to at First Listen, the music podcast for people
who don't always get the hype but want to.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Sometimes we're talking about old people's stuff.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
I'm Andrew, I'm no Mani, and today's one of those days.
It might be our messiest episode coming up. Is this
a mini is this a regular episode?
Speaker 4 (00:29):
Might add we a.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Middle We don't know.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
We're going to talk about the blues, a subject that
neither of us has any business discussing as an expert. Anyway,
bb King, the King of the Blues, would have turned
one hundred years old this past September, So really, in
no sense is this episode timely because he also died
(00:55):
over ten years ago.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yes, and he was born one hundred years ago, and
I believe that that is not when he started being
the King of blues. He may have started young playing blues,
but he didn't get king status until much long.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
He was probably the King of the Blues for a
good forty five years, maybe longer, I.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Would say so. One of the reasons we're bringing this
up is because people were not talking about it.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Right, Yeah, people were not talking about it, which is
why we're talking about it. Because a man named a
famous blues guitarist and rock guitarist named Joe Bonamassa.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
So famous that everyone in.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
The worlst people do know about it. I think anybody.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
He's one of those people where anyone who plays guitar
knows the name.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
That makes sense.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
If you don't play guitar, you probably don't know the name.
If you're a woman, you probably don't.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Know any Yeah, I feel like I have actually seen
the name on credit tide.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I mean he plays big venues. Yeah, he'll play like
the Beacon Theater. He'll play like Red Rock.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
He's like the type of guy that my dad would
be stoked about some tickets and he would go with
his buddy.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Okay, I'm text your dad right now and see if
he knows who Joe Bonamasa is.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah, I should just a quick day. I probably don't.
I can say I don't even need to check. I
would bet a lot of money. Yeah, I don't need
to check.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
I can.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
I can already guarantee my dad knows this. This is
right up his alley sole.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Let me play a clip from this interview here. Joe
Bonamasa was recently at my workplace, q Ando four point
three doing an interview with Out of the Box with
Jonathan Clark talking about why he took it upon himself
to make a tribute album BB King Blues Summit one
hundred tribute album to the late BB King.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
It was on my radar last year that he was
turning ninety nine. I go, wow, you know, eventually, I'm
probably gonna get a phone call from somebody who's producing
a record or some sort of tribute right thing for
his one hundredth Come January of this year, nobody called,
and Okay, maybe they don't want to be on the record.
But then I did some slew thing on the internet
(03:13):
and asked around and contacted his family and all that,
and we're like, is anybody doing anything? They're like no.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I'm like, which is surprising.
Speaker 5 (03:23):
It's surprising. Yeah, it's beyond surprising. Yeah, And I said, well,
do you mind if I do something?
Speaker 4 (03:30):
So you had a particular question.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
I don't know if I can actually articulate the question
because it's wrapped up in many other questions. But I
think it's interesting that Joe Bonamasa, who is one of
this phenomena of white team blues guitar players. He's much
older now, but he knew BB King for twenty five years.
(03:59):
He opened for bb at twelve years old and has
made a career as a world famous guitar player.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
And it is.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
In Joe's own words, basically he took up this mantle
of keeping BB King's music live with this tribute album.
And the guests on the tribute album include people who
a lot of people who personally knew BB King, like
Buddy Guy, George Benson, one of the Neville Brothers. I
(04:32):
forget which one Sha Ka Khan is on it. And
then there's people he mentioned like Kenny, Wayne Shephard and
Derek Trucks and Susan Tadeshi. Everyone turned out for this record.
Everyone was happy to do it, but it took Joe
as opposed to Bebe's family or somebody who was like
in Bbe's band to organize it, or some.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Blues musician in New Orleans or some you know, because
there's there's plenty of people still playing the blues, like gigging,
like on a local scale, so I feel like I.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Have so many. Basically, what you said was why why
is it?
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Uh?
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Why is that the came?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
What is this sort of what is the state of
the blues.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Uh, it's such a it's such a vital genre, where
of course rock and roll came from the blues, heavy
metal came to the blues, but I mean just modern
pop music came from the blues.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
It's American music history.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
It's it's essential American music, essential Black music history. And
I I'm a little, I don't know, disappointed. I get
sort of protective of the blues music as music that
is important for me personally, and I wonder why it's
(05:58):
not important to other people, and wonder why it seems
like it's more important to white people than it is
too black people.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Uh So, Okay, so I have I have lots of
thoughts on that par I.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Think I adequately expressed my confusion on this suspect subject.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
I think you have, yes.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
So on one hand, I think that is the case
for a lot of like black music genres that basically
white people got to them and black people were already
onto something else. So it was blues, jazz, I think
R and B as well, and soul like and rap.
(06:40):
Now honestly like versions of like even when you look
back of like the version of rap, the way the
style of rap that like some white rappers might be
doing is like corny to like the new the new kids. Right,
so there's like the old black guys and the new
white guys. They get together and they're like this is
(07:01):
we're both sill, we're still into this and so on
one hand, I think that there's this and yeah, me
as an expert, but you know, I know media studies.
Basically there's this thing that I think white people they
will look back on things and be like things were
(07:22):
better in the good old days. And famously black people
don't think about it that way.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
The good old days. We don't look back. We look forward.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
As black people, things were not better back then, and
we don't necessarily think it's that fun to remember them.
Like though we know it's important, it's always so tied
up in pain that and like our parents. My grandma
would never talk about you know, not like I mean,
my grandma was a sharecropper, you know, goes with the blues.
(07:55):
She would never ever talk about any of that stuff.
You couldn't you couldn't get it out of her. You
couldn't get you can't get these stories out of like
that generation because it's so painful and like they're just
like praise God that I'm still alive, you know, or not.
And I think that there is a big way that
(08:17):
like white music fans, white art fans will be like, oh,
you'll even hear like, oh, this new rap music is bad,
but Tupac was great. Like it's like you're they're able
to like see the older stuff as quality and then
the newer stuff as like lowbrow. I think it's a
(08:38):
very common way to think about really pop popular music
in general, pop popular things in general. I think it's
always like, oh, the old stuff is cool and the
new stuff is lent. And then on the other side
of that, I think that it's very hard to find
people doing things that aren't explicitly for profit. There is
(09:00):
no money for the arts or for history or for
anything that's not gonna make the biggest buck possible, you know,
why make Why why like talk about history when you
can just like make a thousand AI like copies of
it and like people stream it either way.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
So I think this is convoluted, but I actually I
think that it all comes together to make for these
like for the like slow erasure of history. And then lastly,
I think that people don't realize including this guy Joe, uh,
(09:43):
don't realize that it is on them, not you know,
he he took it upon himself, but other people in
that world don't realize that it is upon them to
teach and to bring this back.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Because because nobody else will.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Like I can't tell you how many of my teachers
these days are always they reference this old stuff and
like you know, famous old actors or comedians or artists
or whatever, and they're like, yeah, you should really learn
your history.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
It's important to know this stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
I'm like, suggest me, one book, suggests me, one movie.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
I don't know how am I supposed to find out
about it?
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Like I feel like there's so much information to be had,
and it's like, oh, I'm supposed to watch Severance, I'm
supposed to watch the new whatever.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
I'm supposed to see the.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
New this and listen to the new that and stay
on top of everything and learn about this history that
is infinite and you don't know where to find it
and it doesn't even necessarily like exist in the places
you look in a way that you can like absorb.
So and like, yeah, as you said, blues clubs are
closing closed down right.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
I mean that's the other aspect of when it comes
to bb King specifically, like his sort of lasting imprint
on American music was the blues clubs. He had this chain,
BB King's Blues Club. They would do all kinds of shows,
and I believe maybe there's still one open in Memphis,
(11:22):
but I believe around the country they're all closed. So really,
this is an artist whose impact on music was very significant,
and now as they've been gone for a little while,
it's their legacy is sort of fading. Their mark on
(11:43):
the industry is fading, and you know, their music is
not really top of mind anymore. I even think about
like hip hop in the nineties, they were sampling records
from the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
But they were usually rock records. They were usually by
like white artists or disco. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
I mean, the only like blues record that I can
think of, and I'm far from a expert in hip hop,
only blues record that was sampled in a big hip
hop song is that the Ray Charles song and that
gold Digger by Kanye West. Other than that, like, these
black artists were not pulling necessarily from black music. They
(12:33):
were pulling from a lot of rock and other styles.
Of music that maybe black people didn't really participate in.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Well well, and there's also the element of blues being
so I feel like it's a live music type of genre.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, that's probably true.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
It's so much about, yeah, being in that space, like
your connection with the artist, because it's not original music typically,
and even when it is original music, it's very similar
like that. You know, you learn the blues. You know,
you first they have jazz band, you learn blues.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
It's sort of you know, musicians of all stripes are
somewhat familiar with the blues because it's taught as like
lesson one, where like these are the sounds you're capable
of making.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
It's very simple, and then you move on from that.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Like one of the things that is interesting about Joe
Bonamasa and players like him is that they stay in that,
you know, level one genre, but they learn other things
and then they become so good at interpreting these blue
songs and making them their own that it really, you know,
(13:54):
to see that kind of playing live is very exciting,
But it doesn't it doesn't always I'm across on a recording.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Right and I think, like again, I think it does
come across on this on this EP?
Speaker 4 (14:10):
Is that what it is? This record? Whatever?
Speaker 3 (14:13):
So the record is being released as EPs each month
because there are so many tracks match. I don't know
if I cut that out of what of the Joe
Bonamassa quote, But there's like thirty two songs and he's
releasing it in volumes like the first of the month
or the first week of each month until February of
(14:34):
next year.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
And like the the it's very good. I'll say so far,
it's very good. And I listen to this and I
am reminded of what I'm off and reminded of when
I listen to stuff like this, is that, like why
do I listen to anything new? It all sucks compared
to this kind of like because it all this is
(14:56):
like it's all a copy of a copy of a
copy of this, Like it's it's an interpretation of this.
And the amount of years of expertise in artistry and
respect for your history and your respect for your craft
and all is in it. But you don't need that
to make music. You don't need all of that you
(15:18):
and you shouldn't.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
You. You gotta make all of the stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
In between before you get there, right, And I.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
Think that like when you are.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
A young artist. Yeah, you're like, oh, it kind of
sounds like that when I do this, and that's cool
for a second, but then you you know, you move.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
On, like now, time to thrash.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Time to find something that anyone that I am in
the age group of also wants to be a part of,
because I mean that was for me. I played saxophone
all through like school age, and I am thinking of
picking it a back up again, but I kind of
abandoned it because it wasn't a part of any music
(16:05):
that I listened to. I love jazz and blues and ska.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Even Scott's mostly brass band.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
That's the thing, you know, My my folk punk band with.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Me saxophone, saxophone.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Saxophone, acoustic guitar and harmonica, m Missus Doubtfire, my band
from high SCHOOLSD thank you to.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Thank You, And it was great.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
But like no, you know, it was always like, well,
this is what I play, so this is what I'm
gonna play in the band.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
There be a reason there are no other bands like this.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
It's exactly exactly no, And it was about us having fun.
It wasn't shocking, Ley, I know, it was.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Not about not enough for the money.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
We weren't.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
We weren't and that was a good thing because there
was no money, but no rip to that friend anyway.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Hey, you were smiling when you said that, So I
assume they are still with them.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
No, they are, but just not personally.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
No, they are passed away. But I'm laughing because what
else are you gonna do?
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Cry? Oh okay, Yeah, it's okay.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
I was like laughing because I'm like, I have to
say it because I do miss him.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Anyway, I was thinking about them this like.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Not it sounds like you have a touch of the blues.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
I do, though, That's why I mentioned it, because it's
like it's there.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
There is this. I think Roland Bart talked about aura
in some of.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
His essays and there was this and aura is like
a word that people use a lot now. But the
idea is that real art when you it has aura.
The Mona Lisa, for example, has aura. The picture of
(18:07):
the Mona Lisa on your laptop does not have aura.
And it's basically the idea that the copy of the copy,
the more you copy it, the less aura it has.
And I think that that is something we're hugely missing
out on in mass.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
Media today that we have.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Like almost erased the we've erased the concept of that
being important. Yeah, and it's like, don't notice it. It's like,
don't pay attention to the fact that this has no aura,
because it's entertaining and that's enough.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
And you should be ready to move on to the
next thing.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Exactly, just exactly, so don't get too interesting.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
If you think about, like, anytime you like the song
that you were hearing in your headphones and then you
instead of listening on headphones, you heard it on speakers,
and how much more you liked it? And then if
you then go from speakers to seeing it performed live, like,
how much more you then like it?
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Exactly except for if the live version sucks, if the
versions isn't a real musician, all they have is marketing
and one idea and whatever.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
And so, and that person is much easier to sell
than an artist who is a.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Complicated person, like we recently discussed with our di'angelo episode.
He would not be controlled by anyone. He was a
true artist. He did what was right for him as
an artist, and he had aura all over the world,
all over the place.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
It was.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
It was big, and that is something that is difficult
to sell, or maybe they won't let you sell them,
but somebody who really doesn't have a ton to offer,
or maybe is just easy, like easy to manipulate, easy
to squeeze. I think you know a lot of these,
like young kids who get record deals young. They probably
(20:24):
could be very prolific artists, but they get squeezed dry
so early that they don't have.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
To they don't get a challenged exactly.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
It's funny what you're saying about copy of a copy
of a copy. Before we started recording, you asked me about, like,
what is the material on this Blue Summit record? Is baby,
it's all bb King material, But he wasn't really a songwriter.
And you know the scene from which BB King emerged,
(20:57):
which I believe was the Chicago and I'm gonna say
the nineteen fifties, maybe I'm off by a few years.
That was like the electric blues. The like Muddy Waters
came even before BB King and he came out of
that scene. And of course Muddy Waters was critical to
(21:19):
the development of the rock and roll. The Rolling Stones
are named after a Muddy Waters song that was like
the third generation of the Blues. There's like a proto
blues genre, which is like was never recorded, never written down,
there's no photographs of the people who played it because
(21:40):
they were like literal sharecroppers and slaves. And then there's
another generation where it's like Robert Johnson's Sonhouse sister Rosetta Tharp,
where like we have some recordings of them, but they
sound horrible. It's like like these people were just like
never got those opportunities, and then they started getting a
(22:04):
little bit of you know, shine after like decades after
they were you know, passed away. So like bb King,
the music that he got famous playing was not music
that he wrote, but he was so good at interpreting it,
so good at communicating it live, and like he played
(22:24):
live forever, like almost until right up until he passed away,
and he was old for my whole life. He was
performing in a chair my entire life, and he was
still moving the air in a room and packing theaters
and getting people to come out and see him. Like
(22:48):
that's exactly the aura that you're talking about, like to
stand while he was playing live.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Now, it occurred to me, just as you said that
that I think of the blues as being played sat down.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
By an ancient man.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
With like some young guys behind him maybe, but like
an ancient man sitting down with the yes, yes, no
I and what you just talked about. Another part of
it occurred to me, and this is something it's a again.
It's it's like the the lost media. The stories that
(23:27):
weren't written and the things that weren't recorded are unknown,
like they're unknown, and they're they're more and more unknown
as time passes, and then as we fill up the
all the data in the world is like a larger
and larger percentage of it is since the creation of
(23:51):
digital media.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
And something that I.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Really it's really sad to say, but I think the
people people who were supposed to be doing it are
dead from HIV and AIDS.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Like I think that.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
All of the coolest people from that generation.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Died.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Friend Leebowitz was talking about this recently. Did you see
this basically, Friend Leebowitz was basically like, think about it.
The coolest people are the ones who are getting laid
the most, doing drugs, partying. It's the people who weren't
getting laid who survived. And then with all many other
(24:40):
epidemics COVID as well, like I feel it in my
own neighborhood of Harlem. The older generation of black people
who populated my neighborhood disappeared through COVID. And I don't know,
(25:03):
I don't know all of them.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
You don't think they moved upstate?
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Well I know for a fact the black lady veterinarian
in my neighborhood died of COVID. I know, I either
they moved upstate or they passed away. Either way, they
were raised from their community and alienated.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Because of a lack of resources.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
I started after the rent freeze, it was eviction notices
all over the walls, and slowly my apartment building has
now looks completely different, and everybody is like under forty
and it looks like crap. Nobody takes care of it,
and nobody is looking after their stuff anymore, which includes
(25:54):
your history. And I really think that, like, like I said,
you don't know what you don't know, so it's very
easy to erase history that's barely even written down in
the first place.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Yeah, I mean the Blues has the Blue survived like
into BB King's era just through like oral tradition, like
I think it was from Mississippi, So I mean he
began playing music as a child, probably learning music where
that nobody knows who wrote the song, and you know,
this music was just these songs were kind of just
(26:27):
passed down through generation through people going to see live
music and remembering songs from those gigs. This might be
a hard left turn, But have you heard of the
movie Sinners?
Speaker 4 (26:44):
Have I heard of it?
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Did you see it?
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Of course I saw it, and I recently watched a
video essay about it that was.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
Longer than the movie shout out.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
FD signific Ice.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
I saw someone next to me on a plane watching it,
and I thought it looked very bad, but apparently people
really liked it.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
It's great anyway.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
It's a contemporary film that revolves around the blues, and
I think it's set in the thirties or the twenties
or something.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
Something like that. I think it's the twenties.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
And or the thirties.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
I had the thought while I was watching it that
while you were watching it, I was watching it.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
She also had subtitles on, so I was I was
getting a lot you.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
I just have to stop you, right, I basically watched it.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
You did not watch it that was shot on large
format film.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Okay, you don't think me peeking at somebody's iPad on
a flight, just watching it.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
That was shot on large format film. It is meant
to be watched in a theater at the And it
is a music.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
It is a bass. It is about music.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
So this is the one thing that audio is important.
Did you like the songs in it?
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Yeah? I did.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Do you anticipate or have you seen it all a
blues revival from this movie?
Speaker 4 (28:07):
No? Okay, more of the vibes, Yeah, the vibes. I think.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
I think it's a lot more about I think it's
more people being happy to see a fun version of
black historical fiction rather than like people being enslaved. It's
(28:33):
like black people having fun and then it's fantasy stuff
and it's like fun. So I think that is more
the thing. But actually, on that note, another reason that
I think, and I touched on this earlier, but another
reason that I think all this is happening is because
everything is about making your own stuff now rather than
(28:56):
making like covers and stuff like I think for a
very very long time, even you know, just an art
in general, and you still have to do this when
you go to art school and music school, you have
to learn the classics. You have to copy the masters, right,
and then once you do that, you you move on
(29:21):
and make your own stuff.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
That was like that's just what was done.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Like nobody wanted to hear your music because before I
think part of it is learning expertise, but it was
also before recorded media. Like if I wanted to hear
a song, I needed someone to play it, and that's
my favorite song, and so play that. Like I don't
need to hear your crappy original music because I can
(29:58):
listen to the old version of it or somebody doing
some good old version of it already. Why would I
listen to your version of it? Or why would I
make a version of it when I could just make
my own Because I'm I don't need to compete with
BB King.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
I'd rather compete with myself.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
So I think, like I think that's also a big
part of this is like I just think everybody, at
least in this country, the great us of a we
are we're all media makers.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
Now, like shout out podcasts.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
You know, we're all media and we're all making our
own stuff. It's all a copy of a copy. We're
talking about music on our own podcast. We're listening to
podcasts about music. We're we're contributing stuff, and sometimes that
might be celebrating something from our past. But there's also
(30:57):
this element of like, well, I don't know, I'm not
a historian, you know, and that's not going to get
any clicks anyway, so like why bring it up?
Speaker 2 (31:08):
It is.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
You do have to cut the youth a little bit
of slack, because.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
You know, when.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Baby boomers grew up, the history of recorded music was
pretty light, and you know, since that era, all music
has been recorded, even if it poorly so, and it
is harder to find the things you're supposed to know about.
(31:43):
It may be that more people know about the blues
and more people love the blues today than ever before.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
It maybe they're huge and like Taiwan, like I feel
like that's also something that happens, is like it moves
across the globe, and.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Like it moved to the UK in the sixties.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yes, yeah, no, like in like South Sudan they're playing
the blues, you know, and we don't know about it.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
But also like this was never a top forty genre, right,
That was because they didn't want black people on the
top forty. But then when they allowed black people on
the top forty. They'd kind of moved on to other
styles of black music as being the popular one. So
(32:35):
maybe I shouldn't Maybe I shouldn't worry, but I still
have more questions and I still want to work this
out with people. We did a bb King episode with
Diamond last year because I had referenced the blues on
a number of episodes of like when we're talking about
like rock or R and b artists, and I was like,
we should actually do a blues record. So we did
one of BB King's live albums and the other challenge
(33:00):
with that music, and I had this just even selecting
a recording for us to focus on was a lot
of it doesn't sound a lot of it sounds old.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
In addition to being like an antiquated style.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Of music, a lot of those recordings did not have
like the full studio treatment. It's just kind of a
bunch of guys in a room with a microphone, and.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
It's very likely that they weren't getting the best quality
at the time either of what existed at the time.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Yeah, So anyone who is interested in Blue Summit one hundred,
we thank Joe Bonamasa for tackling this project. Sounds like
a huge pain in the ass to do fun but
also a huge pain. So good on him for doing that.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
I really want to say, I think, like on that note,
I think that is so important.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
I think.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
I don't want, as you said, cut the kids some slack.
I mean, I'm I'm very much of that mind that.
I really think that I hear people of boomer and
Gen X generation older Gen X. It's always and this
I feel like I've been hearing this my whole life.
It's like you kids don't know anything. You kids don't
(34:17):
know anything, Tell me, tell us it. It's always like
you were supposed to just figure it out. You were
supposed to just know it. And it's always like scolding
us for not knowing it.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
And and if.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
You meet someone who's like our version, like the version
of us but older, then they'll like name thirty artists exactly,
and it's like, well, so I'm going to listen to
zero of.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
That exactly exactly, exactly, exactly so true.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
You know what, Okay, I I'd rather have that.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
Give me a long stupid list and I'll listen to
one thing.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
I was feeling a little bit bad about doing two
bb King episodes, but maybe that's worthwhile, and that we
just need to to turn people onto one guy and
if they like it, they'll figure out the RESTAURANM Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
And I really think it's not even about liking it.
Like we don't read Crime and Punishment because we like it.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
It's like about more than that.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
It's about history, you know, Like I mean, yeah, you
read Crown Punishment and then you go through your emo
phase and you're like, I'm a literature god and you know,
and like maybe one person who has to you know,
one person in a class gets into it and like
starts to learn to read, and maybe one person gets
into Blues because we talk about it and like that
(35:38):
is enough. But I think it's also important to just
know about it and talk about it and keep the
conversation alive. I think that's kind of what this was about,
cause it's like it is history and we are It's
like we talk about it all the time, but it
(35:58):
becomes a thing you talk about, not engage with.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, well, I can't wait to hear later. In this
interview he did with Jonathan, he talked about how he
has Shaka Khan on this record singing the Thrill is Gone.
I said that it's not out yet. I cannot wait
to hear it. So that's that's on the way this
year and next Dominate. Do you have anything to plug?
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Yeah, come check me out on December sixth come to
UC Black. It is going to be at eight thirty
and then right after that is outlaugh episode seven.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
I think you're going to be on the show.
Speaker 4 (36:41):
I'm going to be there.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
I'm now locked in to be on the jury, so
I have to be there every show.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
But otherwise, Yeah, this's Comedy Survivor.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Comedy Survivor Live comedy at a Bred Citizens Brigade Theater.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
It is so much fun.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
We have Phoebe Robinson hosting use and we have guests
from the Survivor universe on the comedy Survivor called out Bath.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
Check it out up well.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Thank you so much for listening. Tell us about your
first Listen on Instagram at at First Listen podcast, and
we'll be back next week with another episode. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
Bye,
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