Saturday, February 13, 2010
The Good Ol' Blues
After listening to the conversation about the devil and the crossroads discussion in class on Friday, it got me thinking. My roommate had recently mentioned the Crossroads Guitar Festival that happens every three years. Eric Clapton hand picks many top guitarists from around everywhere including Buddy Guy, Jeff Beck, ZZ Top, this year on the lineup is John Mayer, Shania Twain, just to name a few. I began to wonder if this had any significance to the Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil story. I researched it a little and didn't come across anything. Clapton made the festival to benefit his charity in Antigua called the Crossroads Center. It benefits drug and alcohol rehabilitation. I think that it definately is in the mindset of the Johnson story because all the guitarists are blues guitarists. Johnson was big with the blues. It is like connecting the dots. It seems like it symbolizes a place where the devil should be, all the temptation and real good music of today rooted from passed years. Then talking about the devil and the crossroads and the music expeditions down south got me wondering about Charlie Daniel's song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." I thought of the lyrics and it seems to be a metaphor for finding new music down south. The lyric "The devil went down to Georgia, lookin' for a soul to steal," is almost like what the record companies did. They would go down south to look for the new "hot" music. Then it also kind of goes with the Robert Johnson story. The fiddler's name is Johnny, possibly a spin off of Johnson. If the devil won the competition, he got Johnny's soul and if the devil lost, Johnny got a "golden fiddle." The conversation sparked a lot of thoughts. Oh, and also I looked a little into Cream's song "Crossroads." I found out they borrowed ideas and lyrics from other classic blues songs. It was arranged by Eric Clapton. The crossroads and the devil do come up in a lot of different blues songs. Charlie Daniels song isn't blues, it's more folk, so I guess it does come up in one other song that I can think of that isn't blues.
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I'm glad you brought this up Andy. I heard an announcement on 97 rock that the tickets to the festival were going on sale soon (I think we went on sale yesterday)-I would give anything to go! I am, however, curious to see the response to John Mayer and Shania Twain, and the like. In 2003 (I think) I went to the Czars concert in Toronto-the Rolling Stones, AC/DC, the Guess Who, and Rush were the headliners-and Justin Timberlake opened them. He didn't make it for his full set before he was booed off (people were chucking water bottles at him) and it sparked this whole discussion in the music world about artists from different artists not fitting together. I'm curious to find out what happens at the festival!
ReplyDeleteThe tickets aren't too bad I think they are around $100, also Robert Cray was on the lineup, I saw him for free in Rochester maybe four years ago. I remember him playing the trumpet, but there is no trumpet in his band. I do know it was definately the Robert Cray Band. I would like to see the crowd reaction for when Shania Twain gets up on stage. She does not fit in, in my mind with the rest of the lineup. Also with John Mayer, he is a great guitarist, but I don't think he plays much of a blues guitar. I'll just have to watch the write-ups after the concert in June.
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