A 10-second search on YouTube will easily turn up gems like this 1966 performance of “Devil Got My Woman” by Skip James, a Delta bluesman who first recorded in 1931s, was rediscovered during the 1960s folk revival, and whose songs inspired such rock icons such as Eric Clapton:
(By the way, standing on the right side in the foreground of the video is Howlin’ Wolf. If you’ve seen a Viagra TV ad, you’ve heard Wolf’s music.)
It would have been difficult to impossible to find an album by Skip James or Howlin’ Wolf when I was a teen-age music fan, growing up in the 1970s in small-town Nebraska. It was tough to find ANY music that wasn’t at the top of the popular or country music charts. AM radio played the hits. FM radio hadn’t even reached the area yet. Nor did television showcase very much rock music, outside of the biggest or safest (from a parental standpoint) hits. We didn’t have cable yet, just ABC, CBS and PBS. There were a few musically adventurous TV shows, like the Johnny Cash Show and the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, where a person might hear Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, John Hartford, or other folk, bluegrass, or other roots music artists as well as rock greats like the Who or Donovan. Somehow, when these shows were on the air I wasn’t yet interested in some of the great music they featured. So I missed performances like this gem:
Aside from these short-lived shows and a few other exceptions, the main media outlets pretty much ignored the kinds of music that had intrigued me, music who I’d been exposed to when friends of mine or my brothers’ shared record albums. For a kid in small town Nebraska, Rolling Stone Magazine was one of the few places to read record reviews, profiles and interviews with musical artists. I could satisfy my curiosity about artists like Jackson Browne, the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead, and others who were outside the playlist of small-town AM radio.
My mind and musical tastes were further expanded by college and new friends with varied tastes in politics, culture, recreational activities, and music. The friends I made at college in Lincoln in the 1970s turned me on to some soon-to-be greats who were still under the general public’s radar at that early date (Bruce Springsteen in 1974), artists who traveled the musical backroads and would never be on the broad, paved road of superstardom (Ry Cooder) and truly out-there artists (Captain Beefheart). There was live music that was truly exotic to these ears – blues, bluegrass, western swing, and the like. And people who worked at record stores like Dirt Cheap had a cool factor and musical tastes that were unimpeachable.
This mix of musical influences left me with an appreciation of a broad roster of genuinely great artists, many of whom would never come within shouting distance of the Billboard Top ten: Richard Thompson, David Lindley, Little Feat, John Hiatt, among others. And I liked it that way. It was a point of pride that the general public would never have the good taste to like my favorites. Thirty or 40 years ago, my friends and I were hipsters before hipsters were invented.
We also followed artists who had the occasional hit record, but spent most of their careers putting out quality music even when they were outside the public eye. We were willing to share them occasionally with the unwashed masses. And of course there were the artists that created the classics of our era. They were both universally popular AND universally cool: the Beatles, the Stones, Willie Nelson, Sinatra, Bob Marley.
This is the short version of how I became a music lover with tastes broad enough to include Skip James and Willie Nelson. But here’s the thing: Discovering new music never satisfied, it just made me burn to find even more new music.
Forty years down the road, I still keep an ear out for great music. It might be new artists – if you haven’t heard John Fullbright, give him a listen – or it might be another amazing player of old, weird music who influenced somebody who influenced Jack White. So the search continues, only these days my sources are different. The record stores are gone, there’s not much live music where I live, and most of my college buddies aren’t as interested in music (but a few still are!).
These days, I have my kids; Rolling Stone and a few other music magazines that are still around; and the internet. I visit some sites regularly to find new music. Here are a few of them:
- Popmatters (http://www.popmatters.com/): This site covers not only music, but also film, TV, books, comics, and multimedia. Popmatters has regular reviews, columns, blogs, and features. Upcoming releases are listed every month. They cover a broad range of musical genres.
- All Songs Considered, a blog by NPR Music (http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/): All Songs Considered covers new artists as well as new releases by established artists. One of the best parts of this site is the Tiny Desk Concert, a series of video mini-concerts in the NPR offices. This is a great way to get a feel or artists who are new, or else just new to you.
- For Americana, alt country and roots music, there’s Country Standard Time (http://www.countrystandardtime.com/countrymusic.asp) a good source of album reviews and feature articles.
- For all-around research, and to look for reviews of new albums I might here about, there’s Allmusic.com (http://www.allmusic.com/)
- Rolling Stone is available both in print and on-line, and other music mags have on-line versions, too. One that I often peruse for its reviews is the Uncut (http://www.uncut.co.uk/music), a British rag that covers a lot of American music as well.
- No Depression is a highly regarded magazine that covers alt country and other roots music. Its print version folded, but the online version lives on: http://www.nodepression.com/
Question: What are your favorite on-line sources of information about music? Share some that I should know about.
No comments:
Post a Comment