Spent the afternoon in Monterey at the Battle of the Bands, a pre-show for this summer’s Monterey Blues Festival. 10 groups performed, including The Spencer Jarrett Band, my husband’s blues/R&B group (which included the singers from The Gospel Travellers, the gospel group he plays with).
Some observations:
— What passes for blues today for many is really bar band music–rock n’roll with southern/R&B roots. Think distant cousin of the Allman brothers, as opposed to son of Son House.
–Club owners don’t want to book blues bands that don’t get people up and dancing–festival bookers feel the same way. One of the big factors in judging the bands in today’s ‘battle’ was how many people hit the dance floor.
–There are men who dance, a lot of them–but I’m not married to one of them.
— I also noticed that there is a blues/rock style– To be specific,if it’s a woman, either very skinny or definitely chubby wearing a tight rock blues t-shirt/leopard off the shoulder sweater/pink muscle shirt with tight high-waisted jeans/black leather pants/mini-shirt and high heels. Hair is long, straight, and loose. Needless to say, this style looked better on most of these women when they adopted it ten years ago.
And the Blues guys: Hawaiian/30’s print shirt, full cut to hide the pot belly, or black T under leather or jeans jacket. Porkpie/newsboy cap/ Borsalino/long pony-tail going gray. Facial hair–mustaches, goatees, sideburns are big. The younger guys look more rockabilly; the older guys look like the aging hippies they are.
For both sexes, this is a look that would definitely benefit from some updating.
–Performers tend to be copies of someone famous–the singer who sounds like Janis Joplin, the one who sounds like Bonnie Raitt, the guy who does Sam & Dave, the other one who’s copying Marvin Gaye–in club land, where these players mostly come from, people are hired to get folks to dance and drink, not to have their own sound.
Spent the afternoon in Monterey at the Battle of the Bands, a pre-show for this summer’s Monterey Blues Festival. 10 groups performed, including The Spencer Jarrett Band, my husband’s blues/R&B group (which included the singers from The Gospel Travellers, the gospel group he plays with).
Some observations:
— What passes for blues today for many is really bar band music–rock n’roll with southern/R&B roots. Think distant cousin of the Allman brothers, as opposed to son of Son House.
–Club owners don’t want to book blues bands that don’t get people up and dancing–festival bookers feel the same way. One of the big factors in judging the bands in today’s ‘battle’ was how many people hit the dance floor.
–There are men who dance, a lot of them–but I’m not married to one of them.
— I also noticed that there is a blues/rock style– To be specific,if it’s a woman, either very skinny or definitely chubby wearing a tight rock blues t-shirt/leopard off the shoulder sweater/pink muscle shirt with tight high-waisted jeans/black leather pants/mini-shirt and high heels. Hair is long, straight, and loose. Needless to say, this style looked better on most of these women when they adopted it ten years ago.
And the Blues guys: Hawaiian/30’s print shirt, full cut to hide the pot belly, or black T under leather or jeans jacket. Porkpie/newsboy cap/ Borsalino/long pony-tail going gray. Facial hair–mustaches, goatees, sideburns are big. The younger guys look more rockabilly; the older guys look like the aging hippies they are.
For both sexes, this is a look that would definitely benefit from some updating.
–Performers tend to be copies of someone famous–the singer who sounds like Janis Joplin, the one who sounds like Bonnie Raitt, the guy who does Sam & Dave, the other one who’s copying Marvin Gaye–in club land, where these players mostly come from, people are hired to get folks to dance and drink, not to have their own sound.