Blues Roots

 

3/30/2006

 

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Sometimes my Chicago blues roots show in my music. I was a huge blues fan when I first started playing in the late 70s. The annual Blues Fest was a major event. 

You can't deny Blues is where it all started in the 60s. With AI music anyone can use "Rock" and "Blues" in a prompt, but it might not resonate if you've never played blues. I still think that humans do blues better, but this is not bad. 

Also, Cal's was what was left of Chicago's red-light district, bounded by and Wells at the west, State at the east, and Van Buren at the north, and Congress at the south. 

3/30/2011

Even after 20 years of riding the El through the west side to the Loop, I’m still seeing new things. Today it was “New Drift Liquors” in Austiin-- a shuttered saloon. Would be a great photo. 

[This actually was a photo I took of Cal’s at Wabash and Van Buren, now a Greek fast-food restaurant. There's a little window on the north side of the building where there was what I called a "shrine" that had a smashed guitar and a Sinatra record. There was a story behind it, I'm sure, but it's a mystery. Vintage Smoking is an actual song of mine that is a Phrygian blues.

Lee Friedlander--Photos of TVs

William Eggleston - Motel Sign

 

New Drift Liquors
A shuttered saloon
Gonna take a photo
Of Cal's at noon
Vintage smoking
A Phrygian blues
Gonna take a photo
Of Cal's at noon

Rhythm of the kick
Shimmer of the 'verb
You can reach the music
If you get the nerve

A swarm of tornadoes
Broke out in the back
While I was laying
The lap steel track

Dreaming of tornadoes
I saw them in films
It's the Droste effect
Films within a film

Pictures of the TV
And motel signs
When you take a look
The window is a shrine

All of us were once
Strangers in the night
You can see it clearly
In the window on the right