Take That, You Virusy Bitch!

Take That, You Virusy Bitch!

Steadily feeling better throughout the day (work actually helped, which was something of a shock) though I still have this thick fog around my skull making all thought processes suspect.

I switched my night with Katie to tomorrow. Sounds like she and Mommy had a great time at the Keneally clinic last night, and she got to hang out with Bill, which makes me very happy since he's leaving very soon. I'm hoping for us to go visit him tomorrow evening. Katie really loves him, and he's FABULOUS with her. I love watching them interact.

I got my check after work and ran around to get shit done so I could come home and collapse. Despite funds to the contrary, I treated myself to a small gift - an $8 paperback of Darwin's Origin Of Species. I nearly bought a book on Algebra. Math and science were my weak points in school, and I'm trying to rectify that - if you're gonna take on the Republicans who also don't know shit about either subject, you gotta get off yer ass. And frankly, I just need to sharpen my brain cells up some. Some hardcore math is good for you.

So is Hendrix, so I cranked the shit out of Band Of Gypsys on the drive and sank deep into the Cox/Miles groove machine. There is no question in my mind - Billy Cox was a FAR cooler bass player than Noel Redding. I have nothing really against Redding, and some of his parts are pretty nifty, but there's times it's like the Experience is driving on a square wheel. With Band Of Gypsys, Hendrix found a much more groove-sympathetic bassist, and though Cox usually does little more than the riff, he KILLS the riff. Kills it until it's dead and kills it some more. Then you listen to the First Rays Of The New Rising Sun stuff Jimi did just before he died (released by his estate a few years back under that title, released shortly after his death as Cry of Love and Rainbow Bridge), and Cox emerges as a very active and inventive player with some serious goddamn funk in his trousers. Dolly Dagger and Roomful Of Mirrors alone knock me on my dead white ass.

I just got through one of the more marginal of Jimi's albums, a live recording released a zillion times under a zillion names (mine is called NYC '68, one of the better known versions is called Woke Up This Morning And Found Myself Dead) which is little more than a loose jam with Jimi and Johnny Winter and a very drunk Jim Morrison yelling "Fuck her in the ass!" at random intervals. Not terribly essential, but it has its momoents.

What I find so essential about Hendrix is the FREEDOM he displays, the fullbore headlong rush into a rockin' neverneverland of joyous feedback and unhinged sexually-driven funk-pounding. He's FUCKING that guitar, goddamn it, he has that little six-stringed whorebag bent over and he's drilling it until it screams how big his dick is. Loads of guitarists have picked up that mantle and pissed all over it, confusing chops with music, and nearly all of them are boring as fuck, despite often having more technical skill (and better tuners) than Jimi ever had. FUCK them.

What with the craze for "tribute" bands all over, I have to say that if I could find a guitarist and drummer who actually understood this music, I'd love to play in a Jimi tribute band. Unfortunately, there's not many of them. Forty years of "advances" into super-clean technique and nicely placed 32nd notes have robbed guitar music of the grit, soul, balls, dirt, and goddamn glorious grime of what Jimi accomplished in a few years. A few of these guys get it, but it still ends up obscuring the music. As much as I love Stevie Ray Vaughan, and am in motherfuckin' AWE of his Hendrix covers, I HATE hearing countless bar bands with guitarists doing Hendrix through some kind of ubiqutous SRV Filtering Device. Fuck that. I wanna find some guy who spent ten years neck-deep in the original shit before he ever knew who SRV was. And a drummer who perfectly balances the frenetic wonder of Mitch Mitchell with the ass-slamming, snare-snapping groove (and hopefully not the vocal ability) of Buddy Miles.

A boy can dream, right?

Jimi not only had the lead guitar insanity he's known for, he also had SONGS, real fucking songs groudned in funk and blues and rock and some shit I'm not even sure what it is, and he KNEW where he came from, he knew the history of this shit and lived in it. He also was a friggin' monster of a rhythm player, a skill that has sadly become so unknown as to be practically useless anymore. Me, when I pick up a guitar instead of a bass, I'm a rhythm player first. Probably in part becasue my lead chops are so fucking erratic and underdeveloped, but also because I wanna hear some FUNK, some greasy chordal shit that fucks around with the tonality and MOVES somewhere. I learned a lot of that from Jimi.

He also had something to say, which is a bit of a lost art in music anymore. Any strivings towards significance seldom reach above yer basic Starbucks-liberalism, and few even go that far anymore. Jimi made more of a statement with simply a guitar mangling the Star Spangled Banner than most of these pathetic diet-soda rock-monkeys these days will ever concieve of. Rock and roll doesn't HAVE to have a real statement at all times, but goddammit, isn't a little of it better than NOTHING?

There's probably 15 comments on this blog I haven't got to yet. But right now I wanna play some fucking bass. Foxy. Lady.

Love,
Dougie
PS Cutter will be glad to know I'm drinking again. Flying Dog's Dogtoberfest not only has some of the funniest of Ralph Steadmans' beer-label art, it's also a damn fuckin' fine brew.

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