Today, I'm gonna be talking about something I mentioned earlier- the drift of music away from blues.
I first mentioned this in my post about beginner guitar songs, when I was talking about Led Zeppelin. Essentially, there's a way I think about music- a sort of generational model, not unlike the one used for immigration. Now, of course, this whole post is gonna be one big oversimplification, I won't deny that- but I like to think it still has some truth to it.
AKA blues bands. Personally, I find a lot of the original blues bands a bit dull- that's not to say I don't respect them, or the contributions they made to music, it just isn't quite to my taste. Blues musicians came up with a lot of unique riffs, keys, scales and "schematics" for songs (for lack of a better word).
The first generation of separation, to use the immigration model I mentioned, would be the generation that moves away from their home country. Bands like Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull are what I would consider first generation. Jethro Tull's first album was essentially a blues album, as was Led Zeppelin's (though of course, there's more going on in both than generic blues). As for Black Sabbath, they were originally called the Polka Tulk Blues Band, playing 12-bar blues songs- they changed to their new style before recording (though there are some interesting in-between songs out there under the name Earth- you can find a song called The Rebel on YouTube, as well as a few others). But after the blues, these bands all expanded and branched out into new, more original styles- all of which were, to some extent, still based on the blues.
These are the ones who, rather than starting out playing the blues, started off playing those bands that had previously been inspired by the blues. I don't know as much about these bands, but they would have formed the rock and roll scene of the late 70s and early 80s- in a lot of cases, these would be metal bands, possibly inspired by Black Sabbath. These bands, though not what I'd normally listen to, aren't too unbearable in my opinion. Examples for this generation might be, say, Metallica, or Iron Maiden- neither are bands I listen to, but both have songs I like.
I'm not gonna bother separating them from here on, half because I don't know much about these bands, and half because things get muddier and muddier (people can be inspired by multiple generations, for instance). Essentially though, these bands are pretty far removed from the blues, possibly to the point of having no recognisable influence in their music. This could include things like disco, heavy metal, even modern pop music.
This concept could apply to more things than just blues, of course- you could apply it to jazz, the Beatles (I heard of an interview between Ozzy Osbourne and Alice Cooper that reached the conclusion that more bands nowadays need to listen to the Beatles), etc.
For me personally, the amount I like music is directly proportional to how much it was influenced by the Beatles, and by the blues. Black Sabbath was a bit of both; Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull were very bluesy; Alice Cooper started off making parodies of Beatles songs (some of which, by the way, are uncanny, apart from the singing (listen to Shoe Salesman to see what I mean)).
Anyways, that's gonna be it for today- hopefully you enjoyed this post! If you have any thoughts on this model, let me know!
