[snoot]

Originally Posted by doodyhead

Where I go south with this is when everything turns into pop.

A lot does I agree, but certainly not everything. Sometimes things do evolve (devolve) out of control, or towards the maudlin. One simply has to be discerning.

Its one thing to create music for music's sake, its quite another to craft pop tunes just to sell them. While many become stars by creating music, The music industry is just that... an industry. you might as well get Clay Aiken in your band.

Fair point. But of course it all comes down to varying degrees, does it not? I mean I can listen to the Carpenters for something soft, then there's The Ohio Express (ouch). Both are well known pop outfits, only where the Carpenters' Solitaire (to use but one example) is fresh and moving, Yummy, Yummy Yummy is syrupy spuds. That's nothing more than bubblegum! My point is, there is good pop, and bad pop. There's also great pop. Much of that evolves over time into what we call standards.

As for canned music, the kind produced by the big production units solely for buckaroos and little more, that's considerably different than that done primarily for artistic achievement. True artists don't sell out cheap, whether they're pop, rock or blues constituted. Even at his quasi-discoed best, Bob Welch can't be used in the same breath as the Backstreet Boys, NKOTB, Milli Vanilli, or any of those other choreographed androids! [not by a sane mind anyway] Often you need look no further than who's producing the work, and who plays on it!

But even here things can get a tad blurred. There's not much Beach Boys on BB albums outside of their vocal tracks and sometimes a bit of Carl's guitar, but those are classic west coast tunes they produced all the same. Brian Wilson is widely considered a modern musical visionary of the first order; even McCartney freely tips his hat to him. But Wilson opted to employ the best WC session musicians money could by - and that formula obviously worked. To some it's "pop" and little more, to others it's surf music at its apex (Dick Dale and Ventures be silent). No thunder, no upheaval, no pain, just pure sunshine. OTOH when news broke The Monkees - an early example of a "prefab" invention if there ever was one - were doing the same thing, the gig was up. They hit the ground like a led balloon on full afterburners.

We also have to be real. Almost all art and music is produced for money one way or another. These guys have to make a living and feed themselves, plus have something in the kitty to help finance their next projects, whether it be from their own accounts or the record company ones. How do you possibly get around that? That doesn't equate to a "sell-out" by any means!

"A Beautiful Day, the Moodies, Bread, the Carpenters and I assume you meant ABBA"

No I was referring to the yankee ABB = Allman Brothers Band

What do they have to do with anything? ((I get that It's a beautiful day was a SF band" but hardly prime movers in any cultural movement")

Those were just a random handful of acts to show the range on what true hippie dippy types can groove to all at once. A fairly broad curve, from mellow yellow to southern fried rock, and running the gamut from weepy pop ballads to mean ol' jams. All from the same time frame mind you. Hey you may want to sample IABD [It's A Beautiful Day] if you want a taste of cultural renaissance. No joking either, if you can handle a little electrified violin (ouch that must hit a blues junkie right where it counts, in the package). Talk about a walk on the wild side. [My guess is Sugarcane Harris is doing this from wherever he rests => ] LaFlamme FTW!

Go listen to White Bird, Hot Summer Day, Wasted Union Blues, Girl With No Eyes, Bombay .. ah hell, the entire album from their first self-titled release in '69. That's SF psychedelia at its breezy best. Now fire up IABD Live At Carnegie Hall from 2 years later, only crank it up! Then come back and thank me for the turn on. I'll break you blues purists yet.

In the 60's no white folk really knew what the blues was. I have reason to believe they still don't.

Some of the best blues ever recorded were done by white artists, right in our lifetimes. Where they may imitate, pimp and snatch at times, they also elevate, refine and reinvent in their own right. Tell me Green's work doesn't do something for you? How 'bout an hour of Stevie Ray Vaughan? It's all how you come to view it. Also, what would those great black man blues be without their own "traditional" song structure borrowings? And that was from white folks way back when, dig? You don't get that "pure blues" sound from the jungles of Africa, do you? That's because it's a hybrid fusion owing much of its own development and evolution to additional music forms, white mans' forms as it were, but tethered and broadened from the plight of their own unique experience. Same with rock n roll. That genesis is no more black based than white, borrowing every bit as much from western, country, popular and traditional standards as anything else (R&B, jazz, blues, etc.).

That's the largely unwritten story, the one not always brought to the fore by the ultra modern scribes. I guess it isn't deemed "cool" or "hip" enough, since our white ancestors were obviously all living in laps of luxury. [I'm not even sure they worked, thus no pain, no gain... let me check on that one though.]

Bob Welch is good in his own right. But Pop culture is just too fickle. "Another Roadside Attraction"

"Another Roadside Attraction"? What the #$*%$!!! Those are fightin' words let me remind you. You bluesmeisters sure know how to put the sting in anything deviating from a purely black n blue norm. Time to circle the wagons, again!