Saturday, 27 November 2010
1. Linin’ Track Taj Mahal
Before anyone started inventing instruments, there was the human voice, but we’ll never know whether the first human approximations of music were entirely vocal or whether there was some (presumably percussive) rhythmic accompaniment.
But there’s something primeval about work songs and the like because what you’re hearing is opening a window on the possible beginnings of what we now call music.
Whether the first music was an accompaniment to work, or associated with ritual, or a form of recreation, or something else entirely is probably another chicken or the egg? question.
But this particular track is an important milestone in Hughesy’s musical evolution. Here’s how it panned out.
Having been listening to the radio in the days before the airwaves were taken over by the sort of playlists that have become the bane of the airwaves in recent years and heading off to friends places to check out their record collections, I’d heard some old blues before I heard the third Taj Mahal album Giant Step/De Ole Folks At Home without really getting what was going on.
Coming from a rock/pop background, although I could make connections to things I was familiar with, the sound quality of the old blues recordings made them sound more primitive than I was used to. Even the first Paul Butterfield, which stacks up fairly well with most of its contemporaries, was dismissed in favour of Fresh Cream.
In retrospect that might seem almost cringe worthy now, but there were reasons for these apparent lapses of judgement.
In his biography of Cream, Dave Thompson makes the point that most blues-based music we’ll never know that we heard in the mid-sixties was a significant departure from the originals in sound because of the various participants’ refusal to sit still for a moment. You could compile an entire album ... from the multitudinous versions ... laid down in English studios between 1963 and 1964, but you struggled to find even two that sounded the same. American groups, on the other hand, excelled at achieving an authenticity that made even John Mayall and Cyril Davies look avant-garde by comparison (Thompson, D Cream: The World’s First Supergroup p. 82)
Of course, virtually everything that hit our airwaves was based around the Top 40, although at that stage the Top 40 was more eclectic than it became as radio degenerated into formats like adult-oriented rock and playlists became much more formulaic.
Apart from the Top 40 and tracks from the latest Beatles or Stones album, there were DJ favourites that they also would slip into the playlists at their weekend gigs. Townsville’s premier radio station at the time had two youth DJs - who operated dances at venues like The Shack on Friday nights and were known as Bill-A-Go-Go and Stuie-Gone-Gone (and, no I’m not making that up). They cross-promoted those gigs on their shows and featured some of the favourite dance tracks in their playlists, which is why I have such vivid memories of hearing stuff like the Animals’ Club A Go Go - which as far as I can tell was never released on a single or EP in Australia - regularly on the radio in 1965.
So we heard some blues-based stuff on radio and record, but it wasn’t going to be anything authentic - and when we heard something that was the genuine article it sounded different to what we were used to. Remember this was the time when the American blues scene prized authenticity in sound, rather than interpretation in performance.
Of course, at the time I was in High School and, like most kids, wasn’t exactly rolling in disposable income. My weekly pocket money wouldn’t have stretched to an album per week, so singles were the standard buying option.
However, I had a friend who’d dropped out of school to work in an accountant’s office, and though he wasn’t rolling in dough, he could afford to indulge himself in fashionable threads and was buying albums. His taste ran to Them, Simon & Garfunkel and The Association. As sophisticated sixteen-year-old connoisseurs of music we read the music papers that found their way to country Australia and we knew what was cool.
I can still remember the one-line review of Wrapping Paper by Cream in Australia’s only weekly pop paper (Go Set) which stated simply We’re rapt... Of course, the people who were making the judgements about what was cool were probably more familiar with the sources of the stuff we were listening to than we were.
So Jim had spent up big one pay-day, buying Fresh Cream and the first Butterfield album, headed off home, wasn’t overly impressed by either, and wanted a second opinion on two albums that hadn’t lived up to their advance publicity.
When I heard the first notes of N.S.U. that was enough for me - I was sold on Cream, but when Born In Chicago headed off the Butterfield album, what we were hearing was Chicago blues and while it wasn’t quite coming from another universe it wasn’t quite from our section of the galaxy either so I wasn’t that impressed.
Jim wasn’t sure what he was going to do with the two albums, and sort-of offered both of them to me at half price. I must have bought something recently, because my meagre finances didn’t run to both. I said I’d definitely take Cream, but didn’t want the other one, and Jim thought that in that case, since he couldn’t move both of them he’d give Cream another chance, and cut his losses with the Butterfield.
By now, of course, the Butterfield is probably one of Jim’s all-time favourite albums, but back then....
Anyway, Jim was the first serious music buyer I’d run across, and listening to the collection he'd built up was a major pastime for an impoverished student. Around the time Jim headed out of school and into accountancy, another collector turned up at school.
Eric was from Innisfail and had taken some time off school to work in a pub kitchen before his parents had persuaded him that he should finish his education and conned him into going back to school. As well as whatever he’d saved from working, he also had the chance to pick up holiday jobs because his father was the local harbour master, and was able to find his son casual work on the dredge that kept the shipping channel open.
Eric had started off as a Ventures fan, but by ‘67 or ‘68 was becoming a major Dylan fan, to the extent that the news that the players who became known later as The Band were in the process of recording Music From Big Pink was met with the memorable statement I’m not interested in Dylan’s backing band. I’m interested in Dylan.
Those were the days. Snap judgements ‘R’ us ....
Unlike Jim, who was also shelling out for mod clothing, Eric had no interest in fashion and was soon following his nose into the sources of the people we were listening to, so the room under the house with the panels from Marvel comics copied by his arty sister covering the walls was where I first heard Muddy Waters and Miles Davis.
Not that I really got Muddy or Miles at the time, but about a year of listening to a wider range of music meant that I wasn’t dismissing things quite as offhandedly.
When Eric dropped the needle into the electric half of the Taj Mahal double album I thought it was the best blues album I’d heard. Eric mentioned that the other half wasn’t bad either, and on went the second disk, which was Taj solo, playing country blues and other odds and ends.
The benefit of an extra twelve months listening meant that I was able to appreciate this was the sort of stuff that would have been played on the front porch of a sharecroppers cabin, and to this day it’s one of my all-time favourites.
So, what’s on the playlist?
Linin’ Track - Taj Mahal
John The Revelator - Son House
John The Revelator - Govt Mule
Grinnin’ In Your Face - Son House
