Jimi's blues-based style makes me think it would move in a led Zeppelinesque direction
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What if MTV Never Existed? (Mary Spender video)
- Thread starter Aric Bjorn
- Start date
Metal is blues based. Black Sabbath was a blues band before they were Black Sabbath and the first record shows many vestiges of blues to my ear.
Yes, for sure. but they're a step further from blues than zeppelin, and Jimi is a step or two closer to blues, imho
And if I nitpick, not all metal is blues based. A lot is derived from classical
D
Maybe Billy Squier would still have a career?
I stopped watching anything MTV when they took MTVX off the air. I did enjoy watching, then eventually recording Celebrity Death Match though. That was some funny stuff. Beavis and Butthead too.
I stopped watching anything MTV when they took MTVX off the air. I did enjoy watching, then eventually recording Celebrity Death Match though. That was some funny stuff. Beavis and Butthead too.
And ultimately, never forget: There's music, and then there's the music business:
MUSIC is that deep, almost primordial desire to listen, to play, to enjoy, to think about. The itch you scratch playing with friends, or even sittin' around in your underwear trying to sort out the chords of this new tune you just GOT to learn.
MUSIC BUSINESS is like any other business. It's a product (in this case a band and their recorded output) to be discovered, built, bought, procured in any number of ways, and then sold to the public in a fashion that makes the owners a profit, just like GM selling Corvettes or P&G selling Tide detergent. Same general process.
The thing to remember is that the two may co-exist, but not often. And artists with long term careers have learned their place in The Business and understand how to work and market and tour and record AS a business, a sub-contractor, if you will to a label, or even their own management company. Do you think Green Day back in the day had a long-term goal of a Broadway musical?
When I think of the many, many videos from the OG MTV days, EVERY one of them was funded by the labels as an advertising/promotional expense. And the most successful (think Duran, Hall and Oates, Madonna and others) of those campaigns made those artists in a shorter time frame than the previous record/tour, record/tour cycle. ZZ Top became made men with a huge second career in their post 'Lil Ol Band from Texas' days.
MUSIC is that deep, almost primordial desire to listen, to play, to enjoy, to think about. The itch you scratch playing with friends, or even sittin' around in your underwear trying to sort out the chords of this new tune you just GOT to learn.
MUSIC BUSINESS is like any other business. It's a product (in this case a band and their recorded output) to be discovered, built, bought, procured in any number of ways, and then sold to the public in a fashion that makes the owners a profit, just like GM selling Corvettes or P&G selling Tide detergent. Same general process.
The thing to remember is that the two may co-exist, but not often. And artists with long term careers have learned their place in The Business and understand how to work and market and tour and record AS a business, a sub-contractor, if you will to a label, or even their own management company. Do you think Green Day back in the day had a long-term goal of a Broadway musical?
When I think of the many, many videos from the OG MTV days, EVERY one of them was funded by the labels as an advertising/promotional expense. And the most successful (think Duran, Hall and Oates, Madonna and others) of those campaigns made those artists in a shorter time frame than the previous record/tour, record/tour cycle. ZZ Top became made men with a huge second career in their post 'Lil Ol Band from Texas' days.
It's kind of a silly thought experiment.
One I prefer thinking about is what if the record industry didn't control or destroy every new technology that comes along with potential to benefit artists.
One I prefer thinking about is what if the record industry didn't control or destroy every new technology that comes along with potential to benefit artists.
I used to see people mention this and wonder "how could a video ruin a career?" Then I watched the video, and man, I don't know what to say. I had been a passive Billy Squier fan before, and now cringe a little bit whenever I hear one of his songs.
It was so, so bad.
His earlier videos were more standard fare. One has to wonder what possessed poor Billy to agree to that horrible concept for "Rock Me Tonite".
EDIT: I suspect that Yes's resurgence and only #1 single during the MTV era would never have happened.
Hendrix's music was already heavy, in the context of the times(one band that could be considered heavier, Blue Cheer, was in many ways a superficial imitation of the JHE); he had already explored the blues aspects, and was about to move on. The material on Cry Of Love was getting far more complex than what was on Electric Ladyland, far more guitar parts and layers as more tracks became available, and any of that material, when played live through the spring and summer of 1970, just sounded empty without all the missing parts. He was reaching the point where his musical ambitions could not be served by a trio, and while there are myths and legends about him teaming up with Miles Davis(who himself was seeking a new direction), Jimi was scheduled to partner with Davis' arranger/orchestrator, Gil Evans, but fate intervened.
In a nutshell, Hendrix would have been at the ground floor of jazz fusion; he certainly inspired the genre, it's very evident in the Mahavishnu Orchestra's music.
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It might be more accurate to say that Mahavishnu Orchestra was essentially Cream plus bop and free jazz.
John McLaughlin played with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker in the Graham Bond Organisation, a jazz/R'n'B group, in the early '60's. All those guys had a deep background in playing jazz and a love of its more experimental forms. (Jack Bruce later said something like "Ginger and I were playing free jazz in Cream, and Eric was Ornette Coleman, but we didn't tell him.")
The only guy in the Jimi Hendrix Experience with any kind of jazz background (at least insofar as he'd learned to play jazz via his drum training) was Mitch Mitchell. The JHE basically followed the Cream template, except that, unlike Cream, they were essentially one wildly creative front man/genius songwriter plus two sidemen. The Mahavishnu Orchestra had more in common with Cream, being composed entirely of astonishing players, though they never quite went as far in the direction of free jazz as Cream did in their live performances.
If Clapton was to be Ornette Coleman, he didn't have a clue about that, and as Jack also observed, Clapton went into Cream thinking it was to be a backing band for his blues guitar. That was the thing, aside from him being an encyclopedia of stock blues licks, which he reproduced in an intense personal style, he was a limited player, with no idea of how to explore anything resembling jazz or anything 'outside'. Jack and Ginger left him in the dust in that regard, and at this point, if I ever do listen to live Cream now, which I now generally find very boring due to Clapton running out of ideas(thus repeating himself), it's to hear the other two battling each other(no love lost between those two, you know).
Jack had played with McLaughlin before, during and after Cream, plus from those Tony Williams videos he seems like he derived far more joy in that situation. I hear plenty of Hendrixian wild abandon in McLaughlin's playing(plus John and Jimi did get together), hense that trickling down to the MO. I hear very little of Cream in the original line-up. There's all sorts of Jimi in something like this…
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Yes, McLaughlin could easily play like Hendrix or Clapton, but neither of those guys could play like McLaughlin, to put it mildly.
That sounds like Mclaughlin using a distortion pedal with his Marshall, a combination that Hendrix seems to have pioneered and which probably accounts for his extravagant live soloing style.
Nothing against Hendrix; he was a surprisingly decent soloist for a guy who'd come up playing the chitlin circuit as a backing musician in R'n'B bands, where the focus was by definition always on the guys who hired him. But he was just as limited as Clapton in having no jazz background.
She is a YT'er guitarist who is actually not annoying, not full of herself, and has some thoughtful observations, not pontifications, for a change.
