Stuck outside Kaikoura with the space nomad blues again

For those unfamiliar, Kaikoura is a little tourist town on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island, famous for whale watching and crayfish eating. More recently for a massive earthquake that luckily killed no one but demolished a significant amount of road and railway. The fact that hardly anyone lives there was a plus on this occasion. It’s also famous for a UFO encounter that nearly saw my little guys busted in 1978. A still from the film taken by the Aussie film crew commissioned to track ‘em down appears on the cover of Posts from Planet Earth. It’s the closest you’ll get to a band photo given how camera shy my little guys are.

You may wonder why we don’t play live, but really. Do we look like Alvin and the Chipmunks?

As it happens, contact with people diminishes their powers, so they don’t have much choice. But all this hiding and dodging from contact with people is a source of conflict for them, since they love people so much. That, and where to do your laundry between planets. It’s a source of the blues in other words, proving that the blues is indeed a universal thing.

“The blues is a low down shaking chill” – Preaching Blues, Robert Johnson 1936

Robert Johnson wasn’t the first to record the blues but he hit the nail on the head with that line. That feeling you get when you realise that what you need and what you are capable of given the reality of the world just don't add up. And then having to deal with that. It’s a feeling that’s been around as long as there have been people, there just wasn’t a recognisable way of communicating it through music until the culture created by ongoing deprivation, of people supposedly freed from slavery, found its voice in the southern states of the USA.

So what is it all about? Well the blues isn’t about being poor and depressed. It’s actually an expression of strength in the face of adversity, combined with deep sense of righteousness in the face of ingrained injustice. The expression is sometimes aimed at society as a whole, but most often it exists on a personal level when the deprivation in question forces people to prey on each other. The blues are a personal thing. Anyone can have them, and everyone experiences them differently, but the feeling is the same.

"You without me is like heavy metal without the blues notes: you'll never go platinum" - It's a Doggy Dogg World, Snoop Dogg 1993

The blues have developed from their acoustic origins via amplification and sophisticated arrangements into a whole range of forms. The delivery may be different but the basic sound and feeling doesn’t change. It’s spread throughout culture like the vines in a Mark Twain novel. Son House informed Howling Wolf who inspired Lynyrd Skynyrd who are echoed by the Kings of Leon. And so it goes on a hundred other branches. How do you know it’s the blues? You can feel it. And it generally feels good.

For the last year or two I’ve been going on a backwards journey through time. Since “modern music” (whatever that is) is stuck on a treadmill of corporatised, technology enhanced, sanitised tedium I figured I’d try and find the source of the Nile. It wasn’t hard. Since all the earliest blues recordings are now in the public domain you can find them everywhere at budget prices. But if you want to understand them, you can’t go past the Not Now and One Day reissue labels. These guys know their stuff, and while their sleeve notes are limited to about 400 words, you don’t need to read endlessly to get it. Too many words only guilds the lily. You just need to get the gist then listen. How many of you know the difference between East and West Coast blues? I didn’t realise there was one either till I got into their compilation series. Likewise Delta blues versus Texas blues and so on.

At this point I want to say that a sainthood should be on the way to Jack White. While I never could get into the White Stripes, the work he is doing now on preserving the earliest blues for posterity gives him maximum points in my book. It seems that it’s all down to individuals with a heart and money to achieve things that governments used to on the behalf of the society they are paid to maintain. It’s an interesting development, and it sort of restores a little faith in humanity in the face of billionaires crying poor and sucking up the wealth of the many. Urgh! Don’t get me started.

So where is this all leading? Uuh – same place it usually does – Hopkinsville Goblins tracks. In this case the link is back to the bluesier sounds: “Shiny Pebbles”, “Soaking up the Suds” and “Home Run” on Posts from Planet Earth and “Even the Rats have Pissed Off”, “Electric RV Blues” and “Easter” on The Hopkinsville Goblins Are Back! "Electric RV" may not sound like a blues song on casual inspection, using as it does the fretless bass voice on a Roland drum machine as the anchor, but the themes are the same – separation, struggle, frustration. And humour. Yes, the blues even has room for a laugh at times.

As a last word, for my money the ultimate blues track is “Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground” by Blind Willie Johnson – it’s Robert Johnson’s lowdown shaking chill expressed in wordless sound. It was recorded in 1927 and blows everything recorded in 2017 out of the water, ourselves included. Don’t believe me? – oh yee of little faith. "Monolith Surfing" on Posts from Planet Earth also aims to use two chords to generate a feeling, but the purpose is different. That one explores deepest outer space, but "Dark was the Night" nails deepest inner.

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