Musical Thru Lines
Everyday Music Every Day #3
Take Blind Lemon Jefferson, whose one-time guitarist was Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie lived with Lead Belly, and Bob Dylan, at the end of Woody’s life, was there with him in the hospital—those through lines were what propelled modern music and its transitions, evolution etc.
Growing up in the ’80s, there were still greasers, Teddy Boys, and bands like George Thorogood, Jason and the Scorchers, and the Stray Cats.
They weren’t from the ’50s, but they were doing ’50s-style music, and it was totally normal, right there alongside the new wave bands on the radio and MTV.
Today Spotify is telling you the ’80s was just synthwave, and that’s just not true. We had a real connection to the past.
A lot of those ’50s people were still around, people whose lives were changed by Elvis, whichever show he was on. That’s who became musicians, and then you had the folks who saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. And the same thing with Bowie—the first-wave new wave bands like Duran Duran saw him on Top of the Pops, and it was just like that lightning strike from the ’50s.
In the ’90s, we all got the Robert Johnson box set, the complete recordings, and that’s how we figured out where so much of it came from. Don’t event know how a thing g like this would even be possible today.
Now those through lines are gone. It’s that old story of the English kids finding the blues and sending it back to us. How could this possibly occur today?
Culture’s too broken up, especially music, and there’s no easy way to draw it track lines now.
But we’ve all got the whole world at our fingertips. You can pull up a ’50s rock playlist anytime. This is great.
But it’s overload too. You almost need a spirit guide to help you through it all.