Quote Originally Posted by 3-LockBox
(1) I believe they called it 'jamming' and a lot of potheads liked it - You did notice that a lot of current and former stoners like these jam bands. They don't care who initiated what, innovated what, immitated what...These guys still like Waiting For Columbus even though its pretty much accepted that it isn't 100% live. There's hundreds of reason to like something.

(2) but then Id have to listen to him sing - I can only take Dylan in very small doses. And I found those to be just as boring. Now, throw in multiple movements within that same timeframe like Yes' Close To The Edge or Ritual, Triumvirant's Illusions On A Double Dimple, Genesis' Supper's Ready or more recently, Tranatlantic's All Of The Above, which clock's in over 30 minutes, but doesn't feel a minute over 20, and then we're talking.

(3) I think Clapton was just following in Chuck Berry's footsteps, as far guitar hero things go, but more than likely, Clapton's rise to fame mirrored Elvis Presley's a decade before - everyone wanted a white guy to do it, so they could put him on a pedestal. Clapton as god was a stretch, as it is for anyone to which they give that moniker, but he made the loner guitar-slinger-for-hire persona more palable for certain people, fair or not. He is a hack, but no more hackish than many who ply the same trade. He's now popular for being popular, like BB King.
1. No quarrel on the jamming, just the worship of it, chemicals aside.I'm not a much a devotee of the 'perfect song' as Brad is framing me, because I know there's more to it than that, but we always seem to hear a lot about the worship of the playing & very little about the worship of the song. Which is fine in a way, because shifting the worship would then become annoying as hell in its own way. The problem is the matter of balance, and there's not enough emphasis on the importance of the song in the realm of jam bands & overplaying blues hackers.

2. If you find Dylan boring, then...well, then you're probably not going to care about hearing the songs that serve the point I was making. Which is fine, but I don't think the examples you list have all that much to do with what I'm talking about, because my point wasn't necessarily about the length of songs per se, but what taking short song forms & blowing them up & still keeping them basically as blues tunes, just ones that go on forever, even if they're fleshed out with the best window dressing they could've possibly had (which in this case means, at least to me, the Allmans in their prime, as opposed to, say, Clapton). Dylan's ideas, & Bloomfield, didn't discount the idea of adding time, but there was some experimentation with structures and unusual approaches to sounds. Yet they were still blues tunes, unlike the ones you're talking about, unless I'm making a horrible mistake with any of those titles.

3. Disagree totally. The term 'guitar hero' in circa 1954 probably best describes someone like Merle Travis more than anyone else, or Django Reinhardt. Chuck Berry was, if anything, an 'entertainment hero.' It wasn't so much what he was playing, but his own innovative take on blues structures, along with a stage act that connected with people in a big way. I'm tempted to say it was original, though I don't know whether his ideas were completely his or whether he borrowed or even stole from others. Regardless, he wasn't the one Clapton was emulating. Berry was doing things to be popular, which meant putting on an entertaining show onstage, hence the presence & choreographed movements; Clapton left the Yardbirds because his goal wasn't the success Berry was obviously trying to achieve 10 years before. The likes of Chet Atkins & Dick Dale--two guys who could've been legitimate guitar heroes--didn't achieve the success (or at least the mass notoriety) of Berry or Clapton. Meanwhile, I'm not sure the 'white guy' thing holds water, because Hendrix was pretty much there by 1967 even in America.

That said, I think we are agreeing far more than disagreeing. Now I've got to deal with Brad, who is pretending I think the world of pop music should be nothing but toons like 'She Loves You' with no regard for something like 'I Am The Walrus' or Quadrophenia or SMiLE.

I need a beer.