In Three Days - Howlin Wolf, mostly, sometimes Jim Lee Blues if I'm in a rough spot

I wake up. 

I have a howlin wolf burnett song stuck in my head and a mask on my face. Doesn't matter who's singing it or what year it was recorded or where i first heard it, but it's almost never howlin wolf singing it when it's howling wolf stuck in my head

One of the several challenges I set with this series that I've already failed is that of having some kind of idea of where I'm going with the post when i start. Like I know I wanted to talk about aldia and alken with gnoster and those who live in death with the nightfarer stuff, even if it is mostly improv. If I don't have an idea I should shut up and go do something else, not try to stripmine my own burnout for something that wasn't there yesterday. 

I had no idea what I was going to say about caligo and sometimes improv works out and it's great fun with friends but this is a Google Blog i need to have some standards dammit this is legacy shit I'm doing. The software I mean, I'm pretty sure Google forgot about the site which is good because it means it doesn't change but bad because it'll probably vanish and reapper as a bunch of ai prompt responses diffused throughout the robotosphere. 

We made a heaven of our own.

The blues doesn't change, it just isnt ever the same. Except the blues does change, because the blues just is, it isn't a genre, it isnt 12 bars, I IV V progressions being sad being rebellious, none of that. It's a fire within that lights the world. I forget who I'm paraphrasing here but she said something like blues being the cry of a full heart and a troubled spirit.

Blues just is and it's either something you do or don't got. 

And people go crazy trying to get it, catch it, claim it, learn it learn about it, refine it, bottle it and shelf it and resell it as budget compilation cassettes all across cold war america. 

And those that got the blues are usually made crazy by it or the underlying issues causing it, if they weren't already crazy, and a lot of them would just as rather not have it (crosses arms). Some people got it and don't want it, some people find it or lose it along the way.

Song are a lie, an enchantment. And of all the magics known to us song is among the oldest.

I don't know what to say about gladius. He should be our dog, not theirs. 

I wake up. 

I've got a song stuck in my head and a mask on my face, it's a song that is new to me but not a new song. 

I met an honest to god sad ukele girl from washington state at work and she hits me with leo sayer the show must go on. I hit her with Justin townes earle live solo. doesn't matter.

I'm talking about gladius I promise.

So I pull up a live video because if you can't play it live because that's where the blues lives. Leo Sayer The Show Must Go On 1974. 

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...

...

Like I've got a line, somewhere, with art, and I say this as an artist, where I start wanting to hand out wedgies while blasting ACDC out of an el camino. 

But anything that doesn't go over the line with me I'm usually okay with. Love even. Queen? Sure. Rush? Get in the locker, nerd.

Brian Wilson is the line, to specify. I break mike regarding the 'purpose of doing this music live and/or as an economic venture' thing, despite being a capital S socialist and not having anything else nice to say about mike, sorry.

So here's this little English dude. Recommended to a texasish honky tonk fan. Gonna rock some socks before god and the queen or whatever, allegedly, hopefully...

English people trying to play blues rock is usually instant wedgies territory. Like 98% fail rate. But also sometimes new and true and genuine hip-shaking barn rocking good time bad time true new tunes for misfits like you does happen, because the blues doesn't discriminate. But it also can't be replicated.

Also, if your band is named the singer's name: I'll be at the bar facing the stage, arms crossed, a non-alcoholic mug of old fashioned haterade and a notepad like a semi-professional lead guitarist, but for band leaders.

And he, Leo the french mime from England in the 70s, is gonna play us a rock and roll song. 

Hype couldn't be lower.

I understand every single thing you're about to going to say about the beatles, probably better than you, and I can confirm they still sound like toothpaste when they're not sounding like overtly twee toothpaste being dispensed at a carnival as tediously as possible by someone who has never been to a carnival and doesn't really understand what a carnical is, but do understand that they enjoy clowns and tigers both and consider themselves experts in these matters. Please enjoy your ice cold toothpaste.

Even by British pop standards the Beatles are bad and suck. Except Ringo, he was in a ray wylie hubbard video and that's about the coolest thing there is to do.

Even if he did try to dance. 

Like, it doesn't ruin the video. He doesn't... its just for a second. Maybe two seconds. Seems longer. It's a great song, Bad Trick. More towards the tony joe white side of rays stuff. Strip club potential. You can hardly notice. And it's not Ringo it's just that's how english people dance outside of like pagan festivals and military balls. Just please, like, try get him to sit at a drumset next time that's literally his job.

He, Ringo does the one dance where you go up and down on your knees and do finger guns. It's universally known as a dance only rich, boring white guys who cant dance (Eagles fans) or but dont realize they cant dance dance, do at parties, usually when they take cocaine. But even that implies a level of coolness almost but not quite entirely absent in English blues rock. Real big notebook next to the haterade :)

It doesn't ruin the video. It Doesn't. It's fine. Happy people are having authenticly presented enjoyment during a grooving tune by one of the all time greats and famous musicians are there. With famous musicians. Outside of Texas famous.

You gotta think about headlines, like Steve earle or Elizabeth cook is gonna attract a lot of approving but penniless band leader critic types and college students, but cottonmouth road was a long time ago, relative, whereas Walsh fans have money, if not sense, and im sure he, joe, personally is fine and not like a ted nugent or kid rock type. 

Plus think about how the english are with blues, and if ringo can keep it together enough to mention it over there on occasion, it's like a package deal you can't say no to even if the package is smoking and being held by a guy with horns. It's fine. Just for a second he dances and it cuts to something else.

You-re old, you got a family. You said it yourself Ray, were you gonna hold out for the bass player? Its fine. You can dance, Ringo, and other cool english guys. We won't mention it. Often. Dance like your hips work, o sons of the silliest empire.

Fucking don't though.

Some of the stones stuff was good for like ten years or whatever, is my understanding, and commercially the US isn't much better, its just like how much shit do you want in the shit sandwich, right? We're all the Irish vampire guy connected to the same radio frequency in this regard.

Elvis? You think Kid Rock or Ted Nugent are shameful and shameless there is pictures of Elvis Presley shaking hands with a confused Richard Nixon, letters from Elvis Presley begging Tricky Dick Nixon to let him be an official secret communist hunter during the red scare, said he, Elvis hated workers, hated kids, loved guns and hating Asia. Said Elvis. To the President who made him a pretend cop because Nixon knew fuckall about what he was doing but oh nobody tell Elvis he's not a real cop look how much red we're gonna scare. Wrote it in crayon, the letter to nixon, I heard.

You want a picture of what rock & roll looks like? here look I'm gonna go get another picture I'll even get one with an English-adjacent person. Point is Elvis could at least dance.

I'm talking about Gladius, I promise.

Anyway, so this very small very English young man Leo Sayer appears dressed like an old timey French clown (would you be hyped for this? be honest. Pull your wallet out excited? no you would not.) but it puts me in mind of ICP, so Sayer gets like an extra half second on the clock before he gets shoved in a locker in my brain several different but all metaphorical ways.

...

This silly little tap dancing English muppet dude is real close to the Beach Boys Line but guess what? 

SHOOP BOOP DEEP BOP DOODLEY DEE I LOVE YOU YOU SILLY LITTLE MUPPET YOURE SO GOOD OH WAIT YOU ACTUALLY DANCED WITH THE MUPPETS WHEN THEY WERE GOOD GODDAMMIT WHY IS ELTON JOHN FAMOUS AND NOT YOU OH ELTON JOHNS A COP HOW SURPRISING

I wake up.

I have a song stuck in my head and a mask on my face. Charlie Patton's old Jim Lee whistle is blowing. Samantha Fish is singing, , so lonesone, like she wasnt gonna sing no more.  

Tricky cover for a white gal, or white presenting gal pesenting gal me having learned better finally to some degree. 

She has a song with tech n9ne. Just to, like, foreshadow where I'm going with this.

Please go watch fd signifiers video Eminem and the White Rapper problem. Because I need to talk about rap without having to go over a bunch of very basic stuff it took me an embarassingly long time to figure out and I feel fucking awful about the person I was and as of fifteen or so years ago my life has been devoted largely to trying to cancel out the wickedness of my prior selves, so i want to be clear, as a suspected supernatural but not racist Irish vampire analoge and on behalf of poor, pitiable remmick: The white rapper problem is the white blues problem is the white rocker problem is the white disco problem etc. Theft is theft but not all theft is equal. Vanilla Ice stealing a david bowie or whoever bassline is fine. Stealing a board from a rich man's house to fashion a the world at large has never seen is good and noble. Unintentionally stealing the craft and legacy and styling and voices of centuries of unheard songs by unremembered singers is not.

I had arrived at conclusions similar to FD Signifier around blues music, broadly, in the late 90s after the 7000th person i asked about the blues came back with stevie ray vaughn. I can't directly say anything bad about SRV because he's a texas bluesman but fortunately he's also not as universally and inexplicably agreed-upon-as-good-despite-being-a-bland-souless-clone-at-best as the beatles or elvis.

So,

Between this and having a few big 'oh' moments around rock and metal I developed an allergy around guitars for some reason in the late 90s and switched to hip hop until the late 2000s, but the stuff i look for in music regardless of genre is somehow always the same and has nothing to do with what the music sounds like to anyone else so don't listen to any recommendations I make, I was about to write Leo Sayer off. People talk about music being pure or authentic or Truth or having soul, stuff like that. It was the opposite of sellout music, in the lexicon. Lo and behold apart from a few mix tapes and used cd section finds it was all sellout music. Then the internet slooooowwlly made its way into my life and, along with real world...stuff related to music, the scales fell all the way from my eyes and I realized hey, we're all Lautrec to someone let's try to at least pursue the vibe since we're knee deep in the blood of dead poets anyway.

Genres sure have fucked us all haven't they? Among other things. 

And, so right there in the middle of it as I a music fan on their way to becoming something more than a fan thinking they're getting further and further away from the blues that first took em, right in the middle of this journey, was tech n9ne. Absolute Power. I haven't heard that album in ages but it's one of those things that's just, like, right there. That was The Album for that era of rap, and also that era of toxic masculinity, if you're trying to convey it to an outsider.

About as pure a case of the blues as you could ever find out there. 

And here he is again. Worlds apart and lifetimes passed. Singing a song with about a pure a case of blues as you could ever find Sam Fish who sings a nice cover of a song from an old mix tape that plays in my head when I've knowingly been engaging in some manner of foolishness. 

Whatever it is it ain't got no genre or style it's something you is or you ain't.

What is it? Part of it is you mean it. You mean it like you mean it as hard as you can as pure as you can and it works or you get the fuck off the stage because someone else is always gonna mean it more than you.

And then it means you gotta make peace with even being on that stage being the pact with the devil. The devil was the wantin of it to begin with, it always was.

Now go out there and start a party you won't get to attend, because if we don't sell enough drinks nobody gets paid but the bank and the blues dies here.

Since the first time I saw Gladius something has AAAAAllllllmmmmooosssssstttttt been there. The Idea. I've seen that chain but where those helmets but when. TRIUNES MEAN SO MUCH AND SO LITTLE

People jump to Cerberus as a connection and it's like yeah but the Mona Lisa is the most boring thing in the painting.

So.

My gut reaction at the time when I first saw gladius was: Farron. I dismissed this as too obvious. Then I see the sword, the chain, I think Londor, Carthus, harald knights(?), the kingdom that became a desert that became the graveyard where the world ends, where all worlds end. The End that survives itself.

My baby caught the train. Left me all alone.

If Gladius is from The Lands Between I'm fucked if I can place them beyond tedious connections to radagon era caria. I really don't think they is though. Oh hey go find a maga chud see if you can make them glitch out over gladius' pronouns I fucking hate English pronouns so much we need new ones. And also governments. Institutions in general. Music industry top to bottom and retroactive. 

You know I love her. She's doing me wrong.

A Gladius, irl, is a Roman Shortsword. It seems to have become just a general word for sword in Rome after a while, but the military shortsword was the only literally-a-gladius gladius. 

My baby bought a ticket. Long as my right arm.

The word gladius or glavus seems to have come from the french 'glaive,' by way of, uh, Rome, by way of of... wow proto-celtic Europe. 

Words evolve and change and diverge and split and loop back the same way weapons and cultures do. I think that's what happened with Gladius, in some sense. 

So the name of the sword Rome is most associated with was traced to France, who traced it back to Rome, who traced to it to the pre-Celts of Europe. I'm gonna have to look into this more if I have time later.

Of all the words for sword, glaive is among the oldest.

She says she's gonna ride. Long as I been from home.

Well so thank god that hail mary payed off, thank you wiktionary you have saved this blog yet again.

Well who been talking? Everything I do

Once there was a great godking who overthrew the order of old and evil and established a new kingdom of glory and good.

Well goodbye baby. I hate to see you go.

Once the heir of a great godking traveled to a distant land and founded a new kingdom of glory and good.

Once there was an aspiring godking who returned to his ancestral homeland in order to defeat the forces of old and evil and establish a new kingdom. Of glory and good. And the shadows danced all the while.

You know I love her.

I'm the causing of it all...