Editor’s Note: In a series of “classic” articles, 10Listens is giving some love to albums that may not have gotten much in the past. These won’t be reviews, per se, but collections of ideas spawned by revisiting albums we may be alone in loving. There’s no timetable to when these appear, so they will come as they may. Enjoy. Oh, and if anyone comes up with a good name for this series, I’m all ears.
Somewhere in the second half of our 20th Century, a Delta Blues Man’s hitchhiking his way up the Mississippi toward Chicago, thinking he’s gonna be the second coming of Howlin’ Wolf. Along the way he’s picked up by a van full of kids- whatta they call ‘em, beatniks? Hippies? Only they don’t dress like no beatniks or hippies. They wear bold pinstripe suits and finely groomed facial hair, like dandy-boys. Only they ain’t no dandy boys neither. There may not be a single word to describe what these weirdos are. Their license plate says California, so the Blues Man assumes they’re from San Francisco. Then again they could very well be from Mars, or the future.
Whatever they are, they’re so stoked to meet an authentic Delta Blues singer- guess what, they’re musicians too, man! They should totally jam! Now the Blues Man reckons he sure ain’t no square, but he still wonders how much common ground he’ll find with these cats. Even if they’re not hippies they still must be waist deep in all that hippy-dippy acid rock- The Magic Doors and The Strawberry Airplane and such. He asks if they know any Bo Diddley, and they answer by busting out a gritty impromptu a cappella rendition of “Who Do You Love?” So the Blues Man reckons these crazy cats just might be all right after all. “Well hell yes we can jam!” he says, and the not-quite-hippies rejoice. But first, they say, how bout a little grass? You dig grass, don’t you, Blues Man? Sho ’nuff, baby. Sho nuff, n’ yes I do…
When the smoke clears, the Delta Blues Man could swear they’re somewhere in the Mojave. But how’d that happen if they were just on the outskirts of Memphis- what was it, 20 minutes ago? 5 hours ago? And is that a giant gila monster sleeping on top of the sun?
They’re not even in the van anymore. In fact, the van’s nowhere to be seen. They’re all just standing there, surrounded by miles of sand and rock, with nothing but their gear in front of them. Amps too, with power lights glowing red and traces of feedback humming in strange frequencies- but where in the hell are they plugged in?
The kid behind the drum kit says, “OK Blues Man, you kick it off and we’ll follow.” So The Delta Blues Man steps up to a mic that looks like a bug-headed tree, and he clears his throat. He starts playing this riff he’s been fooling with lately, this thing with a little slide to it, though he doesn’t really have any lyrics for it yet. Then all of a sudden words just come to him from deep within his subconscious. “I was born in a desert…came on up from New Orleeeeeans…” Wait, that don’t make no sense, ain’t no deserts in New Orleans…”I came upon a tornado, sunlight in the sky…” Tornadoes in sunlight? A moon stickin’ in my eye? What in the-
In spite of talkin’ all this nonsense jive, the band dives right in, fast and bulbous: a squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag. The drummer lays down this herky-jerky locomotive groove, like a Johnny Cash tune with a peg-leg. It’s odd, but the Blues Man can dig it. The lead guitarist- Cooder, was that his name?- kid’s got otherworldly chops, he’s dancing on some other plane. And that bass player! So much energy, and yet so very smooth…
…he realizes they’ve been playing a brand new song for about a minute and a half now, in fact they’re already at the breakdown. Just drums and that perfect bass line and the Blues Man hollering, “Zig-Zag traveler for the mercy mile!”, whatever that means. It’s like the moment that all American music has been building up toward until now. It’s blues, it’s Motown, it’s rock n’ motherfucking roll. And not only that, it’s going to affect the course of music to come- that’s right, he can see the future now. He doesn’t know John Lennon, and he doesn’t even know if he likes John Lennon, but he knows John Lennon is gonna go crazy for this noise. Him and a couple guys named Joe Strummer and Tom Waits. Also some blues rockin’ kid named Jackie White who hasn’t even been born yet.
The Blues Man’s mind tricks him into thinking he’s coming down, and so the band slides into a much safer song. Safe as milk, you might say, so long as that milk hasn’t been basking in the desert heat. The kind of song you’d sing to snag a woman: “Call on me whenever you’re lonely and blue.” They could probably play Ed Sullivan with this tune, if they were the types who’d want to play on Ed Sullivan. OK that was nice and all, but let’s get far out again, fellas. I’m gonna sing this next one like some kind of bayou monster, and let’s see if we can make those guitars sound like mechanical caterpillars. Yeah, that’s it. And maybe let’s do a bridge where we slow it down to half-time and throw in some pianos or xylophones or something like that. All right now just for kicks let’s try another Top 40 ditty, something a little Smokey Robinson. Hold on- you’ve got one of them theremins? Well let’s see what kind of magic we can make with that bastard! Ooh yeah, I can feel that vibe all the way down in my EEEEEeeeeeeEEEEE-Lec-Tri-Suh-Teeeeee….
In the distance, a mighty lighthouse rises up from the Earth and spews lightning like a gigantic Tesla coil. The band skips jauntily down the Yellow Brick Road. They summon the ancient spirits of Abba Zabba from dark, baboon-infested jungles. They grumble about factory jobs and pesky bosses while a wandering coyote drops by to blow on harmonica. They bow and praise the miracle of Woman. There’s a sad, Kafkaesque identity crisis in an unsettling time signature. Finally the sun sets on our mythic jam session with a surreal memory of a distant Autumn- “feet of dust under trees of rust.” Then the sun comes up again. The Blues Man and his magic band decide that this whimsically menacing trip has gone on exactly as long as it needed to. This is their gift to the gods, and if the gods desire to share this gift with humankind, these songs will find their way back somehow.