The Juke Joint

The past 2 weeks have been quite musically-involved for me.

Participating in a band competition and watching the competitors, going for other performances and having our own practices took up most of my non-academic life (apart from the brief interlude in camouflage uniform), and I had the opportunity to observe first hand many musical viewpoints.

For someone who entered music through the blues first and then went on to other music forms, I found some of these viewpoints distinctly different from my own, though not necessarily right or wrong. Things such as the expression and arrangement of musical ideas, the interpretation of genres, the dynamics of the whole sound and even the fundamental “why” for wanting to play music in the first place were called into question in my mind.

It’s tempting for me to go into a long analysis here, but since a picture speaks a thousand words, and one second of film contains 24 pictures, a little video here would suffice in expressing my musical philosophy. I’d caution that it’s probably not for everyone though.

The band shown in the video is “Hound Dog” Taylor and the Houserockers. A motley crew of 3 guys, playing pawn-shop guitars through beat-up amps and banging out the beat on a skeletal drum set. For 2 guitars and one drummer, they make an awful lot of noise and kick up a huge racket.

It’s not pretty by any stretch of the imagination, probably doesn’t sound remotely like todays (or even yesterdays) rock. The guitars are in tune “close enough for rock and roll”, the amps sound like a transistor radio being thrown about in a washing machine and the playing is primitive by most standards. From the way they look, I doubt they got the groupies banging (ok, knocking) their doors down either.

What really gets me though is the way they really come together as a cohesive unit and feed off each other’s energy, taking the lead from Hound Dog. Taking the song from sparse and barely-played into a rip-roaring tide of micro-tonally out of tune chords, they’re there right along with each other. Even with their Neolithic equipment and simplistic technicality, they capture a fantastic vibe that most bands couldn’t with a whole rack of equipment and a busload of gear. They are driven only by booze and a simple desire : Just play the damned thing.

This is dynamics at its rawest, tastefully restrained at times yet possessing a reckless abandon that wants to have fun with music minus the spit-and-polish. Maybe just the spit.

And here’s what he said about himself.

“When I die, they'll say 'he couldn't play shit, but he sure made it sound good!”