Thank you, Hugh, for showing us the rest of the Monterey Pop Festival clip even though you were trying to keep us on the topic of the blues. i apologize for wanting to see more, but i couldn't help myself. im greedy when i get the chance.
i have only gone through one of the examples, but i am so excited to hear the rest, especially the prison songs. i can't help but think that watching the rest of the Monterey festival was, in some sense, applicable to the topic we were covering because rock and roll has such an important link to the blues. i would define rock and roll, or at least the very primitive forms of it (buddy holly, elvis presley) as the white man's blues. most early rock and roll songs are based on the same chord progressions as the blues songs that influenced the artists, and some of the songs are simply remakes of blues classics. so groups like the Animals and the Who owe a lot to Janis Joplin's predecessors, if not as much as she does herself. as i was watching Janis's performance, i couldn't help but be reminded of a banshee screaming. it is quite clear why she burned out so quickly. she has an extremely unique quality to her voice that is both enticing and repulsive at the same time.
all the blues stuff that we have listened to thus far chills my spine - i can't get enough. blues is one of those things that i know exists but never sat down to listen to much because i didn't think it would suit my tastes, so to speak. but everything we've listened to has tingled my skin. just the raw emotion, heart, and soul that the musicians pour into their playing and their singing is so much to handle - it's easy to see why there wasn't much musical accompaniment to blues songs. the vocals and the rhythmic aspects really shine. the prison songs especially exemplify to me a kind of community that isn't really present in any other form of music - they're the songs of shared hardships, and the power of music is what keeps them sane and alive and even, dare i say, optimistic. it's all just so beautiful.
i hope we come up with more examples we can listen to in class, because this is really fantastic.