Fred Mcdowell - I Don't Play No Rock N Roll lyrics

Amongst a sea of plastic, prepackaged marionettes masquerading as artists and musicians, it's ironic something so authentic sits at the core of it all. A flashlight through the thick, dark, shallow pa**age of “all singing, all dancing crap”(as Phaliunuk once described) projected on the population through our televisions and car stereos, dial tuned to your favorite top 40 station. A generation that bases the talent of an individual on the regurgitated verdict of a three panel karaoke judgement system, whose personalities are equally responsible for a watered down product in the first place. The blind shall truly lead the blind. But the problem is just that, music can be a product. A shiny material item you can hold in your hand, wear on your chest, put on your wall, and sell for a profit. Sell enough units and you're either offering something special, or you're a great marketer. Art versus Entertainment. Aesthetic versus Substance. But If you trace the roots of western music deep enough you'll find the nutrients that feed them. Blues isn't the tree, it's the soil Blues music, in it's purest form, is simply the raw cry of the disheartened human spirit. How else could you describe it? Sure, it a**umes many shapes. It hangs suspended in the thick, stagnant summer Delta humidity and thunders through the hill country of Mississippi. It rips through alleyways like the biting, unforgiving winds of Chicago. Sure, technically it can be “accomplished” with something so simple as three little chords. But it couldn't be anything further from the logistics of a fret board, a row of ivory keys, a flat fifth minor scale degree, or a sheet of paper polluted with the mathematics of staffed musical notation. To truly appreciate this music, you must grip the plant by it's roots. Crawl inside it's arteries and hold your hand over the palpitating broken heartbeat that spawns it So what makes a man bend a note so hard a string snaps, or strangle the neck of a guitar so hard your fingers would buckle? What possesses a man to build a crude instrument made of shed tools and common kitchenware? What commissions a person to drag the neck of a broken bottle of cheap wine across stretched steel wire? “What is the soul of a man?” as Blind Willie Johnson asks. It stews in the age old question of humanity: so what's the point? Blues is something you feel, period. It's something inside your heart. It's something that crawls up your arm late at night when you're tossing to sleep. It gets inside your chest cavity and haunts the very bones that construct your stature. It's the dirt under your finger nails, the virgin skin of a popped blister on your heel, the telephone phone that won't ring, and the itch you can't reach to scratch. It's the hot, serrated steel blade lodged in your back by your closest friend. It's the exhaust note that carried everything you hold dear off into the blind night. It's a curse 51Qj-1mjVQL__SL500_AA300_.jpg The music is the outcome, the vehicle for release. The soundtrack of a dejected psyche. Blues music, like the feelings that propel it, often messy, unorganized and demanding. At times a cluster of rapid, bent, scrambling notes sprayed like shotgun blasts over a somber rhythm. At other times soft, silken and delicate like a woman's voice. It holds the power to infect your feet like a bad case of Dancing Fool or the innocence to lull a newborn to sleep. It's what drives a man to the edge but restrains him from falling. Blues music is a healer. A grieving tool and a coping mechanism. True blues music takes no prisoners. It's as much music as it is a bold headline on newsprint. The great disgust. The inability to gag the screaming voice that floods your thought process. “One man against the world,” as Jack White once said of Son House's craft It's the only thing left for show when you peel the layers back. Real blues music cannot be faked, and that's everything I love about it To be a blues artist is to wear Hell around your neck like a glowing neon bar sign. One must bare the devil's music like a naked suit of tired, rusty armor. To play the blues is to be an open channel, the transparent middleman between your heart and your amplifier. To possess the ability to reverberate sonic soul off the walls of a filled room, convincingly. A hustler that commands your feet into motion. One must pull you by the guts down their own personal rabbit hole Mississippi Fred McDowell is an artist that possesses the competency to do so. The man, who's personal slogan proudly boasts “I do not play no Rock n' Roll”, is as authentic as the soil he grew up farming. A journey down such a rabbit hole can be navigated through a listening of Live in New York, McDowell's final 1971 release, a year before Fred's d**h. The album showcases the artist in a raw, live setting at the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village. The collection of blues and spirituals, or “specials” as Fred calls them, act as gallery of honest, unapologetic human expression, the only way true art should be exhibited McDowell kicks off the set with a blistering version of “Shake Em On Down”, commanding the audience to do just that. The slinky, slide guitar driven melodies mimic, and sometimes substitute his gravelly vocals. The magic of Fred's playing lies in his ability to play both rhythm and lead simultaneously. The songs' slippery melodies ride shotgun to the percussive, thundering backbones built of thumps, scratches, clacks, snaps, slaps, and drawn out rumbles which shuck and jive like a clubfooted tap dancer. The outcome, hypnotic, entrancing, and all-consuming. Fred reflects on his own unique style of playing by admitting, “I don't go put no expert guitar player. I don't even try to outplay nobody. I got my own way of playin', see. I play by feeling. You know it, some people don't ever feel nothing until they lose somebody in their family, then they say ‘I'm sorry, I did all i could' when they ain't done nothing, y'understand?” Accompanying McDowell's unique one-man-brand of blues is Tom Pomposello, whose walking ba** lines should be commended in their own right. It's not easy to follow music as alive and spontaneous as McDowell's, and he never misses a beat Between the boogeying juke-joint burners such as “Shake Em On Down”, the traditional “John Henry”, “Red Cross Store”, “My Babe”, “Baby Please Don't Go” and the sultry “Good Morning Little School Girl” lie the deep gut-wrenchers like “Mercy”, “Someday baby”, “Fred's Worried Life Blues”, and “Levee Camp Blues.” An interesting pause in the music occurs prior to playing “You Got to Move”, in which Fred admits, “I have a request for this piece. I get tired of playing it, but you know if people want to hear it, I don't mind playing it for you.” Obviously in response to the overwhelming popularity of The Rolling Stones album Sticky Fingers, released earlier the same year, on which they cover Fred's tune Rounding out the collection includes interpretations of spirituals and gospels instilled in the artist. Blues, in general, is a music born out of age old hymns and field hollers. Music that eases the pain and celebrates hope. Both responses by the oppressed, both lit from the same wick. But to play the blues, is to wield a double edged sword. In generations past, it's a sin unforgivable enough to find yourself blacklisted by your own family. To lead the life of a bluesman is to sign your name on the Devil's dotted line. That being said, many cut their teeth playing the Church's music, which roots itself equally as deep in the artist. Early in the record, Fred notes, “I play blues, and I play specials too. I play blues this way. It's what i know. But when I play special songs, I play from my heart, y'understand? Of course, I feel both of them. But a special song is closer to me than the blues do... sometimes.” Like any collection of this caliber, I'll let the music do what it does best, which is speak for itself. I like to think of the album as a snapshot of an artist all to rare and out of style in this day and age. Although the music may not be everyone's cup o' tea, it's raw, stripped down, unchoreographed, unrestrained freedom of expression demands respect. Fred McDowell remains a legend of a genre of music based in legend and folklore. This serves as a window inside the heart of Fred McDowell, and a smaller window inside the heart of a music so cherished by it's amba**adors and interpreters. After all, it's music that separates us from other species, isn't it? Music, and art in general, is the only universal language. - Alex Schwer http://watchtowermusicblog.com Http://watchtowermusicblog.blogspot.com Http://watchtowermusicblog.tumblr.com