re: Charlie Daniels

[len bullard <cbullard@hiwaay.net>]

Karen writes:

> Sorry to offend, len.  

Not at all.  Just making the point that in the world of 
bands, a leader who takes really good care of the crew is the 
one to follow.  The music one plays for mainstream money is of the era.  
That is what I find confusing about the Gen-X music.  I don't 
know what they are so depressed about, and think maybe, like 
the commercial says, they should eat something.  On the other 
hand, I'm not meant to understand them.  This is their thing.  
I'm in a different place.  Once one rises out of the zeitgeist, 
one is free to explore the rest of the universe outside one's 
own head.  The song of the Lord is the song of liberation. 
Surrender to the Lord.  Breathe.

>I'm sure Charlie's a fine gentleman, and I didn't
>mean to pick on him in particular.  Growing up in the South was (for me) a
>frustrating exercise in coping with wholesale ignorance, stupidity, and
>prejudice.  Of course most of us felt that way about our home towns when we
>were teenagers.

Some yes, but I grew up in a part of the South like no other.  Yes 
I experienced these things too.  Bummer.  However, I found wholesale
ignorance 
and stupidity in every place.  So, I quit looking for that.  Living
here, 
I also saw some of the most brilliant achievements of the century.  
It was .... Home.

>I came to associate the big Southern Rock boom of the 70's with the type of
>guys who leaned out of their gun-laden pickup trucks and tried to punch me
>in the head as they drove past my bicycle -- or beat the hell out of black
>farm workers on Saturday nights ...

So did I at that time.  Truth be told, when that music was popular I was 
a working musician playing Gordon Lightfoot, James Taylor, Paul Simon, 
Bach, etc.  That vision of the southern rocker is probably as true 
as the one some have of the gangsta rapper.  Difference is, the
musicians 
weren't killing people then.  That was the Army's job.

Musically, for a serious guitar player, the southern rockers are the
ones 
who gave you Stax, Muscle Shoals, Athens Georgia, and so on, and are 
revered in many circles as the musicians who with the British blues 
rockers made good guitar work a fact instead of a studio dream.  It 
was San Francisco that almost destroyed rock guitar believing they 
could take 400m of LSD and still cut a good album, who kicked out 
knowledgeable producers and *took over* only to produce dreck 
like Anthem of the Sun.  Bands like the Allman Brothers perfected 
the sounds that others of the period could only make stabs at.  
They were the creme de la creme of guitar rock.  Many of them still are.

Perspectives on idiocy aside, it is a cash cow. I play those songs
because 
in any bar anywhere I've ever played, they get the butts away 
from the espresso machine and on the dance floor.  If it makes 
people dance, men sweat and women wet, it's a good time for all and 
we did our jobs.  Crude, yes.  Does it have to be?  I don't know 
but you can ask the ladies from Boston last weekend who sat 
there and screamed "FREEBIRD!!!" all night, then told us 
with the sincerity of a heart attack that "Country Boy Can Survive" 
was the greatest song ever written.  I don't make this stuff up.

I'm just as aghast as you are.  Difference is, I play it.
Why?  Simple.  I want to play the gig again.  It pays the rent 
on the recording studio and fixes the gear.  So, Freebird it is, 
key of G.  Selling out is what one does to feed the cats to 
eat the bird that swallowed the worm that lives in the 
Tequila that Jack bought.  In the bar, I am a bar musician.

At home, I listen to Kate Bush.

Partee Rock is about attitude:  a bad one.  Much too 
late in the day I learned the truths:  we play loud, we don't 
take requests, and we will sleep with your mother.

Of course, at this age, your mother is asleep before we 
pack up the gear, lug it out the door, put it in the 
trucks, take it to the warehouse, lug it in, collapse 
in the air conditioning, then go home and make love to 
our wives.  I like it.  Sugar magnolia.

len