Singing The Blues

I'm going to take some time today to pick on one of my fellow artists; the blues musician. My sympathies for blues musicians can hardly be said to exist.


Maybe I'm cynical, but they always seem to sing such lyrics as, "ain't got no woman," or "since my woman left me." I roll my eyes and say, "give me a break." It's the same as if I got a flat tire and moaned about it even though I have six other bikes in the basement.

As I recall, blues came from a group of Americans called 'black people.' I heard they were slaves for, oh, a couple hundred years or so. Been going on way before the country was a country. After a lifetime of lynchings, beatings, and other odd treatment, they looked ahead only to find the light at the end of the tunnel was a burning cross.

Jeepers, says I, but they did make lemonade out of the lemon. That's the blues. But let me he honest and admit the root of my gripe is not a blues have their roots in slavery thing, it's a moaning about chicks thing; the haves singing as though they were a have not. It's the outright bullshitonomy (I just made that up) of a guy who is not awkward, is not skinny, is not fat -he could be but he isn't- singing about not having a woman while he plucks his guitar, and sends out vibes that are the acoustic equivalent of The Rabbit. (For those not in the know, The Rabbit is a girl toy. Girls turn it on and it returns the favor.)

When I hear someone singing that old "ain't got no woman now" medley, while the women in the joint become spellbound, as if he were Orpheus, and start doing the dirty Watusi, and a few of them give him a wink, well, I have a hard time getting on board his sympathy bus. But like I said, I'm a cynic.