Society and their Blues Artists (Joe Bonamassa)

I think, and this is just my personal opinion, but I think people just need to learn to accept and take what they get and stop projecting onto musicians what they think they should be doing.

Joe Bonamassa dresses nice and wears sunglasses. That's what he wants to do, it's what he feels comfortable doing. He plays blues for a living. People want to say he's a shredder and I don't see that at all. He's not tearing the pentatonics up any faster then SRV did (from what I see.)

I just see a dude making a living playing some cool rocking blues.

It is what it is.

I'll be the first person to say all these rules about how people are supposed to play, and things they're supposed to do, and what to wear or not wear to fall comfortably into the category of being "blues players" is just completely and totally ridiculous. Don't play too fast, don't use too much distortion, don't use humbuckers,.......jeez.

It's total bulls**t. Who wrote these supposed rules? Tradition? What tradition? The tradtional Greats that everyone is comparing the 'new' guys to, weren't following any rules or traditions, they were just living their lives playing their music. So is Joe.

Maybe he's creating his own traditions? There's a thought.

He's obviously carving his own path. And if he's anything like me I bet he'd say, "if you like it, cool, c'mon along for the ride. If you don't like it? Blow! Go find something else to criticize."

People are destroying the blues by trying to force it to be something it's not and never was.

It's expression.

It's living your life and expressing yourself through your instrument. I know a lot of people like to make jokes about John Mayer, and I'll be the first to admit I think one of the reasons we do is because he appears to not be committed to the blues. He plays pop when he wants, and blues when it's convenient, it seems like it's all fun and games for him. Who knows?

But from the little I've seen of Joe, this guy is living the blues. This is his life and it seems like what he's always done. That's what a bluesman is. Someone who's not doing it by choice. But doing it because to not do it would be like death.

Sometimes I just feel so bad for todays musicians. Living under a microscope where everybody and their brother is right there scrutinizing every move and every mistake. Picking on everything from the clothes they wear to their choice of guitar, to whether they play too fast or slow, or use overdrive or distortion.

It's madness.

It's just blues guitar. Maybe it's not your particular favorite kind of blues style, but who are we to judge? There's like 20 different styles of blues music.

I'm not out there playing to a crowd of thousands of people, and Joe is. And he's doing it by playing blues. And nowadays that's extremely impressive.

Shouldn't we just be happy that in the age where Hip-Hop rules, that people even still have any kind of interest in the blues? This is a genre that could've probably died a long time ago, but it didn't. Because it's real and it speaks to people. And at the end of the day isn't that what people really want? Music that speaks to them and moves something inside them? Makes them think and feel things?

There's a lot of bitterness in people today I can't even begin to understand. I've never heard one bad thing about Joe B as a person. I've never heard he acts like a jerk or treats people poorly, or talks badly about other people in the press. I just see a dude who makes a living playing some mean blues guitar.

If he died tomorrow, half the people that talk sh*t would suddenly say how he was so talented and how much he'll be missed.

How about we start appreciating these people while they're alive? And not having their deaths give us the hindsight to realize that we missed out on someone awesome.