This is Wayne's World

Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong
Lawd you gonna miss me when I’m gone
Oh the Rock Island Line is a mighty fine line
Oh the Rock Island Line is the road to ride
If you want to ride, you gotta ride it like you’re flyin’
Get your ticket at the station on the Rock Island Line

Aren’t Metallica ace?! Good hard fast metal. And that’s where it ends.
Isn’t Bob Dylan just fab?! Folky, rhythm & blues, blues & rock. What a guy. No need to look elsewhere because he has it all going on!
Afraid not people. Some folks who are passive music fans think like this and it beggars belief sometimes. Why? Why is the question we should be asking. Why do Metallica sound like that? What makes them do what they do? Why do they make me want to write songs that are harder, faster and what would end up being ultimately an evolution of their sound?
Now I can’t help it but if I hear a band nowadays then I start looking back into the past. Looking out for the influences. Silly but that’s what I do and that’s why, I suppose, that I’m listening to music dating back to the ’30s. One of my favourite albums is an old compilation of pre-WWII harmonica blues and I love ‘King of the Delta Blues by Robert Johnson and who can resist a bit of Leadbelly every now and then. This though I think is a result of listening to bands like Skid Row, Iron Maiden & Metallica in my youth and asking why and looking back….And to be fair. Not alot has changed in many cases. You can still hear 4/4 12 bar, its just got louder and faster.
Lets look at an example…..No really, lets:-

• You take a band like The Darkness
• Who sound just ike AC/DC. Don’t they?!
• Who took a leaf out of the Rolling Stones book and turned up to 11
• Who to name but only one were influenced by artists like John Lee Hooker
• And Hookers electric blues is a progression of Robert Johnsons country Delta blues
• Which leads us to Johnsons sensai. Son House
• Difficult to know exactly what influeneced Son but I expect his thirst for preaching the good news in his younger years meant gospel and spiritual music played their part

All great artists and bands made even better when you understand where they came from and what the music is about. Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t like the newer stuff but with a rich history of quality crackly fuzzily produced music by (in my favourate cases) people and not musicians, like the newer stuff but love the oldies.

Fuck, I’m still playing catch up with alot of what I like and thats the great thing. I’m discovering new music all the time but the thing is……Its all old music.