In the theme of rhetorical (answerless) questions, I'll posit a ponderer grandiose enough for a Monday: Why do we love music?
Music is a transportive experience. That is, music can make the world around you melt away. You close your eyes and listen to the melody, the chords, the way the musicians wade through their composition with frenetic energy or relaxed candor or both. In the music we love, the music we listen to over and over again, we find a respite, a place of comfort and familiarity mixed with awe that this piece of truth managed to eek its way into the world, despite all that's stacked up against it: apathy, a top-heavy music industry, discord in the writing and recording process, egos and billing rates and false starts. We are thankful for this familiar escape, the contours of which become a tangible reality, a
piece of music broken off from the larger fabric, music we can hold in our hands like a totem.
Music is also a transformative experience. It can help us see the world differently, thanks to heartrendingly true lyrics or the simple beauty of a well-crafted cadence. We respond to music emotionally because music is born of emotion, a singing and humming and strumming demonstration of human desires, joys, fears, neuroses, imperfections. It is the highest form of poetry, rhetoric matched to aural movement. In the space of a moment, a bar chord can thump us straight in the heart and jolt us out of stupor, out of the doldrums of our most boring and unengaged thoughts, and remind us of that ever-shifting category of What's Important. Music can change us.
Music is also transitive. It is created with a purpose, and in listening, we seek to identify that purpose and apply it, transfer it, to our own lives. As today's jam evidences, blues is a beautiful medium for this, the slow and steady progression of blues chords providing an even backdrop for the rise and fall of the iconic BB King's whining guitar and plaintive lyrics. The song itself is simple and funny. The narrating character lists the reasons for his blues, all relating back to his woman, whose love peters in comparison to his own roaring flame. "I gave you seven children, and now you wanna give 'em back!" he cries on his way to the final chorus, signaling just how much this romance has faltered. And yet there's humor: We laugh at how silly this woman is, the triviality of her complaints, the grandiose ridiculousness of her expectations, as if she could return her children to their place of origin and get a refund. BB sings to her, "I gave you a brand new Ford, and you said 'I want a Cadillac.' I bought you a ten-dollar dinner, and you said 'Thanks for the snack.'" No reason for her distaste is given, so we are to assume she's simply a snob, maybe just a bad person. But BB suggests no escape -- there isn't one -- and so we wallow in the pain and sorrow and levity of his one-sided love story.
I've come back to this song a lot over the years, mostly due to its inclusion in the under-appreciated sequel
Blues Brothers 2000. In that movie, which I owned on a tape-recorded VHS (complete with commercial breaks), BB King is joined by dozens of iconic musicians to perform this song and win a contest over the Blues Brothers. Of course, the heroes prevail, but the ridiculously massive conglomerate of blues talent led by King puts up a dizzying performance, with each music star singing a line, popcorn reading-style. (Unfortunately I can't find an embeddable video, so
jump over to YouTube for a few minutes to check that out.)
I can't really explain why this song calms me, why the first few notes immediately put me at ease whether I'm at the office or on the train, whether I'm lost in thought or barely hanging on to thoughts as they stream by, flashing of importance as they pass and then sinking back into shadowed anonymity. No matter where my head is at, this song grounds me, brings me back to earth. The song reminds me of being a kid, of watching that movie, of hearing and really listening to the blues for the first time, of my shockingly implicit understanding of a music format that relies as much on template as improvisation. I realized, and am continually reminded, that you could have a plan -- assemble a group of musicians on stage, marry the person you love -- and still have no idea what it will look or sound like five minutes from now, five months or five years or five decades. This song was originally recorded in 1949, and it's been a standard cover of BB King's live set for almost 50 years, since it appeared as a single in 1964.
I'm seeing BB King perform at the House of Blues in Chicago in a couple of weeks. If he plays this song, I may start to have a panic attack out of pure excitement. The good news is that the song itself will immediately center me again. Funny how that works.
