The theme this week was Mississippi John Hurt. We'd been doing his music for a while in the course but now we're going in depth.
My favorite song is still "Since I've Laid My Burden Down," but "Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" is a close second.
However, the song that inspired me most for my artwork was "Candy Man Blues." I think the theme of the song, albeit racy, is not unusual. It's only unusual because as a general rule older songs are not as explicit, and the themes tend to be more profound and so we tend to glorify them relative to today's music. Today's music is focused on money, fame, sex, and drugs much more than music was before, but it's also much more artificial - musically, melodically, dynamically... All that aside, how different is "Candy Man Blues" thematically from "Candy Shop" or "Sexy and I Know It?"
On the reading: I really enjoyed the piece by Elisabeth Dubovsky and I appreciate that Tony put it up for us. John Hurt seems like he's very down-to-earth, very spiritual, and very disconnected from the commercial side of the music. That's also very rare today that the artist is who he says he is. There are a lot of artists that like to have a very down to earth image and anti-commercialist attitude, but it's pretty contradictory to all the publicity they get by taking on that image.
My favorite song is still "Since I've Laid My Burden Down," but "Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" is a close second.
However, the song that inspired me most for my artwork was "Candy Man Blues." I think the theme of the song, albeit racy, is not unusual. It's only unusual because as a general rule older songs are not as explicit, and the themes tend to be more profound and so we tend to glorify them relative to today's music. Today's music is focused on money, fame, sex, and drugs much more than music was before, but it's also much more artificial - musically, melodically, dynamically... All that aside, how different is "Candy Man Blues" thematically from "Candy Shop" or "Sexy and I Know It?"
On the reading: I really enjoyed the piece by Elisabeth Dubovsky and I appreciate that Tony put it up for us. John Hurt seems like he's very down-to-earth, very spiritual, and very disconnected from the commercial side of the music. That's also very rare today that the artist is who he says he is. There are a lot of artists that like to have a very down to earth image and anti-commercialist attitude, but it's pretty contradictory to all the publicity they get by taking on that image.
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