12 Bars of Immortality

The 12 bar blues song…we’ve all heard it… a million times. Think of every Chuck Berry tune, or perhaps any number of 50s tunes by Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, or hell, even the Beatles did it!

It’s time honored, for all guys in bands, you all know it as the I-IV-V pattern. It is the single most used formula in music.
It is also the laziest!!!!!
Hell, I’m always up for a good 12 bar tune, but Goddamn, there’s only so much you can do with it.
Sometimes it’s an excuse for a guitarist to say “Hey, look…I can do hours of solos!”
Other times it’s an excuse for pulling out the acoustic and slide and bringing things down a bit.
Sometimes, your just too damn lazy to write an actual song, so you write lyrics and just put it to any 12 bar key. Try listening to every Bob Dylan lp in the 60s and early 70s. For every “All I really Want to Do” there are 57 “Black Crow Blues”. I mean, yeah, we know the guy can write lyrics, but damn was he lazy back in the day!
This is my issue with a lot of great 60s and 70s bands. When they play some straight up rock tunes, they are excellent, but then they bog down ¾ of the lp with 12 bar blues excuses for solos with “feeling”.

Some notable examples:
1. Cream-One of the very first super groups. Great Jams such as “NSU”, “White Room”, “Tales of Brave Ulysses”, “Badge”! Yeah, I know you get “Crossroads” and “Strange Brew” but Goddamn..there’s a lot of “Sleepy Time Time” and fucking “Spoonful” HOW MANY TIMES ARE YOU GOING TO PUT A 30 MINUTE VERSION ON AN ALBUM!!! IT’S NOT A GOOD SONG!
2. Ten Years After- All jams, but lotsa 12 bar filler…and yes, I know they are a blues band, but their straight rock and roll tunes are so good!!! Songs like “I’d Love to Change the Word” “Positive Vibrations” “I’m Coming on” kick my ass! I will tell you that this is the one band that keep the 12 bar thing sustainable for long periods of time because they understand variation. I will get to that in a bit
3. Rory Gallagher- Perhaps the biggest offender of this phenomenon..no wait…that could be Eric Clapton’s solo work…anyway, this guy jams so hard on songs like “Bad Penny” “I’m Not Awake Yet”, “Follow Me” “Tatoo’d Lady” and such, but man can he bog down some albums! His first band The Taste is another primo example. Complete jams like “Blister on the Moon” and “What’s Going On” then 8 songs of LedBetter impersonations!
4. Eric Clapton’s solo work-Especially lately, the pure definition of lazy! Dude! You used to write the hardest jams ever!!!! Why?!?!?!?!

What I enjoy is when bands take the 12 bar and beat it to within an inch of its life!!!!!
Examples:
1. Led Zeppelin-“Since I’ve Been Loving You” –They take the 12 bar and bash it into submission, but it’s still there. It creeps up on you, then before you know it, you are being fetish raped by Jimmy Page’s solo!!!! I get hard just thinking about it!!!!
2. Cream-“Strange Brew”-Yeah, I know I just complained about them a little, but this one fools you. You are caught up in the whimsy and Psychedelia , that you forget the blues!
3. Black Sabbath-“Warning”-This is what I call “Punch you in the face Blues” …no thinking, just a good smack…and you like it! Yes, Aynsley Dunbar wrote it and recorded it first. Sabbath showed them how to do it Koreshly!

Now I’m not knocking the Blues…it’s just that it has a finite window for listening in one sitting. Like right now! I’ve got the Blues!!!