Dear Blues Blub,
While flipping through some blues magazines which litter my girlfriend’s coffee table recently I noticed that you are starting an advice column for your readers. What a strange idea! Listening to blues seems much like any other hobby, yet I can’t imagine the motorcycle magazines I subscribe to suddenly including an agony aunt column.
Consider this letter to be a test. I find the idea of one’s hobby bringing emotional trauma or whatever ridiculous. Here is the test question for you: I have noticed that each time my girlfriend of thirteen years attends a blues event, she is is really low afterwards. By really low I mean unable-to-move-off-the-couch-for-two-days kind of low. She hardly talks to me. She has no appetite for food or anything else that we usually do on weekends. Sometimes when we are watching TV and I glance over she is actually sitting there staring at the wall rather than at the TV! It can take her as long as a week to get back to normal. Whether I come along to the event or whether she goes alone makes no difference.
What is this about? Okay, I get that the name “Blues” is connected with “feeling blue” and that the lyrics about sad-ass losers whose chicks left them can drag you down. The times she makes me come along I have a few beers, hang out, but don’t have a clue about why she goes into such a funk after the music stops? Why does she keep going if it makes her feel so bad?
Baffled Boyfriend but no King
Dear B.B.,
We are including your letter as the first one in this first Blues Blub column because it addresses one of the fundamental characteristics of blues.
You would not believe how many letters the editorial staff have been getting which address matters of the heart rather than performances, artists, instruments, or the 16 bar. Blues, as opposed to your motorcycles is about soft values. It is created from, performed with and elicits feelings. No wonder then that the editorial staff is getting sacks of letters each month about - you guessed it - feelings!
Note how the “sad-ass losers” as you call them of the songs express their longing and their love for some girl in the song in words. Most women I have met have a huge unsatisfied need to hear those exact words; that their man can’t be happy without them, that he can’t live without them, etc. How common is it for us real guys to ever say those words?
The reason why your girlfriend becomes depressed after attending a performance is because she is reminded of her hunger to feel that important to someone as the girls in the songs. Get your butt off the TV room sofa B.B. and do something for her. Go get her some flowers. Turn off the TV and offer to give her a back rub. You’ve been together thirteen years? Maybe you could shorten the funk periods if you go get her a ring, tell her you can’t live without her and propose already. Just a suggestion.
Blues Blub
Dear Blues Blub,
I have never written to an advice column but I really need help from someone. I am a drummer in a fairly successful blues band. That it is quite an accomplishment for a guy who is 69. Our band performs several times a week and almost every weekend.
All the band members are friends and we spend most of our spare time together. Now I have an issue that is threatening to affect the band’s dynamics. You see, I hate the fact that the singer gets all the attention of the audience. When people clap, it feels like they applaud only him. During a recent performance I went up to the bar during a break to get a drink. Even the fact that I can do that pisses me off. I can go to the bar and nothing happens. If the singer would do that he would have throngs of women surrounding him to ask for autographs. Anyway as I went up to the bar a woman approached me and made a joke about being a groupie of the band. She was noticeable from onstage because she was dancing a lot. I was pleasantly surprised and wrote down my e-mail address for her. I told the other guys, mainly because these kind of things happen to me so seldom, but when we got back onstage she wouldn’t make eye contact with me. Needless to say, she never e-mailed. I am a bit overweight but not to the point where it impairs my playing or anything. I am also a bit bald, but youthful for my age.
Why would she make a joke like that and not follow through? How can I make the audience notice me as an artist even though I “only” play drums? This is driving me nuts! Shouldn’t each musician who contributes to the whole have equal share of the fame? That is all I want. All of us together make up the band – just like parts of a body.
Newman
Dear Newman,
You say that all you want an equal share of the fame, but I am sensing that what you really want is chicks.
If all the band members make up a body as you say, which member do you think the singer is? While your beat is as crucial to the music as say a heart is for a body to work, his voice is what touches them deep inside, so to speak. He stands up, he juts out, he gets it on. The answer, Newman, is that the singer is the member, if you follow me. That is why women flock to get his autograph.
The reason the female who joked with you did not e-mail you is that she did not want to be your groupie but his groupie. She was just hoping that you would pass the information on. You write that the woman was dancing right in front of the stage? We humans transmit so much through body language, facial expressions, our eyes. You told the guys that she made a pass at you? Could it be that they gave her furtive looks to check what kind of woman would proposition a balding overweight drummer? Could she have noticed?
If your friend the singer is indeed as good a friend as you write, maybe he could send a couple of the chicks your way? Asking a friend for a favor is easier sometimes than finding a woman who will get involved out of pity. Just a suggestion.
Good luck and don't lose beat!
Blues Blub
Dear Blus Blub,
I am a 50-year old preschool teacher. My husband is 54 and a professional blues guitarist. In recent years he has become quite famous and has even been featured on TV a couple of times (mostly local channels). We have been married for five years and we don’t have children. The problem are his fans. Whenever my husband performs, women swarm around him like flies. At every performance at least a couple of single (and not-so-single) women dance in front of the stage suggestively. There is no doubt in my mind what they are after.
I used to insist on coming along on my husband’s gigs and always chose a seat so that I could see what is going on near the stage. Lately performance nights became such a drag that I want to stop coming along. I get tired of listening to the same music and sometimes I don’t get enough sleep.
Yet I keep feeling that I have to come along to prevent a disaster. My husband does not wear his wedding band onstage as he says it clashes with his image. I have never once seen him encourage a women but I am worried that one of these days he will stray off the straight path. Also, I have gained a lot of weight due to stress in these past years, so my self-confidence is not very good. Apart from his fancy guitars my husband is quite normal-looking.
What is wrong with these women? Am I bound to lose him? What can I do to keep my husband?
Feeling Blue but no longer the Blues
Dear Feeling Blue,
I am sorry that blues has been making you lose sleep in both the literal and the metaphorical sense. However I disagree with you about the nature of your problem. It has less to do with loose women than with a classical relationship imbalance.
In most relationships the partners turn to each other to satisfy their basic needs. if you think of security, love, sex, companionship as commodities for a moment, then your partner is a kind of store to which you can go when your supplies start running low. Each of you provide each other with these commodities, sometimes being on the giving, sometimes on the receiving end. If you benefit from the trade balance you are likely to stay in the relationship. If not, you are likely to look for a better deal, etc.
Now your husband appears to be giving out something to everyone in the room (though you only notice the prancing women). What he is giving must be valuable or else people would pay to attend or feature him on TV. No wonder you feel threatened.
But distributing this (unnamed) commodity to bunches of people is your husband's job. In that respect being the wife of a musician is not unlike being a vicar's wife. As the wife of a vicar, would you hold a grudge against the congregation because your husband was performing a service? Because people liked his sermon? It is possible that you would. Not every woman could be a vicar’s wife. I imagine one would have to believe in a Cause so when things get tough you could take comfort from knowing that what your husband is doing and what you are doing is part of a greater scheme of things. Just like a vicar performing a service your husband needs do things to bring attention to the office rather than to himself as an individual. This is what not wearing his wedding band because it “clashes with his image” is about.
Do you believe in blues as a Cause? Or did you believe once, but lost faith along the way? Focus on that rather than on your husband. What made you lose faith? Stop forcing yourself immediately to attend just to police him. If you do attend, try to have fun. No, not try, let’s make it a rule: if you don’t have fun you won’t be allowed to attend, okay? Dress up. Dance instead of watching the stage. You are guaranteed to get many compliments. As a fifty-year old you belong among the youngsters of the blues crowd.Best of luck!
Blues Blub
Dear Blues Blub, Thank you for starting this advice column. I hope that you can help me understand something about myself. I am a 45-year old woman currently obsessed with a band. I used to be obsessed with them years ago and it felt scary and out of control so I stopped going to their concerts. A few years passed and I thought I was over it. But attending a concert recently my heart felt like a fire that was being rekindled. With a huge pair of bellows!
Immediately after the concert, as in a trance, I found myself booking tickets online to their next couple gigs. It was almost like my body was doing it without my consent. The problem is that I have not told my family that I am going. Instead, creative lies keep popping into my head. I now have several fool-proof stories that I could tell my family on the concert nights so they won’t know I am going. They knew about my going to the most recent concert. The impulse to lie started after that and it is incomprehensible to me where all this is coming from. My husband and I keep no secrets from each other so my own behavior baffles me. I keep feeling like I should want to do things with him instead of sneaking off alone for God knows what reason. In a sense he and I are starting a new life together now that our children are old enough that we no longer have to worry about what they do in the evenings.
It seems that I am dead set on attending the concerts to which I now have tickets. I even know what I will be wearing! I am also determined to go alone – I don’t want my husband to come along.
Why am I so reluctant to tell my family that lies keep popping up in my head almost by themselves weeks ahead of the event? Should I go or should I rip up the tickets? Should I confess to having lied?
PS. Please believe me whan I say that I don't know anyone who will be attending and am not interested in meeting or hooking up with anyone in the crowd.
White 50's Dress
Dear White 50's Dress,
If you were hoping for me to come down on you with the full force of moral authority to bring you to order then you have written to the wrong magazine. I am no expert on morality. If I were, I would not be replying to letters in a blues magazine. I do remember from a college class on ethics decades ago that one can tackle morality issues from three perspectives: values, motivations and consequences. Or were there more perspectives? Those are all I remember.
Let’s start with the consequences of your possible future lies then. (The consequences seem so much easier to discuss than the other two perspectives.) Constantly being with people who know us is wonderful but can also be stifling. People who know us always make one demand, either implicitly or explicitly – that we remain ourselves, i.e. that we stay recognizeable to them as they know us. By evading questions (and possible judgement from people at home) you are basically creating little pockets of time in the future for yourself where you won’t have to live up to anyone’s expectations of you, as a mother, as a wife, as an acquaintance. If you go to these concerts where no one knows you, you will be able to be anyone you want. That is exciting! And scary, too, because if you can be anyone you choose then anything might happen, right?.
If something does happen during your unsupervised outings, if you get so drunk that you can’t stand up for example, then of course your image will be a bit tarnished. You will need to explain to a perplexed husband and family what was going on that you were caught so very unlike the you then know. But from your letter I don’t believe you would let that happen.
As to the values perspective, yes, it seems less complicated. It is coming back to me now why ethics was so tricky. You constantly had to justify what you thought was right by referring to frameworks. I hated that. It just seems plain better for people to tell the truth all the time.
But telling the truth also requires people to be strong enough to do it. I don’t have children myself but I understand that children or teenagers routinely lie to get away with things that their parents won’t allow them. One friend of mine, who is very good at parenting, told me that he expects his children to lie. The strength of the opposition facing the kids is too overwhelming. How would they ever get do anything if they asked for permission? The parents are too afraid for their safety and keep saing no to things. My friend knows, and secretly approves, of some of their lies.
I am pointing you in a direction here: pockets of time to explore in, a possible feeling of that you could not win over the opposition? As for your motives, I don’t really have a clue. Neither do you at the moment. But I do believe that it is your duty to find out as much as possible about your own motives. I am suggesting this: loosen the reins a bit. Go to the concerts. I trust this strong impulse in you. I think it may lead to change, but change is not something one has to fear. Avoid lying directly if possible but do not volunteer information about where you are going either. Be vague. If the events change you, tell people afterwards who you have become. If they love you they will accept the new you. Please write back and let me know how things turned out!
Blues Blub
Dear readers, thank you for the owerwhelmingly positive feedback to our new column. Be sure to read the next column, which will be entirely dedicated to conflicts associated with live jam sessions, such as what to do if a fellow musician hogs the stage all evening, if too many base players turn up but not a single drummer and other related problems.
Blues Blub
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Comments
I have a rather thorny problem. I am a thirty seven year old man. Unfortunately, due to the economy and such I am living at home with my mother. In some ways this is good for both of us. Dad passed on a few years back and my mother complained that the house was now too big for her to manage. I try to "earn my keep" as much as possible, but sometimes I can't help feeling like a child.
Music has always been a big part of my life. I was never in a band or anything, but I do have an extensive collection of LP's and whenever finances allow I make a point of keeping tabs on the up and coming kids. I think of myself as a latter day Lomax, hanging around the dives and street corners in search of the true soul of the music.
Unfortunately my mother does not share my musical tastes. She was raised in the Baptist faith, and feels that music must serve a sacred purpose. Most of the time we are able to live and let live, but recently I really put my foot in it.
Having scraped together the coin, I purchased a rare copy of the classic 1972 recording of Billy Shine and the Tubs "Outta Dodge." I was, I must admit, listening to it repeatedly and at higher volume then usual. My mother entered without knocking, imploring that I not "give lips to the devil's music" in her house. Perhaps because I had been caught in a moment of ecstasy, I did not mute the volume apologetically and dig out my headphones. Instead, carried away by the moment I launched into a defense of the music. The blues is fundamentally a sacred music, a holy music with the power to take the hopelessness of ordinary life and transpose it into a different key, revealing the essential beauty of life. Well, suffice it to say my mother was not persuaded. In her heart burned a mother’s pain for her lost child. Perhaps it would be best she suggested if I found another place to live.
And so there is my dilemma. Leave my mother alone without husband or son, and myself without prospect of a roof over my head, or renounce the music, the blues, that alone which brings solace on this bitter journey. I soberly await your advice.
Not without hope,
A fellow traveler.