Shuffleton's Barber Shop
Its not terribly counter-culture to say you like Norman Rockwell. I don't know where that leaves me but I think he's as close to a novelist as any painter can get. And though he speaks for the rural folk, I feel as if he captures humanity (at least American humanity) in its raw and unaffected state. The paintings are the skeletal frame of how society is made. Some of the scenes are less fancy than some of us are used to, but we can only build upon the scenes he saw between the 30's and 50's. The photo above is some of the essence of what makes music, for me, brilliant.
Music today, at least what I'm hearing coming out is contrived. Not totally but its thought about, as any profession will get you, enough that image matters. And while I agree with Tom Waits in believing all artists are bad imitations of their idols, when your idols are too contrived, their philosophy and yours moves more toward a synthetic concoction.
But what I love about this painting is that its just a bunch of old guys, sitting around in the backroom, cramped and in dining room chairs of someones business, late into the night for no other reason that to jam. Maybe they wouldn't use that term, but that's what they are doing. What I like about the roots music that's depicted here is its coming from the soul of labor. These guys aren't paid to make music, their paid to cut hair, and sweep floors. They make rent by laying brick, and growing crops.
Today many sounds we hear are either from two schools, techinical tampering or imitating these guys, who played with what they had and if that was out of tune, they worked with what they had. This is the same reason I hate American Idol. Mistakes are taken out of anything the contestants do if they ever make an album, guys in a back room roll with it. In fact the world owes more to bad instruments than anyone else for our drive toward new sounds, and how we manipulate them.
Part of my love has one foot in paranoia. I've always said of life, I'd rather sleep in the mud than in the Penthouse because when you sleep in the mud they can't take anything from you. With guys holding instruments in a room, they never can't play music, theres no amps, theres no microphones, instruments get new roles so they aren't buried. It might be why I stopped playing piano, but this year my girlfriends mother gave us her deceased fathers accordion because of the sound I heard coming from Johnny Cash's
Wayfaring Stranger.
When I leave any place, in this case MB, I should hope that I've inspired at least one person to get out there and get their hands dirty, to play until their clothes are soaked in some dingy room where you play because its the best you've ever felt. And if nothing else, that those demands are put on other people. God Bless the Dirt Farmers.