I was listening to Beefheart and Howlin' Wolf earlier and it occurred to me that The Fall have never really gone near the Blues as a form, apart from Bourgeois Blues

Leadbelly

but that's reworked completely on AYAMW and it's not really the blues anymore.

I wonder why they've never done a straight blues song.
Do you think it's because it's impossible to do a blues song now without it sounding retrograde?

Maybe they have. I can't think of any...

A lot of Fall covers are bluesy...

White Lightning
Mr. Pharmacist
Rollin' Dany
&
F-Oldin' Money

could all be considered 'blues.'

Strangely, 'God-Box' also follows blues form, in a way... and of course, '986 Generator' is a one-chord blues. ;)

I can imagine some Fall material translating well into a Blues form, though.

Systematic Abuse for example.

When I saw this thread title, I thought The Fall, Blues!? but then immediately a song from Unutterable sprung to mind. Can't remember the title / which one currently tho...

W.B.? That's a bit bluesy in the guitar-riffage dept... as is 'Hot Runes.'

Plenty of blues changes in The Fall, which is hardly unusual. No real blues, though. Not a huge surprise, the blues is a genre of transparent emotion and narrative, whcich is often ace, but not really The Fall's stock in trade.

And thenm, of course, sometime at the end of the 60s, the blues became a framework for endless pentatonic widdling, which is...well, you know.

I suspect MES admires a lot of blues, but would be quick to point out his distrust of much of the genre. Bit like me. Clever lad.

"I was walking down the street" is clearly MES's equivalent of "I woke up this morning..."

bourgeois blues
blindness

a hard blues sound to a lot of fall to my ears. it seems the fall are less obviously rock and more blues/rocakabilly when they get going. stuff like blindness is good blues music. has the same repetition but more soul than the current stuff (which i do like i have to say but the rhythm section really tests my patience. i wish to fuck they would either loosen up or go and let things move to the next stage. thi sphase has to be over soon). a lot of the attitudes expressed and the moods of fall stuff is like blues. i mean, whats the difference between a song like blindness and a talking blues? but it is a peculairly english provinical blues (which is a lot better than the material referred to above, re the endless noodling of so called british blues music which is a joke really. when you hear a blues original and then listen to clapton, for example, absolutely murdering it with excess

Midwatch 1953?

That's certainly blues, but drowned out by a lot of sillyness.

It seems to me that Leadbelly's Bourgeois Blues is not a blues as the form is generally understood.
Blues usually is a twelve bar AAB, with the A's being pretty much identical.
There is another blues tradition, common with Howlin Wolf, Robert Pete Williams, and a few others, of a blues based on one chord.
Bourgeois Blues seems more of a folk song and Leadbelly was more of a folksinger and folk composer than a blues player anyway. It's not in tradition blues form.
I know that there are bluesy elements in the Fall but I can't think of a standard blues construction the group employs on a song.

[QUOTE]

i think that the thread inclines more towards blues feel than actual structural blues (of which there are so many variations it would be a chore to list them here lol

i see what you mean about bourgeois blues. it does raise the question as to where these different genres begin and end

but isnt country blues a genre?

Country blues is indeed a genre and that's often, or almost exclusively, 12 bar or one-chord tunes.
Piedmont Blues, which is centered from southside Virginia down to northern Florida, employs cycle of 7ths quite a lot - Blind Blake is a good example of the Piedmont blues.
Mississippi John Hurt played a lot of folk tunes and dance tunes that were bluesy because he was bluesy but I don't think that they were constructed along the blues templates.
Jump Blues like Louis Jordan was jazzy but still was usually constructed as a blues although sometimes he would put in a bridge.
So, yes, there are all sorts of blues just as there are African Americans doing what are considered folk songs.
That's my confusing short answer and I am sticking by it :lol:

The Fall's Bourgeois Blues, by your parameters, certainly has a blues feel - a contemporary blues feel, but one nonetheless. It took me a while to appreciate the version having grown up on Leadbelly so to speak, but now I think it's one of the best things Mr Smith & Co have done.

fill your ears bk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMz5C_qW1Fc
986 Generator.
:)

As noted by others in this thread already, The Fall have done many tunes that have a standard blues chord structure - particularly covers - but nothing that could, I think, be described straightforwardly as 'the blues'.

I vaguely recall that the Velvet Underground had a rule that any type of music was on the agenda except for the blues, because it was clichéd; perhaps The Fall have a similar edict?

VU's jamming went in a blues direction sometimes, as did the song It's Just Too Much. :devil2:

Maybe so, but that is the story that I've heard oft told, and vaguely recall Sterling Morrison... or perhaps John Cale recounting in interviews.

The line between what is blues and what is R'n'R is a fuzzy one. It's Just Too Much is arguably blues, but equally arguably R'n'R, especially with its walking bass line. I imagine that the 'rule' was meant to apply to doing straight-down-the-line standard blues numbers.

I would say that the legacy of The Blues resonates through all popular music, including The Fall.

I think that contemporary feel comes from it essentially being a cover of the Panther Burns version, rather than a direct cover of the original.

I suspect Bourgeois Town may descend more directly from the Tav Falco version of Bourgeois Blues than from Leadbelly. It was even credited to Robert Johnson on AYAMW, tho that may just be the usual carelessness over credits.

'Bo Demmick' is a straight blues song to my mind, though I suppose you could argue strictly rhythm and blues.

I have always thought that H.O.W from Seminal Live was a blues number.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWh-VZbXtRY&feature=related

have a listen <_<

My New House

What makes this blues?

Rhythm = Texas shuffle
Melodically: The main riff is a blue note
Strucurally: modified 12 bar pattern.

And it fucking rocks!

The story of Pinball Machine is sort of bluesy, in't'it?
Not really a blues song, tho

As with 'Bo Demmick' it typifies Smiths' love of Diddley and yes it rocks. :thumbsup:

Very old Cowboy tune, collected by John Lomax in 1583.

Rye whiskey rye whiskey
Rye whiskey I cry
If I don't get rye whiskey I surely shall die.

If the ocean was whiskey and I was a duck
I'd dive to the bottom and never come up.

Is that on Middle Class Revolt?
I don't listen to that one much. :unsure:

Seminal Live, ie THAT one!

Great version though (of Pinball Machine)