Travelling today so enjoy the music

I am travelling a lot today – from London to Brussels and then onto Maastricht. I have had some meetings in London and then tonight (Europe time) I will present the Third Joan Muysken Lecture at the University of Maastricht, which honours their foundation professor in macroeconomics (and one of my co-authors). The talk will outline why the Eurozone should be dissolved forthwith. I don’t expect a sympathetic crowd. Tomorrow, I am giving a talk at the University on why mainstream economics has contributed nothing to the advancement of societal well-being. Rather, it has been a blight on progress. I expect a even less than sympathetic audience. Should be fun! I will try to post audio (at least) of these events. But for now … here is some music.

For locals (or those near to Maastricht), the Monday evening event is a public lecture and all are welcome. It starts at 20:00 in the lecture hall TS53 (at the Tongersestraat Campus). The Tuesday lecture is closed to the public.

For the next 24 hours I will not be able to closely monitor the comments section. So if your comment has a link in it please be patient and I will get to it in due course.

To ensure this visit wasn’t a total waste of your time, here are some classic recordings … and modern versions of the same.

A blues influenced choice today.

One of the best – Robert Nighthawk – playing slide guitar and singing I Need Love So Bad.

He was one of the original electric guitar blues players who influenced the next wave of players (like Muddy Waters and then the white players like the Rolling Stones).

He was forced to earn a meagre living by busking on Maxwell Street, Chicago.

This song was taken from CD set “And This Is Maxwell St” released in 1999. I urge you to purchase the 3-CD set if you appreciate this clip. It is well documented (a great booklet included) and helps support those who have revived these historic performances.

Then we have Magic Sam (Sam Maghett) singing and playing his own song “All Of Your Love”, which was released on the Cobra label in 1957.

He didn’t achieve much success himself but influenced a lot of those who would follow, especially the white blues revivalists such as Mike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishop, Nick Gravenites and Paul Butterfield.

He also carved out new guitar techniques including the dripping reverb sound overlaid with tremelo. Beautiful sounds that I heard when I was younger and which I tried to emulate.

And to trace the influences through to the modern day, here are the Rolling Stones off their latest CD (which is pretty good) – Blue and Lonesome.

This, seemingly impromptu recording effort, shows just how great these guys were at playing R&B and electric blues – as we knew from their earlier recordings of the 1960s, before they became the greatest rock and roll band.

Here they are covering Magic Sam’s All Of Your Love. It is Chuck Leavell (former Allman Brothers Band) playing the piano break.

Conclusion

I will surface again tomorrow.

That is enough for today!

(c) Copyright 2017 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.