Glen Hirshberg's Blog - Posts Tagged "look-to-the-side"
Otis Taylor-- "Look to the Side"
Tuesday Round-up of Everything, Week of 8/5, Post #3:
Otis Taylor-- "Look to the Side"
Listen to it here >>
The blues, for me--like most of the art I love most, in one way or another--has always been about mesmerism, about witching our way free of whatever's behind or coming for or already inside us. Strangely, then, I've gone back and forth on Otis Taylor, who hammers and smooths and slow-boils the blues down to its grooving, mesmeric essence, but sometimes seems to lose the essence in the process. Not this time.
I was playing this track back to back with the Isleys' "Ohio/Machine Gun" medley on my drive home through the baking mid-California cattlenowhere this weekend, and suddenly, 200 miles had evaporated--had winked out of existence--and I wasn't anywhere I knew, just floating, just driving, my work done, my book gone, my summer over, my family and friends far, so far, my life a flickering filament in the asphalt shimmer, a sidelong glance in a rearview mirror.
"If I follow the ocean..." "Look to the side..." I'm not sure, in the end, if listening to this keeps my blues at bay or drives them so deep down in me that I'll never get them out. I just know I don't seem to mind, either way.
Otis Taylor-- "Look to the Side"
Listen to it here >>
The blues, for me--like most of the art I love most, in one way or another--has always been about mesmerism, about witching our way free of whatever's behind or coming for or already inside us. Strangely, then, I've gone back and forth on Otis Taylor, who hammers and smooths and slow-boils the blues down to its grooving, mesmeric essence, but sometimes seems to lose the essence in the process. Not this time.
I was playing this track back to back with the Isleys' "Ohio/Machine Gun" medley on my drive home through the baking mid-California cattlenowhere this weekend, and suddenly, 200 miles had evaporated--had winked out of existence--and I wasn't anywhere I knew, just floating, just driving, my work done, my book gone, my summer over, my family and friends far, so far, my life a flickering filament in the asphalt shimmer, a sidelong glance in a rearview mirror.
"If I follow the ocean..." "Look to the side..." I'm not sure, in the end, if listening to this keeps my blues at bay or drives them so deep down in me that I'll never get them out. I just know I don't seem to mind, either way.
