THE BUTTERFIELD BLUES BAND: IN MY OWN DREAM (1968)
1) Last Hope's Gone; 2) Mine
To Love; 3) Get Yourself Together; 4) Just To Be With You; 5) Mornin' Blues; 6)
Drunk Again; 7) In My Own Dream.
By the time this album came out, nobody really
cared any more, and only the most astute listeners and critics may have noticed
how desperately The Butterfield Blues Band was trying to rebrand itself.
Running on covers, it seems to have been agreed, was pretty much equivalent to
suicide; but neither Butterfield nor Bishop had a lot of songwriting talent,
and so it is up to new bass player Bugsy Maugh to fill in the glaring gap and
steer the Butterfields away from interpretation and improvisation and into the
treacherous waters of creativity.
The big problem with this is that Bugsy was
apparently a major fan of contemporary R&B, and his songs basically sound
like sincere, but never outstanding imitations of Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding,
and whoever else was riding the Atlantic wave of success at the time. Jazzy
rhythms, poppy choruses, lots of brass and vocal exuberance (and, what's more,
the vocals were to be provided by Bugsy himself — Paul either did not want to
mess around with other band members' songs, or found them unsuitable to his own
style). And yes, the problem is not that this does not at all sound like classic
BBB (who'd really care?), but that the songs only barely stand competition.
ʽGet Yourself Togetherʼ, for instance, takes the old and well-worn ʽCan I Get A
Witness?ʼ groove, but adds nothing particularly new to it — probably the most
«novel» aspect is the way their brass section crosses paths with Butterfield's
harmonica, but then I'd rather just see the whole thing turn into a fast,
punchy, harmonica-driven instrumental (much like the Stones had originally done
with this groove, turning it into the awesome — for 1964, at least — ʽNow I've
Got A Witnessʼ). Actually, Bugsy is not a bad singer: he does quite alright on
ʽMornin' Bluesʼ, a snappy chunk of whitebread soul, showing good range, fluent
modulation, and respectable restraint. And still, I cannot get rid of the
feeling that something is just not
there. Probably because they take all these familiar structures, refuse to
populate them with extra hooks, yet do not have enough balls to make them
sizzle and kick proper ass in performance.
There are altogether two songs on the album
that rise above the likes of «nice» and «okay» and «wish I'd had an extra
ninety years to my life». The opening number, ʽLast Hope's Goneʼ, is a moody,
subtle piece of blues made special by a very unusual bass «zoop» at its core
and a chaotic mish-mash of brass and woodwinds at the edges; it is hardly a
coincidence that the rising star of David Sanborn is credited here as one of
the co-authors. And Bishop's only contribution to the record, ʽDrunk Againʼ, is
a hilariously realistic example of how to make an authentically «drunken blues», with a large part of it taken over
by a loosely coherent rant of the «protagonist walks into a bar...» variety.
Not much to do with pure music (although Butterfield does a pretty good job on the
harmonica in the background), but hits home all the same.
Butterfield's only solo composition here — the
title track — is featured at the end and was probably supposed to be the
climactic finish, what with all those gospel harmony overtones, but it is
stunningly weak: musically, just sort of a ghostly shuffle, limping along like
a three-legged dog, and vocally, with nothing but the pure power of one man's
soul to guide it to its conclusion (and it doesn't even have a conclusion — it just indecisively fades away after almost
six minutes of trying to understand what it is supposed to do).
So yes, I respect that the fact that they at
least tried to change, and even develop
some sort of hybrid musical genre, wobbling between blues, jazz, and R&B,
rather than just throwing in a few more mediocre Albert King covers. But
there's really nothing here that couldn't be done better by either Traffic, or Grateful
Dead, or Blood, Sweat & Tears in their prime — and there's nothing but
sheer curiosity, I think, that might make you want to check it out. Oh well, at
least it's all over in just 36 minutes — very respectful of them, since it
wouldn't have been too difficult to shove twenty more minutes of comparable
mediocrity into the pot, and then I'd really have to hate 'em.
"But there's really nothing here that couldn't be done better by either Traffic, or Grateful Dead, or Blood, Sweat & Tears in their prime"
ReplyDeleteUh...first you raise Kansas as an exemplar of American prog (for end-stage Bloodrock), now you're touting Traffic as a blues band? Now, confess your secret love of Grand Funk and be free!!
I'm not - "In My Own Dream" isn't really a blues album.
DeleteHe was referring to the jazz/R&B/roots mixture; in this particular case roots means blues, but for the Dead and occasionally Traffic it's country and folk and for BST, well, they mostly just had the jazz/R&B mix
DeleteUmm, how is this "holding up Kansas as an exemplar of American prog"?
Delete"It is all so mind-numbing that I wouldn't even want to recommend the album to fans of Kansas — as much as I hate the band, at least it had its own silly schtick sort of worked out from the very beginning"
He literally says he hates Kansas and just says this album is so bad, it's worse, after trashing a band member for getting involved with Kansas after Bloodrock broke up. None of this is paying Kansas a compliment.
Thanks for clearing that up. You have put my musical universe back in order.
DeleteMight I also add: Horrible, horrible cover art! A true faux-psych eyesore!
ReplyDelete