MUSIC: Interview with John Mayall: "You don't need to be loud to get your music across"

Photo by Terry Bert. 

Father figures hold the dogmatic and almost bewitching power of being both fear and awe inspiring. Still, and in spite of the devotional nature of their influence, their numeral range is programmed, by the laws of biological anthropology, to be rather limited, no matter how big of a Mormon or a pussy killer your father claims he was at the tender age of 23; not only on pollination subsists the man.

With blues father figures, however, the potency reach is unlimited and its potential danger skyrockets consequently. Unless one is John Mayall, of course, unmovable father (together with Alexis Korner, Cyril Davis and two or three other cool cats) of the unfairly disdained British blues. In that particular case, not one single fuck is given about popularity, record success or actually answering what the interviewer is asking. On the occasion of his forthcoming Iberian tour, we talked to the walking guitar legend to try and decode the mystique of the blues. Spoiler alert: we failed miserably. We didn’t even get close to it. Cool your jets, people, don’t get too disappointed. There was no chance. We’re sorry.

They say that people stop discovering or caring about new music as soon as they reach the age of 30, statement that obviously wouldn’t apply to somebody who never really cared about “new music” in the first place. Are you contented with being regarded as, undoubtedly, one of the most crucial and productive blues revivalists of the past century or do you actually see yourself as a rather misunderstood innovator in some less evident way?

I certainly never feel that I’m being misunderstood because there are enough people out there who follow my music and it makes me feel very proud of my achievements. I also feel lucky that throughout my career I’ve seldom had issues with the various record companies, and now that I have great contact with Eric Corne of Forty Below Records, who owns and engineers sessions with his artists, I’m in really a good place.

As a larger-than-life figure who literally has been instrumental and fundamental in giving shape to the blues during its most popular and mainstream historical period, the 1950s and 1960s, do you see any future for the genre in this contemporary age of computerized music?

The blues will always be with us, as in every generation there are always new artistes coming up who keep the music alive.

Having been a pivotal participant in the British blues movement during the 1960s that, from quite a far geographical and chronological distance, revitalized a form of black American art which had been neglected by its originators for decades, do you have any clues on why the blues has historically appealed to British kids more than to coetaneous generations in the US? What was it that made you relate and connect with something so apparently remote as a child and teenager?

I started collecting and revering blues and jazz records at the age of ten, and the main reason that American blues artists never had the same acceptance in their own country is because, up until the 1960s, black people had to live a separate life from white people. Racial division in US history meant that their music wasn’t heard by people in general.  However, they were idolized in Europe for what they did.

You backed Sonny Boy Williamson II when he first arrived in the UK with his inseparable bowler hat and umbrella, amongst other greats like John Lee Hooker or Champion Jack Dupree. How did the experience of meeting, seeing and playing with those who really knew what the blues was about, who had it running through their veins, change your perception and style of approach to the music? Did it intimidate you or legitimate you more in your dedication to it?

I certainly wasn’t intimidated by working and playing with them on their club tours, but I did learn one thing and that was that you didn’t need to be loud to get your music across.

Having met the man himself, do you see any amount of truth or are you able to empathize with the late Sonny Boy Williamson II when he famously declared that “those British boys want to play the blues real bad, and they do”? Do you think British blues isn’t given enough credit as a genre of its own, just as a movement that paid homage and helped to revitalize another?

I know for a fact that Sonny Boy was referring to the Yardbirds when he made that famous quote, but that was part of Sonny Boy’s alcohol fuelled wit. I never had any trouble working with him.

For years, you were the mentor behind the scenes for some young and ambitious blues lovers who would later grow to become the biggest rock & roll stars on the planet. Was talent that easy to find during those days or do you have a particularly infallible eye to recognize it? What do you think was the combination of circumstances that made so many brilliant artists gravitate around you?

If I choose someone to work with me, it is always because I admire and am excited by their playing, and when they work with me they are allowed to express themselves and soon develop as a result of that musical freedom.

Talk About That will be the 66^th album of your career, and that’s a milestone that not many can take pride in! What’s left to say for a musician who has his 80^th Anniversary Tour already behind him and is still going strong? What percentage of it is just the pure pleasure of playing the music and what other intends to send a message, to say something out loud?

I have always enjoyed being on the road performing for the people wherever they may be, and without hit record success I’ve always had freedom to play as I feel.

I’ve read that you have a tour with around 130 dates ahead of you this year. Would you say the blues makes more sense with the rawness and spontaneity that a live performance offers, and not so much around the production and premeditated atmosphere of the recording studio? Is this a sort of unique trait of the genre? Or do you recognize that the blues can also be as thought-out and intricate as progressive rock, for example?

Studio work and live work are very different in that with a live show, you explore the medium regardless of whatever sound system is involved, whereas in the studio you get to shape the music into something permanent.  In the studio, however, I always try and capture the same spirit as live performance.

There’s something about the music you do that, across generations and continents, still makes people fall head over heels for it. What is it that separates the blues from any other art form that has ever existed? What’s that universal human struggle that it manages to capture so uniquely well? Would you dare saying you’ve succeeded in pinpointing its incomparable mystique after so many years? 

The blues is the historical base of most popular music in that it speaks of the situations in life that we all go through.

And last but not least, and as Nardwuar the Human Serviette (great contemporary Canadian music journalist) always asks at the end of his interviews, why should people care about John Mayall?

Because it is true to our ways we deal with life.

Whatever that means. Ladies and gents, that was a legend talking.


Lee aquí la entrevista en español con John Mayall para Muzikalia.

MUSIC: Interview with The Wave Pictures: "I think they've got shit coming out of their ears, they’re so full of shit"

Photo by James Loveday. Via The Wave Pictures.

Posthumanism approaching. Robots play the violin better than your cousin already, and it’s a matter of time that they will take over everything else. A final android planetary crusade is just a click away, as it is the resurrection of a tinplate-bodied David Bowie with a short-circuited talent. No, this is not the pretext for a musical version of Terminator 7, but the latest oracle from David Tattersall, songwriter, singer and guitarist for The Wave Pictures. On the occasion of their new album release, Bamboo Diner in the Rain, as well as their forthcoming Spanish tour, we catch up with the three incombustible from Leicestershire about Deep Blue versus Gary Kasparov, the Internet possibly being Satan on Earth, Bob Dylan’s much undeserved Nobel prize and, in general, how marvellous the Wave Pictures are in every sense of the word and how full of shit all the rest seem to be. But these are just opinions, mind you.

Being the Wave Pictures such a famously prolific band since their very early and even-more-unpolished-than-now beginnings, 2016 has been a particularly inspired year even by your standards; before Bamboo Diner in the Rain last month came A Season in Hull in February, recorded with one microphone, no mixing and released only in vinyl. Don’t you think you have it tough enough these days, as a guitar-driven act in a contemporary music landscape widely dominated by computers? What was the intention behind this bold (if not self-sabotaging) move?

I wanted to make something that was not for the Internet. To me, it’s a very romantic idea. It's like a message in a bottle that you throw out to the sea. To listen to those songs, you have to listen to the vinyl record. It sounds really wonderful and I was very proud of the songs and I think it's a very lovely idea. I don't like the Internet anyway. I'm sick to death of it. It is eating away at everything that I like.

It seems like your trademark productiveness is not a quality that can be generally applied to most bands that fall under the category of rock of some sort, especially compared to the never-ending flow of work produced by their hip hop and electronic counterparts. Do you perceive a creative drought in the current state of rock?

Yes, I do. In fact, I think that there is very little music in any genre that is being made with fire in its belly. Everything seems complacent and commercialised, not just in rock but across the board. Everyone lives in their own little box. They have forgotten that music is for fun, and for expressing yourself. The robots have taken over the place. It would be very easy now to replace human beings altogether.

Bamboo Diner in the Rain is similarly described and felt as a battle “against the robot music apocalypse”. What is it that you categorize as “robot music” and why is it something that should be confronted? Or rephrased from a constructive point of view: why is an instrument-based recording style still worth reclaiming?

You want to hear the human spirit on tape. Machines can beat a man at chess, machines will soon beat a human football team at football. They will undoubtedly soon fight our wars for us, and not long after rise up against us, as you see predicted in the Terminator movies. People have a terrible weakness for technology. They think that machines can do everything better than people can. This is not true of the arts. A machine will never be able to play music like Skip James. Skip James was a true genius and his music could never be created by a machine. But people have been tricked into believing that people like David Bowie are great geniuses. Actually, David Bowie's music could be made by machines at some point. It is not unfeasible. If a computer can beat Kasparov, surely a computer could make Hunky Dory? I think I fear these developments and I think that the human spirit is the principle element that you want to hear on a recording. That's what it boils down to: the human spirit. Personal expression. Is someone expressing themselves? Does it move me? All the rest is just cleverness and commercialism.

You guys have talked repeatedly, and again in the means of pin-pointing the influences of this new album, about the impact that blues and other forms of primitive black American music has had in the Wave Pictures. Why do you think blues has historically appealed to British kids more than to younger generations in the US? With the likes of the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Alexis Korner and many more being regarded as the ultimate blues saviours during the 1960s.

I think that's something to do with the racial segregation that existed in America, nothing to do with music.

Having experimented with cover albums already, as you did with Daniel Johnston’s Artistic Vice in 2014 during a recording and two-week tour under Houston Party’s initiative “We Used to Party”, have you ever thought about publishing a collection of your own blues and American folk favourites? If so, how would the potential track list look like? I’ve heard you tried with the Stones’ England’s Newest Hitmakers, for instance, which includes some bluesy covers itself.

I think that Robert Johnson has truly extraordinary songs, the poetry is exceptional and mysterious. This is in addition to his extraordinary, supernatural guitar and vocal abilities. I have often thought of covering his songs, but instead I get inspired to write my own songs when I listen to him.

The Wave Pictures have been recurrently described as a band that writes songs for fans of songwriting, referring to the more often than not abstract, melancholic and complex nature of your lyrics. Anybody from an outer perspective would agree that this obscurantist motivation is still palpable in Bamboo Diner in the Rain, but as the creative minds behind it, what, if anything, would you say has changed about the way you wrote the songs for this album, style and subject-wise?

No, I don't write songs for fans of songwriting. I don't write them for anyone. I write them for myself. It's a fluke that later anyone likes them.

But when you are writing, you cannot think about what anyone else thinks, otherwise you will go wrong. It's enough to try to get it correct for yourself. You become addicted to this, and that's all there is to it. Then, afterwards, it's good if other people like it, but it isn't the essential part. Furthermore, I don't have any obscurantist motivation. I just have a motivation to make up songs. You put all your eggs in that basket, you put all your focus on it, and then you disregard absolutely everything else that would get in the way of doing it. And as long as you disregard everything that will stop you it is very easy and pleasant. Everyone wants to slow you down with theories and with work. That's the way people are. But as long as you focus, it is easy. It is not difficult. It is a great pleasure! You just have to block out all the other voices, then it's like turning on a tap and the water comes rushing out. I turn on the songwriting tap and out come the songs!

However, to write songs you need solitude and contemplation and I think that with the amount of time people spend on the Internet now, and with the Internet on their phones, there will be no solitude for people, and no good songs. I like to take long walks in the city myself. I think solitude is the most important rule of songwriting.

I have solitude. I have been able to make great advances in the song. I changed the syntax of songwriting altogether. I broke every rule of lyric writing that there was. I always did this. Nobody does it the way I do it. I'm a better poet than Bob Dylan. I was better than Bob Dylan at writing lyrics when I was 14 years old. I already knew at that age that you had to break the form. You had to break the form to give it life. What you want to get is not a reflection of life, but something as vivid as life itself, that in and of itself is as alive and as real as anything in the real world. Not a picture of life, but life itself. Truth itself. No one can touch my lyrics. They can't even understand them!

Three out of ten of the songs in Bamboo Diner in the Rain distinctively stand out for their non-blues infused sound: Bamboo Diner Rag, Meeting Simon at the Airport (the only instrumental piece in the entire album) and the title track, Bamboo Diner in the Rain. Why did you deem appropriate to place these more folkish, Appalachian-reminiscent tunes in the context of an otherwise straightforward house-rocking electric blues album?

I wanted the emotional heart of the album to be instrumental, to focus the listener on what the guitar was saying, to make them listen to the guitar as if it was a voice. I thought it worked personally, though I don't know whether people thought it. The heart of the album is Meeting Simon at the Airport because is it the most moving, the most emotional moment. That is the heart. It was an experiment, I like to experiment and to release the experiments.

The heart of the album is Meeting Simon at the Airport and the soul of the album is Bamboo Diner in the Rain. The whole album takes place within that song. It is the title track. It presents the key to everything that has unfolded before it. It is a very beautiful song. Mystery and emotion.

As for Bamboo Diner Rag, it seems totally real to me. I think you perhaps wouldn't consider it blues, but in fact it is a blues piece. It’s a blues piece in the ragtime style of Reverend Gary Davis. East Coast Blues, guys like Blind Blake, Barbecue Bob and Sylvester Weaver, they did a lot of blues pieces in this kind of style. I think we nailed it. I love that piece. I was very proud of it. If you want to learn more, there's a very good compilation album called The Rough Guide to East Coast Blues.

We opened up something inside of ourselves on this album, and we found there was a lot more in there than we had realised. I don't think anyone has ever put this kind of instrumental together with the kind of songs we do. I think it’s a totally original album, which I realise, does not interest anybody at all!

A sublime video for Now I Want to Hoover My Brain Clean, second single of the album, has just been recently released. Some of the most popular Wave Pictures’ clips succeed in pulling out very conceptually intelligent and subtle ideas in a lo-fi, rustic format (the one for “I Love You Like a Madman” comes to mind instantly as a very illustrative example). To which extent are you involved in the creative process of making these videos?

I hate music videos. To me, they are an insult to the art form. When you buy a novel, you don't get given a CD of music to listen to while you read it. Why should music have videos? It is saying that music is not interesting enough on its own, you need a film as well otherwise you will be bored. I hate them. I appear in them only to be nice and helpful. I have no interest in what they look like and I don't like to watch them. If you like one, it is the work of the director, not me. Same if you don't like it. I wish they didn't exist, not just for me but for anyone. Personally, I like to listen to music without a film to accompany it. Or I like to watch a proper film.

It’s been announced that you’ll be playing Primavera Sound 2017! Next year’s line-up has been an unbeatable surprise for some and a bit of a disappointment for others. I’ve been told you guys are not crazy about festivals as attendees, but what’s your opinion on it so far? Looking forward to seeing any specific band?

I don't like festivals because I think they should be free. I think that the idea of festivals should be free events for the local community. Instead they are terribly expensive. I think a nice hippie idea has been commercialised out of all recognition. I think people are being ripped off, robbed in broad daylight. There is no community spirit to festivals, just money men selling the faded image of Woodstock to new generations.

Last but not least, and as Nardwuar the Human Serviette would ask, why should people care about the Wave Pictures?

It's not for me to say. You can't beg people to like you! I can tell you my opinions, but they aren't worth any more than anybody else's. I really love The Wave Pictures. I think we're truly exceptional and totally original. I think we’re really a band of exceptional genius. I think that everyone else is full of shit. I think they've got shit coming out of their ears, they’re so full of shit. I think The Wave Pictures are the real deal. Totally honest. Pure genius. Pure innovation and invention. I think we are true artists, magicians, shamans, wizards. Gods. But this is just my opinion.


Lee aquí la entrevista en español con The Wave Pictures para Muzikalia.

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MUSIC: Benjamin Booker, tired of feeling guilty just for wanting a little bit more

Benjamin Booker (2014), disco debut de ídem. Via DIY Mag

¿Cansado de sentirte culpable por pensar que todo lo que cae bajo el calificativo indie rock no es más que screamo para post-adolescentes sin gomina ni masa muscular que leen contraportadas de novelas de Bukowski, se hacen fotos con ellas y las cuelgan en Instagram acompañadas de frases sobreexplotadas por la comunidad Tumblr (intentando parecer inteligentes a la par que misteriosos y con peculiar sentido del humor) tipo “y en ese momento, juro que fuimos patatas fritas con wasabi #bukowski  #patatas #curvy #vsco #vscocam #hashtag”? Yo también. ¿Eres un poco hijo de puta y odias a la raza humana en su esplendorosa totalidad? Yo también, pero ese no es el tema de hoy. El tema de hoy es que Benjamin Booker puede considerarse teóricamente indie rock y a pesar de ello, si comulgas con el aserto anterior, además de estimarte amante del blues, el soul, Patsy Cline o de cualquier otra cosa rabiosa y sanguinolenta en general, te va a encantar. Palabra de atea del indie rock.

Aunque es posible que el presente artículo acabe resultando contraproducente con respecto a su propósito inicial, que, tal y como intentaba sugerir durante el párrafo de presentación, no era otro que  el de demostrar a mis homólogos hispanohablantes y dolientes de alternitivitis crónica que, en efecto, hay vida después de lo independiente. Porque, seamos completamente honestos; no habría de tomarse siquiera como notable el acto de recelar de un género cuya principal característica definitoria y apelativa es rotundamente circunstancial, instrumental y logística; ser producida con independencia de los sellos discográficos comerciales. Para que nos hagamos una idea de lo ditirámbicamente absurdo del asunto, esto sería equivalente a describir el jazz como música que se vende en cajas de cinco unidades de doce minutos cada una y que, ¡agárrate!, a la gente le gustase explícitamente por ello. Afirmar que "no te va la música comercial" sonaría a premisa tan válida y ordinaria como que no te mole la que viene envasada al vacío. O todavía más lejos; la belleza intrínseca de un estilo de música residiría en atributos enteramente ajenos a lo musical, artístico, sonoro o incluso emocional, como si se fuera a conciertos de Jake Bugg para ponerlo en el currículum vitae o se adquirieran álbumes de Thelonious Monk para meterlos en la despensa ocupando el menor espacio posible. 

Sí, lo admito; éste plano de visión crea un vacío legal por culpa del cual no se tiene en cuenta la histórica audacia sociológica de la música alternativa, ni tampoco su innegable mérito como democratizadora cultural. Aun así, continúa no quedando invalidada la proposición arriba expuesta; de nuevo ¿escuchamos un tipo de música por su aportación al progreso de la humanidad, por muy loable que ésta sea, o más bien porque hace que vibren partes de nuestro cuerpo que no habrían de vibrar en estado de reposo?

Y eso es precisamente lo que me ocurrió mientras contemplaba, por primera vez en mi vida, a Benjamin Booker desde los aledaños del escenario Heineken, en el Primavera Sound 2015. "¡Vaya, si la música indie también se disfruta, no sirve sólo para ser expuesta en una vitrina/estado de Facebook y fardar de  cantidad de horas invertida en fornicar con Rockdelux, Pitchfork y Je Ne Sais Pop! ¡Ay qué alegría! ¡Por fin lo pillo, soy una de ellos! ¡Mamá, mañana empiezo a dejarme barba!". No podía arder más en deseos de compartir éste episodio de iluminación con el resto del mundo, de cómo pasé de estar sorda a oír, y evangelizar a cualquier semejante descarriado en la fe mía recién encontrada.

¡Eh! No me juzgues muy severamente, todavía, no soy tan facilona ni quiero adherir a nadie a ninguna secta religiosa; advertí de que venía para abrir mentes, nunca convertir moros en cristianos. ¿Sigues creyendo que las tías sólo escuchan Radiohead por el indudable atractivo físico de Thom Yorke?  ¿Panda Bear, Animal Collective o (atención) Super Furry AnimalsJAJAJAJAJA (si es que me lo ponen a huevo) te parecen la banda sonora perfecta para una orgía de gente especial de esa que se disfraza de osito de peluche para follar? ¿Sospechas que si fueras de Granada y tuvieras cuerdas de guitarra en los sobacos compondrías canciones con más grasia y más harte que las de Los Planetas? Bien, yo igual, no dejes de leer.

El mayor, prácticamente único encanto y seña de identidad de la música llamada independiente consiste en su desarraigo. No suena mucho a nada que haya existido antes, no se parece manifiestamente a su padre ni a su madre, ni está en deuda con ninguna tradición; la ingravidez forma parte de su naturaleza. Sin embargo, a medida que avanzaba el concierto, noté que algo no rulaba, que éste chaval, Benjamin Booker, no gravitaba al cien por cien, que era como un bonsái: chiquitín y con más raíces que tronco. Lo primero lo sé porque me lo crucé nadando a crol en la piscina de peña que veía a The Replacements el primer día del PS. Lo segundo, porque para cuando empecé a presentir estas paranoias el tipo ya llevaba dos covers, y todo el que se precie sabe que la gente alternativa es alérgica a las covers, en lógica concordancia con su desdén hacia la ascendencia intelectual. Y no únicamente por eso, también había motivos menos evidentes y más agresivamente perceptibles a través de los sentidos. Lo de Booker era un tira y afloja crispado, irritado pero a la vez exquisito entre dos universos sónicos; uno que flota sin conocer anclas, que no sabe ni adónde va ni de dónde viene, y otro que se amarra al centro de la Tierra con cepas centenarias. Pretende ir hacia delante arrastrando lo de detrás, una hazaña tan temeraria, tan utópica como entrañable, como admirable.

Lo entendí mucho mejor tras escuchar de principio a fin y en el orden en que fue concebido su homónimo debut Benjamin Booker (2014), uno de esos trabajos que, literalmente, encandilan al primer intento, no piden apenas poner de la parte del oyente, lo cual de vez en cuando (aunque sólo si se hace bien) es de agradecer. No obstante, lo acabé de captar al cien por cien cuando encontré por YouTube ésta joya de una belleza sin parangón, de las mejores versiones de cualquier cosa que haya visto yo en mi puta vida, y que no hace más que reforzar la teoría según la cual la auténtica calidad y honestidad de un artista se vislumbran mejor a través del trato que da a las canciones de otros. De acuerdo con lo anterior, Benjamin Booker es la próxima reencarnación de Louis Armstrong y Gram Parsons combinados. Aviso: éste Walkin' After Midnight de Patsy Cline rompe corazones:

Aviso 2: la original también:

Por decirlo de alguna manera, Ben nació en Virginia Beach, Virginia, creció en la punky Tampa, Florida y se hizo hombre en New Orleans, Louisiana, adonde fue a parar, como mucha otra gente, después de que el Huracán Katrina la convirtiera en una de las ciudades más baratas de Estados Unidos. De ahí, de ese ser de muchas partes y de ninguna, le viene con toda probabilidad una fobia abierta a los purismos, muy especialmente a los del blues (comunidad entre la que jura no sentirse nada bien recibido), y el revuelto del mismo con soul, boogie, americana, country, folk, punk y a saber qué más, patentado como algo muy nuevo, muy suyo, muy viejo y muy de quien lo quiera, todo al unísono. El destino lo empujó literalmente a acabar como un perdido de la vida del rock & roll, tras un rechazo de la NPR (la radio pública estadounidense) para trabajar en su programa de música una vez terminó los estudios de periodismo en la Universidad de Florida, y otro del mismísimo Nardwuar the Human Serviette, quien ahora se atribuye el detonante del nacimiento de Benjamin Booker, el muy cabroncete. Lo de ser músico le daba respeto, y a sus padres, devotos cristianos temerosos de Dios, de los de ir a iglesia todos los domingos con un crío punky arrastrado de las orejas, algo más feo incluso que el respeto, así que decidió que escribir sobre su pasión sería la opción menos intimidante.

Benjamin Booker se grabó íntegro en analógico, como dictaba el melómano orgánico que lleva dentro, en los mismos estudios The Bomb Shelter de Nashville donde debutaron mis buenos amigos Vintage Trouble; es que a Booker lo que sea o suene a electrónico le da asquete y se le nota. Le ayudaron Max Norton a la batería y el multifacético bajista (al fiddle cuando tocan versiones de Furry Lewis) Alex Spoto, un par de músicos igual de estudiosos e irreverentes en lo que a cruzar fronteras genéricas se refiere. Juntos están aprovechando el impulso de la ola renacentista del roots rock, que lleva ahora un par de años creciendo, para hacerse un hueco en ésto del show business, más algún que otro cable que se echa haciéndose protége de Jack White.

En mitad de una mítica pelea automobilística acerca de cómo se ganaba el sustento con sus conservadores progenitores, decidió que tenía asuntos sin resolver con personas concretas, y sin encontrar medio más adecuado ni haberlo hecho antes, escribió una canción para cada una de ellas. Juntas suman doce, y conforman el disco que ha puesto cara al último estandarte del blues rock mestizo de la segunda mitad de la presente década.

Ben dice que el álbum entero está lleno de errores, pero que así debe de ser. Como si nos fuéramos a dar cuenta, Violent Shiver arranca con un riff Chuck-Berry-esco que desemboca, para profunda confusión del oyente, en un pantano de lodo seco y fluidos adolescentes. Una cochinada feromónica de ejemplo enciclopédico (por si algún dia incluyen una entrada para eso en los diccionarios). La segunda, Always Waiting, lo mismo; despega blusera, sonámbula como esos discos de blues de los 1920 y los 1930 que tanto escucha (Blind Willie Johnson (su favorito), los putísimos Sonny Terry con Brownie McGhee, Tampa Red) para acabar en el enésimo episodio de guarrería frenética.

Slow Coming, como su nombre deja entrever, es un respiro para los nervios y un despertar de las conciencias (Aunque los ordenadores acaparan mi tiempo/ Aunque hay satélites flotando en el espacio/ Aunque mi teléfono predice el tiempo/ Todavía no podemos ayudarte), y Wicked Waters es el himno del adolescente esnob, lo que me hubiera gustado que me cantaran el día que me hice adulta (si es que ese día pasó ya). Ambas se unen en un conmovedor mini-film dirigido por James Lees y dedicado a todos aquellos que se desesperan ante lo lento del avance humano cuando se trata de lo verdaderamente esencial:

Have You Seen My Son? es punk garajero con título más propio del repertorio de Blind Lemon Jefferson, un intento de empatía... ¿fallido? pero enternecedor hacia su pobre madre beata. Y hay un aura de pesimismo derrotado en las letras de Booker que se contradice con la rabia física estimulada por su guitarreo y su garganta agrietada de fumar desde el día que nació, como dice en Spoon Out My Eyeballs. Otra vez al acecho la sombra de la gran lucha americana por la consecución de una madurez vital personalizada, esa misma que Hunter S. Thompson fotografiaba con palabras en forma de abismo entre permanecer quieto e ir hacia adelante. Hasta aquí todo relativamente común dentro de los estándares del blues/rock/punk/soul/noise/sangre sucia, si no fuera por un tercer choque frontal con el carácter y apariencia cándidas del músico, actitud bastante menos extendida en el género. Ni en millón de años volverán a confluir tan dulce, sonriente y tímida fachada al hablar con la mala baba que le entra subido sobre un escenario, sin contar la picaresca inesperada y constante que transluce en sus entrevistas.

La fragilidad autobiográfica de cada tema llama especialmente la atención en ratos como I Thought I Heard You Screaming, tema inspirado en una chica con serios problemas de adicción a la que frecuentaba durante las más bajas horas de su lozana existencia, plagada de blancazos en la memoria y miedos a un posible gen esquizofrénico que corre por la familia y que, Ben sospechaba, podría estar alimentando con su maltrecho modus vivendi. Happy Homes es americana al estilo afro, fabricada por un negro que, incomprensiblemente para alguien tan blanco como yo, aparenta identificarse más con lo anodino de la claridad que no es que con la jugosa oscuridad que sí. Y para cerrar, By The Evening, casi como decía Leroy Carr, lo más cerca que se puede estar éste año de Spik James, Son House o Blind Boy Fuller.

Benjamin Booker, al final del día, resulta que no es indie rock, pero tampoco está tan arraigado ni procede del futuro. Ni punk, ni folk, ni boogie, a la mierda Eric Clapton y sus lameculos fascistas de los sonidos, el purismo se ahoga en 2015. ¿Por qué sentirse culpable por querer un poco más de todo, un poco más de lo que dé la gana? A partir de ahora, amaremos cualquier cosa mientras tenga rabia, derrame sangre y, sobretodo, sea real, por muy difícil que parezca. Palabra de atea de todos los géneros.

Fotografía original de Charlotte Robin. Via Wordfrom