This blog is still young enough to celebrate 1/2 birthdays, and we’ll be 2 and 1/2 years old in a couple of weeks- that’s how long it’s been since our inaugural post on August 13, 2020. Happy HBD TNB! Like many creations during the 2020 lockdown, this blog had only been an idea for years. With extra time and the magical ingredient of boredom, we decided to create The Necessary Blues and get started writing. It’s been our honor to share music we love, and we thought now’s a good time to look back at the posts we feel are representative of what this blog is shooting for.
Our first substantive post is about music which is a paradigm for this blog. Julius Hemphill’s composition “Dogon A.D.” has earthy grit conveyed through the blues-soaked tone of Hemphill’s alto sax, yet its artistic raison-d’être is the beat itself. The insistent, driving pulse of the song, written in 11/8 by Hemphill and brilliantly played by the overlooked drummer Philip Wilson, is unforgettable. We quoted critic Robert Palmer, who said that Hemphill’s music is a “fruitful dialogue between experimentation and tradition.” That’s what “progressive” music is all about and what this blog seeks to explore!
TNB has found it fruitful to focus on single works of art rather than the often extensive discographies of artists, an approach we picked up with our profile of Nate Wooley’s Seven Storey Mountain VI. Wooley’s expansive and epic “Seven Story” series is too big to do justice in one post. Wooley uses processed instruments played live against prepared tape loops to create an ecstatic event and deploys this approach slightly differently with each installment. Our post focused on the incredible sixth iteration and tried to capture some of the flavor of Wooley’s concept and explain his motivations and purpose.
We’ve tried to embrace an eclectic approach and write about music of different categories and approaches. In this spirit, some of our subjects have been progressive rock, such as a profile of King Crimson’s epic Lark’s Tongue in Aspic, Magma’s strange and exciting “The Last Seven Minutes” or Bill Bruford’s wonderful jazz/rock fusion Feels Good to Me. With other posts, we’ve explored the 1970s free jazz of Poughkeepsie great Joe McPhee, the calm wonder of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbru’s piano, and the “comeback” of Charles Mingus with sideman Don Pullen.
Some posts we’re especially proud of explore multidisciplinary or intersectional artistic statements. “Attica!” looks at the art made to the wake of the government’s infamous crackdown and cover-up of the 1972 prison rebellion. “Soundtracks In Search of a Movie” looks at electronic music inspired by Frank Herbert’s famous science fiction novel, Dune. These posts look at art’s reflections on life and art’s commentary on art itself.
In March 2021, we started our “New Album Round-up,” which we’ve posted monthly, culminating in our annual album round-up. We took a break from the monthy round-ups for a while, but they are back again (it’s our most popular series of posts) and here to stay! You can expect a round-up of our favorite albums at the end of every month – make sure you check in here!
Another series of posts we’ve done periodically is the “Gig Journal,” posting about live performances we’ve seen in New York City, where we are based. The “Gig Journal” started in May 2022 with the 5/21/2022 performance of Jason Moran at the beautiful Park Avenue Armory. We then posted about an intimate Kresten Osgood gig in the basement of Downtown Music Gallery – amazing hearing a band of masters in a space no bigger than a living room! We were also there during Arts for Arts’ series of free concerts this summer. Unfortunately, over the last 2 1/2 years, a lot of the great musicians have passed away, and we did memorial posts about Stanley Cowell, Billy Bang, Abdul Wadud, and Grachan Moncur III.
I hope you’ve all enjoyed this content! We know it’s been fun creating these posts and sharing them. Our goal is to explore the beauty and wisdom of great music and, hopefully, in the process, to help benefit the creators of that art too. We believe in art, and we know that you do too!
So what’s next for The Necessary Blues?
We’re so excited about the content we’re planning for this year, and we can’t wait to share it. We’re working on a profile of a masterpiece of Canterbury rock, an album that is funny, adventurous, and strangely easy to enjoy. Also on the horizon is the long-delayed series on the legendary African Blue Notes, including discographical information and rare field recordings. We’re also planning a profile of a jazz master who should be mentioned in the same breath as Monk, Mingus and Miles but somehow is not. Who is it? You’ll have to wait and see!
Thank you so much for being here. We hope you’re excited to share this journey with us!