fun stuff

blues

Paradoxically, creativity can often soar when placed under constraints. Like these...

1.Most blues begin “woke up this morning”

2. “I got a good woman" is a bad way to begin the blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line: “I got a good woman... with the meanest dog in town”

3. Blues are simple. After you have the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes. Sort of. “Got a good woman, with the meanest dog in town / He got teeth like Margaret Thatcher, and he weighs ’bout 500 pounds”

4.The blues are not about limitless choice

5.Blues cars are Chevies and Cadillacs. Other acceptable blues transportation are a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Walkin’ plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin’ to die

6.Teenagers can’t sing the blues. Adults sing the blues. Blues adulthood means old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis

7.You can have the blues in New York City but not in Brooklyn or Queens. Hard times in Vermont or North Dakota are just depression. Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City are still the best places to have the blues. You cannot have the blues in Miami Beach or Honolulu

8.The following colors do not belong in the blues:

• violet
• beige
• mauve

9.You can’t have the blues in an office or a shopping mall - the lighting is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster

10.Good places for the blues:

• the highway
• the jailhouse
• an empty bed
• the bottom of a whiskey glass

Bad places:

• ashrams
• gallery openings
• weekend in the Hamptons

11.No one will believe it’s the blues if you wear a suit unless you happen to be an old black man and slept in it. Or one of the Blues Brothers

12. Do you have the right to sing the blues? Yes, if:

• your first name is a southern state - like Georgia
• you’re blind
• you shot a man in Memphis
• you can’t be satisfied

No, if:

• you were once blind but now can see
• you’re deaf
• you have a trust fund

13.Neither Julio Iglesias nor Barbra Streisand can sing the blues

14.If you ask for water and baby gives you gasoline, it’s the blues. Other blues beverages are:

• wine
• Irish whiskey
• muddy water

Blues beverages are NOT:

• any mixed drink
• kosher wine
• Yoo Hoo (all flavors)

15.If it occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it’s a blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is a blues way to die. So is the electric chair, substance abuse, or being denied treatment in an emergency room. It is not a blues death if you die during a liposuction treatment

16.Some blues names for women:

• Sadie
• Big Mama
• Bessie

17.Some blues names for men:

• Joe
• Willie
• Little Willie
• Lightning

Persons with names like Sierra or Sequoia will not be permitted to sing the blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis

18.Other blues names (starter kit):

• name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Asthmatic)
• first name (see above) or name of fruit (Lemon, Lime, Kiwi)
• last name of former president (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.)

Or just pile on the infirmities, as in Mike Harding’s Whistling Willie Ramsbottom

19. The definitive blues instruments are the guitar and the harp (harmonica). You’ll never play the blues on a didgeridoo, glockenspiel, sackbutt or harp (Welsh, Irish or concert)

20. Blues is not a matter of color. It’s a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. Gary Coleman could. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the blues

21. I don’t care how tragic your life: you own a computer, you cannot sing the blues. You best destroy it. Fire, a spilled bottle of Mad Dog, or get out a shotgun. Maybe your big woman just done sat on it. I don’t care.