Chuck Berry: C or D?

totally, also he's conscious of exactly how many syllables he needs to make the syncopation of the line work perfectly

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, December 28, 2023 11:56 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

his almost clipped delivery and the efficiency with which he gets out most of lyrics make it all the more rewarding when he lingers on "swing low chariot, come down eeeeee-asy"; one of many small details that really make the song

Elijah Wald with help from New York Rocker’s Andy Schwartz re Chuck Berry’s “Promised Land” and lyrical references to the civil rights Freedom Riders. As an aside ,Wald’s playing of song in his video there is too folky

https://www.elijahwald.com/songblog/promised-land/?fbclid=IwAR3kqa1tOdHzex-5FqpvtB9OM7ZJdvEKf0I37GA39mrvzyDpRQvuUqM8Xew_aem_AcqFkEBw7IEBpxkyPKgWQwhEwCrZ1BfFV6zIzmlZWyqKz300hnHydDMyRCfzgWaJwXg

damn. the video he posted of himself performing "promised land" is kind of brutal and has sort of altered how i see him fundamentally

Can you elaborate on that?

i just mean that it's terrible and makes me wonder why he'd post something like that. what the fuck is this shit

it's an older guy who enjoys a song playing it to boost engagement, and having a good time playing it. one can see how a person would get really aggro and weird about that, and how it would "alter how [they] see him fundamentally," I mean that's just really rational and sensible

You'll never earn yr top Grateful Dead fan badge if you keep on objecting to shitty Chuck Berry covers.

hi can we all just please calm down and have a rational and sensible discussion about chuck berry? thanks

lol, Ward

Also, “they’ll hear it the way Elijah Ward played it!”

(xp) Elijah or Fowler? Or both?

Heh, meant Fowler but realized the problem after posting

I feel like I am an outlier, but I have never totally bought or wanted to dig into EW’s übercontrarian shtick which from where I sit looks like endless iterations of “actually, Robert Johnson wasn’t a blues singer at all, and if he was, he was terrible, he was really just a creation of John Hammond’s febrile mind” or “actually Beatlemania wasn’t really a thing” shockas.

And then this Maxwell’s Demon of authenticity games goes and does a super-corny oldbro Chuck Berry cover without any Peter Stampfel Wollheim weirdness to skew it and add interest.

lol. that's interesting. he has always seemed okay to me, even astute, but on reflection i think that might just come down to the recommendations of others i esteem who have read and enjoyed EW, because i've never read one of his books.

but have read little things here and there, like the blog post linked about "promised land." which i think is great. the video's another story.