Ninety percent of everything sucks.At least that's the conclusion that Taylor Grover and I arrived at after several hours of emptying cans on my front porch last summer.
Both of us were in pretty good old-time bands then, and we were secretly admitting that neither one of us really cared for most of the old-time music being performed at that time. A lot of it was (and is) just flat bad.
Nevertheless, we loved the other 10 percent so much that it nearly drove us nuts, and would've had we not been nuts already.
Having grown up listening almost exclusively to metal and punk rock, it's a bit mysterious how we both ended up playing old-time music anyway. But that afternoon on the porch, it started to make a little more sense.
You see, the 10 percent of old-time music that got us going was of the super-intense, high-speed, fiddle-driven type. Simple lyrics based on the players' immediate surroundings or current events, and tangible melodies and chord progressions made this music accessible to the masses whether they were dancing or picking up an instrument. Who would have thought? Old-time and punk rock - the people's music.
Proving once again that every can of cheap beer consumed in the sun makes you smarter, Taylor and I dug deeper. We shared details of our respective musical journeys back through time. Our journey from 13-year-old hard-rocking hooligans to pushin'-40 old-time geeks was fraught with perilous twists and turns, booby traps and cliff drops, hair bands and parachute pants. Like old vets with a couple more battles left in us, we recalled the old salad days, bemoaned the present and wondered about the future.
Throughout our musical journey, about 90 percent of what we were exposed to was worthless. But as we cruised through the 1970s, we started collecting the 10 percent that matters, such as Jimi Hendrix, Zep, Cream, Janis, Ozzy and the Stones. Hurting for gas money, we couldn't help but pick up the blues hitchhiking on the side of the road. None of these 70s bands would have happened without Muddy and the Wolf, Little Walter and so on. And of course, when we stopped to pick up the blues, about 10 percent of jazz was hiding in the bushes and jumped in, too.
Cruising along to find Hank Williams and Robert Johnson by way of the Balfa Brothers, somewhere our overloaded musical caravan broke an axle on an old dirt road. We all piled out, only to trip in the dark over some old-time musicians asleep in a ditch clutching jugs of moonshine.
And here we sit. With a carload of folks such as we have, and the instruments and whiskey sitting right here, why go anywhere else?
Because the whiskey's gonna dry up someday, that's why. We're gonna have to keep moving to get some more and maybe some breakfast. Who knows who else musically we'll run into on the way there? Some probably aren't even born yet!
Needless to say, American music will careen down the Franklin Street of time like a runaway garbage can in a Taku wind. Its erratic path will keep us on our toes with anticipation, and with ears open for the 10 percent of everything that doesn't suck.
• Sean Tracey can be contacted at crabgrassalaska@gmail.com.
