Sympathy for the Devil

I’m not really a metal-head.   Eventually we will get around to Leadbelly, Howling Wolf and Chess Records, and we may even take a dive into Son House and deeper.  But there is a road we have to take to get there, and it is not so much a journey backwards as it is finding out where we are right now.  And we’re going to have to stop and wait at the crossroads for a bit.

But just right now, as I listen to Anthrax’s heavy guitar cutting through my brain, I am a metal head.   Scott Ian on rhythm guitar.  Charlie Benante on drums.  Frank Bello on bass. Rob Cagginao on lead guitar and John Bush on vocals.  I never got into the heavy stuff until later in life.  I’m making up for the lack of a degenerate childhood, I suppose.  In a few moment’s I will be listening to Zakk Wylde and I will be something else and somewhere else.  Like a speck of dust in a storm.   Knocked flat by the power and carried away in the arms of music.

Click to be carried over

The blues purists on this site might wonder what the hell I am doing listening to this stuff, so I throw Zakk Wylde’s 1996 “Book of Shadows“ in their face.  Zakk got the deal down in “Sold My Soul".  “Gonna make a deal with you child.  Gonna live another day.  Just sign right here son.  Everything will be alright.” If that ain’t blues I don’t know what is.  On November 2009, Scott Ian, guitarist for Anthrax created a version of the devil for the DC comic books miniseries “Lobo.  Highway to Hell".  So, with Anthrax, Zakk and DC Comic Books already promoting him, I don’t need to give the devil any extra publicity.

However, in terms of music we can’t get away from it.  Because, from Robert Johnson on up, there is no question.   Blues and rock is devil music.

As for Robert Johnson, he died in 1938 at the age of 27.  It’s hard to be polite about Robert Johnson, or even truthful, because I don’t know the truth.  We’ve got the recordings and two photographs and everything else seems to be cobbled together by tall tales from old folk and blues musicians about 50 years later.  So I’m not even going to try to tell the truth.

Robert Johnson was a bastard born in Mississippi.  He had ten brothers and sisters.  A lynch mob chased his stepfather out of Mississippi all the way to Memphis and at the age of two his mother sent him to Memphis to live with his stepfather.  At the age of ten he moved back to Mississippi to live with his mother.  He learned guitar from

A man without a daddy or a real family and a mommy that tosses him from place to place.  A guy just looking for a piece of happiness in life.  And someone tells him he can go down to the crossroads and make a deal.

I don’t think so, though.  Now I’m here and I think I’ve found something else, but I’m not telling what it is, even if I could put it into words.  I think you have to go through it all yourself and come out the other end.  What are the crossroads if not that point at which you have to make a decision about which way to go in your life?  The devil can actually be a great teacher, if you don’t take him too seriously.

And, after all people, it’s all entertainment… and then something more, maybe.