Why The Devil Don't Come Around No More
Why The Devil Don’t Come Around No More
Oh, how I loved them blues, gritty and soulful, idiosyncratic, and unpredictable, that was the blues in 1926, or 1946, or 1959. It was Black music, heard only on Southern Black radio stations. Segregation was the law. You couldn’t integrate a lunch counter, even if you were White. You’d be arrested and ostracized, just like if you was Black. Maybe worse, because you was White, you should know better, you’ve transgressed the color line.
I remember playing an all Black club, in an all Black neighborhood, when there was a real color line. People, Black or White, did not move easily between the two worlds, which were as separate as they were unequal. I’m not talking no “Hey Massa-shit, like in them slavery days! I’m talking, post-Malcolm X, post-Martin Luther King, just as Vietnam was coming to a close, and “Shaft,” the super dick, bad muthafucka was raging, but still, as always, on the outside looking in.
It took guts, then. But not today. Today, you’ve got to manufacture racism, which the media does with an incessant glee. Some people latch onto stories of racism and rejoice, that way, they can re-enact history, without any of the risks. That’s how you know the blues will never die, too many people need somebody to be miserable so they can have a purpose, to be needed, to have something to believe in.
Why? Because religion is uncool. But racism, like the devil, is alive and well, and living in Florida, Chicago, Botswana, certainly in LA., everywhere man resides, is where evil lives. A bunch of evil motherfuckers. That’s why the musician can do nothing but make music, sing, play, dance. What else you gonna do? That’s how you deal with the devil, it’s why you sing the blues…...and make it beautiful, in spite of the devil. That way you trick the muthafucka…..I mean the devil, into reforming, cause his shit don’t work no more.
That’s why I sing the blues. And why the devil don’t come around, no more.
Bust'a Crab
Oh, how I loved them blues, gritty and soulful, idiosyncratic, and unpredictable, that was the blues in 1926, or 1946, or 1959. It was Black music, heard only on Southern Black radio stations. Segregation was the law. You couldn’t integrate a lunch counter, even if you were White. You’d be arrested and ostracized, just like if you was Black. Maybe worse, because you was White, you should know better, you’ve transgressed the color line.
I remember playing an all Black club, in an all Black neighborhood, when there was a real color line. People, Black or White, did not move easily between the two worlds, which were as separate as they were unequal. I’m not talking no “Hey Massa-shit, like in them slavery days! I’m talking, post-Malcolm X, post-Martin Luther King, just as Vietnam was coming to a close, and “Shaft,” the super dick, bad muthafucka was raging, but still, as always, on the outside looking in.
It took guts, then. But not today. Today, you’ve got to manufacture racism, which the media does with an incessant glee. Some people latch onto stories of racism and rejoice, that way, they can re-enact history, without any of the risks. That’s how you know the blues will never die, too many people need somebody to be miserable so they can have a purpose, to be needed, to have something to believe in.
Why? Because religion is uncool. But racism, like the devil, is alive and well, and living in Florida, Chicago, Botswana, certainly in LA., everywhere man resides, is where evil lives. A bunch of evil motherfuckers. That’s why the musician can do nothing but make music, sing, play, dance. What else you gonna do? That’s how you deal with the devil, it’s why you sing the blues…...and make it beautiful, in spite of the devil. That way you trick the muthafucka…..I mean the devil, into reforming, cause his shit don’t work no more.
That’s why I sing the blues. And why the devil don’t come around, no more.
Bust'a Crab