Baby please don't go

A lot of people don't realize this about me, but I'm actually a very moody person. And by "moody," I mean that every once in a while I'll dip into a funk that will last for several weeks, or even months. Usually this will be followed by a period of sunny optimism and eventually I'll settle back into my usual even-keeled emotional temper. I used to be rather bad about dealing with my little depressive episodes -- I'd withdraw from people, stop going to school, fuck up my relationships -- but in the Army I learned to glide through them without going off the deep end. I'd say that, all in all, I'm a fairly emotionally healthy person now, just one who occasionally feels the chilly walls of mortality closing in, or whatever.

Over the years, I've discovered a few methods of cheering myself up when I'm feeling down. For instance, you can smoke a pack of cigarettes and drink a bottle of bourbon. Or you can leave everything behind, drive a hundred miles in a random direction, and spend a few weeks moping in isolation. But both of these options have significant drawbacks, like hangovers and the loss of your job. So instead I immerse myself in the blues.

I fell in love with the blues in the summer of 1995, right before my senior year in High School. I remember the incident clearly: I was walking home from downtown, where I had been doing God only knows what, and I stopped in a little used record store on Connecticut Avenue, just north of Dupont Circle. I have no idea if it's still there. There was a twenty dollar bill in my wallet itching to be spent, so I picked up "The Bends" by Radiohead and, finding I still had a few bucks left over, two ancient CDs from the cut-out bin. They were both "Best Of" collections, one of Muddy Waters and one of Howlin' Wolf. I was hooked instantly. It took me a few more years to get into Radiohead.

Anyway, it was all downhill from there. My senior year, when I wasn't skipping class, I was often holding forth on the subject of Lightnin' Hopkins humor or the travesty that is virtually all covers of John Lee Hooker songs. I was a blues nut, and it didn't take me long to discover the great social advantage of the genre: it is unassailably cool. Nobody can deny that the blues is awesome and it gives you an edge in every conversation about music:

Me: Got any new records?
That jerk JP: Yeah, like, "Dookie" by Green Day.
Me: Oh, well, I've mostly just been listening to Pink Anderson lately.
Cheerleader girl: Oh Tom, that's hot! Let's have sex under the bleachers!

Okay, I made that last line up. But still, the blues is a trump card in every game of musical oneupmanship, and the only way to win against it is to whip out Miles Davis or to realize that musical oneupmanship is essentially moronic.

But while the beauty of the blues is its simplicity, that's also its downfall. There's only so far to take it and after a while it all starts to blend together. There are plenty of good contemporary blues artists -- Taj Mahal is my favorite -- but even they sound like watered down versions of the old masters. Soul is a good step forward, and bit more diverse, but it lacks the brutal truth that lies at the heart of the best blues songs. Sometimes artists from other genres will tackle the blues in a new and surprising way, but only the rare few (read: Tom Waits) can incorporate the sound into their own style without coming off as foolish or condescending.

So I'm no longer the blues nut I once was. Maybe I've matured or maybe I've just lost the willingness to bask in the misery of others. But every few months, when I start to feel depressed or lonely or trapped, I break out my collection, including those same two "Best Of" collections I purchased back in the summer of '95. Nothing soothes the pain quite as well. And I hope that a new generation of misfit High School students will take a chance on some cheap records from the cut-out bin.