3 quick blues afterthoughts

Then I'll let it go, I swear:

Turning the Blues On Its Head

On his 2007 album Radical, Don Lennon has a song called "The Blues".
Each verse follows the standard blues format:
One line
Same line repeated (preceded by "I said..")
Different line that rhymes with first two.

However, the music is ambient, rhythmless synthesizer with birds chirping.

And, well, he says in a few verses what I took several paragraphs to say (the origins of its name, the hypocrisy of the current market and the irony of the House of Blues.) It's worth checking out.


You Wouldn't Suspect It, But...

In 1969, The Grateful Dead on a few occasions tried to oust Pig Pen and Bob Weir from the band, largely because they wanted to continue on their then-experimental path and not be bogged down by having to do the obligatory Pig Pen blues spotlight every show. It didn't work because they kept showing up for every gig. Pig Pen died a few years later, so that solved that problem, however, not cutting the problem at its root meant all those horrific Bob Weir versions of "Little Red Rooster" and "Wang Dang Doodle" throughout the 80's and 90's (i.e. bathroom break)

You Wouldn't Suspect It, But...

I figured out guitar when I was about 17 from a famous album, by figuring out a blues progression in one key, and then another. What touchstone of blues handed the torch to me? Who did I meet at the crossroads?
Mike. Then Davy.

That's right, The Monkees 4th (and best?) album, 1967's Pisces Aquarius Capricorn and Jones starts off with a one two punch of songs with blues progressions--Salesman and She Hangs Out--but not necessarily blues songs.
(yes, Salesman has that bridge that gets tricky--it was a little while later that I tackled all that).