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While seeing if you can ever like the music of a particular artist whose music has not appealed to you to date, do ever find yourself hanging onto the musicianship of a particular band member? Growing up I couldn’t stand Janis Joplin except for the song “Piece of My Heart.” That song, in fact, initially appealed to me only because of the sloppy, fuzztoned lead guitar and the throaty, off-key backing vocals of the dudes in Big Brother and the Holding Company. Over the years, whenever being confronted with the music of Janis Joplin, I’d see out the guitar player(s?) in Big Brother and the Holding Company and see if the sloppy guitar playing and funzztone could get me through the next 3 to 4 minutes of Joplin’s blooz wail. The stuff she did after Big Brother never worked for me because that guitarist, whose name I’ve never bothered to learn until seeing it in this video (James Gurley), wasn’t in the mix.
About 10 years ago I began to come around on Joplin with the help of other aids, which I’ll get into another day this week, if not for the lifeline that guitar player through me I’d have had no shot!
Another example for me is Phil Lesh, whenever I’m revisiting the Grateful Dead, again, a band I no longer hate but still feel the need to thank Lesh for thinking of me with his long, loopy bass runs.
How about you: has a particular musician in a band or backing an artists you did not otherwise like thrown you a lifeline?
