mojo of the intimate venue

I got a gypsy woman giving me advice
I got a gypsy woman giving me advice
She got some red hot tips, I'm keepin' them on ice.

Got my mojo working
Got my mojo working
Got my mojo working
Got my mojo working
Got my mojo working, but it just won't work on you.

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{written, Preston Foster, 1956; recorded by Ann Cole; popularized by Muddy Waters, 1957}
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During the Jimmy Carter administration, when a tenant downstairs from me at 357 Beacon Street in Boston played a Muddy Waters record for me, to try to show me what Blues was, the thing that was ton-of-bricks-ish about the moment was, this music sounded like every popular-rock song I'd ever heard that I liked, only a shlagillion times better -- or maybe not better, not putting down the more top-40 versions of the sound, but -- this was the Source.  It was DEEPER.  Here, we had got to the Roots of the matter.  The heart of the matter.  That was what was exciting.  This here was the stuff.

The young man with the record albums explained to me that the music of the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and my other favorites at the time (newly-discovered by me, at that time) was based on what these popular recording artists had learned from American bluesmen.  I was very very interested in the idea that these white guys of the rock and roll generation had learned a lot of their ideas about music from the black men and women of the older generation. 

Because the music was so great, I found myself enthusiastic to know -- to find out -- where in the world it could have come from.  I mean, my curiosity almost approached outrage, in a way -- "Where did they learn to play like that?  WHO CAME UP WITH THIS????????!!!!!!!!!"  Because I liked it so much.  It was so rich.  So true.  And I'd not heard it before.  ("Where have they been hiding this music?  WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE??????!!!!!!!")

So after being introduced to the Rolling Stones' music, and to the Blues, and studying on these things for a while, at some point I saw an ad in a Boston paper that said a Chicago bluesman (can't remember the name now) was going to play at the Inn Square Men's Bar in Cambridge.  So I went. 

What a venue!  Unlike a humungous stadium where you're watching the concert on TV screens in your "section" -- this place was a bar.  Just a -- place.  Not even a large nightclub, or anything.  And so the artist you came to see was right there in front of you.  Thank you very much.

At one point, the bluesman was up on this long bar / table which ran down the center of the place.  He walked down, playing his electric guitar, singing "Walkin' The Dog."

Now that was what I'd been looking for; that was what I was talking about.  Nnnnnow we're cookin' with gas.

---------------- To attend an event like that, I'd take public transportation (trolley above-ground, subway train below-ground) to get there, but a taxi back home.  You would invest the extra $$ in a taxi ride one way, because if it was late enough at night, the public transit wouldn't be running, or even if it was still running, it could be unsafe in the late hours.  (YOU might have to end up "running"...)  So -- (dial, dial) -- "Could we get a cab at ### - Inman Square in Cambridge?"

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[1965]  "The most bizarre part of the whole story is that having done what we intended to do in our narrow, purist teenage brains at the time, which was to turn people on to the blues, what actually happened was we turned American people back on to their own music."

-- Keith Richards

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