Fortyhboobs's blog post - The Thrill is (not) Gone

Went to B.B. King's Blues Fest last night and had a great time. The concert was part of his Eightieth Birthday Tour, can you believe it? The man will turn 80 years old next month. He's not quite the performer he was years ago, but he still knows how to put on a good show and can he ever still play. It was so nice of D to go with me because he doesn't really like bluesy music. He's a country fan through and through. But he did enjoy parts of the concert especially hearing a guitar played to sound like a violin (Joe Bonamassa), like a horn (Kenny Wayne Shepherd) and like a human voice (B.B. King). That was so awesome.

I know next to nothing about playing the guitar, but I do know what I like. And I LOVE the blues. Back in the early '70s, when I was single and still having to use a fake ID, I briefly dated a guitarist. He played lead in a white-bread cover band that performed at wedding receptions and large parties and such but his passion was the blues, and it was he who introduced me to that music. On one of our dates, he took me to a blues club in L.A. and that night changed my life forever. I had always liked R&B and some soul music, but I had never heard pure, raw blues before. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I don't know why, there was just something about it that touched something inside me, and I've felt that way ever since. It's almost visceral.

I love and appreciate different kinds of music and have pretty eclectic tastes - I mean, I get off on AC/DC's sexy power chords yet I'm reduced to a puddle of tears each time I hear Massenet's Meditation - but no music has ever affected me like the blues. Years ago, it just reached in and grabbed hold of my guts and it's never let go. I hope it never does.