Playin’ the Blues (a response to Jon Pareles’s review “Finding Their Way Home, Or At Least To The Garden”)

By James Spica

Legendary rock groups of yesterday, at some point many years after their breakup, will almost certainly re-unite to play the hits once again, setting all differences aside to please an eager audience. Almost every band does this at some point, from the Rolling Stones’ comeback to Billy Corgan’s re-joining the Smashing Pumpkins. The more celebrated half of Blind Faith, Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood, , paid homage to their roots and their short lived partnership in a concert at Madison Square Garden this past Monday.

Jon Pareles, in his New York Times review of the concert notes that whereas most post-band single artists such as Clapton and Winwood would pepper their sets with their big radio hits, the two instead spent their time “cherishing old Americana”, in other words, playing the blues.

The musicians were, Pareles says “just doing their job”, not preoccupied with stardom and showing off. Such modest behavior is in the spirit of the blues in all possible ways.

Pareles also notes that “It was, despite all the musicians’ previous experience, the first full length set together in decades.” This is also different from most reunions—the re-forming of a band isn’t usually more than two decades after the last album.