confessing the blues
I take my gospel with flattened fifth notes.
The first time I was ever moved spiritually by music was when I was in the main branch of the Minneapolis Public Library. I had been having money troubles and was looking at living in an alley for a while if things didn't improve. It was getting late, the sky was dark, and I was listening to Thelonious Monk for the first time. 'Round Midnight came on, and I was awash in this feeling, this.. sudden and adamantine faith that it was going to be okay, that I wasn't having any troubles that nobody had ever had before, that I was going to make it through this and out the other side and though the times may get tough, Everything Was Going To Be Okay.
I didn't really understand the religious experience for what it was, and it took a good few years for me to really form the thought: Blues is gospel wearing sunglasses. No really - open up a handy Bible to the book of Matthew, chapter six, verse 31 to 33. "So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." Now grab the album Let It Bleed by the Rolling Stones, and play the ninth track. "You Can't Always Get What You Want". Hell, it even starts with a choral interlude.
The song explores that itchy unfulfilled feeling you get when you depend on the Next Big Thing to give you meaning - a new love, a new cause, a new pill - only to find out you didn't get what you expected. However, if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.
So let's compare the two. The basic message from the quoted passage is 'Don't worry, don't get upset about your needs. Wants you might or might not get, but the things you NEED, you'll get.' Now look at the song. Same message, but a little more focused on the social environment of the late 1960's.
Crank up Beggar's Banquet and play Sympathy for the Devil. Congratulations, you are hearing a sermon on how the Devil can seem very, very attractive, and to be wary. This isn't simply a Stones phenomenon, either - the vast majority of blues and blues-rock music has at its heart a simple message delivered with style. Love is more important than money. Be humble. Beware the serpent.
What about the songs that are all about how my baby left me, I'm broke, I got turned out on the street, all I have left is this guitar, so on and so forth? Hell, many of them even openly question the existence of a God, so how can that be 'gospel'? Well, look at the message of the song. It's meant as comfort to the suffering. Yes, I understand pain, see? It's okay, we'll get through it together. After all, we're still here to sing, right?
Get your Bible back out and crack it open to the book of Job. I'll summarize: God and the Devil have a debate about the limits of faith, and God basically gives the Devil permission to screw over Job in whatever ways his foul mind can come up with. The Devil throws himself wildly into his work, destroying all of Job's material wealth and homestead, his children get killed, he develops rashes and boils all over, the whole nine yards. Eventually, Job gets a little annoyed at the constant abuse and wonders aloud what he did to deserve this. God pipes up and points out that though it sucks to be Job, he can't complain too much because he's still alive. After some 'how dare you question Me' posturing, he restores Job and his family back to life and wealth.
The book is sort of a response to the just-world fallacy: Yes indeed, sometimes horrible stuff does happen to good people, and there is no rhyme or reason to it. But all of that suffering, all those troubles, no matter how bad they seem at the time - they are temporary. Like anything else, they are here, then gone. Comfort to the suffering - after all, we're still here to sing, right?
Hell, if you feel like reading up on some history, early blues lyric structure was strikingly similar to the call-and-response sermons and spirituals popular among black congregations in the late 18th - early 19th century. Blues was born in the churches of the American South, and although it's wandered all over and flirted with new ideas from cultures close and alien, it never really left home. It's still the same old Joyful Noise.