|
Old man blues >>Mose Allison stands the test of time by ADAM GOLLNER
He was old. He was white. He was singing the blues. Getting beyond those hurdles took a couple of moments. Then the sudden truth came at me like a wild sheet of flame that left me too stunned to do more than gasp. Cha-chink! The reason he was so good was that he transcended the eternal bohemian plague of growing old. In his case, there's nothing wrong with being an aging hipster. "There are some parts I enjoy about aging and there's some parts I enjoy a little less," he says. A stoic beatnik who has actually maintained his grace, Allison put on a chilling performance. One tangible element of his mystique is that he played every song with his eyes shut. "Well, I play with my eyes closed most of the time." Does he ever visualize things beneath those static eyelids? "Yes. Yes, I do sometimes." What sort of images does a dreamer like Allison conjure up while tickling the ivories? "Well, that's kinda personal." Ah. Allison has a rather closed persona. Preferring to let his tunes speak for themselves, he answers most questions just like his songs: short and sweet. Of the lyrics "A young man... ain't nothin' in the world these days," from his heart-stopping song "Blues" (the song that made Pete Townsend become a musician) he says only, "I was 27 when I wrote that in 1955, and I guess it was just how I felt at the time." Allison doesn't communicate in interviews; his medium is lines like "Your mind's on vacation but your mouth is working overtime" and "I'll never get straight/I guess I'm just a reprobate." Whether one sees him as a romantic ironist or satirical hoaxer, he is, by all accounts, a cunning linguist of the deepest dye. Don't miss this show.
With the Andy Bey Trio at the Spectrum, Thursday, July 1, 9pm, $34.50 |
Last summer, I heard that notorious hermit and ex-genius Phil Spector had emerged from decades of self-imposed exile to see Mose Allison perform in London. On that recommendation, I checked out Allison during his week-long residency at a dimly lit basement lounge in Soho.