Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/07/busking-rock-band-does-cream-cover-on-belfast-street.html
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They busk like that in Ireland, too. Or at least they did when I visited several years ago.
BTW, they are awesome. Great cover.
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Robert Johnson ?
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Please don’t further whitewash the legacy of African American blues, this was originally a Robert Johnson song.
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Most people don’t know the origins of many of Eric Clapton’s famous songs. Clapton can be praised for performing them, but often times he didn’t write them, let alone play them first.
I wouldn’t go as far as chiding someone for “whitewashing” when their intent isn’t to hide facts but they are simply ignorant of them.
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I did not know that he wrote this song originally. Going to listen to him right now.
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In high school I heard kids say “you know it’s that Clapton song. . . ‘I Shot The Sheriff.’”
oy vey.
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Stop it or I’ll post the Clapton shredding video again. This is not an idle threat. I hate that shitty scumbag and want everyone to laugh at his mediocrity.
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Compared to me, everyone is a guitar god.
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To be fair he’s better than me.
Not by as much as I am better than the Edge though.+
- Not actually true, my tendinitis robbed my ability to play guitar any more.
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Are they really busking, or just there to play a set and also put a hat out?
Cuz to me busking is a lot more informal and doesn’t have a great setup or probably even exactly permission to be there (I know, “no real Scotsman!” fallacy)
or wait: is the band called The Buskers?
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are you talking about the St. Sanders classics?
Poor guy got robbed of so much money by being too early on YouTube.
Indeed it is a Robert Johnson song, but the band is doing a cover of the Cream arrangement. That bears little relation to the original version. I know that when I first heard the RJ version, after years of hearing the Cream version, I didn’t even realize it was the same song. That most people don’t know the origin of the song is sad, but probably shouldn’t be surprising.
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It’s the same with Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix, they were able to take an ok son and make awesome.
Cover Original
Cover Original
Original Cover
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Those ladies certainly rock hard
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One of my favorite movies 
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gotta give it up for these badass ladies.
also, while we’re on the topic of Clapton and his songs, yes it’s a Robert Johnson tune but the Cream arrangement is uniquely theirs, and these ladies were not doing their own arrangement here, nor Johnson’s. but still, OP shoulda worked that it was a Johnson tune in there somewhere.
now, to continue piling-on Clapton, both “After Midnight” and “Cocaine” are J.J. Cale tunes, and Clapton’s arrangements are not especially different, either. Cale’s style (everything, not just those tunes) feels like when you stay up very late jamming even though you’re tired. Clapton’s version is the same except fully awake. not energetic, just awake. but if you don’t know Cale, you’re in for a treat.
ETA if I were a betting man, I’d lay my money on Jack Bruce creating Cream’s arrangement. he was a jazzer at heart. hearing the bell-bottomed lady play his part just now remided me of what a beast he was on bass
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This film was broadcasted once after midnight on TV. Before social networks a cult was formed by those who managed to watch and those, like me, who would have liked to have watched.
I was in high school and many of my friends learned to play the guitar and listen to the blues because of this film.
They bought cheap guitars and second hand blues albums. Suddenly we realized that there was an underground blues scene around us.
Since I was born devoid of talent, I just became a fan of the style.
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we rented the video when I was in middle school, I was pretty blown away. although it didn’t kickstart a blues phase in me, it was a great movie with great playing. through my mom, I had already been schooled on the blues’ place in the structure of american music. I knew my mom had one of those Johnson reissues in her album collection, and in highschool, that LP made it into my crate (aside: weird to think my collection was once only one crate.)
when rewatching it maybe five years ago, I noticed in the credits that the old man’s guitar playing was done by Shuggie Otis. Otis started out as a blues man, then invented his own style, his only hit was the Brothers Johnson covering his tune “Strawberry Letter 23,” and was slept-on until David Byrne/Luka Bop records reissued him in the late 90s, which was how I discovered him. His blues material wasn’t part of the reissue, but as you heard in the movie, it’s tough stuff. and I believe the evil white boy was Steve Vai? or someone like that.
anyway, that is so awesome that this movie sparked a blues scene where you live, and itself sounds like the plot of a movie (shades of Swing Kids, in a way.)
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