Call this a delaying tactic.  I was lying on my bedroom floor, anticipating my back exercises, and after punching up the smart playlist on my iPod of my 50 Most Recently Added Tracks, I heard this, Gov’t Mule’s "Million Miles From Yesterday".

Do you remember 1972?  When there were no fashion awards, when you got high in your dorm room and nodded your head to the tunes on the stereo?  Quite possibly the Allman Brothers Band, or "Layla", well this is a direct hit, it will bring you right back.

It appears Warren Haynes has finally found the formula.  With "Mr. High and Mighty", and now this.

But don’t take my word for it.  Go directly to the MP3 at: Gov’t Mule’s "Million Miles From Yesterday".  Or, click to the previous page Bows & Arrows, and find the link near the bottom of the page, so you can hold down the Option key on your Mac while you click so you can save the track to disk.

This is the opposite of beat music.  It starts at the heart and then spreads outward, as opposed to affecting your exterior, and then bouncing off.

Remember the gigs?  The ones wherein the girl with the long blond hair stood up in front of you and started swaying to the music and you didn’t even mind that she was blocking your view?  This is THAT music.

We’ve gotten too far from the garden.  We’ve lost melody, subtlety.  It’s good to know not only old music has this.

It’s the dynamics.  From quiet to loud and back again.  It’s the guitar flourishes.  It’s the SOUL!

And when they break it all down, three quarters through the song, after the background singers lay back, and it gets quiet and the guitars come out of alternate speakers, bringing the song back alive, it feels so right, so IN THE POCKET!

It’s not always about cutting edge.  It’s not always about forward.  Sometimes it’s about reinventing the form.  Riffing on what’s already happened.  After all, those British bands of the sixties, they were just reinterpreting the blues.