Busy Days Begin==not so many posts--Yay for you!

Got lots of work ahead so I won't be writing 25417 posts per day after this.

Perhaps I am becoming more serious about improving my playing and versatility. Periodically, I tend to listen to great players, mostly diatonic harmonica players. For the most part I prefer the sound of the diatonic over the chromatic, especially when playing chords. And with the recent breakthroughs in technique and harp customizing, and even many out of box, you can play it close to chromatically. Maybe not you, but it can be done, and I have figured out I am capable of most of the bends it takes.

Not sure how it happened but I found myself on a page with lots of info on John Popper of the band Blues Traveller--which is no longer. Guitar player died and a new band formed and who knows.

It was a shock to me to discover that not everyone likes Popper or Blues T. But then, some people don't like me, so what can you do? Harp nerds (henceforth harp will mean harmonica) tend to rarely mention John Popper, although they do often idolize Jason Ricci. They typically talk about Little Walter and such, and some of the great players who are regulars at harp festivals and teaching workshops. Some players make their living off of harp nerds.

Harp nerds are the people who buy all the right gear, ask for tabs on things real players play, and travel from festival to festival collecting T shirts and attempting to play exactly what their idols play. Most are not that good but they have fun and manage to complicate, dissect, and analyze the simplest technique and riff.

Harp tabs are a form of written music which tells you what hole in the harp is being played and whether you blow or draw--or suck, if you prefer. Like a guitar player recently said of me, in my presence--sometimes he sucks and sometimes he blows. All in good fun.

I like Popper because he is very good, very original, not a copy, and he manages to play such upbeat flurries. He doesn't see limits. He uses effects to their max and experiments. He even makes a song, which I never liked, The Devil Went Down To Georgia, rock. His version is so much better that Charlie Daniels'. I like John Popper's cover of it. I don't care for Charlie's.

Anyway, JP is definitely one of the best and I watched a series of very short videos in which he gives a few basic tips. I did pick up something about the technique called overblows in his fifteen second discussion of them. Just the way he referred to it opened up a path to simplicity. He never actually said how to do it. Yet in a way he did.

I guess the current players I find the most inspiring and worth my serious attention are Lee Oskar, John Popper, Jason Ricci, Tim Gonzales, Mickey Raphael--Willie Nelson Band, and maybe Sugar Blue and Rod Piazza. Not necessarily in that order. There are many other super good players, but I can only pay attention to so many without getting bored. I go for unique and accomplished. Tons of bluesharp players are very good, but not as much in a style of their own. I like the ones who tend to break ground and whose style I can generally pick out of the crowd.

So, Popper deserves more notoriety among the harp nerds than they have wisdom to give. Ricci does give him mention, though, in some of his workshops.

update; just watched a video with Dan Akroyd and John Popper from the nineties. Maybe Dan got better. Judging from the comments, Akroyd is highly overrated as a harp player. So, it was the most overrated harp player sharing a stage with a guy who seems to be underrated, yet he's among the greatest.