Brian Smalley busted flat

Kris Kristofferson wrote “Me And Bobby McGee” in 1969. Some big names recorded this tune. (just to name a few) Roger Miller and Roy Clark in 1969. Kenny Rogers, Gordon Lightfoot and Charlie Pride in 1970. But in 1971, Janis Joplin recorded this song. Two days afterward, she was dead of a drug overdose. Because of that event, this song became a symbol for Joplin, commemorating her together with this song in the national consciousness, in the same way you press a rosebud in between the pages of a heavy book; forever crystalized in our collective memory as an emblem of tragedy and loss. In fact, it is a country song. The trademark key change after the first chorus gives it an almost Conway-Twitty-esque feel if you just ‘grab the chords’ and sing it straight. I guess it’s all in the delivery. I had a guitar arrangement for this one before the pandemic, but lately I have begun to realized that I hate it, lol. Who knows how I will feel about this experimental approach after some time has passed? This morning I am deliberately depressing the mood of the song, coloring it with discord and overlong resonation. Soaked in reverb, to add to the melancholy. To make it hurt. To make it bleed. Pay close attention to the C note (I pluck it twice in the very beginning) and notice how it will travel through the key change; at first, that C is a discordant tone all throughout the first verse and chorus, standing apart, lonely and sad, but after the key change, it still fails to truly resolve, when in theory it should. It is as though the C note is being asked to keep up, but it can’t. I think this is because of all the ‘jangling’ vocal notes from Joplin’s version that I am throwing in on the guitar, ‘blue notes’ that run counter to the chord progression. Janis was a bluesy singer and she ‘bent notes.’ The human ear can distinguish the sung notes from the instrumental notes, it can differentiate. But throwing them all together on the guitar jumbles it up. All the notes fight each other. I like it. It’s dark. That’s where I am, and so the end result is satisfying, to me anyway. Maybe ‘satisfying’ is not the right word. Validated? Legitimized? Forget it. Just shut up and play, Brian. (BTW, I do not claim ownership of this song. I'm just picking it out on the guitar as an educational demonstration.)