Mike Bloomfield founded the Electric Flag after he left the Butterfield Blues Band. The album came out in 1968. It opened with a snip of Lyndon Johnson’s speech of March 15, 1965, announcing he would send the Voting Rights Act to Congress. It was designed to end illegal barriers to the right to vote. The tape of Johnson started, “I speak tonight for the dignity of man,” Bloomfield hit a big chord, the audience laughed, and the band launched into ‘Killing Floor,’ by Howlin’ Wolf. When I first heard the song, I had no idea what it meant. I used the innertubes to figure out the singer is depressed about love gone bad, using ‘killing floor’ as a grisly metaphor. Wolf said he should have followed his first mind and quit his woman a long time ago. Nick Gravenites made it ‘listened to my second mind.’
The album had a version of Drinkin’ Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee, a classic about drinking cheap fortified wine and getting into fights. There are many examples; I’ll point them out. Don’t know when wine’s image improved; in Super Freak in 1980 Rick James linked it with incense and candles in a freaky scene.
converselyspeaking 