Opinion: Cry me a river, when the brown brings on the blues

Muddy Waters, Creedence Clearwater Revival ... Roger Moroney ponders the link between blues/rock lineage and Napier's water quality.

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for good old blues music.

It has never been a great part of my musical landscape but it's always kind of been there in the background.

I think that is simply because it was the real rock core blues which sparked and inspired so many musicians who entered the pop and rock trade. I steered a main course in terms of buying records and heading off to watch some of them.

But, yeah, blues has always been there and just lately I have been having a few flashbacks to some real fine old blues offerings.

Out of the blue(s) I turned the cold tap on and ended up filling the sink with water which had a colourful tint to it. A brownish tint.

So any thoughts about that jaunty little band called Creedence Clearwater Revival did not surface. Only the brown tints in the water started to surface.

Instead, of course, I contemplated the blues ... the man they called the father of modern Chicago blues. Muddy Waters.

Muddy Waters - a great bluesman, and also something that Napier residents encounter from time to time.

You must excuse my musical flippancy here but when the waters from the wells once again have a slight colour one can only try to look on the bright side, despite the lack of brightness in the liquid below.

Yes, muddy waters. Waters which of late have been giving many people across the local landscape the blues.

But it's a little bit like anyone encountering the blues for the first time.

At first you're not used to it. So the advice being put out there is "just run it for a while".
It works.

The longer you listen to traditional blues music the more you will embrace it.

And the longer you run the tap the sooner things will clear up again.

Until the next time, because, like noisy cars in the middle of the night, it just keeps recurring.

And I just keeping thinking about Muddy Waters.

And the Rolling Stones.

Water quality issues are ongoing. Dannevirke residents Pauline Ward (left) and Tricia Jones, with a sample of undrinkable tap water from Jones' Queen St home in 2017.

Because in a state of slight frustration at the time the "run your taps" process was taking I went and got a teaspoon of white sugar and tipped it in.

It became brown sugar.

And gosh, guess which rock band had a hit with a song called Brown Sugar back in 1971?

No, it wasn't the clearwater lads.

It was Mick and the lads.

The process of trying to make light of the murky water situation got worse.

I went and got the little plastic Mickey Mouse toy the grandkids throw at each other and threw it into the sink where the plughole was still struggling to be seen.

"It's Murky Mouse," I declared.

Then I went looking for a jug which I could use to extract Murky Mouse from the sink, because then I could put the old Glenn Miller record on and sing along to Little Brown Jug.But I pulled the pin on that idea as I noticed something was happening in the sink.

The plughole, after being shrouded by a watery brown veil for three minutes, was re-appearing.

Glenn Miller could stay put.

Time to hunt down the old Johnny Nash single and drop the needle onto the A side where I Can See Clearly Now resides.

Yes, it is all rather flippant and silly, but one has to do something to raise one's spirits when the one commodity we all take for granted (and should be able to take for granted) turns filthy on us from time to time.

Maybe I should take a leaf out of the Pink Floyd musical machine and have my name changed to echo their bass man, Roger Waters.

Or maybe I could cut back on taking the exercise walks and learn to dance instead.

Yes (prepare to groan loudly), I could become a tap dancer.

A tap dancer wearing brown trousers.

Okay, that's that.

Until next time.

Because the way things have been going over the past six weeks the waters will murk up again soon and our abode will add to the chorus of sounds across the landscape.

Sounds of cold taps being run.

Along with the sound of trucks delivering more bottled water to the supermarket shelves.

As long as they don't line it up beside the ginger ale because it's getting harder to tell what's what these days.