Category: Music

Dimebag Darrell. Shot down onstage. I have to admit it’s something of a Klingon way to die for a metal guitarist. At least he didn’t OD or crash into anything. This is the guy who, when Guitar World asked him about touring necessities, he made sure to include acid (“for long bus trips“) on his list. Despite that, I’ll always admit that the first two Pantera albums were classic metal records that showed a lot of ingenuity, but afterward they failed to remain innovative or creative. In post-grunge metal, only he and Zakk Wylde seem to be allowed to play guitar solos. Now there’s one less great guitarist. We all move up a notch.

Interesting point made on Fark.com:

In America a Beatle was attacked by a pyscho and died.
In Britain a Beatle was attacked by a pyscho and survived.

The obvious difference being that in America, Mark David Chapman had access to a gun. Of course, as Heath pointed out regarding the Churchill/Hitler comment below, you can find a statistic to support any damn ludicrous position you want.

John Lee is a genius. He’s the morning guy on FM 101.1 The River, the only radio station in Little Rock that I can stand. He’s probably better known to the rest of the world as Amy Lee‘s dad. I’ve met him a few times; he would come to the music store I used to work at in Maumelle. Great guy. Anyway, he’s one of the few DJ’s here that can still create his own playlist on the fly. He’s not limited to the same damn 20 songs over and over; a consequence of the station’s format: oldies. If the weather is rainy, he’ll play rainy day songs (this may sound like a given for older folks but today that kind of freedom is unfortunately rare in radio). Yesterday morning as the torrential rainstorm was coming down, John was reading a spot for some roofers, and I thought to myself, “you know, John, you should play ‘Fixing a Hole’ by the Beatles right now.”

And he did.

I saw two of my favorite groups Friday night, King’s X and Van Halen. Details posted in the brand new Little Rock Guitar Forum. Check it out and tell your friends.

Pics from last night’s Sloan show. They rock. Also some other random bits all in the new Plog, arriving just 3 days after the last Plog.
Sorry to be so horribly sporadic. Not much happens around here, but when it does, it brings friends.

Again with the old magazines, this time from Down Beat, circa 1963:

I’m not against progress, but I think maybe one of the things that keeps the guitar alive, and one of the charms of it, might well be the fact that no one has put a finger on *a way* of doing things. I think there is a certain danger when somebody decides he’s got the way.

– Charlie Byrd, 1963

This was something of a revelation to me, and it crystallized a lot of things I’ve been thinking about lately. The rock guitar community has pretty much been adrift since the mid 90’s in a sea of instrumental mediocrity, and while I’m sure many hipster record store employees would posit that rock guitar should never involve virtuosity, I think that people are still waiting for another Jimi Hendrix or Eddie Van Halen to come along to inspire today’s 13-year olds to pick up the instrument and work hard toward playing the ever living shit out of it.

After reading Charlie Byrd’s comments from 40 damn years ago, I now realize that the odds of this happening are now double what I thought they were. Worse, the reason is the very guitar method that I followed: modern guitar magazines and their easy, pervasive tablature methods. Tablature, for those who don’t know, is a super-easy system of learning how to play the guitar without working too hard. The problem with lots of kids learning to play guitar quickly and easily is that kids get a weak grasp of music theory, but worse, the ones who might otherwise be forced (out of disdain for the dogma of music theory perhaps) to invent their own approach are given such an easy route to tread that they have no incentive or oppoprtunity to innovate.

I’ve always defended modern rock guitar methodologies to the purists who derided its lack of discipline, but I now wonder if tablature isn’t killing the guitar in a way. I had always maintained that genius is genius and it will always rise above, but when there’s no resistance to the rising, if the rise is easy, does the rise have a reason to occur? To climb, you have to have something to push against. If a genius kid came along and learned through tab methods, would he develop more quickly or would his talents merely atrophy for lack of resistance? I’m going to think more on this and see what I can figure out.

Here are some pics of the latest additions to the herd. I just got the white one yesterday from Zappa.com. It was custom-made for Dweezil Zappa by the Fender Custom Shop. The other is from Fender’s Japan Custom Shop, it’s a signature model of Richie Kotzen, available only in Japan (where he probably has more fans). I traded my Fender Kotzen stratocaster for a Fender Kotzen telecaster. The neck on it is HUGE, like a baseball bat, and that’s not an exaggeration.

Jessica and I went to see Garden State last night and it’s fabulous. It’s a sort of existential romance for 20-somethings. Certainly an auspicious debut from writer/director Zach Braff. The soundtrack is utterly flawless – I’ve been excited about this movie since I saw the trailer, which featured Frou Frou’s “Let Go” as a theme. The song plays during the movie’s climax and I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to hear a piece of music in a movie. It was perfect. In her blog, Frou Frou singer Imogen Heap says she still hasn’t seen the movie, but I think it will make her ecstatic. She’ll definitely see a record sales spike this month. Jessica and I went out to Barnes & Noble after the movie to get the soundtrack – when we got there, two girls were already listening to it. Fortunately one of them already had it and was just playing it for a friend, so I got the one copy available. It has some great tunes by the Shins, Zero 7, Nick Drake, and, not to draw more comparisons to The Graduate, Simon & Garfunkel.

Like Imogen Heap and Cameron Crowe (two of my favorite people), Zach Braff has an insightful blog that gives a closeup look at the business of doing what you love and getting paid for it.

More fun with old quotations. Another one from Uncle Frank.

"I think that if a person is making music — even if it’s the most crass, commercial kind of crud — that person should be doing that because there are people who want to consume crass, commercial crud. And they’re doing a necessary function for the audience that needs to be entertained. Just because I’m not the consumer of that stuff, it’s no reason for me to go on some big campaign against it. I don’t think it’s particularly aesthetic, but then again, if it’s providing enjoyment for somebody, then fine."

– Frank Zappa, 1983

I’m finding lately that reading old magazines can be more enlightening than reading current magazines.

"It’s the 13-year-old girls who buy the records in mass quantities, so the guitarists who make huge amounts of money are in vocal bands. Think about the psychological conditioning that starts to happen: I do less, I make more. It doesn’t matter. Nobody notices. The more poppy the band becomes, the less musicians there are. Certain days I’m real bitter about our lack of success, but other times I know this is the right way. My big gripe is the way the radio stations program the listeners: It’s all aimed at the pre-adolescent, everything. I’m proud to be in an underground band."

— Steve Morse, 1982

Recently I’ve discovered that this web thing was true. The Internet can make a difference in people’s lives. Ross Rice has just informed me that he scored a gig as Peter Frampton’s keyboardist/guitarist in part because the Frampton Organization liked what they saw on his website (which I designed and maintain). Additionally, my other musician web project, JanCyrka.com, has enabled Jan Cyrka to recently discover that Jeff Beck is a big fan of his. Jan was not previously aware of that, and has thus been residing on cloud 9 for some weeks now, as Jeff Beck is perhaps his primary influence.

So yay me! I don’t do either website for any profit; I just did them for the love, and it’s this sort of thing I get in return. Plus occasional perks (Jan has in the past hooked me up with aftershow passes for Satriani/Vai shows).

In other news, I bought a guitar from Dweezil Zappa! Zappa.com is having a big garage sale.

The guitar I got is an Eddie Van Halen replica from GMW. The white one in the picture. Only $300!! I suspect because of this. I think it’s illegal now to profit from Ed’s trademark stripes. So now I have to sell some guitars to make room. Seriously, there is no more space in my living room for another guitar. So I’m selling my OLP and Jay Turser guitars for $150 each (no cases) to anyone who wants them. They’re amazingly high-quality guitars for the price. Both are gig-able instruments and are comparable in quality to American Fenders (well, the Turser is, but I do use the OLP as a backup guitar in Superflux). More info on the guitars page.

Happy birthdays out to Robin, Tracy and Arika! Three girls to whom I freely pledge my undying devotion despite the vast geographic distances between us.

Did I not mention that I’m an officially published writer now? I wrote an article about Atomic Guitars (and the loss of regional guitar stores in general) for Localist, an arty regional publication for which people around here actually pay $4. Not that I got paid or anything, so I’m still not “professional.” The article also used my pictures of Atomic Guitars.

Also, with all the talk about John Kerry’s past, here’s something I did not know: www.theelectrasrockandrollband.com

Also, also: Imogen Heap’s blog.